#safe to say Azula would live a happier life if she never has to exist anywhere near her again

[seyaryminamoto]

Hi! I was just curious, will we be seeing more of Hina? I was rereading and realized how much I dislike her lol her last interaction with Azula made my blood boil! It was not deserved whatsoever, talk about petty…

Anyway! Thank you for making such an amazing story!!! These last few chapters have been amazing, can’t wait!!!

love, Rhea <3

Hello there, Rhea! :D

Hina's an annoyance for sure x'D I really don't know if she'll be showing up again directly in the story, but she's definitely not going to keep living her life as perfectly carelessly anymore once things hit the fan, most of all because of her current bastard of a husband. They're both despicable, but Hahn's objectively a criminal to the Northern Water Tribe... :'D therefore? Once the political situation shifts in the story's conclusive arcs, things ~will~ happen concerning this guy, which will directly affect Hina, so... if I ever write her again? I'll probably rejoice by making her very miserable x'D

Thank you so much for the ask! <3 so glad you've enjoyed the story and the latest chapters!!

[loopy777]

Potential outline/ideas/headcanons for an Avatar Ty Lee AU? (Also, for some crazy reason I like the idea that if Aang died in the Air Nomad Genocide, and we get a Water Avatar who lives to be in her thirties or forties, that the Earth Avatar is Long Feng, who makes no effort to go on the offensive against the Fire Nation, nor tries to learn the other elements, instead holing up in Ba Sing Se as the Fire Nation conquers the rest of the Earth Kingdom.)

(Wow, Avatar Long Feng? I can see him doing what you say, deciding to devote his power to protecting just Ba Sing Se, and I’m getting chills thinking about what he would do to make sure that no one knows that he’s the Avatar.)

Anyway, Avatar Ty Lee! Let’s make up something interesting…

Ty Lee has always paid attention to her dreams. The most frequent, one that has visited since before she can remember, has her standing in battle before a shadow shaped like a man, a wall of fire erasing the world around them. The sky above them bleeds as the shadow roars the sound of war…

Ten years before her legend begins, Ty Lee and her sisters were examined by the Fire Sages. It was entirely routine, something all children in the Homeland had to undergo by order of the Fire Lord, one part of an initiative to ensure the continuing health of the nobility. But Ty Lee was always been shy around authority, and something about the Fire Sages especially creeped her out. She persuaded her sister Ty Lin to substitute for her, a frequent trick the sisters used to play. Even Mommy didn’t notice Ty Lee slip out, and Ty Lin twice was poked and prodded and had a very flammable ball of tinder held under her nose. It became known that none of the seven sisters was a Firebender- or, of course, any other kind.

Nine years before her legend begins, she met Princess Azula and Mai. By this time, Ty Lee had gotten tired of how easily she was mistaken for one of her sisters, and the exclusive attention of the Princess seemed to be a gift from the spirits. Ty Lee was less sure of the quiet and gloomy Mai, but one time Mai protected Ty Lee from Ty Woo’s bullying so that was good. Ty Lee quickly learned, though, that she couldn’t fully trust her friends. Azula could be cruel, could be scary, and both Ty Lee and Mai would follow the princess’s commands if the alternative was worse. Plus, Mai blushed around Azula’s brother Prince Zuko, and for some reason that made Ty Lee’s stomach clench.

Four years before her legend begins, Ty Lee had become resigned to the fact that she would always be an outsider. She never quite felt like she could fit in, not even amongst her sisters. She felt like she was always holding a part of herself back, hiding something fragile out of an instinct for self-preservation. She dreamed, sometimes, of living amidst beautiful mountain-temples, but those dreams always ended in fire and pain and fear. So she tried to make the best of life, always chose to see the positive side of things, and took some solace in how Mai seemed to be just as much of an outsider but in completely different ways.

Four and a half years before her legend begins, Ty Lee decided one day to make a surprise visit to Mai. She skipped the front door and climbed in through Mai’s bedroom window, making use of the skills she was learning at the Academy’s Advanced Defense Classes. And so she saw Mai lounging on the bed, making a motion like throwing a knife except there was no knife in her hand. Nevertheless, the wooden target hanging on the far wall was sliced in half as though by a full-sized saber. Ty Lee’s gasp startled Mai, who ran over and dragged her in through the window and begged in a whisper to tell no one about this. It was only then, in a moment stinking of the fear of discovery, that Ty Lee realized Mai had been Airbending. Ty Lee still didn’t trust Mai completely, because Azula would always be in their lives and sometimes she blushed at Zuko. But having the power to destroy Mai by revealing such a dangerous secret was a kind of safety, one that made Ty Lee feel better (and feel a little bad for feeling better), and they grew closer as friends.

Three years before her legend begins, Zuko went away. Ty Lee never caught Mai crying, but no one caught Ty Lee crying either.

Two years before her legend begins, Ty Lee started making plans for running away. She was spending as much time away from home as possible; the mind games her sisters played were becoming intolerable. Their auras grew muddier day by day, and they were so good at tricking Ty Lee, at agreeing on things which weren’t true with such a sureness and solidarity that she sometimes wondered if she was going crazy. She told Azula, but the princess said that it was Ty Lee’s problem to solve and spent weeks teasing about it. Only Mai seemed sympathetic, but the advice to stab her sisters over it didn’t seem entirely practical. Besides, Mai’s aura was growing muddier, too.

One year before her legend begins, Ty Lee stowed away on a ship carrying a circus troupe to the colonies to find fame and fortune. This was not an accident, as odd as it sounded, because she knew that in the circus she could be herself. She could tumble, she could dance, she could be ignorant, and she could stand out as an individual and receive the acclaim of the audiences. There would be no sisters, no Princess. There wouldn’t be Mai, either, and Ty Lee was sad about that, but she told herself that it would be better if no one in the Capital knew Mai’s secret. Better for both of them. Probably.

50 weeks before her legend begins, Ty Lee was an official member of Shuzumu’s Traveling Circus and practicing her brand new routine. She was happy, cartwheeling across a rope stretched taught between two barrels just inches off the ground, happier than she had ever been before. Everyone here had such pink auras, and Ty Lee could do what she loved! The joy became so overwhelming that she turned her cartwheel into a dance, and she didn’t notice how the heat in her feet spread to light the rope on fire, nor how the motions of her arms summoned the winds to join her dance in a small tornado. She didn’t notice, that is, until the rope broke beneath her, and she opened her eyes to find all the other wind-whipped performers staring at her. She wondered if that was how she herself had looked when she found Mai, that time. The juggler called out that Ty Lee had been bending both Fire and Air. Ty Lee ran and didn’t look back once.

Six months before her legend begins, Ty Lee realized she hadn’t managed to stay in any town for more than a few days. Whenever she thought she might be safe, that this time she might be far enough away from the colonies, she’d start to feel itchy and the dreams would turn into nightmares. The man of shadows would loom over her, roaring like a storm, and the flames were so hot that she woke up screaming in a sweat. Even if the locals didn’t see her Bending, they’d soon talk of her as crazy, as spirit-touched, and it felt like being back with her sisters all over again. Ty Lee loved the places she got to visit, but she never stayed.

By the day her legend begins, Ty Lee is used to running, used to not having a home. She is more than eager to leave this Chin Village, where she thought she could maybe find something positive about her existence during their ‘Avatar Day’ festival. (She was very, very wrong about that.) She is passing next to a massive burning effigy of the Child Avatar, the flames consuming his grin and arrow tattoos, when she bumps into a soldier. But no, he’s not a regular soldier. He’s is far too short, and there’s gold trim on his armor. He scowls at her in the light of the flames with a hand-shaped scar twisting the skin over his eye.

She recognizes Prince Zuko and can’t help but blurt out, “What are you doing here?”

He blinks at her, recognizing her in turn, and says, “Me? What are you doing here?”

And so the Legend of Avatar Ty Lee begins.