Tyzula Week entries
Hey! I wrote two fics for Tyzula Week over on deviantART. I don't know how many people in this group still care about Avatar: The Last Airbender, but I figured I'd post them here anyway.
I'm putting an "adult concepts" warning on this because there's a bit of not-very-explicit sex in the second one. The first one's completely clean.
Travelling in the tank train, space is tight. Curtains divide the car in which Azula, Mai, and Ty Lee sleep into thirds, giving each of them a cramped room that fits little else but a single cot. Some nights, however, the empty spaces in Ty Lee's room become too much for her to bear, and if Azula is in a good mood she opens her bed to the acrobat.
On one such night, Ty Lee stays awake long after her princess has gone to sleep. Azula's rest is usually light when others are near, but she has been sleeping so scarcely since they first set out to follow the Avatar that even the noise and the motion of the tank don't wake her. Ty Lee has become so accustomed to seeing a crease between Azula's eyebrows as she plots out their eventual confrontation with the Avatar that now the princess's sleep-smooth face seems almost alien to her. An impulse comes to Ty Lee: for a brief moment, she wants to finger Azula's face out of some vague panic that she will never see it so untroubled again. The impulse is easily quelled, however, and Ty Lee sighs and lies back against the mattress, closing her eyes.
Through the quiet, Ty Lee can hear Mai's light snores coming over the fabric wall. In all the years she has known Azula, all the times she has shared her bed, Ty Lee has never once heard her make noise when she sleeps. Now, Azula's breathing is completely drowned out by Mai's quiet snoring. Ty Lee wonders if she, herself, snores when she sleeps; she has never given the matter thought, but when she remembers how loudly her sisters snore she hopes that she sleeps as quietly as Azula.
She opens her eyes again and turns her head to watch the sleeping princess. Ty Lee does not often get the chance to stare, but when she does she takes advantage of the opportunity greedily.
It occurs to her how young Azula's face looks in sleep, nothing at all like the controlled, manipulative regal she presents herself as. Ty Lee has always seen sides of Azula that others haven't, and although she isn't allowed to share her discoveries with anyone the memories never fade.
* * *
The sun was high above the palace's main courtyard as Ty Lee watched the three other children. Zuko was in a corner practicing his firebending, moving from stance to stance with his face scrunched up in concentration. Mai was teaching Azula to throw knives, demonstrating while Azula watched with unwavering attention. Ty Lee was leaning against the sun-warmed surface of the courtyard wall, chewing on the end of her braid as she watched the others. Although she knew that there was nothing she could do to help Azula learn the art of blade-throwing, she couldn't help but feel left out. She walked over to Zuko instead.
"Hi, Zuko!"
He paused briefly to look at her, then turned his head again and resumed running through his forms.
"Hi."
She sat down on the ground and idly stretched her leg behind her head. "What's it like to firebend?"
"Hot."
"Oh." She looked up at the few wispy clouds in the afternoon sky. "Can you firebend when it's raining?"
"No."
Zuko's movements were sharp and agitated, and little fluctuations in his aura let Ty Lee know that he was becoming irritated with her. She went back to her spot near the wall and leaned over onto her hands. Concentrating on shifting her center of gravity over her palms, she lifted the lower half of her body into the air and carefully spread her legs out into a left split.
Then a sharp cry came, and Ty Lee crumpled into a heap of confused limbs on the ground.
She quickly righted herself and leapt over to the tree studded with shuriken and darts. Mai was sitting beneath, huddled protectively around her right forearm.
"What happened?" Ty Lee asked, her voice panicked.
Mai did not speak, just looked at the ground trying to blink away tears. Ty Lee knelt down and pulled Mai's arm out. The fabric of the sleeve felt sticky and wet, and although her stomach lurched she impatiently pushed her nausea down and turned Mai's arm over.
There was a clean rip in Mai's sleeve, and underneath the fabric was a cut, bleeding profusely. Mai gritted her teeth as Ty Lee pulled back her sleeve. Before she could assess the damage, however, a shout caught her attention.
"You hurt her!"
Both Ty Lee and Mai's heads turned. Zuko came storming up to where Azula was standing, his expression livid. It was Azula's face, however, that attracted Ty Lee's notice. There was no confident smirk curving her mouth; instead, her eyes were wide with surprise and her lips were slightly parted. She was clearly taken aback by Mai's injury, and Ty Lee almost thought she saw a trace of guilt in her expression.
The moment passed quickly. Azula's eyes narrowed and her upper lip curled into a sneer. "I wouldn't have if she hadn't gotten in the way."
Ty Lee looked away and stood, saying to Mai "Let's go clean you up."
She pulled Mai to her feet by her uninjured elbow as Zuko's furious retort bounced off the walls around them. While she steered Mai out of the courtyard she alternated glances between her wound and her face. The cut didn't seem to be very deep, but she saw in the way Mai's eyebrows contracted slightly and her lips pressed together that she was angry, perhaps as angry as Zuko. Ty Lee put a placating hand on the girl's shoulder, and although Mai's muscles initially stiffened at the touch they relaxed after a few seconds. Ty Lee led the other girl in silence to the nearest washroom, where she directed her to sit down on the floor. She then took up a towel, dampened it, rubbed soap into it, and knelt down to clean Mai's forearm. The girl squeezed her eyes shut against the pain, and Ty Lee eased up on the pressure she was putting on her arm.
"Why does she have to act like that?"
Ty Lee looked up, startled to hear Mai speak. Her face was turned slightly toward the wall and her eyes were fixed firmly on the floor.
"She didn't mean to hurt you."
"I'm not talking about that. She didn't even pretend she was sorry." Mai's voice was even, but her aura spiked and roiled in anger.
"She was! I saw her, I know she feels terrible about it."
Mai's eyes narrowed, but remained on of the tiles in the mosaic patterning the bathroom floor. "What gives her the right to treat us like that?"
Mai had not been expecting an answer -- they both knew, the way they knew fire was hot, that Azula had the right to treat them any way she pleased -- but Ty Lee responded anyway.
"She's pretty and smart and brave and strong."
Mai looked up, stoicism giving way to scornful scrutiny. "You really do love her."
Ty Lee shrugged. "Don't you?"
Surprise flitted across Mai's face, but Ty Lee turned away to rinse the towel before she could catch any more of her reaction. When she turned back to clean away the soap and the last of the blood, Mai was again looking down at the floor. This time, however, Ty Lee saw resignation in her lowered eyes. In silence, she dried Mai's arm and bound it with strips of toilet paper.
They rose from the floor and exited the bathroom, Ty Lee slightly behind Mai. As they walked the palace corridor, the quiet began to make Ty Lee uncomfortable. She knew she couldn't count on Mai to break the silence, so she filled the air with talk about how she always had to patch up bumps and bruises at home, where it was so crowded it was hardly possible to walk two yards without tripping over someone's feet. Mai responded to Ty Lee's chatter with nods and faint, unconvincing smiles, but Ty Lee knew that she didn't mind it.
When they reached the courtyard entrance, Mai only hesitated slightly before walking through the doorway. As the door closed, Azula -- alone now -- turned to them.
"Oh, good, you're all clean. I'll let you take the rest of the day off from practicing with me." She beckoned to Ty Lee. "Come here, Ty Lee. We'll work on acrobatics."
Ty Lee did not imagine that Mai was resentful as she walked over to their princess obediently, but all the same she kept from looking back at where Mai still stood by the doorway.
* * *
Looking down at Azula's sleeping face, at the pacific blue aura that furls tightly against its owner's body when she is awake, Ty Lee thinks that none of them have changed much since then. Even though their lives have taken different paths at times, their relationships with each other are still bound by the same rules. Azula -- the beautiful, strong, clever, and perfectly human Azula -- is still at the center of Mai and Ty Lee's world.
On the verge of sleep, Ty Lee thinks back to the answer Mai didn't give that day. It occurs to her to wonder whether Mai's love for Azula is the same type of love as her own, but it doesn't take her long to decide that, even if it were, it wouldn't make any difference at all.
Although Fire Lord Ozai has taken great care to groom Azula for a powerful political position since she was young (at least since Zuko had proved to be an unworthy heir, she thinks), he still deems it inappropriate for his thirteen-year-old daughter to sit in on important war meetings. Sometimes, when he and his top generals are planning a particularly difficult attack, the meetings stretch on for days. Whenever he anticipates that a war meeting will take up more time than usual he sends her off to Lo and Li's house on Ember Island. Azula always hides her resentment well, but she can't help but feel like a useless doll to be packed away in a frilly pink box smelling of cats and incense when not in use. It does no good to try to reason with herself that the memory of what happened the last time a young heir was allowed into one of his war meetings is still fresh in her father's mind - that would mean Ozai is equating her with Zuko, and after all her years spent striving to establish herself as his sole worthy heir, that is a thought she finds difficult to stand. Azula never lets these insecurities show, but she is less adept at pushing them away in her own mind. Instead, she lets them manifest outwardly by reasserting her dominance over those lower in status than her.
It was in this mind that she ordered Lo and Li to take her to a colony in the northwestern part of the Earth Kingdom. Ty Lee, who often accompanies her on these forced holidays along with Mai, had expressed interest in a resort village in this colony, so Azula decided to make that their destination. When she brought it up to the twins, they smiled indulgently and said "Of course, princess." The exchange was not anywhere near as satisfying as she had pictured.
They depart on one of the royal ships a day before the war meeting starts. As they travel further north, Azula begins to regret their change of plans; as the ship sails toward the colony the air grows cold and the sunlight grows thin and watery, making her feel lethargic. Azula fights against this sluggishness, spending much of her time running through firebending exercises in her cabin, sometimes bringing Mai or Ty Lee over to spar with her.
They reach the resort in the early evening the day after they set out, and once their luggage has been unloaded the three waste no time in relocating it to their shared room in the most expensive inn in the village. In the hour or so before they retire Ty Lee talks endlessly about everything she's heard about the resort and her plans for their stay. Azula responds when the mood strikes her, but for the most part Ty Lee is content to keep up a monologue while she brushes out her braid in front of the vanity mirror. Mai is lying back on her bed, dispassionately throwing darts into the ceiling.
Eventually, Azula's elderly guardians open the door to suggest that they go to sleep. One by one, they get into bed over the course of the next twenty minutes. Azula is the last to do so, but eventually she takes to her bed and succumbs to the weariness creeping its way through her bones.
The next morning, Azula is woken by a loud tapping. She jerks upright and looks around for the source before realizing that the noise is coming from the window. Warily, she rises from her bed, past the still-sleeping Mai, and approaches the window. As she comes closer, she notices that the light seeping in through the curtains seems somewhat muted. She curiously pulls aside the curtains, and is greeted by Ty Lee's face, grinning hugely. Azula's eyes widen as she takes in the girl crouching on the narrow fourth-storey window ledge as easily as if it were solid ground. Then Ty Lee throws a hand out behind her, indicating the scenery beyond the window, and Azula's awareness shifts to the outside world.
The entire village is covered in a foot-deep layer of snow. Snowflakes saturate the air as they make their leisurely way to the ground, and icicles stretch downward from every tree branch. Azula doesn't even realize that her right hand has come to rest on the cold windowpane until Ty Lee coquettishly presses her lips to the other side of the glass her palm is touching. Before Azula can react, Ty Lee has dropped to the window ledge below, then the one below that, nimbly working her way down to the ground. Azula lifts the hand that Ty Lee almost-kissed to her face, feeling her cheeks glowing with heat. She leans closer to the window to see Ty Lee turning cartwheels in the snow with the tireless exuberance of a child. Azula cannot prevent a smile from forming on her face as she watches.
Five minutes later, she climbs down to the ground floor of the inn, wearing a set of thick warm robes that are nevertheless lighter than her usual armored outfits.
"Azula!"
Azula is almost knocked over when she walks out the main doors as Ty Lee throws her arms around her. The embrace is brief, however - Ty Lee pulls away quickly to beam at her, the light of the newly-risen sun glittering in the snowflakes dusting her loose hair.
"Isn't this amazing, Azula? I've never seen snow before in my whole life!"
Azula understands Ty Lee's excitement; she has never seen a snowfall, either. The Fire Nation's climate is far too tropical for their winters to be anything but slight respite from the heat of the other seasons. Azula prefers hot weather, of course, but she can certainly appreciate natural beauty when she encounters it. More than that, though, she appreciates it for the excitement it has produced in Ty Lee. Her warm response to Ty Lee's happiness is not entirely expected, but she does not stop to examine the feeling.
"I see you've made no attempt to dress warmer than usual. Do you not mind the cold, or are you simply too unwilling to go without baring your stomach for even a day?" she says, the note of warmth in her tone softening the already mild barb.
Ty Lee shrugs unconcernedly. "I was in too much of a hurry. I almost didn't get dressed at all."
Azula raises an eyebrow, but before she can respond Ty Lee falls back into the snow.
"I really don't mind, though. It's all so beautiful I don't even notice the cold."
Azula watches as Ty Lee fans her limbs out on the ground. Then, suddenly, the girl jumps nimbly to her feet and catches hold of Azula's arm.
"Come with me, there's a forest a little over that way!"
Amused, Azula allows Ty Lee to pull her around the back of the building, walking slowly and deliberately so that Ty Lee has to adjust her pace to match hers. As they round the corner, Azula sees the beginning of a dense patch of trees. Eager as she is to gain privacy, she makes a point of keeping her strides measured.
They walk through the trees until they can no longer see the village. When they stop in a clearing, there is no sound to be heard except for a few birds calling. The snow on the ground is slightly less dense here, and the sunlight filtering through the tree branches is dimmer.
When Azula turns to Ty Lee, the girl is watching her with a smile - not breathless and exhilarated, as it had been before, but with a sort of wondering contentment about it - playing on her lips. As she sees Azula looking, she lowers her head slightly and arches her eyebrows, and the subtle movements transform her expression into a lascivious one. Azula smirks and closes the distance between them, deftly catching Ty Lee's lips with her own as she pushes her up against a tree. Her left hand comes up to grasp the base of Ty Lee's head while the girl responds enthusiastically to the kiss. Without giving Ty Lee any warning, Azula breaks the kiss and pulls her head back, baring her throat. She brings her lips a finger's breadth away from Ty Lee's throat and carefully exhales heat into it. Ty Lee gasps, eliciting a smile from Azula. With the encouragement of Ty Lee's ragged breathing sounding in her ears, she moves her lips further down her soft neck.
Ty Lee's bare skin is freezing, but there are parts of the girl which never lose their heat, and it doesn't take long for Azula's mouth to find one. Ty Lee's wordless vocalizations remain soft, but their intensity grows steadily until they have finally given way to frenzied gasps. The moment passes, and Ty Lee's respiration slows. Azula pulls away and stands up, watching the other girl catch her breath.
When Ty Lee is once again fully clothed, Azula says "We should go back. Lo and Li will be waking up soon."
Her voice must have been brusque, for Ty Lee's expression grows hurt. Azula's eyebrows contract in unbidden sympathy. She waits for Ty Lee to draw level with her and then puts an arm around her waist in apology as they walk back through the trees, following their footprints from earlier. The trees thin and the snow thickens as they walk, and the early-morning noises of the village grow steadily louder.
When they are almost out of the forest, they come upon Mai leaning against a tree, staring up at its leaves. Azula withdraws her arm from Ty Lee's waist, but Mai doesn't bother to look down when she speaks.
"Your nurses are looking for you, Azula. I told them you'd both gone out for a walk."
Azula clears her throat. "Good work, Mai." She walks quickly in the direction of the inn's front entrance, but when it becomes apparent that she is not being followed she turns her head back. Mai is straightening Ty Lee's clothing, combing fingers through her hair, making it less obvious what she had been up to prior to emerging from the forest. Azula's mouth curves downward.
"Ty Lee. Come inside."
The girl starts at the command, and rushes to her usual place slightly behind Azula. As they turn the corner Azula hears Mai's tread draw level with Ty Lee's. Her footsteps melt the snow as they walk toward the elaborate set of double doors.
Cross-posted to azula_tylee and avatar_femslash.