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Azula was all hard edges. Not hard like a stone but sharp and cutting. She would glint when the light caught her and the background would fade into a haze. She had a way of changing the energy of the room. She’d just have to flick her finger or twitch eyebrow and I’d instantly feel it, nerves like I’d just stepped on coals. You didn’t need to be able to see auras to know that something was wrong. I think she did it deliberately, to save herself the breath.
It wasn’t all bad though. I always knew where I stood with Azula. Always knew when I’d stepped on her toes. Always knew when I’d done something right. Her eyes would flash and she’d smile to herself but I knew she was smiling at me too. If she could turn a room to ice with a glance, she turned my world upside down with a smile.
She wasn’t smiling at the moment though. I didn’t have to look at her to know. I was looking anywhere but, in fact. I was busying myself by running my hand along the wicker chair in Lo and Li’s Ember Island living room. It was as knobbled and old as them, but it had the cutest, quirkiest seashell cushion on it. I tried to picture living in a little wooden house like this one, filling it with things from all over the world, waiting for the inevitable -
“Ty Lee.”
Azula was all hard edges that I tried softening with the sweetest, “yes, Azula,” I could muster. Looking at her, I could tell it wasn’t me she was upset with. She was all blue and purple and even a little bit of pink, but it turned in on itself like a storm in a bottle- like an ugly bruise. I noticed it brewing first last night, before the campfire, before the party. And now it was going to break. She had waited for the house to be empty of everyone but us two, with Lo and Li soaking in some sulfur spring mudbaths, and Mai and Zuko disappeared off to do whatever it was they did when they were alone. And when Azula and I were all alone?
“I want to kiss you.”
Whatever I was expecting Azula to say, it was not that. Actually, I almost fell out of my chair.
Azula looked like a doll, stopping beside me after pacing back and forth the length of the house. All smooth skin and red lips; she had been playing dress up all weekend. Or rather, she had let me play dress up all weekend: let’s try letting your hair out for tonight, why don’t you wear the skirt? You’ll look such a treat! She seemed to quite like it too, preening in front of the mirror with a half smile at me while we both looked at her reflection. Out of those stuffy royal robes and her heavy armour, she glowed, soft and muted; she was more like moonlight than blazing sun that burned even behind closed eyes.
I gawped up at her, and finally she looked down at me, utterly unfathomable.
“I need to practise,” she said with a languid swish of her hand, looking away from me again.
“I want next time to be perfect.”
She said it under her breath, but I caught her meaning. This was about what happened with Chan, and for some reason, my heart sunk a little. I hadn’t realised it had swelled until it sunk again.
She never exactly said what happened with Chan, but I gathered it did not go as well as she had hoped. I thought maybe he had been too pushy, too forward, and Azula had burnt his house down just like I knocked out the group of boys who cornered me. Sometimes a little force is necessary after all. But this sounded like she was the one who got her feelings hurt. Sure, her flirting was a little much, and sure, she had a tendency of threatening total annihilation on those around her, but that was just a little quirk. Guys were so easily intimidated. You just had to know how to handle her.
I knew how to handle Azula, and most of the time I was happy to do so. Hardly anyone was considered worthy of her company like I was, and hardly anyone considered me worthy of anything much at all. So in some ways we were a perfect fit. It was an honour, really.
But I was still slack and staring at her where she stood, as beautiful as she was imposing. It was a bad idea to keep her waiting, especially when she had exposed herself and her failures by asking for my help. Azula was at her most dangerous when she was most vulnerable, and maybe that was why my heart was racing so hard. But if she wanted me to be her teacher, there was one problem: I had never kissed anyone before.
It wasn’t from a lack of opportunity like it was for Azula. Guys always wanted something from me; they’d line up for hours for the chance to kiss me. But it never seemed like the right time, or the right person, even if he were cute. I don’t know what I was waiting for. Maybe for someone to really sweep me off my feet. But that had never happened. So at this point, Azula was probably more experienced than me. And she must have known that. She must have. But if she didn’t, I wasn’t going to tell her, although I wasn’t sure exactly why.
“Oh! Sure! But who says you’re not perfect already?”
That was the right thing to say. The tension eased, and Azula almost smiled. See? Azula was easy to handle when you knew what to say. You just had to get her guard down and she acted so differently, so much nicer.
“I do,” she replied sharply, before hesitating. With a little more uncertainty in her voice, she said, “I did everything you said with Chan, but…”
Azula trailed off, then swallowed.
“But he’s an idiot ,” I said firmly.
Her mouth twisted, and she turned away.
“I’m sure some more practise won’t go astray, though!”
I didn’t mean for my words to rush over each other like that. I was almost a little embarrassed until Azula looked back at me over her shoulder. She had that glint in her eye and it sent a jolt from my head to my toes. How could I say no when she looked at me like that? I didn’t want to say no.
I rose to my feet, and Azula turned to face me. We looked at each other, too far apart to touch and certainly too far apart to kiss. But she just stood there, holding her hands together expectantly, and I suddenly felt very shy. It was one thing to pretend to be a boy to teach her how to flirt. It was altogether another thing to walk up to the Princess of the Fire Nation and kiss her. Especially when she was your best friend. Especially when it wouldn’t even be a real kiss. Just practice for the real thing. It was silly to be nervous at all, really. It was just practise, after all.
I never had to do much, when it came to boys. I just had to stand there and smile, and they’d come rushing over. And whenever I imagined kissing someone, I thought it would be the same. Just stand there, close your eyes and it would be done like that. It was easy. Here I was a bit lost. Azula expected me to do something, so I pretended I was someone stupid like Chan who thought he might have a chance with someone like Azula. Someone who did have a chance with someone like Azula when it wasn’t just practice. So I swaggered across the room until we were face to face and said the first thing that came to my head.
“Hey there, doll-face.”
As soon as the words came out of my mouth, in the silliest falsely deep voice I could manage, I could have died of embarrassment. But Azula didn’t scoff; she looked sweetly bemused. And I felt my heart wrench: why couldn’t she always look at me like that?
“What are you doing?” she asked through a laugh. It was the most charming laugh I’d ever heard. It didn’t echo around the room like an out of tune tsungi horn, and there was no nasty bite to it. I could barely keep the smile off my face.
“I can’t just kiss you, Azula. That would never happen with a guy. You have to talk to him first,” I said.
I had to say it gently so she wouldn’t think I was telling her what to do. I didn’t want her to feel like a fool. And if she never realised I had no idea what I was doing, and that’s why I was procrastinating from just kissing her on those pretty red lips, then all the better.
She paused for a moment, thinking of something to say.
“Okay then.”
She took a deep breath.
“Hello. You’re so... tall.”
I blinked. And I blinked again, because what on earth was she talking about? I was at least an inch shorter than her, and the height difference was only the more obvious now we were standing face to face.
“But Azula, you’re taller than me.”
That was the wrong thing to say. Her face hardened into a scowl, and she chided me.
“Of course you’re tall! I wouldn’t kiss a boy as short as you .”
She crossed her arms.
“If you’re not going to take this seriously, stop wasting my time, Ty Lee.”
“Oh!”
Of course! This was just practise, and of course Azula wouldn’t kiss someone my height. That would be beneath her .
“Sorry Azula! That was a really good compliment. Boys love it when you tell them how tall they are.”
She rolled her eyes.
“ I know, Ty Lee. That’s why I said it.”
She said it with an arrogance out of place in someone who, only last night needed to be told how to laugh at a dumb joke, but I winced anyway. This was going badly.
“I’m sorry. I’ll be serious now.”
No silly voices. No getting confused. I was the boy and she was the girl and we were just practising for the real thing. And we were going to take this seriously . I took the deep breath now and assumed my character.
“So, what’s a pretty girl like you doing in a place like this?”
A little crease appeared between her brows. My line dropped like a stone in a turtleduck pond. We both looked around the room. Lo and Li’s living room. Like the ocean had thrown up. Azula would say it was garish , but I thought it was nice. But we were supposed to be practising, and Azula wouldn’t be meeting any guys here. No wonder she looked so confused. So I put my hand to my mouth and whispered, “pretend we’re out somewhere,” and gave her a wink.
“What are you talking about, Ty Lee?”
“Pretend we’re at a party or a night market or something,” I hissed back.
“Why do you care why I’m here? It's none of your business.”
She didn’t get it. She was supposed to giggle, and say something like waiting for you to talk to me or something stupid like that.
“I just meant I’m surprised you’re here on your own and not with your boyfriend.”
I was doing a bad job, scrambling to correct my mistake, and we both knew it.
“I don’t need a chaperone, but thank-you for your concern,” she said, her voice dripping with so much sarcasm it made my ears hurt. At this point I wasn’t sure if she was talking to me or the guy I was pretending to be.
We had a lot of work to do, and Azula was only getting more irritated with me. But it wasn’t my fault she made the simplest conversation excruciatingly awkward and I had no idea how to teach her that guys didn’t want to date the most powerful firebender of all time, they just wanted a stupid ditz like me. And here she was looking annoyed as all hell with me because I was standing here clutching at my hands because flirting was all I was good for and I couldn’t even do that right. But worst of all she was expecting me to teach her how to kiss properly and I was too scared to tell her I’d never done it before because then what if she never came to me for help again?
“Ty Lee?”
She said it a little too softly, too uncertainly, and it didn’t make any sense to hear my name coming out of her lips like that. But I must have been standing there too long, because the next thing I knew Azula was taking me by the hands and saying something to me.
“Stop looking so worried, Ty Lee.”
There it was. Azula loved to tell me what to do, but this time she said it in a gentle voice that made her command sound more like a request, and it just made me think why can’t you always speak to me like this?
I looked up at her and I couldn’t see any hard edges. Biting my lip, I looked away again. It was easier to look at her hands holding mine when I said, “I’ve just never done this before.”
Azula’s hands twitched when I said it. I almost expected her to drop them and push me away for lying to her, even though, really, I never told her any lies. She had just assumed I knew what I was doing. I was in way over my head.
She didn’t drop my hands. Actually, she stroked them.Just once, with her thumb, like she wanted to remember what they felt like after she told me this was a silly idea anyway and I shouldn’t have asked . But it was kindness enough that I could look up at her pretty doll face. And it wasn’t doll-like at all. It was just Azula, and she was the softest shade of pink.
She said something with those painted lips and it took me a moment to hear them, because it was then that she kissed me.
“It’s just practice,” she had said, like I should have known; like it was silly for me to be nervous at all. “Just practice for the real thing.”
So we practised like that, for a while, and I didn’t pretend to be anyone but me.