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One day, Azula pulled at your braid.
You still remember it, clear as day.
If you focus hard enough, you can see yourself age seven again, playing hide and seek in one of the many Royal Palace gardens with none other than the princess of the Fire Nation herself.
As you were sitting down on the grass, doing the lotus position without even knowing, the numbers of the countdown resonated across the field, your voice giving away your childish excitement.
"Five, four, three..."
Nevertheless, a voice, a loud yelp cut the sequence, and it took you a few seconds to recognize it as your own. Following suit, a mischievous cackle broke the silence, right behind you.
Someone had pulled at your braid, hard. Really, really hard. It almost made you fall backwards.
"Ouchieee!" You cried out, louder this time, as your hands traveled from covering your eyes to grasp at your hurting scalp.
"Come on, don't be such a baby, I barely touched it." You heard from above, and sure enough, when your eyes adjusted to the blinding light of that summer day, you made out the silhouette of Azula, smirking down at you.
Tall, proud, authoritative, even for a child, she just stood there, towering over you, as if she were enjoying the whole thing.
"But that really hurt, Princess Azula." You whispered, still rubbing at your head, "why would you do that?" You ventured, fresh tears clouding your vision.
Azula shrugged, nonchalantly. "Because I can."
And she could, she was the princess after all, and whatever she wanted, whenever she wanted, she took.
"But-"
"Ugh, just wipe your eyes and get up, I'm bored of playing this. Let's go back inside." Without another word, Azula dusted off her perfectly clean clothes, and started walking away.
Still in pain and profusely dazed, you watched her go, composed as ever, almost marching down with a military posture.
Azula could be terribly mean if she felt like it, you noted to yourself, holding onto your braid absentmindedly as your feet took you forward.
Inevitably towards her.
On another day, Azula looked at your braid.
Really looked at it.
You were both inside the main library, surrounded by tall, red walls, thousands and thousands of books collecting dust on their shelves.
You were not one to enjoy reading that much, at least not from the books you could find inside the Palace. They were always about the same: making war, conquering, succeeding, failing, trying again.
All soldiers' names forgotten in time or simply omitted. Important events becoming just that, moments in specific places, never including the real people who experienced them.
Naturally, you would have been bored out of your mind, laying on the floor -also red-, staring at the ceiling or doing whatever you could in silence, until Azula was finished with yet another war strategy book.
Nevertheless, that day had been different.
For some reason you'd never know, when you were summoned to the Royal Library, instead of just the princess reading quietly on her usual way-too-big wooden chair, she was standing up, extending her left arm your way, her hand holding a green book, not like the dark brown, grey or black she always read.
"You're always distracting me with your constant fooling around." She said, but her voice lacked its trademark venom. Instead, the tone somehow seemed to match the light pink staining her cheeks. "So I made a servant bring this from one of the colonies. You can keep it."
Taken aback by the sudden gift, even if it had a practical purpose like she said, you couldn't help but let a tiny grin tug at the corners of your lips as your hand took the book Azula had been holding.
"Thank you, 'Zula." Eleven-year-old you had already earned to call her that. No one else.
"Whatever, now I'll be able to focus."
With that, she sat down on her chair, while you did so on the floor beside her, both starting to read their respective books in silence.
Soon enough and barely two pages in, Azula's words made sense to you. This was not a book you would find anywhere in Caldera: it was a storybook.
All the more exciting than those worn-out, unnecessarily complicated history books.
It was a collection of a hundred tales- folk tales, but tales nonetheless, of all Four Nations. And with all the restrictions the Fire Nation had on all the media, it must have been extremely difficult and considerably expensive to find and purchase. You pitied the poor servant who had been chosen to do that.
Maybe ten or fifteen minutes later, absorbed in the story of two lovers forced to hide their love inside an intricate series of tunnels, you were distracted by an odd feeling, one you couldn't quite explain but somehow knew what it was.
Blinking in confusion, your movements as slow as you could make them, your head turned slightly to the right, your eyes giving a sidelong glance at your companion.
Sure enough, Azula was not reading, not anymore at least. Instead, the Royal Princess was looking at you.
Her book was open and resting on her lap, one of her hands still holding onto it. However, her golden irises were not busy with it, but they were staring at you, at some point behind you.
It turned out, she was staring right at your braid.
You didn't know what to do.
On the one hand, if you made evident you had caught her, she would most likely lash out at you; on the other hand now that you knew, it was becoming harder by the second to try and focus back on Oma and Shu.
Not long after, you started getting nervous, feeling as exposed as ever under that blazing gaze.
What was she thinking? Maybe she came up to the conclusion she hated your hair that way? Would she forbid you from wearing a braid from now on? Or worse, would she make you cut it? Or worse than worst! Would she cut it herself?
Utterly terrified by that point, the least you were expecting was hearing her voice, calm, almost drowsy, addressing you.
"Your hair is very... long, Ty Lee."
Gulping audibly, you dared to fully turn her way.
She had her right arm propped on the armrest, her temple resting on her knuckles as she gave you a tiny frown.
"Um, yes... thank you?" Please don't make me cut it, please.
She prolonged your suffering by waiting a few moments before finally answering, as if she were to state the obvious, "you're welcome."
Then she had gone back to reading, all the while your racing heart seemed determined to come out of your ribcage.
It would take you many, many years to realize that that had been indeed Azula's attempt of a compliment.
Throughout the span of a few months, Azula would order you every day to wear your braid.
She would always say it was more efficient to keep it that way, and not in a complex, half up half down fashion like Mai liked to keep hers.
She would say it would be less likely it got in your way while fighting, and it'd be harder for the enemy to try and take a hold of it than if you wore it down.
Something within you told you, however, she had her own hidden reasons for insisting so much on it.
After several years of not even talking to you, of looking right through you, Azula touched your braid.
She barely grazed it with her fingers, the both of you startled by such a bold action inside the confinements of four white, padded walls.
She hadn't said anything, as usual, and you were honestly getting exhausted of that same position you had found yourself in for yet another occasion, coming into the 'crazy princess' cage.
You had been too tired to try, too annoyed with the world, with her, with yourself inside that room, with her glance fixed on her hands, that you didn't even start telling her about how life had been for you on the six months since your last visit.
Maybe a second or two before you decided you've had enough for at least another eight months, her trembling hand, all bones and torn nails, had reached out to you, and being her first actual approach in forever, you couldn't bring yourself to react.
Maybe she wanted to burn you, or do whatever that could be potentially harmful to you- which, in Azula's case, could be literally anything. And yet, you didn't move a single muscle, as her long fingers shortened the distance between you two.
Finally, after what felt like a million hundred-year wars, the pads of her fingers grazed the ends of your hair, done in the usual braid that had been draped over your left shoulder.
It had been an alien experience, to see her after all that time making controlled, almost calculated movements, all to perform a feather-like touch, something so foreign coming from the hand that had caused so much suffering.
You didn't wear your Kyoshi warrior uniform, nor the face paint. Therefore, there had been no reason to style your hair in a different way other than braiding it as always. She must have noticed.
Wide grey eyes left the spot on her hand once you decided she wasn't trying to injure you, and instead focused on her face, curious to discover what had motivated her into ignoring your tacit routine of one-sided communication, one-sided effort.
When your glance got to its destination, you couldn't help but blink back a few astray, offending tears.
The prodigy child, former golden princess, once great conqueror of Ba Sing Se and pride of an entire nation, had the saddest, most pained expression darkening her regal, broken features as her fingers combed through the strands of your hair.
Some other day, Azula smelled your braid.
As weird as that sounds, it was true.
You were finally home after many months of going on a mission back at the Earth Kingdom.
As much as you loved what you did and the time you spent with you comrades, being so much time away from home always seemed to take a toll on you. On her as well.
You had arrived that morning, and after unpacking, taking a relaxing bath and grabbing whatever to eat, all you had wanted to do was collapse on the bed and sleep twenty hours.
So, when you woke up from a refreshing nap the sun had already set, no light coming through the white curtains.
The bed was empty, and albeit by this point in your life you had nothing to worry about, you still couldn't totally get rid of the nagging feeling in the pit of your stomach when you called her and she wouldn't answer.
Deciding it was best not to panic, but to act like the functional adult you were, you got out of bed, enveloped on a blanket because the ocean breeze would make you cold, and started looking through the rooms for any sight of her. Maybe she had gotten caught up on another How to cook without burning an entire house down book.
The living room, the dining room, the kitchen, the spare room- even the bathrooms were completely deserted.
Now slightly trembling, more rapid steps took you to the only place left before you would definitely start hyperventilating.
Opening the sliding door leading to the porch, you swore you would've been able to cough and spit your hammering heart out.
There she was.
A giant sigh of relief escaped your lips as you leaned on the doorframe for a few moments, recovering from the mini heart attack you almost suffered.
"Azula what... what are you doing out here?" Panting lightly, you couldn't prevent the smile from creeping it's way up your lips when you saw her confused, squinting eyes looking at you.
"Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't want to wake you up so I came here for a while." She responded with a soft smile of her own.
She had been sitting by the steps, watching how the waves licked at the shore, then ebbing away to never return.
"Is beautiful, isn't it?" You whispered, more enthralled by the pale moonlight reflecting on your partner's even paler skin than by the ocean itself.
"Yeah, being here soothes me in a way." Azula said back, still staring at the fierce, dark waters.
Her hair was down; she wore it that way more often now. She was also wearing a pink robe, one that didn't precisely belong to her.
Widening your grin, you closed the distance with a few long strides in silence, reaching her spot before dropping to the floor behind her, embracing her with your arms and legs.
"If you keep on wearing only my robes out here at night you're gonna get sick." You reprimanded, as sweet and playful as you could, and she just nodded.
Even if you could practically hear her eyes rolling, she bit at her tongue to not mention the fact of her ability as a bender to generate warmth; a fact both of you knew very well.
Secretly one to seek and crave for contact and attention, it didn't take her long to lean back on your chest, placing her arms above yours as your chin rested on the crown of her head -puberty ended up making you a few inches taller than the honestly short princess-.
Albeit you had already slept a few hours, you could have easily drifted off again in that moment.
You just felt so relaxed, so in peace, as if nothing else mattered or even existed outside that minuscule spot in time and space, hearing the back and forth of the ocean in front of you, with the broken princess in your arms, her rhythmic breathing colliding against your skin.
Right when your eyelids were becoming too heavy to keep them open, you felt your companion shifting slightly, followed by the lightest tug on your braided hair.
Surprised by this, you tilted your head a little, and judging by the slowness of her motions, you could tell Azula had been falling asleep was well.
"I really missed you." She muttered, barely opening her now nude lips.
She had reached behind you to get a hold of your braid, and she currently had it against her nose, delicately sniffing at your hair, as if it gave her some sense of reality, some tangible proof of that memory.
Impossibly endearing and preciously sweet.
You wondered for a moment how all the previous events of your lives had led you to this point, and even after all the suffering, all the struggles and many things you wished you could change, you realized you wouldn't trade it for the world.
Your paths constantly braiding, twisting and tangling around each other, with each other, breaking apart and then crossing again. All to get to this tiny, fleeting moment where everything was exactly the way it should.
You kissed her temple, and tightened your grip around her, "I missed you too, sweet sugar cakes."
After a giggle or two, a stolen kiss or two, tranquility engulfed you both again, frozen in time for what seemed like a lifetime, together.
Today, Azula does your braid.
While you lay on a wooden table, in the center of one of the rooms in your cozy, warm home in Ember Island.
It's a summer day, but the hot sun rays that sneak it's way through the burgundy curtains, licking at your wrinkled skin, don't feel like anything at all.
Azula carefully combs her fingers through your dull, grey hair, one silent tear after the other streaming down her aged cheeks.
"I braided it just how you like it, dear." And you know she did, "I did it myself, I know you wouldn't trust anyone else with this." She finishes, an ironic chuckle breaking through her throat, ending with a sob.
You're silent. You can't speak anymore, and she knows you can't hear her, that she can't talk to you expecting to get a response back. Not ever again.
"Your sisters will arrive soon." She brushes your bangs out of your pale forehead. "Maybe that's a good thing, I'm sure you and me will be reunited if they stay for too long." She finishes with a sad smile.
Caressing your cold face, she plants a delicate kiss, her lips broken and dry, on your cheek, just like every morning for the past decades.
"I don't want to leave you on your own, I know you hate it." She whispers, the pads of her fingertips tracing carefully the patterns of your braid, "so I'm gonna stay here until everyone arrives, okay? You don't have to worry about anything at all." And if something is true, among all the things Azula now doubted and felt surreal, was that she always kept her promises.
After a few minutes, where the quietness almost drowns the former 'mad princess', seeping through her every pore, a sudden knock on the door breaks the tension, before the bashful creak of the wood is heard when it opens.
"Azula," it's Zuko standing by the hall, not daring to cross the doorframe, "everyone is here. We were wondering if..." he can't even finish the sentence, but Azula knows what he means.
The glint of the Fire Lord crown he wears seems irrelevant to her, colorless even. A deep frown is marking his expression, and his eyes, experienced and oh so tired, are not looking at her, his gaze kept low.
Good.
Azula would loathe to find pity inside his golden orbs, and he knew it.
"Just give us a minute." She turns towards you again, doesn't want to waste any more time not looking at you, for as long as she can. "Tell the others to come in shortly, just... give us one more minute."
She would not say 'please', she would not beg for more time with her wife, she just couldn't. That would mean acknowledging it was running out, that it would come to an end.
Not needing further explanation, Zuko nods his head and abandons the room, leaving you alone again.
Azula sighs loudly, almost desperately, swallowing back the sobs that have been trying to tear at her throat for a while now as she takes your hand, before so soft and soothing, now a stone cold reminder of what had once been.
"Everyone is coming in, my love," Azula whispers, knowing you can't hear. "Even now, everyone wants a piece of you, it's not possible for me to have you all to myself."
Lifting her hands still with yours between their grasp, she kisses the back of it, her whole body, weak and exhausted, trembling at the feeling of your cold skin.
"I can only hope I loved you as right as I could..." she wipes her tears from her cheeks with the sleeve of her white robes, "I swear I did my best." Azula takes a deep breath to steady herself before continuing, "you know I've always despised to be left alone, so please, please, wait for me. I'll be there soon, my dear."
She releases your hand, and bends down to speak as close to your expressionless face as she can.
"I love you, entirely and always. In this life, and all the next ones to come."
A soft knock on the door, and Azula knows is finally time.
Today, Azula kisses your braid.
For the last time.