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When they release her from the psychiatric facility on her own recognizance, the doctors advise Azula to “take it easy”. Do they not know how impossible of a task that is when her brother is Fire Lord, stumbling blindly toward missteps with every turn and desperately needing her guidance?
He doesn’t ask for it, of course, but Azula gives it anyway.
She spends many a late night with Zuko in his office, reading through legal documents and encouraging him to rewrite bills coming to him from his council or, in some cases, shred them altogether. She offers him advice on which nobility have opinions that actually matter and who to avoid, and how to avoid them. She works herself to the bone for her brother, writing like she’s running out of time and keeping the Fire Nation running so that his reputation remains untarnished and his people do not revolt. Azula cannot say she loves Zuko, but this she can do.
The impossibility of the idea of her “taking it easy” is not lost on Azula, but like most of her doctors’ instructions she brushes it off in favor of her own ideas; what do they know, when very little of their advice helped her out of her delicate state, and it was only her own willpower and determination that allowed her to claw herself out of the hole dug for her? She does not need to take it easy.
Everyone else in the palace, however, might disagree.
As the days wear on into weeks, the fuse of her temper burns shorter and shorter, and she grows snappish. With Zuko, her frustration comes out as ill-timed snark, little digs at him in between meetings and in the small hours of the morning when they hole up together and struggle, like baby deer just learning to walk, to run a nation. For everyone else, the stress of the world on her shoulders turns into short bursts of anger, controlled and explosive rage that ends in council meetings ending early or a Kyoshi Warrior crying so hard she can’t finish her shift on guard duty.
With Ty Lee, she holds back. Her anger and frustration is soothed without fail by Ty Lee’s chipper moods. The acrobat’s anecdotes about what she watched the turtleducks do on her break that day or how the flowers she saw when visiting Mai at her home reminded her of Azula’s eyes become a remedy for any stress.
Azula realizes, then, how much she loves Ty Lee. To adjust her life, her mood, to fit into the life Ty Lee has already built, to wait for her to finish work instead of demand that Ty Lee’s schedule accommodate her. To be softer, more patient, kinder with her. That is love, in the best way Azula can express it.
“‘Zula?” Ty Lee asks one evening, her hands mindlessly occupied with playing with the ends of Azula’s hair. Her brown eyes, unfocused and faraway, hold a sadness to them when she finally looks at Azula’s face. “Didn’t the doctors tell you to… I don’t know, relax? To make sure you don’t overwork yourself?”
It is not often Azula finds herself unsure of how to respond to anything, but somehow Ty Lee is the one who consistently gives her pause. Her bottom lip sticks out in something of a pout while the gears in her mind churn out a suitable response. “Of course they did.” She knows it will not sit well with Ty Lee to tell her she consciously ignores what they had to say, however. She must be delicate with Ty Lee’s heart, so as to not upset or worry her needlessly. “Is that not what I do here, with you, when we spend time together?”
The thought brings a smile to Ty Lee’s face. Her fingers rake through Azula’s hair with a delicate tenderness, but the sadness in her eyes doesn’t go away. “I know. But I just mean…” She doesn’t finish her sentence.
“You mean what?” Azula prompts, her voice a low purr that goads Ty Lee to continue.
“I just mean that you seem… stressed. Everyone notices it, and I want to make sure you don’t hurt yourself again.”
Azula finds the fire of her anger flaring up again, and she pulls away from Ty Lee. “Ty, I’m fine . Nothing would get done around here if it weren’t for me, and we all know that my incompetent brother shouldn’t be allowed to handle this on his own.” She feels the familiar walls going up around her, the protection she had to build for herself when nothing else would do, and shutting even Ty Lee out.
Ty Lee must now be an expert at slowly dismantling all her defenses, because her hand slips into Azula’s and she squeezes it three times in slow succession.
Azula wants to kiss her in that moment, but the tension between them is too thick for such vulnerability. She hasn’t kissed Ty Lee since they were on the beach, since the whole world felt like it belonged to them and there was nothing that could stand in their way. Time has changed so much, and Azula does not know how, and if, she should express those feelings.
So instead she smiles, and squeezes Ty Lee’s hand three times.
“What if you took a break?” Ty Lee says, startling her. The idea of a break is unheard of. It simply does not sit well with Azula to take a break from work. Who will keep Zuko from running the Fire Nation into the ground if not her? Who else will manage council meetings and keep the blundering, ineffectual noblemen from arguing so much nothing gets done? Who will keep everything together if not her? If she is not useful, she is as good as dead.
Her expression sours, her nose crinkling in distaste and dislike at the idea of stepping away from her duties for even a moment. But Ty Lee leans forward and places a kiss at her jaw, just below her ear, and the simple gesture is enough to make her consider the idea just a bit more. “We could go to Ember Island,” Ty Lee continues, sounding wistful. Maybe even nostalgic for the quiet innocence of their last trip there. “It would be so nice. We could stay at your beach house and watch the sunsets together… I think it would be good for you, ‘Zula. Just a week. Please?”
And so they do. Azula informs those around her of her impending vacation on a need-to-know basis, and eventually she and Ty Lee set off for Ember Island. No retinue, just the two of them alone. The idea of a break from the ins and outs of her daily life begins to feel more refreshing the closer they get to their destination, but it’s when they finally make landfall and her feet touch the soft sand that it all sinks in for her.
Like the waves lapping up against the shoreline, the memories of the last time she was here with Ty Lee ebb and flow in her mind. Of enjoying the cool night breezes with Ty Lee’s head in her lap, of shared confessions around a bonfire, of jealousyjealousyjealousy - and it feels as though all the progress she’s made these past months have simply slid backwards into nothingness.
She has to get away .
So she does. Azula runs, ignoring Ty Lee shouting after her and going as far and as fast as her feet will take her. Further down the shoreline, her lungs ache with the effort of her exertion, reminding her of the way her body has lapsed, the way she has allowed herself to become lax, over those long months spent in careful, chaotic isolation. She’s made progress in reverse, three steps backward for every two she’s taken forward; and now, alone and with her mind too frantic to match her tired body, she realizes the damage she’s done. Not just to herself, but to everyone around her.
Ty Lee doesn’t come after her, and that pain feels more like the icy shutout of rejection than it does a sign of trust. It feels like a betrayal, not the sting of fingers poking in between her ribs but the slow, inevitable realization that she wasn’t followed.
Azula wants to cry about it, and realizes the well within her full of self-pity, dragged up by the bucketful these last few months, has run dry. It’s an oddly freeing feeling in a way Azula has never experienced before. So rather than cry or rage, Azula just sits. She sits, and she watches the sunset, and tries to really feel the way Ember Island smooths things over and changes her for the better.
Once the sun dips below the horizon, painting the skies in broad strokes of melancholy blues and purples, Azula feels her body and mind growing tired. The humid heat of Ember Island has exhausted her, and the idea of clinging to her pride so tightly becomes infinitely less appealing the longer she lets the heavy, lead balloon-like feeling fill up her limbs. She wants Ty Lee, wants to be securely wrapped in the brunette’s arms while trying the breathing techniques the doctors taught her. (She will never admit it, but they work wonders for her anxiety-ridden mind even at the worst of times.)
So Azula tries those breathing exercises on her own, counting on the inhale and the exhale and letting her racing thoughts slow until she feels like herself again. She surprises even herself to know she can manage it on her own, without Ty Lee or one of her doctors talking her through it.
When she returns to the beach house, night has already fallen and with it the cool, tropical breezes waft around her and make the sheer, gauzey curtains dance around the open-air windows. Azula walks on the balls of her feet to make soft footfalls, but even though she attempts to wrap herself in silence she notices Ty Lee’s long shadow lingering in the doorway of the kitchen, waiting for her.
“Ty,” she says, sounding more exasperated than she truly feels; Azula takes a deep breath, and she makes a conscious effort to soften her tone. “Ty. You’re not being very subtle if you’re trying to not be noticed.” However much work it takes, Azula makes sure her fondness creeps into her voice; she wants Ty Lee to hear the smile on her face before she even sees it.
Ty Lee creeps into the doorway with a wide-eyed trepidation on her face. As if trying to discern Azula’s mood from the expression she wears, Ty Lee lets several empty seconds pass without a word spoken between them. “I knew you would come back,” she says, letting her face split open into a full-force grin. Her unwavering (unearned) confidence in Azula makes her heart skip a beat, and there’s a sudden tightness in the back of her throat like she might start crying any moment now.
“I made dinner for us both,” Ty Lee continues. An unfamiliar wave of guilt washes up on the shores of Azula’s mind; Ty Lee waited all this time to eat while Azula selfishly ran off, putting herself first as usual. With a slow, depe breath through her nose, the wave washes out like the tide. “Won’t you come eat?”
Helpless in the face of Ty Lee asking her for something, Azula acquieses easily, though she tells herself it has everything to do with the hunger pangs in her stomach and nothing to do with Ty Lee’s earnest smile. As they sit through dinner together, silent while they both eat, Azula wonders what she’s done to possibly deserve the way Ty Lee treats her. What in her lifetime had gone so right that she’s living in a universe in which Ty Lee chooses her to look after?
“Why did you wait for me?” She asks Ty Lee, too profoundly touched by the simple act of sharing dinner with her to think of anything else to ask. There is a multitude contained within her question, endless wonderings of why her and why Ty Lee and why now. How, after all of this, has she deserved the love she is consistently and constantly shown?
Azula knows she’ll never learn the answer, knows that she likely does not deserve the kind of love she’s shown, and somehow that makes her heart ache all the more in a way that feels like her chest is too small to contain what she holds inside her.
“Because I wanted to,” Ty Lee asks, and her chest hurts even more.
For the time being, the Fire Nation feels so far away. Zuko and his difficulties ruling are hardly a thought in Azula’s mind, nor are the noblemen that make her job such a headache. Thoughts of Mai, thoughts of her doctors and the institution she spent months living in all leave her mind, and, in a sudden thought that surprises Azula, so do the thoughts of before . The jealousy she felt on their most recent trip to Ember Island doesn’t matter when she knows Ty Lee has long since forgiven her, and neither does the pain of betrayal or what she had done to deserve it.
Azula exhales, and lets her shoulders relax. The sudden lack of tension in her body makes her cry tears of relief, and Ty Lee brushes her thumbs across Azula’s cheeks to wipe them away.
“I love you, ‘Zula,” Ty Lee says softly, a whisper so low it sounds like a prayer.
Azula doesn’t respond; she can’t. Instead, she takes Ty Lee’s hand and squeezes it three times.