Treading Lightning
Prompt: #18 Summer Melody: Tyzula by sylvacoer
Title: Treading Lightning
Author: overlithe
Rating: R for some moderately graphic sexual content and mature themes
Word Count: 4,938
Warnings/Pairings: Non-graphic references to violence; extensive references to Azula’s various mental health issues; Azula in general. Pairing: Azula/Ty Lee, obviously.
Summary: Set several years post-War. While spending some time at Ember Island, Azula unsuccessfully tries to bend lightning again. Ty Lee decides to lend a hand. Azula/Ty Lee, some D/s, sensation-play, fire-play, electricity.
Author’s Notes: This story takes place after there’s been quite a lot of water under the bridge for both Azula and Ty Lee and they’re in the early stages of a relationship. And by “relationship”, I mean something that accommodates the fact that Azula may be slick like an oil spill, but as it comes to relationships, she makes Zuko look suave on a James Bond level. ;) Many thanks to my beta joyeuses for her input on this story.
***
Treading Lightning
Breath poured out of her in a steady stream. She finished the exercise and focused on an empty stretch of sky. A fist of memory tightened inside her. To create lightning, your mind must be completely clear. You must empty yourself of emotion.
She dropped into a bending stance and arced her left arm forward. Energy crashed within her like a slap of cold water. It sent bursts through the pathways of her chi, raced through her muscles…
… and fizzled down her arm with a snap of pain. She shook her hand, as if that would coax a spark, but instead the muscles in her palm and fingers twitched, like some alien thing attached to the end of her arm. No. She clutched her left hand with her right, dug her fingernails into her skin, and squeezed until she was sure the bones were beginning to bruise.
Ahead of her, a parrot-skink alighted on the courtyard. She glared at it. It picked at its feathers and scales, then turned a beady, morose eye towards her.
‘What are you looking at?’ she snapped. She knew she was being childish, but still found herself thinking it was a shame you couldn’t really set something on fire with a stare.
Her hand steadied. The bird finished grooming itself, let out a squawk, and flew off with a rustle of wings. It made her feel a little pleased, as though she had intimidated it away.
Footsteps sounded behind her. Cold-
fear
-threaded down Azula’s back. She batted it down, forced herself not to turn around; she recognised the rhythm. A door slid open.
‘What are you doing?’ Ty Lee said behind her. A faint aroma of sugar, cinnamon, and hot sesame oil wafted into the courtyard through the open door.
‘Working on my statue of a four-hundred foot tall platypus-bear. I’m trying to decide which shade of glowing pink will be most artistically meaningful.’ Ty Lee giggled, as though it had been a shared joke instead of just mockery. ‘I’m practising,’ Azula said, voice flat, and turned around.
Her gaze fell on Ty Lee’s beach clothes and her throat closed up with the smell of musty rooms, stiff paper cracking and burning, the sway of palm trees in some other summer. Her skin felt about to slough off her bones; a ball of nausea swelled in her stomach.
She dug her fingers into her hands again, kept them there until she could feel the nails breaking the skin and until all she could think of was what a bilious shade of pink Ty Lee was wearing. Memory slunk away, scaly and slow like a komodo rhino.
For now, child, for now.
Ty Lee didn’t seem to notice. ‘Still?’ The years had done nothing to change her voice: it still sounded like an excessively cheerful flute. Some part of Azula was sure she was supposed to find it irritating, but instead it made some of the tension in her limbs ebb away. ‘You’ve been practising all day,’ Ty Lee added.
‘Yes. That’s what “practising” means,’ Azula said, and picked an invisible strand of hair off her shoulder.
‘I know that, silly,’ Ty Lee said. ‘I just don’t see why you’re doing it. Come on, let’s have something to eat.’
‘You’re a terrible cook.’
‘Oh, I didn’t cook. Come on,’ Ty Lee said, and vanished back into the house. Azula lingered outside for a second, then followed. She supposed she could afford to delay her practice for a few moments.
She hurried across a corridor that always felt too tight, its doors too few and too small. When she had first come back to her-
father’s
-family’s beach house-her beach house, now-it had been thick with dust and cobwebs, the window panes fogged with dirt. A corridor was streaked with soot. Her first instinct had been to boil the whole place, preferably with some kind of caustic soda. Failing that, she had spent two days sweeping away spider-flies, wiping and scrubbing until the air smelled soapy and empty. Right now it just smelled faintly of Ty Lee-fire lily blossoms, mostly-and more strongly of hot rice and komodo chicken.
Ty Lee had dragged a low table and a few floor cushions into the balcony that clung to the rock shielding the house, and was now spooning the food into bowls and trays. The air filled with the scent of spices, almost strong enough to erase the tang of salt drifting up from the sea. Azula sat down and pushed a few steamed cherry-plums around in her bowl.
‘Aren’t you glad you came here?’ Ty Lee said as she plopped down on a cushion like someone finishing a series of somersaults. Azula found her gaze trailing over the fabric clinging to the swell of her breasts, down to the foot Ty Lee had slipped out of its shoe. She looked back at her bowl, where she’d arranged the cherry-plums in a perfect circle.
‘Actually, no,’ she said, her voice flat, as though she were discussing the weather. ‘I hate this place.’
‘Oh. Then why-’
She popped one of the cherry-plums in her mouth. It tasted too bitter, and her tongue brushed up against a pit the shopkeeper had overlooked. Of course. You couldn’t get decent service anywhere these days. ‘I hate everywhere else even more,’ she said with a shrug.
‘I see,’ Ty Lee said softly. For a moment, her eyes seemed to dampen, but then she picked up another dumpling and Azula was sure it had just been a trick of the light. Chopsticks clinked. Voices and the cries of macaw-gulls wafted from the beach below.
The thing inside her spoke again in its clotted voice. Doesn’t the sound of the ocean bring back memories? She tried to bat it away, but she knew it was right. Even at night, with her shutters drawn and the mirror blinded by cloth and half her sheets bunched up around her ears, there was still the sound of the waves, the rustle of tides like the muffled beat of some vast, diseased heart. Then they came back: the cracks and the dust, the smell of mould and things older still. Sitting on a moonlit beach, smoke and the crackle of flames pulling unwise words from her mouth like some strange drug. Hunting starfish-snails in low-tide pools. Eating fire gummies from the same bag, hands still sticky with sand.
The cherry-plum settled in the pit of her stomach like a lump of rock. She wanted to get up, stride down to the sea and command it to stop until it obeyed her purely out of fear.
Instead, she spoke. ‘I can’t bend lightning.’
Ty Lee wolfed down a bite of komodo chicken. ‘Is that why you were practising? Don’t worry, Azula. I’m sure you’ll get the hang of it again in no time.’
Yes, I’m sure everything will be fine if I just wish really, really hard, Azula wanted to say in her most dismissive tone-which, despite everything that had happened in her past lifetime and a half, was still the dismissive tone to which all lesser dismissive tones aspired.
However-
However, the thing about Ty Lee’s permanent cheerfulness wasn’t just that it was naïve. Sometimes, her ridiculous belief that everything would turn out fine, despite all the evidence to the contrary, was almost…
… reassuring.
‘No,’ she found herself saying, instead of sharpness, and looked at the hand holding her chopsticks. Were her fingers shaking just a little? She curled them into a fist, so hard she was sure the wood was going to snap in half. ‘I can’t bend lightning.’
Ty Lee looked up, eyebrows pulled into a frown. ‘Not even a little?’
Azula couldn’t squelch a sarcastic snort. ‘You do realise it’s not-
spinning around doing somersaults
-calligraphy, right? You can either bend lightning or you can’t.’
‘But you could bend lightning since you were thirteen,’ Ty Lee said, cheerfulness undimmed.
‘Twelve and a half, actually,’ Azula said. Ty Lee ignored her and carried on, still holding a chunk of komodo chicken in her chopsticks.
‘You must be one of the most talented firebenders ever. So now you’ve got rid of that block, it’s just a matter of time, right?’ She grinned so broadly Azula was sure her face must hurt.
A flock of birds drifted overhead, black specks in the white sun. Azula put down the bowl of uneaten cherry-plums with a thud. ‘No. Do you really want to know why I can’t bend lightning?’ She reached for the pouch that was always with her, skin to skin, as though it had been sewn to her flesh. Pellets clicked on the table with a noise of spilled beads. A few darted behind bowls and trays and the pitcher of watermelon juice. They smelled faintly of gum tree resin and were covered in green flecks that always made Azula think of poison.
Ty Lee looked at the table, then back at Azula. Her lips parted, closed, parted again. ‘Your medicine-’
‘Does this,’ Azula said, and put one hand out. Ty Lee stared at it, frowning a little, as though she were examining a particularly complicated puzzle.
Azula sighed. ‘It shakes. Inside.’
‘It looks all right-’
‘All right? All right isn’t nearly good enough,’ Azula snapped, and placed her hand on her lap. She was sure she could feel the tremors in her flesh even through the fabric of her wrap, like little earthquakes.
‘Oh,’ Ty Lee said. Her whole self seemed to droop. Azula looked back at the spill on the table. She could just reach out and brush the whole thing away.
Yes. Do that.
Vines twisted inside her. She could see them, almost, under her skin, toothy with thorns, dark and swollen with blood. They spoke again, burning in every nerve ending. Yes. Throw them away. Monsters are feared but defanged monsters are mocked and pitied and that’s what you are with your leash, just weak and sad and laughable, just-
Shut. Up.
A clench of laughter in her stomach. Or else what? Just cut the ropes and burn this place, because then you can burn, then you can be blue flame and cold fire, you can be free, unbound, unrestrained, unfettered. Because then what’s real and what’s not doesn’t matter, because madness is its own freedom. Because you can cover the woman in the mirror all you want but you and I know who you are, you and I know what you want and where you belong and-
‘-all right?’
She blinked. Ty Lee had put down her bowl and was crouching on the floor in front of her, balanced on her toes, fingers brushing Azula’s hand, eyes wide with concern but empty of fear.
‘I’m perfectly fine,’ Azula said with a dismissive flutter of her hand, and leaned back in her cushion.
‘Good.’ Ty Lee looked like she was about to hug her, but instead she jumped back to her feet. ‘Hey, maybe I can help you!’
‘I doubt it,’ Azula said, and started picking up the pills.
‘I can help you with my chi-blocking.’
Azula finished refilling the pouch. It settled against her skin like an anchor. ‘Yes, I am sure lying on the ground would be a big help.’
‘Not like that, silly,’ Ty Lee said with a chuckle, and sat down on the cushion next to Azula, so close their arms were pressed together and Azula could smell her hair, almost taste the sun and the trace of salt on her skin. ‘I mean, your chi must not be flowing properly, right? So I could block it just a little bit. Doesn’t that make sense?’
‘If you don’t think about it for more than five seconds,’ Azula said, but she knew she sounded unconvincing. She glanced over the wall of rock, down at the slope where houses had popped up after the War like mushrooms after rain. In the one closest to theirs, a woman stood in the terrace, face shielded by a parasol.
‘Do you want to know the real reason I’m here?’ She didn’t wait for Ty Lee to answer before she edged closer to the balcony’s latticed railing. ‘Do you see that man in the beach playing-’
we’re playing next
‘-Kuai ball? Second position behind the woman with the braids.’ Ty Lee moved forward on the cushion.
‘Sure,’ Ty Lee said. Azula could feel her breath on the skin of her neck. ‘He owns that house just over there, right?’
‘Yes. He killed his wife.’
‘What? Why would you think-’
In the terrace, the woman had returned to her lounging chair. Below, someone had kicked the ball into the sea, and one of the players was fishing it out.
‘I don’t think he killed his wife. I came here because I thought he killed his wife. Now I know he did. The woman in the terrace isn’t her. She’s in on it, of course-she’s pretending to be her. I think they buried her under the terrace. See the shrine in that corner? The paving underneath doesn’t match the rest-it was laid down quite recently, and that’s an odd way for a shrine to face. One of the players down there probably knows the real wife. They haven’t seen her recently, I’m sure, but maybe they met her as a child. That’s why the woman’s been staying in the house and why she keeps half-hiding her face with hats and parasols and whatnot. The other person must not remember the real wife very well, but there was always a risk they’d figure out she’s an impostor if they got a long good look at her. Of course, those two really shouldn’t have bothered with the subterfuge. I mean, not that I care, but I’m sure someone will come along shortly to have some words. Probably with restraints. And a shovel.’
In the beach, the game had resumed.
‘Do you really think they buried her under the shrine?’ Ty Lee said, voice thick.
‘Yes. Well, technically they had the shrine built after they buried her,’ she added, nonchalant.
‘That’s…’
Azula stood up and crossed her arms over her chest. The air was as hot as ever, but an edge of wind rustled the palm trees. She shivered, and hoped Ty Lee didn’t notice. ‘That’s logical. People wouldn’t think to look under it. People…’ She fell silent. Sunlight glittered on the waves, bright enough to hurt.
The thing wearing her bubbled up again. She could feel its grin, stretched under cracked skin, stained with rust. You don’t need to tell her, do you? She certainly showed you what people are really like under the skin, how all it takes is a little push for them to show you their true faces. Especially to us. Sooner or later, everybody finds a reason to bite.
Something touched her arm and she startled. Only it wasn’t a blade or a stinger or even a slap. It was only Ty Lee’s hand, and her touch felt almost like a caress. She didn’t brush it off.
‘Azula, I promise I just want to help.’
Go away.
She felt the words rise in her throat, even felt them in her mouth, under her tongue. But, somehow, what poured from her lips was something else altogether.
‘All right.’
It didn’t even sound all that grudging.
***
They sat in the courtyard in the lotus position, facing each other. The paving stones dug into Azula’s legs and buttocks. She opened one eye a crack. Above the roof line, dusk had begun to creep into the sky.
‘We should be doing this at noon,’ she said.
Ty Lee shifted a little. ‘You’re supposed to be focusing on your breathing.’
‘I’m a firebender. My breathing is always perfect.’
‘OK.’ A pause. ‘You can give me your hands now.’
Azula opened her eyes fully. Ty Lee stared at her, guileless smile on her face, hands held out, expectant.
How quickly you forget.
I promise I just want to help.
She felt each breath like the press of fingers in her throat and lungs, as though she were a child again, learning how to breathe through heat and rain and fog. You’re being ridiculous, she snapped at herself. She had made generals twice her size and thrice her age quiver, had shown men who liked to cut up women until they didn’t look like women anymore that she could hold their fear in her hand and show it to them.
She certainly wasn’t afraid of Ty Lee.
Their hands met. Ty Lee’s fingertips moved over her wrists, traced lines up her forearms, pebble-hard. Her muscles tightened, then slackened. She was-
slumped on the ground, cheek pressed against stone, trapped in her twitching, useless body, and Ty Lee stood above her, eyes hard and colourless like glass
‘It’s all right.’ Ty Lee’s voice, older, and Azula was back in the courtyard, the afternoon sun on her bare arms, the air full of the smell of dry leaves and the sea. Her heart beat an urgent tattoo on her ribcage; she willed it to slow. ‘It’s all right,’ Ty Lee repeated, and smiled. Her fingers tightened in a circle around Azula’s elbows and the thin skin in the crook of her arms. Ty Lee blushed. ‘I haven’t really done something like this before-can you still bend?’
Fire lit in Azula’s fingertips, pale orange, claw-thin flames. Heat rose between the two of them. Ty Lee’s smile widened and her fingers crept up. Like any firebender-any decent firebender, at least-Azula had always been able to feel the way the air mixed with her chi, deep in her stomach, a split second before flames the colour of ice poured from her hands and feet. But now, even with these weak threads of flame, she felt every channel in her flesh, as though Ty Lee’s fingernails had peeled each layer of skin, bared the incandescent wires underneath. She didn’t know if she believed in auras-she had never had time or patience for such frivolities, not when there was firebending, or strategy, or politics-but right now she was sure she could see them, ghostly tendrils whispering against their skin, Ty Lee’s a vibrant shade of pink, hers scarlet and gold, flimsy like her flames, the edges darkened like bruised fruit. The colours blurred together where Ty Lee’s fingers touched her, and her stomach lurched. Flames darkened and swelled with a whoosh. She yanked her arms back.
‘What’s wrong?’ Ty Lee said. ‘Did I-’
It felt like feeding, didn’t it? Like you needed-
I don’t. ‘It was nothing,’ Azula said as she rubbed her right wrist. She almost expected to see an open mouth ringed with teeth, but of course there was only skin and the faint outlines of veins. She picked at a fleck of loose polish on one nail. When she spoke, her voice was as flat and hard as ice. ‘Look, I’ll handle this on my own.’ She started getting up. Ty Lee’s hand closed on her wrist.
‘Wait.’ Azula nearly pulled her arm away, but she let it remain in Ty Lee’s grip. ‘You don’t have to…’ Ty Lee’s mouth pursed in concentration for a second. ‘Uh, worry? No, that’s not the right word.’ A ripple passed through her face and she brightened again. ‘Never mind. I just mean that you don’t have to do everything on your own.’ She released Azula’s wrist and touched her hand instead.
‘Well, you certainly seem to have stopped minding being part of a matched set,’ Azula said with as much acidity as she could muster. Instead of looking hurt, Ty Lee brightened further and hooked her fingers in Azula’s.
‘Exactly!’ Ty Lee said, and sidled closer. ‘I know you weren’t… feeling well back then, but I think everything turned out OK. In a way. Because…’
She blushed and looked down. Her hair flopped down onto her forehead. ‘I was always a little scared of you. Until-well, until everything happened.’ Her voice wobbled, regained its footing. ‘But then I realised that I wasn’t afraid of you anymore. And I just… wasn’t going to do things because of other people or because I was afraid of something. Then I saw you again and you were, well, better, and I knew I wanted to be with you. But now-’ She slipped one arm around Azula’s shoulders and inched closer still with a rustle of fabric, until their lips were a finger’s breadth apart. Azula was sure they would taste like fresh mint and pepper.
‘Now it was only because I cared about you. Not because I was scared of you.’ Her eyes were still as wide and bright as ever, but her voice dropped to a whisper, and her fingers slid from Azula’s hand onto her waist. ‘Because I’m not afraid of you. And you don’t have to-’
‘I’m not,’ Azula spat out.
You’re a trusting fool, she thought, and laid one hand on the other woman’s throat, pressing hard until she could feel the heart, fingers hot enough to make the skin redden. Ty Lee gasped.
Thorns and glass shards stirred inside Azula. If she wanted to, she could blast a hole through Ty Lee’s throat even with her jagged, tangled firebending. Her fingers dug into the hollows above Ty Lee’s collarbones. It would be so fast the flesh would char and the blood would boil before Ty Lee even had time to scream.
Yes. Remind her of what the world really is like, how it always ends in the flame or the rope or the blade. Trust gets you worm-beetles and a stone slab on your face, and you and I know this, we know They are out there, They are watching, and waiting, always waiting for the time when we show bare skin and soft flesh so They can kick and slash and bite, because things like us have fangs and claws and live in the dark and it’s better to have Them run and shake and fear than find out how much our teeth have dulled…
She did nothing. Ty Lee pressed a thigh against her knee; the hand on Azula’s waist moved up, tugged at the fabric just below her breasts. Ty Lee’s lips parted, her eyes half-closed, and Azula knew the speed of the heartbeat and the shiver in the skin under her palm had nothing to do with fear.
It was just want. Anticipation.
Heat coiled behind Azula’s navel, pooled between her thighs. Her hand moved over Ty Lee’s flesh, a scalding trail of red blooming and fading behind it. Her fingers touched all the things that hadn’t been there Before, at the beach, in a fortress in a boiling lake, as though she couldn’t believe time had passed unless her hands told her so. The way the mop of hair on Ty Lee’s forehead was shorter, so that it curled just above one eye and hung like seaweed when wet. The start of laugh lines bracketing her mouth, thin and soft as spider-fly webbing. The scar an inch below Ty Lee’s right breast, a bolt of white on her brown skin.
Ty Lee whimpered. Her grip on Azula’s shoulders tightened, and her fingers dug urgently under the fabric of Azula’s beach top.
‘Touch me,’ Azula ordered. ‘Touch me again.’ Then, in a voice far too low for-
herself
-anyone else to hear, added, ‘Help me.’
‘Yes, Azula.’ Her tone was as supple as her body as she unhooked her arm from Azula’s shoulders and rose to her knees in one fluid move, but her hands as she pulled Azula to her were unyielding.
They stood face to face, only a sliver of air between them. Ty Lee’s fingers went to Azula’s wrists, drifted up her arms, pressed on her shoulders and the curve of her spine, hard, slow. Azula didn’t know what the other woman was doing-her interest in Ty Lee’s skill had always been strictly practical-but there was numbness and warmth under her skin, as though she were slipping into a hot pool.
‘Keep going,’ Azula said, and closed the gap between them, hair’s breadth by hair’s breadth, until her belly and breasts were pressed against Ty Lee’s and her mouth rested where jaw and throat met. She ran the tip of her tongue over skin that tasted of salt and sun. It shivered under her mouth; under her lips, Azula could feel a heartbeat, the thrum of a moan. Ty Lee’s grip on her slackened. ‘Keep going,’ she said into Ty Lee’s neck in a voice of blue flame.
‘Yes,’ Ty Lee whimpered, but her touch was unwavering. Fingertips kneaded the small of Azula’s back, pressed on the top of her buttocks until her flesh ached and she was sure she was going to clamp down her teeth above Ty Lee’s collarbone and make blood trickle down, thick and coppery and sweet. Instead she left a row of stinging kisses on Ty Lee’s neck, like marks of ownership.
A hand slipped between their bodies, damp with sweat. Ty Lee’s palm pressed just above her stomach; the other hand moved up Azula’s back, maddeningly slow. It buried itself in her hair, ran over her scalp.
To create lightning, your mind must be completely clear.
She laid her face against Ty Lee’s cheek, breathed in the scent of fire lilies and soap and fresh sweat. She didn’t know what Ty Lee was doing, much less if it was working, but right now she didn’t care. She no longer heard the hum of the ocean, the afternoon din of insects. There was only the rise and fall of Ty Lee’s breath, the downy hair just above her ear, the half-whimper as her fingers trailed over Ty Lee’s back, hot enough to burn holes through the fabric.
Your mind must be completely clear.
Completely-
A white-hot wire tightened from the top of her head to the small of her back, coiled between her thighs, and right now her failure didn’t matter, her weakness didn’t matter, the thing under her skin-
almost
-didn’t matter. Whatever bright line Ty Lee had conjured with her fingers had nothing to do with chi, or chakras, she was sure; it was yearning. Arousal. She wanted to pull Ty Lee down onto the ground, part the fabric of her clothes with a blade of flame, then run a hungry mouth and burning fingers over every inch of her, until she was soaked with sweat and desire and red trails criss-crossed her skin. Until she squirmed and begged and in her eyes there wouldn’t be fear, or distrust, or anything other than eagerness.
Energy crashed inside Azula, dotted her skin with goosebumps. It raced down her arms and hands, buried itself in Ty Lee’s flesh with a crackle and a gasp of mingled pain and pleasure. The air held the hum and sharp smell of an incoming storm, and the world had sharpened to Ty Lee’s scent, Ty Lee’s skin, Ty Lee’s touch, the bright net flowing between the two of them.
Lightning raced down her arms again, only newborn sparks, weak and faint, but enough to make Ty Lee’s body arch against hers, nipples and muscles hard enough for Azula to feel even through the fabric. She wanted to pull Ty Lee’s waistband down and dip a hand between her thighs, tell her exactly how hot and slick it felt. Ty Lee’s grip on her slackened a little.
‘Keep your hands on me,’ Azula said. There was a shudder in her voice, but right now she didn’t mind. ‘And ask me.’
‘Do it again,’ Ty Lee said, and pushed her body harder against Azula’s, her skin feverish. ‘Please.’
So she did.
***
Afterwards, they remained in the courtyard, like basking catgators watching the sun set. Azula leaned on Ty Lee and let her play with her hair. She was sure she was eventually going to find a ridiculous collection of braids and loops, but right now there was only the feel of Ty Lee’s fingers, dipping and weaving.
‘Did it help?’
Azula turned her face towards Ty Lee. The stone ground had numbed her legs and buttocks, but the feeling was not wholly unpleasant, like the pain of an old bruise. ‘What? Oh.’ She looked back at the roof ahead of her. You didn’t bend lightning. You made a few sparks. ‘Well, you can hardly expect-’ She paused, glanced at Ty Lee again. Above them the sky had darkened into purples and deep pinks, and an ocean wind murmured against the palm fronds. The air was spicy and sweet.
‘It won’t work all at once, you know,’ Azula said. ‘We shall have to do it again tomorrow. And a number of times after that, I am sure.’ She looked at Ty Lee again and her voice softened just a fraction. ‘Do you think you can handle such a rigorous schedule? I really have no patience for laziness or poor work habits, you know.’
Ty Lee laughed. Her fingers dropped from Azula’s hair onto her hand and squeezed. Azula kept her hand still; after a few moments, she squeezed back, just a little. ‘I’ll give it my best try,’ Ty Lee said.
Just trying is never goo-
‘Good,’ Azula said, and looked at the dusting of stars above the horizon. Tonight she would sleep with the smell of Ty Lee’s hair and skin, and with the rhythm of the other woman’s breathing drowning out the sounds of the sea. She would not look at the covered mirror and maybe, maybe, she would not dream.
++The End++
Author’s Notes: Azula thinking her medicine is what’s blocking her lightning-bending has some grounding in the fact that, in real life, prolonged use of antipsychotic medication (especially the typical/first generation antipsychotics) often results in tardive dyskinesia (repetitive, involuntary movements). Of course, this being the Avatar world, Azula’s medicine is different, and her difficulties with bending lightning are primarily psychological and spiritual, which is why she can get help from a chi-blocker rather than an actual health professional, and also by finding a way to, er, sharpen her focus. ;)
Title: Treading Lightning
Author: overlithe
Rating: R for some moderately graphic sexual content and mature themes
Word Count: 4,938
Warnings/Pairings: Non-graphic references to violence; extensive references to Azula’s various mental health issues; Azula in general. Pairing: Azula/Ty Lee, obviously.
Summary: Set several years post-War. While spending some time at Ember Island, Azula unsuccessfully tries to bend lightning again. Ty Lee decides to lend a hand. Azula/Ty Lee, some D/s, sensation-play, fire-play, electricity.
Author’s Notes: This story takes place after there’s been quite a lot of water under the bridge for both Azula and Ty Lee and they’re in the early stages of a relationship. And by “relationship”, I mean something that accommodates the fact that Azula may be slick like an oil spill, but as it comes to relationships, she makes Zuko look suave on a James Bond level. ;) Many thanks to my beta joyeuses for her input on this story.
***
Treading Lightning
Breath poured out of her in a steady stream. She finished the exercise and focused on an empty stretch of sky. A fist of memory tightened inside her. To create lightning, your mind must be completely clear. You must empty yourself of emotion.
She dropped into a bending stance and arced her left arm forward. Energy crashed within her like a slap of cold water. It sent bursts through the pathways of her chi, raced through her muscles…
… and fizzled down her arm with a snap of pain. She shook her hand, as if that would coax a spark, but instead the muscles in her palm and fingers twitched, like some alien thing attached to the end of her arm. No. She clutched her left hand with her right, dug her fingernails into her skin, and squeezed until she was sure the bones were beginning to bruise.
Ahead of her, a parrot-skink alighted on the courtyard. She glared at it. It picked at its feathers and scales, then turned a beady, morose eye towards her.
‘What are you looking at?’ she snapped. She knew she was being childish, but still found herself thinking it was a shame you couldn’t really set something on fire with a stare.
Her hand steadied. The bird finished grooming itself, let out a squawk, and flew off with a rustle of wings. It made her feel a little pleased, as though she had intimidated it away.
Footsteps sounded behind her. Cold-
fear
-threaded down Azula’s back. She batted it down, forced herself not to turn around; she recognised the rhythm. A door slid open.
‘What are you doing?’ Ty Lee said behind her. A faint aroma of sugar, cinnamon, and hot sesame oil wafted into the courtyard through the open door.
‘Working on my statue of a four-hundred foot tall platypus-bear. I’m trying to decide which shade of glowing pink will be most artistically meaningful.’ Ty Lee giggled, as though it had been a shared joke instead of just mockery. ‘I’m practising,’ Azula said, voice flat, and turned around.
Her gaze fell on Ty Lee’s beach clothes and her throat closed up with the smell of musty rooms, stiff paper cracking and burning, the sway of palm trees in some other summer. Her skin felt about to slough off her bones; a ball of nausea swelled in her stomach.
She dug her fingers into her hands again, kept them there until she could feel the nails breaking the skin and until all she could think of was what a bilious shade of pink Ty Lee was wearing. Memory slunk away, scaly and slow like a komodo rhino.
For now, child, for now.
Ty Lee didn’t seem to notice. ‘Still?’ The years had done nothing to change her voice: it still sounded like an excessively cheerful flute. Some part of Azula was sure she was supposed to find it irritating, but instead it made some of the tension in her limbs ebb away. ‘You’ve been practising all day,’ Ty Lee added.
‘Yes. That’s what “practising” means,’ Azula said, and picked an invisible strand of hair off her shoulder.
‘I know that, silly,’ Ty Lee said. ‘I just don’t see why you’re doing it. Come on, let’s have something to eat.’
‘You’re a terrible cook.’
‘Oh, I didn’t cook. Come on,’ Ty Lee said, and vanished back into the house. Azula lingered outside for a second, then followed. She supposed she could afford to delay her practice for a few moments.
She hurried across a corridor that always felt too tight, its doors too few and too small. When she had first come back to her-
father’s
-family’s beach house-her beach house, now-it had been thick with dust and cobwebs, the window panes fogged with dirt. A corridor was streaked with soot. Her first instinct had been to boil the whole place, preferably with some kind of caustic soda. Failing that, she had spent two days sweeping away spider-flies, wiping and scrubbing until the air smelled soapy and empty. Right now it just smelled faintly of Ty Lee-fire lily blossoms, mostly-and more strongly of hot rice and komodo chicken.
Ty Lee had dragged a low table and a few floor cushions into the balcony that clung to the rock shielding the house, and was now spooning the food into bowls and trays. The air filled with the scent of spices, almost strong enough to erase the tang of salt drifting up from the sea. Azula sat down and pushed a few steamed cherry-plums around in her bowl.
‘Aren’t you glad you came here?’ Ty Lee said as she plopped down on a cushion like someone finishing a series of somersaults. Azula found her gaze trailing over the fabric clinging to the swell of her breasts, down to the foot Ty Lee had slipped out of its shoe. She looked back at her bowl, where she’d arranged the cherry-plums in a perfect circle.
‘Actually, no,’ she said, her voice flat, as though she were discussing the weather. ‘I hate this place.’
‘Oh. Then why-’
She popped one of the cherry-plums in her mouth. It tasted too bitter, and her tongue brushed up against a pit the shopkeeper had overlooked. Of course. You couldn’t get decent service anywhere these days. ‘I hate everywhere else even more,’ she said with a shrug.
‘I see,’ Ty Lee said softly. For a moment, her eyes seemed to dampen, but then she picked up another dumpling and Azula was sure it had just been a trick of the light. Chopsticks clinked. Voices and the cries of macaw-gulls wafted from the beach below.
The thing inside her spoke again in its clotted voice. Doesn’t the sound of the ocean bring back memories? She tried to bat it away, but she knew it was right. Even at night, with her shutters drawn and the mirror blinded by cloth and half her sheets bunched up around her ears, there was still the sound of the waves, the rustle of tides like the muffled beat of some vast, diseased heart. Then they came back: the cracks and the dust, the smell of mould and things older still. Sitting on a moonlit beach, smoke and the crackle of flames pulling unwise words from her mouth like some strange drug. Hunting starfish-snails in low-tide pools. Eating fire gummies from the same bag, hands still sticky with sand.
The cherry-plum settled in the pit of her stomach like a lump of rock. She wanted to get up, stride down to the sea and command it to stop until it obeyed her purely out of fear.
Instead, she spoke. ‘I can’t bend lightning.’
Ty Lee wolfed down a bite of komodo chicken. ‘Is that why you were practising? Don’t worry, Azula. I’m sure you’ll get the hang of it again in no time.’
Yes, I’m sure everything will be fine if I just wish really, really hard, Azula wanted to say in her most dismissive tone-which, despite everything that had happened in her past lifetime and a half, was still the dismissive tone to which all lesser dismissive tones aspired.
However-
However, the thing about Ty Lee’s permanent cheerfulness wasn’t just that it was naïve. Sometimes, her ridiculous belief that everything would turn out fine, despite all the evidence to the contrary, was almost…
… reassuring.
‘No,’ she found herself saying, instead of sharpness, and looked at the hand holding her chopsticks. Were her fingers shaking just a little? She curled them into a fist, so hard she was sure the wood was going to snap in half. ‘I can’t bend lightning.’
Ty Lee looked up, eyebrows pulled into a frown. ‘Not even a little?’
Azula couldn’t squelch a sarcastic snort. ‘You do realise it’s not-
spinning around doing somersaults
-calligraphy, right? You can either bend lightning or you can’t.’
‘But you could bend lightning since you were thirteen,’ Ty Lee said, cheerfulness undimmed.
‘Twelve and a half, actually,’ Azula said. Ty Lee ignored her and carried on, still holding a chunk of komodo chicken in her chopsticks.
‘You must be one of the most talented firebenders ever. So now you’ve got rid of that block, it’s just a matter of time, right?’ She grinned so broadly Azula was sure her face must hurt.
A flock of birds drifted overhead, black specks in the white sun. Azula put down the bowl of uneaten cherry-plums with a thud. ‘No. Do you really want to know why I can’t bend lightning?’ She reached for the pouch that was always with her, skin to skin, as though it had been sewn to her flesh. Pellets clicked on the table with a noise of spilled beads. A few darted behind bowls and trays and the pitcher of watermelon juice. They smelled faintly of gum tree resin and were covered in green flecks that always made Azula think of poison.
Ty Lee looked at the table, then back at Azula. Her lips parted, closed, parted again. ‘Your medicine-’
‘Does this,’ Azula said, and put one hand out. Ty Lee stared at it, frowning a little, as though she were examining a particularly complicated puzzle.
Azula sighed. ‘It shakes. Inside.’
‘It looks all right-’
‘All right? All right isn’t nearly good enough,’ Azula snapped, and placed her hand on her lap. She was sure she could feel the tremors in her flesh even through the fabric of her wrap, like little earthquakes.
‘Oh,’ Ty Lee said. Her whole self seemed to droop. Azula looked back at the spill on the table. She could just reach out and brush the whole thing away.
Yes. Do that.
Vines twisted inside her. She could see them, almost, under her skin, toothy with thorns, dark and swollen with blood. They spoke again, burning in every nerve ending. Yes. Throw them away. Monsters are feared but defanged monsters are mocked and pitied and that’s what you are with your leash, just weak and sad and laughable, just-
Shut. Up.
A clench of laughter in her stomach. Or else what? Just cut the ropes and burn this place, because then you can burn, then you can be blue flame and cold fire, you can be free, unbound, unrestrained, unfettered. Because then what’s real and what’s not doesn’t matter, because madness is its own freedom. Because you can cover the woman in the mirror all you want but you and I know who you are, you and I know what you want and where you belong and-
‘-all right?’
She blinked. Ty Lee had put down her bowl and was crouching on the floor in front of her, balanced on her toes, fingers brushing Azula’s hand, eyes wide with concern but empty of fear.
‘I’m perfectly fine,’ Azula said with a dismissive flutter of her hand, and leaned back in her cushion.
‘Good.’ Ty Lee looked like she was about to hug her, but instead she jumped back to her feet. ‘Hey, maybe I can help you!’
‘I doubt it,’ Azula said, and started picking up the pills.
‘I can help you with my chi-blocking.’
Azula finished refilling the pouch. It settled against her skin like an anchor. ‘Yes, I am sure lying on the ground would be a big help.’
‘Not like that, silly,’ Ty Lee said with a chuckle, and sat down on the cushion next to Azula, so close their arms were pressed together and Azula could smell her hair, almost taste the sun and the trace of salt on her skin. ‘I mean, your chi must not be flowing properly, right? So I could block it just a little bit. Doesn’t that make sense?’
‘If you don’t think about it for more than five seconds,’ Azula said, but she knew she sounded unconvincing. She glanced over the wall of rock, down at the slope where houses had popped up after the War like mushrooms after rain. In the one closest to theirs, a woman stood in the terrace, face shielded by a parasol.
‘Do you want to know the real reason I’m here?’ She didn’t wait for Ty Lee to answer before she edged closer to the balcony’s latticed railing. ‘Do you see that man in the beach playing-’
we’re playing next
‘-Kuai ball? Second position behind the woman with the braids.’ Ty Lee moved forward on the cushion.
‘Sure,’ Ty Lee said. Azula could feel her breath on the skin of her neck. ‘He owns that house just over there, right?’
‘Yes. He killed his wife.’
‘What? Why would you think-’
In the terrace, the woman had returned to her lounging chair. Below, someone had kicked the ball into the sea, and one of the players was fishing it out.
‘I don’t think he killed his wife. I came here because I thought he killed his wife. Now I know he did. The woman in the terrace isn’t her. She’s in on it, of course-she’s pretending to be her. I think they buried her under the terrace. See the shrine in that corner? The paving underneath doesn’t match the rest-it was laid down quite recently, and that’s an odd way for a shrine to face. One of the players down there probably knows the real wife. They haven’t seen her recently, I’m sure, but maybe they met her as a child. That’s why the woman’s been staying in the house and why she keeps half-hiding her face with hats and parasols and whatnot. The other person must not remember the real wife very well, but there was always a risk they’d figure out she’s an impostor if they got a long good look at her. Of course, those two really shouldn’t have bothered with the subterfuge. I mean, not that I care, but I’m sure someone will come along shortly to have some words. Probably with restraints. And a shovel.’
In the beach, the game had resumed.
‘Do you really think they buried her under the shrine?’ Ty Lee said, voice thick.
‘Yes. Well, technically they had the shrine built after they buried her,’ she added, nonchalant.
‘That’s…’
Azula stood up and crossed her arms over her chest. The air was as hot as ever, but an edge of wind rustled the palm trees. She shivered, and hoped Ty Lee didn’t notice. ‘That’s logical. People wouldn’t think to look under it. People…’ She fell silent. Sunlight glittered on the waves, bright enough to hurt.
The thing wearing her bubbled up again. She could feel its grin, stretched under cracked skin, stained with rust. You don’t need to tell her, do you? She certainly showed you what people are really like under the skin, how all it takes is a little push for them to show you their true faces. Especially to us. Sooner or later, everybody finds a reason to bite.
Something touched her arm and she startled. Only it wasn’t a blade or a stinger or even a slap. It was only Ty Lee’s hand, and her touch felt almost like a caress. She didn’t brush it off.
‘Azula, I promise I just want to help.’
Go away.
She felt the words rise in her throat, even felt them in her mouth, under her tongue. But, somehow, what poured from her lips was something else altogether.
‘All right.’
It didn’t even sound all that grudging.
***
They sat in the courtyard in the lotus position, facing each other. The paving stones dug into Azula’s legs and buttocks. She opened one eye a crack. Above the roof line, dusk had begun to creep into the sky.
‘We should be doing this at noon,’ she said.
Ty Lee shifted a little. ‘You’re supposed to be focusing on your breathing.’
‘I’m a firebender. My breathing is always perfect.’
‘OK.’ A pause. ‘You can give me your hands now.’
Azula opened her eyes fully. Ty Lee stared at her, guileless smile on her face, hands held out, expectant.
How quickly you forget.
I promise I just want to help.
She felt each breath like the press of fingers in her throat and lungs, as though she were a child again, learning how to breathe through heat and rain and fog. You’re being ridiculous, she snapped at herself. She had made generals twice her size and thrice her age quiver, had shown men who liked to cut up women until they didn’t look like women anymore that she could hold their fear in her hand and show it to them.
She certainly wasn’t afraid of Ty Lee.
Their hands met. Ty Lee’s fingertips moved over her wrists, traced lines up her forearms, pebble-hard. Her muscles tightened, then slackened. She was-
slumped on the ground, cheek pressed against stone, trapped in her twitching, useless body, and Ty Lee stood above her, eyes hard and colourless like glass
‘It’s all right.’ Ty Lee’s voice, older, and Azula was back in the courtyard, the afternoon sun on her bare arms, the air full of the smell of dry leaves and the sea. Her heart beat an urgent tattoo on her ribcage; she willed it to slow. ‘It’s all right,’ Ty Lee repeated, and smiled. Her fingers tightened in a circle around Azula’s elbows and the thin skin in the crook of her arms. Ty Lee blushed. ‘I haven’t really done something like this before-can you still bend?’
Fire lit in Azula’s fingertips, pale orange, claw-thin flames. Heat rose between the two of them. Ty Lee’s smile widened and her fingers crept up. Like any firebender-any decent firebender, at least-Azula had always been able to feel the way the air mixed with her chi, deep in her stomach, a split second before flames the colour of ice poured from her hands and feet. But now, even with these weak threads of flame, she felt every channel in her flesh, as though Ty Lee’s fingernails had peeled each layer of skin, bared the incandescent wires underneath. She didn’t know if she believed in auras-she had never had time or patience for such frivolities, not when there was firebending, or strategy, or politics-but right now she was sure she could see them, ghostly tendrils whispering against their skin, Ty Lee’s a vibrant shade of pink, hers scarlet and gold, flimsy like her flames, the edges darkened like bruised fruit. The colours blurred together where Ty Lee’s fingers touched her, and her stomach lurched. Flames darkened and swelled with a whoosh. She yanked her arms back.
‘What’s wrong?’ Ty Lee said. ‘Did I-’
It felt like feeding, didn’t it? Like you needed-
I don’t. ‘It was nothing,’ Azula said as she rubbed her right wrist. She almost expected to see an open mouth ringed with teeth, but of course there was only skin and the faint outlines of veins. She picked at a fleck of loose polish on one nail. When she spoke, her voice was as flat and hard as ice. ‘Look, I’ll handle this on my own.’ She started getting up. Ty Lee’s hand closed on her wrist.
‘Wait.’ Azula nearly pulled her arm away, but she let it remain in Ty Lee’s grip. ‘You don’t have to…’ Ty Lee’s mouth pursed in concentration for a second. ‘Uh, worry? No, that’s not the right word.’ A ripple passed through her face and she brightened again. ‘Never mind. I just mean that you don’t have to do everything on your own.’ She released Azula’s wrist and touched her hand instead.
‘Well, you certainly seem to have stopped minding being part of a matched set,’ Azula said with as much acidity as she could muster. Instead of looking hurt, Ty Lee brightened further and hooked her fingers in Azula’s.
‘Exactly!’ Ty Lee said, and sidled closer. ‘I know you weren’t… feeling well back then, but I think everything turned out OK. In a way. Because…’
She blushed and looked down. Her hair flopped down onto her forehead. ‘I was always a little scared of you. Until-well, until everything happened.’ Her voice wobbled, regained its footing. ‘But then I realised that I wasn’t afraid of you anymore. And I just… wasn’t going to do things because of other people or because I was afraid of something. Then I saw you again and you were, well, better, and I knew I wanted to be with you. But now-’ She slipped one arm around Azula’s shoulders and inched closer still with a rustle of fabric, until their lips were a finger’s breadth apart. Azula was sure they would taste like fresh mint and pepper.
‘Now it was only because I cared about you. Not because I was scared of you.’ Her eyes were still as wide and bright as ever, but her voice dropped to a whisper, and her fingers slid from Azula’s hand onto her waist. ‘Because I’m not afraid of you. And you don’t have to-’
‘I’m not,’ Azula spat out.
You’re a trusting fool, she thought, and laid one hand on the other woman’s throat, pressing hard until she could feel the heart, fingers hot enough to make the skin redden. Ty Lee gasped.
Thorns and glass shards stirred inside Azula. If she wanted to, she could blast a hole through Ty Lee’s throat even with her jagged, tangled firebending. Her fingers dug into the hollows above Ty Lee’s collarbones. It would be so fast the flesh would char and the blood would boil before Ty Lee even had time to scream.
Yes. Remind her of what the world really is like, how it always ends in the flame or the rope or the blade. Trust gets you worm-beetles and a stone slab on your face, and you and I know this, we know They are out there, They are watching, and waiting, always waiting for the time when we show bare skin and soft flesh so They can kick and slash and bite, because things like us have fangs and claws and live in the dark and it’s better to have Them run and shake and fear than find out how much our teeth have dulled…
She did nothing. Ty Lee pressed a thigh against her knee; the hand on Azula’s waist moved up, tugged at the fabric just below her breasts. Ty Lee’s lips parted, her eyes half-closed, and Azula knew the speed of the heartbeat and the shiver in the skin under her palm had nothing to do with fear.
It was just want. Anticipation.
Heat coiled behind Azula’s navel, pooled between her thighs. Her hand moved over Ty Lee’s flesh, a scalding trail of red blooming and fading behind it. Her fingers touched all the things that hadn’t been there Before, at the beach, in a fortress in a boiling lake, as though she couldn’t believe time had passed unless her hands told her so. The way the mop of hair on Ty Lee’s forehead was shorter, so that it curled just above one eye and hung like seaweed when wet. The start of laugh lines bracketing her mouth, thin and soft as spider-fly webbing. The scar an inch below Ty Lee’s right breast, a bolt of white on her brown skin.
Ty Lee whimpered. Her grip on Azula’s shoulders tightened, and her fingers dug urgently under the fabric of Azula’s beach top.
‘Touch me,’ Azula ordered. ‘Touch me again.’ Then, in a voice far too low for-
herself
-anyone else to hear, added, ‘Help me.’
‘Yes, Azula.’ Her tone was as supple as her body as she unhooked her arm from Azula’s shoulders and rose to her knees in one fluid move, but her hands as she pulled Azula to her were unyielding.
They stood face to face, only a sliver of air between them. Ty Lee’s fingers went to Azula’s wrists, drifted up her arms, pressed on her shoulders and the curve of her spine, hard, slow. Azula didn’t know what the other woman was doing-her interest in Ty Lee’s skill had always been strictly practical-but there was numbness and warmth under her skin, as though she were slipping into a hot pool.
‘Keep going,’ Azula said, and closed the gap between them, hair’s breadth by hair’s breadth, until her belly and breasts were pressed against Ty Lee’s and her mouth rested where jaw and throat met. She ran the tip of her tongue over skin that tasted of salt and sun. It shivered under her mouth; under her lips, Azula could feel a heartbeat, the thrum of a moan. Ty Lee’s grip on her slackened. ‘Keep going,’ she said into Ty Lee’s neck in a voice of blue flame.
‘Yes,’ Ty Lee whimpered, but her touch was unwavering. Fingertips kneaded the small of Azula’s back, pressed on the top of her buttocks until her flesh ached and she was sure she was going to clamp down her teeth above Ty Lee’s collarbone and make blood trickle down, thick and coppery and sweet. Instead she left a row of stinging kisses on Ty Lee’s neck, like marks of ownership.
A hand slipped between their bodies, damp with sweat. Ty Lee’s palm pressed just above her stomach; the other hand moved up Azula’s back, maddeningly slow. It buried itself in her hair, ran over her scalp.
To create lightning, your mind must be completely clear.
She laid her face against Ty Lee’s cheek, breathed in the scent of fire lilies and soap and fresh sweat. She didn’t know what Ty Lee was doing, much less if it was working, but right now she didn’t care. She no longer heard the hum of the ocean, the afternoon din of insects. There was only the rise and fall of Ty Lee’s breath, the downy hair just above her ear, the half-whimper as her fingers trailed over Ty Lee’s back, hot enough to burn holes through the fabric.
Your mind must be completely clear.
Completely-
A white-hot wire tightened from the top of her head to the small of her back, coiled between her thighs, and right now her failure didn’t matter, her weakness didn’t matter, the thing under her skin-
almost
-didn’t matter. Whatever bright line Ty Lee had conjured with her fingers had nothing to do with chi, or chakras, she was sure; it was yearning. Arousal. She wanted to pull Ty Lee down onto the ground, part the fabric of her clothes with a blade of flame, then run a hungry mouth and burning fingers over every inch of her, until she was soaked with sweat and desire and red trails criss-crossed her skin. Until she squirmed and begged and in her eyes there wouldn’t be fear, or distrust, or anything other than eagerness.
Energy crashed inside Azula, dotted her skin with goosebumps. It raced down her arms and hands, buried itself in Ty Lee’s flesh with a crackle and a gasp of mingled pain and pleasure. The air held the hum and sharp smell of an incoming storm, and the world had sharpened to Ty Lee’s scent, Ty Lee’s skin, Ty Lee’s touch, the bright net flowing between the two of them.
Lightning raced down her arms again, only newborn sparks, weak and faint, but enough to make Ty Lee’s body arch against hers, nipples and muscles hard enough for Azula to feel even through the fabric. She wanted to pull Ty Lee’s waistband down and dip a hand between her thighs, tell her exactly how hot and slick it felt. Ty Lee’s grip on her slackened a little.
‘Keep your hands on me,’ Azula said. There was a shudder in her voice, but right now she didn’t mind. ‘And ask me.’
‘Do it again,’ Ty Lee said, and pushed her body harder against Azula’s, her skin feverish. ‘Please.’
So she did.
***
Afterwards, they remained in the courtyard, like basking catgators watching the sun set. Azula leaned on Ty Lee and let her play with her hair. She was sure she was eventually going to find a ridiculous collection of braids and loops, but right now there was only the feel of Ty Lee’s fingers, dipping and weaving.
‘Did it help?’
Azula turned her face towards Ty Lee. The stone ground had numbed her legs and buttocks, but the feeling was not wholly unpleasant, like the pain of an old bruise. ‘What? Oh.’ She looked back at the roof ahead of her. You didn’t bend lightning. You made a few sparks. ‘Well, you can hardly expect-’ She paused, glanced at Ty Lee again. Above them the sky had darkened into purples and deep pinks, and an ocean wind murmured against the palm fronds. The air was spicy and sweet.
‘It won’t work all at once, you know,’ Azula said. ‘We shall have to do it again tomorrow. And a number of times after that, I am sure.’ She looked at Ty Lee again and her voice softened just a fraction. ‘Do you think you can handle such a rigorous schedule? I really have no patience for laziness or poor work habits, you know.’
Ty Lee laughed. Her fingers dropped from Azula’s hair onto her hand and squeezed. Azula kept her hand still; after a few moments, she squeezed back, just a little. ‘I’ll give it my best try,’ Ty Lee said.
Just trying is never goo-
‘Good,’ Azula said, and looked at the dusting of stars above the horizon. Tonight she would sleep with the smell of Ty Lee’s hair and skin, and with the rhythm of the other woman’s breathing drowning out the sounds of the sea. She would not look at the covered mirror and maybe, maybe, she would not dream.
++The End++
Author’s Notes: Azula thinking her medicine is what’s blocking her lightning-bending has some grounding in the fact that, in real life, prolonged use of antipsychotic medication (especially the typical/first generation antipsychotics) often results in tardive dyskinesia (repetitive, involuntary movements). Of course, this being the Avatar world, Azula’s medicine is different, and her difficulties with bending lightning are primarily psychological and spiritual, which is why she can get help from a chi-blocker rather than an actual health professional, and also by finding a way to, er, sharpen her focus. ;)