Chapter Text
It happened like this:
The shop was empty of customers save for Katara’s bald ex-boyfriend, Aang. A girl was sitting across him, her back turned to Azula. She walked over to their table, skipped the greeting Uncle insisted they give every customer, and finally looked over to the girl. She froze, words failing her as she stared at her too long to be polite.
The girl stared right back; her eyes were wide as Azula’s name escaped her mouth like a question, the girl's own name echoing in Azula's mind. Ty Lee... Her body tensed as if gearing for fight or flight, to confront or flee before another word was spoken. Yet her defenses were utterly disarmed the moment Ty Lee rose from her chair to gather her up in her lightly muscled arms. A tight embrace. The scent of flowers assaulting her senses. It was as if nothing had changed and they were fifteen and careless again.
Water splashed across her face and she was wrenched out of the memory that had been playing on a loop in her head since yesterday. She spluttered water out of her mouth, her eyes blinking open.
“What the hell is wrong with you?!” she exclaimed, glaring up at Katara who was sniggering and holding an empty water bottle over her face. “I was trying to nap!”
“You weren't.”
“What do you want?”
Katara propped up a hand on her hip. “Yue's inviting a bunch of friends over tonight, she wants me to ask you if you'll be staying.”
“Like I have a choice?” Azula said. She'd rather be here than suffer her uncle's endless questions about her day.
Katara nudged her with her hip, Azula promptly scooting over to the side so Katara could plop down beside her on the pool lounge. Katara's hair was still damp from being on the water for hours, dripping droplets on Azula's shoulder.
Azula had her fair share of strange things in her life, but her friendship with Katara was still one of the more peculiar ones. They hated each other the moment Azula transferred to her school in junior year, then they both came out as gay around the same time and drunkenly made out at a party. After avoiding each other like the plague for months, they begrudgingly built an alliance against rude customers after Katara got herself hired in Uncle's tea shop. Waitressing was like navigating a social warzone, and having the hot-tempered Katara on her side had its perks.
She isn't terrible company, at least.
“You're thinking about your ex-girlfriend again, aren't you?” Katara prodded, the question carried by that gentle tone she always used whenever she was trying to get Azula to talk about her issues.
Except when she's acting like my therapist.
“For the last time, she's not my ex.”
“You are thinking of her.”
“Shut up. Go flirt with Yue or something.”
They’d been hanging out in Yue's mansion ever since Katara began dating her around the start of summer. Azula did miss the superficial pleasures of living in a house like Yue’s, even though her childhood home back in Caldera became nothing but a lifeless edifice of unpleasant memories lurking in every corner. Uncle Iroh wasn’t exactly hurting for money, but her life now was a far cry from the one she had back when they still lived under her dad’s roof.
Azula leaned back, chasing that empty calmness she knew too well as her eyes fluttered shut. A warm summer wind passed over her.
“I just never thought I'd see her again,” she began to say, because she was only human and the thoughts she'd been keeping to herself were bound to spill over. “It’s only been a couple of years but it feels like a lifetime ago since I last saw her. Things are so different now. And her cousin just happened to be your ex? What were the odds of that?”
Katara flicked her shoulder playfully. “At least it wasn't a disaster when you two bumped into each other, right?”
Azula nodded without opening her eyes. “Yeah... I guess so.”
~
“God, it's been forever, hasn't it?” said Ty Lee as she pulled away, grinning like she actually meant every word. “How have you been?”
“I go to therapy now,” Azula blurted, then inwardly chided herself. Out of all the things she could've said...
Never in her life had Azula felt so inadequate. She could bend words like weapons, but right now she felt like she had been thrust into an arena empty-handed.
It didn't seem to matter to Ty Lee, though. “That's... great,” she said, then her smile turned soft. “I- um, I heard about your dad. Azula, I'm—”
“It's fine, you don’t have to say anything.” Her pity was the last thing Azula wanted. She finally turned to bald boy. “The usual?”
“Sure,” he replied, stupid bright smile and all. “Oh, and this is my cousin, Ty Lee, but you two seem to know each other already.”
Azula frowned. “Cousin?”
“Mom's side. Very distant, though,” explained Ty Lee. “I'm staying with Aang and his dad for the summer.”
“Oh,” she said, rather dumbly, then left to get their order without saying another word.
~
Katara's girlfriend never liked the idea of throwing parties. What she liked to do was arranging what she always called “get togethers” like some rich man's bored housewife and preparing platters of Northern delicacies and snacks for her friends. Katara would help her cook and bake everything, because they were one of those annoyingly wholesome couples, while Azula popped in and out of the kitchen at random times to taste whatever they were making. Her critiques were always frank, but she tried to tamp them down after that one time she got particularly grating and Yue looked visibly upset. She was blunt, but she wasn't a monster.
When their friends arrive—more accurately, Katara and Yue's friends since Azula mostly just tolerated the others, including her own brother—Yue would either let them put on a movie to watch or take everyone to her dad's karaoke room. This time wasn't any different, and the same old faces crowded Yue's opulent living room.
Things got a little bit more complicated for Azula when Aang arrived while Sokka and Zuko were still debating which movie to watch.
...with Ty Lee trailing behind him.
Azula tried to repress her sudden panic. She had known another encounter was inevitable, but she hadn't expected it to be so soon. Fortunately, Azula was great at schooling her features to avoid betraying even the slightest hint of whatever emotion internally clawing at her. And when it came to Ty Lee, she only had to bury down the nearly nauseating amalgam of guilt, nostalgia, and something disturbingly close to longing that bloomed in her chest for the rest of the evening.
She’d been through worse.
Zuzu looked surprised to see Ty Lee but he let her hug him anyway. Azula pointedly ignored him when he tried to catch her eye.
Ty Lee inserted herself in the group with ease, which wasn't surprising; she always had a way with social interactions. She was all smiles while she chatted with the others, endearing herself to them with her contagious energy. That trick never got old, it seemed. Boys used to foam at the mouth just to be near her; Azula suspected she still had that effect on people.
“Wait, you're a part of the Kyoshi Dance Company?” said Sokka. “You must know Suki!”
“Of course!” Ty Lee’s lips curled in a smirk and the sight brought back a myriad of memories that Azula would rather stay hidden. Her stomach flipped despite herself. “Suki talks about you a lot, actually.”
Sokka blushed, scratching the back of his head sheepishly, and Azula feared she was going to revisit her dinner. “Um, yeah, she’s— we're... yeah.”
When Ty Lee's eyes finally landed on Azula, her face lit up even more, if such a thing was even possible. “Hi, Azula. Good to see you!”
She sounded genuine, and Azula managed a polite smile. Katara was rubbing off on her.
Mai gave her a sideway glance. “That went better than I expected.”
“What, you thought I was going to cause a scene?”
“Wouldn't put it past you.”
“Tch, I’m better than that now and you know it,” she muttered. “Besides, you and I get along well enough, don't we?”
“We both know it was different between the two of you, Azula.” Mai’s eyes grew serious for a moment, fixing Azula with a fleeting look, a hint of warning in them. It vanished and Mai was back to her indifferent self before Azula could start overthinking.
Azula didn't bother denying what she said.
The movie started and Azula sat next to Toph, refusing to stay anywhere near Katara while she snuggled with Yue on the love seat. She did that once and it was harrowing, they were sickly sweet those two. Toph was blissfully munching on a bowl of popcorn.
“You and new girl know each other?” she asked Azula, elbowing her slightly on the side.
“Never thought you'd be one to gossip, Beifong.”
Toph's eyebrow rose in a slow arch. Wrong move, then.
“Why, is there something we shouldn't know?”
Azula didn't deign to reply. She shifted her focus back to the film they were watching: some maximalist fanfare that was nothing but one pointless spectacle after another. Hardly a minute had gone by and she was already bored.
Her eyes flitted over to the other side of the living room where Ty Lee sat beside Mai. Under the shifting light of the television screen, Ty Lee glowed like a pale ghost with a smiling face. Azula couldn't help but think how apt the comparison was.
~
When Azula was seven, she heard her mother say she was a difficult child. She didn’t entirely understand what it meant, but she knew she was being slighted.
“I’m sure she didn’t mean it, Azula,” said Ty Lee.
“You weren’t there, Ty Lee. She hates me.” Azula threw the stupid beheaded doll that her stupid uncle gave her across the bedroom. It landed on a small stack of books she had stolen from her dad’s library. “It doesn't matter, though. I don't care if she does,” she said, not sure whether she actually meant any of it.
Ty Lee’s mouth pulled downwards when she looked at her, like she was sad on Azula’s behalf. “Nobody hates you, Azula.” Ty Lee sounded so sure of it, so convinced, that Azula believed her right away. “You’re the prettiest, bestest girl ever! No one could ever hate you. Right, Mai?”
Mai, who was busy perusing the dumb comic book that Zuzu gave her after she complimented the large set of volumes he got from Uncle, looked up and nodded. “Sure,” she said.
“See? There’s no need to be upset.” Ty Lee smiled.
Azula scoffed. “I wasn’t upset.”
“Okay… we should go outside then. I want to show you a new trick I learned!”
They spent the rest of the day playing in the sprawling backyard of Azula's house, clear blue sky above them and soft grass beneath their feet. For a while, Azula forgot her mother’s words.
~
Azula refused to cry during the funeral.
She kept her face sad though, which was expected of her. It wasn’t hard. She was sad. Her mom just died, snatched away from her without warning after a car accident. But she didn’t let herself cry. When she had just turned nine and twisted her ankle in the middle of her birthday party, her dad had pulled her aside and chastised her, his grip on her arm tight as he told her that she was too old to cry. She hadn’t cried in front of anyone since then, and she certainly wasn’t going to now—not with her dad standing beside her, her dad whose face was a blank solemn mask.
Next to her, Zuzu was heaving loud hiccuping sobs even as Uncle tried to comfort him with a hand on his shoulder. Azula hated having to hear him. Not because it was pathetic. She hated how it made her chest tighten so much that it hurt, hated how it made her want to cry too.
Ty Lee stayed with her the whole day and offered to sleep over. When Azula finally couldn’t hold back her tears, she was the only one around to hear Azula quietly sob against her pillow.
Azula let her best friend hug her while she cried herself to sleep.
~
“You’re a terrible friend, you know that?” Ty Lee’s whole face scrunched up like it could barely hold the amount of anger that was brimming over her. Azula had never seen Ty Lee this... angry, and that should be the main thing bothering her, but her mind fixated on the word friend, the way Ty Lee spat it out of her pink lips like a curse.
“You’ve been holding that in for years, haven’t you?” Azula sneered. “If you think I’m so terrible then why don’t you just leave me alone? Oh, wait, I almost forgot, you’re so airheaded and helpless that you always need me to tell you what to do with yourself.”
Ty Lee’s anger washed away from her features like a wave as another emotion crested. Her bottom lip wobbled, tears ran down her cheeks, and Azula fought against the sting of guilt in her chest.
“Why are you being like this, Azula?” she said, voice so small and wounded. It somehow hurt Azula more than any insult she could’ve thrown at her face, and yet Azula kept the cruel twist of her mouth like it didn’t matter to her, like Ty Lee didn’t matter.
It was the last time they ever spoke.
They didn’t speak months later when Azula’s father fell from grace and fled the country to escape justice after being caught red-handed siphoning money from public funds, abandoning her and Zuko for good. Azula didn’t seek her out to say goodbye before she left Caldera for Ba Sing Se with no intention of looking back.
~
Ty Lee caught her staring and Azula quickly darted her eyes away. Her cheeks warmed. She didn’t dare sneak another glance after that.
When the movie ended, Sokka declared that they should all head to the pool. He put on some music and Yue, after some urging from the others, brought out a few drinks. Mai and Zuko sat close to each other with their heads bowed over Mai’s phone, while the rest jumped into the pool. Azula didn’t join them, content to laze all by herself and stay dry.
It was then that Ty Lee cornered her.
“Hi,” she greeted, a hint of nervousness in the way she fiddled with her hands. It made Azula feel a lot less awkward. “Is it okay if I sit here?” She pointed to the pool lounge next to Azula.
“No one’s stopping you.” When Azula realized how that sounded, she added, “I don’t mind.”
Ty Lee gave her a smile and sat down. Her hair was swept to one side in loose waves, which somehow made the fact that she was here in Yue's house, reclining on the lounge beside Azula, all the more weird. She almost always wore her hair in a braid when the two of them were still inseparable.
“So, you joined a dance company?” Azula asked.
Ty Lee looked surprised by the question, or perhaps by the fact that Azula was attempting to talk to her at all. “Yeah! I actually moved out after the girls recruited me.”
“And what did your parents think of that?”
“Nah, they're fine. They have their work and my sisters to worry about.” Ty Lee gave a little dismissive wave of her hand. “They stopped bothering me after I let them know I was okay.”
Azula nodded. She knew all about Ty Lee’s situation. She remembered how Ty Lee used to stay at her house for days on end and her parents would rarely notice she was gone.
“How about you?” asked Ty Lee. “Where are you going to school next year?”
“Ba Sing Se University,” she replied, not without a little bit of pride. “I got in with a scholarship. It’s not Agni U, I know, but I figured it wasn’t a bad choice.”
“That’s amazing! I shouldn’t be surprised, though—you’ve always been brilliant.”
She rolled her eyes even though she liked compliments, which made Ty Lee giggle for some reason. Azula hadn’t realized how much she had missed her laugh until she heard it again.
A few minutes had gone by before one of them spoke again.
“Azula, I know we – I mean, it’s been a long time since we last talked,” Ty Lee began, and Azula's heart dipped. "I know it didn't really end well. But I want to—"
“Look, Ty Lee, I don’t think I’m ready for that conversation yet.” Azula tried her best to say that without any real sting. “Like you said, it was a long time ago.”
Another beat of silence until: “I was just going to tell you that I’ve missed you.”
The way Ty Lee said it—quiet and low, eyebrows drawing up slightly as she met Azula’s gaze, her owlish eyes vulnerable—was painful in its familiarity. A fragment of a memory sprung into her mind again, unprompted. (Why are you being like this, Azula? she had said)
“I'm…” Azula faltered, then clamped her mouth shut. She was ill-prepared for this, she was ill-suited for all of this. It was strange how the only things she found difficult to do were the ones that, no matter how hard she tried to deny, meant the most to her.
When Azula gathered herself enough to speak, she said, “I’m sorry... for everything.”
She managed to surprise Ty Lee with something she said for the second time that night.
Ty Lee gingerly reached out and Azula braced herself for the contact, but she paused halfway, her hand hovering midair in the space between them. Azula stared at it. Ty Lee's fingers looked graceful, delicate, belying the strength Azula knew they held. Just as Azula thought Ty Lee had completely changed her mind, her hand crossed the remaining distance and landed gently on top of Azula's.
Azula didn’t even realize she’d been holding her breath until she unburdened her lungs with an exhale, feeling Ty Lee’s warm palm against the back of her hand.
There were still some things that needed to be addressed between the two of them, but it wouldn't do her any good to barrel right into it. Take one step at a time, her therapist always told her. This was one of those countless times that her advice came in handy.
The two of them shared a tentative, awkward smile. It was a start.