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bellatrixobsessed1 · 4 months ago

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In The Cherry Blossom Grove

I'm going to write a short one shot I say before typing 5 pages. A TyZula thing for @sillybillylulu

Fun fact: My initial premise was that Azula finds TyLee who had been turned into a deer. It somehow became not that at all. Like at all. There is no trace of the initial idea. Whack.

Summary: TyLee runs away and Azula attempts to get her to go back home.

She has a habit of disappearing. Once upon a time, Azula imagined that it concerned people. They used to send guards for her, a whole team of them to search for her until they found her. Usually she would be curled up in the shade of a dragon maple or nestled deep in a berry bush with a tattered and stained dress and twigs in her hair.

Concern waned with age and frequency. The more she left, the less they cared, having grown used to it by now. And the older she got the more capable they decided that she was and therefore a search party would just be a waste of time and resources. She would come back on her own.

But it was nice. Nice to have a reminder that people cared enough for her to look for her.

These days no one looks for her at all.

No one cares for her at all.

She has been gone for years now.

She thinks that Zuzu and mother had tried seeking her out during the first year and maybe somewhat into the second year. But then their interest fizzled out and they had lives to get back to. Lives that moved on oh so easily without her.

And she knows that they didn’t try all that hard because she is right here. Right here in Caldera City. She visits often and she does so without disguise. But nobody spots her in the crowd because nobody is looking.

Not for her anyways. There is one out and they are looking for TyLee, the name sends a shiver through her. A shiver of longing and a flutter of sadness. She wonders if TyLee had ever looked for her.

She is looking for TyLee. Looking and wondering if TyLee would even want to be found by her. She can imagine that TyLee might run further if she was the one to find her. But is she even on the run? It isn’t exactly unlike her, she had run away to join the circus and shape out her own identity. But she, as far as everyone knows, is content with her position as a Kyoshi Warrior. Azula has her doubts, the girl is once again part of a matched set. Really, how much longer could she endure that.

Of course Azula can’t rule out that TyLee had been abducted either by human or by spirit hands…

What is she thinking? It isn’t her place to go find TyLee so what is the point in speculation. There is none at all she concludes. Unless, of course, she did do some digging. Just to see. If she finds TyLee she doesn’t have to approach her.

She can have her peek and move on.

But what for?

Would it not just be something painful?

But Azula has always been something of a curious person. And so she sets out. Out to that place that she knows TyLee likes to go to when she wants to be alone. When she wants to think. When she wants to let that bubbly, chipper facade crumble for just a moment.

She promises herself that no matter what she sees, if she sees anything at all, she will turn the other way. It will be better for the both of them if she does.

People can say what they want of her; that she is ruthless and hateful. That she is devoid of empathy and can cling fast to a good grudge.

They have never seen her around the people that she cares for. The people that she loves but without know exactly how to do so.

She promises, oh she promises, that whatever she sees or dosn’t see, she will turn back or stop looking altogether.

But when it comes down to it, she knows that she is lying.

She has plenty of ground to cover and hours that have yet to pass her by. But TyLee is in her special spot in the cherry blossom grove. The one that is hidden behind towering temple ruins. The one that only the two of them know of.

She is there. She has been there for days.

.oOo.

Silly thing to do, it is. TyLee knows it and Azula knows it. She knows that Azula is aware because Azula lingers behind the tree well after TyLee calls out that she knows Azula is there. And she is certain that Azula wanted her to know, at least to some degree.

Finally Azula comes out from behind the tree she had been propping herself up against. “What are you doing here?” She asks as though she isn’t the one intruding on a private moment.

“I think that it makes more sense for me to ask you that. What do you want Azula?”

“Zuzu’s got a whole search party looking for you in Caldera City. They think that you’ve been captured…” she trails off only to add, “probably by me.”

“So what concern of yours is that?”

She shrugs. “I guess that it isn’t.” She pauses. “Other than that they might speculate that I’ve taken you.”

“Don’t worry, I’ll go back before they find you.”

“Do you want to go back?” Azula makes herself comfortable on one of several large stones.

“If you’re going to ask me to run away with you…”

“I asked you if you really want to go back? Or would you rather tell them that you still need to find your own way?’

“Why do you care, Azula?”

Another shrug. TyLee wishes that she didn’t know what that shrug meant. She wishes that she didn’t know that Azula still cares very much for her in spite of everything. And she wishes that she didn’t still care for Azula. Wishes that she wasn’t concerned about where Azula was sleeping and finding food. Whether or not she is lonely. And she is almost certainly lonely, she wouldn’t be lingering otherwise.

“If you don’t want to be a Kyoshi Warrior anymore just say so.” She says with a lazy flick of her bangs. “If you can tell me that you…are no longer interested then you’ll have no problem with them.”

“I don’t want to disappoint everyone.”

“Oh who cares.” Azula says in that tone that TyLee also wishes that she didn’t understand. The one that indicates that Azula cares very deeply. “It isn’t so bad…” she doesn’t say it out loud but TyLee can fill in the blanks; it isn’t so bad being a disappointment. “You get used to it after a while.”

It isn’t something that TyLee wants to get used to. It isn’t something that she believes that Azula has truly gotten used to. TyLee’s instincts compel her to reassure Azula that she isn’t a disappointment but Azula has disappointed her.

She watches Azula stare at her palms, occasionally flexing her fingers. “I miss talking to you TyLee. To people in general, but mostly you. I miss being at home…”

TyLee’s tummy flutters. She had always speculated as much but she had never imagined that Azula would say it out loud. And maybe that is what she was waiting for. Just to hear Azula say that she misses people. But no. She also has to hear…

“I’m…I’m sorry, TyLee. I cared about you and Mai. But I don’t know how to care about people because…”

No one ever cared about her. “We cared about you.”

“I think that it was too late by then. After Zuzu got banished…” She seems to stare off. “It’s in the heart of a volcano but the palace still managed to get so cold. So big.”

TyLee chews her lower lip. She can’t say that she knows what that is like. She has always been surrounded by people. So many people that it was almost overwhelming. So many people that she has to have her own secret place in a cherry tree grove.

“You should go back, TyLee. At least let them know that you’re okay. They’re worried about you.”

Azula herself doesn’t have anyone who asks about her. Who worries about whether or not she comes back. And if TyLee lets her disappear into the jungle now there is a real chance that she won’t see her again. Either Azula will perish at the beautiful but brutal hands of nature or her own hands or she will find herself some cozy place to start over. Some place where she can assume a new name and her old one can be forgotten—forgotten as much as a princess can be anyhow.

Maybe she will come back around once or twice but eventually, when she assesses that there is nothing really worthwhile to come back to, she will disappear. For good. Off into a huge world whose every corner can never be explored by any one person in one lifetime.

“I’ll go back if you do.”

“Wh-what.”

Seldom does she get to see Azula taken aback. “I’ll go back to the palace right now if you come with me.”

“And if I don’t?”

It is TyLee’s turn to shrug. “Nothing I guess. I’ll just be here and you’ll go wherever you go.”

“I can’t go back there. They’ll put me back in that insufferable institution or, at this point, some dingey prison cell. I’ll die free and with some dignity out here before I…”

“They’re not going to throw you in prison.” TyLee promises. “Believe it or not Zuko does wonder about you sometimes.” Not often but every now and then when he is in one of his darker moods. His grimly contemplative moods. “Deep down he misses you. I think that he wants to know what your family will be like now that your father isn’t there…”

“It will be very lonely.” Azula replies. “Mother will dote on Zuzu and I’ll be an afterthought.”

Before she can stop herself she confesses, “you won’t be an afterthought to me, Azula.”

At this she swallows had.

At this she crumbles.

TyLee wonders just how long it has been since anyone has told Azula that they are worried about her or implied that they would put her first.

She really ought not but TyLee puts her arms around Azula. Her heart crumbles at the feeling of Azula’s ribcage so prominent against her own. “We really should get you home, being out here is hard on you, I can tell.” Hard on her physically and probably absolutely exhausting mentally. To be so very alone.

And alone with thoughts and memories as dark as Azula’s…

“Can you come home with me?”

“I don’t want to go to prison.”

“You won’t. I promise.” She insists again. “And even if you do, I’m a Kyoshi Warrior and I can request to guard your cell.” She says it in jest but Azula seems to take it with some serious contemplation.

“I miss talking with you…”

TyLee can see it turning over in her mind. See her weighting what is better, dying free and alone or living imprisoned with kind company. Even TyLee can agree that both are bleak in their own way.

“I’ll go with you.” She pauses. “But only because you need to go home. It’s not all that great to stay out here for so long.”

And so it is that Azula shows herself so openly to Caldera City for the first time in years. And she does so with TyLee in her arms. TyLee who is very good at faking injuries for attention. Or, in this particular instance, to give Azula an opening. A way to show people that she isn’t all that bad, isn’t the terror that they have been making her out to be. Perhaps she isn’t really saving TyLee from the wild, but there is something that she has saved today.

She has saved TyLee’s drive, her ability to declare that she does want to leave the Kyoshi Warriors and continue to find her own path.

And maybe she and Azula will venture off together after all. After the princess is well fed and fully recovered. After she has a chance to see if being off on her own for that long has given her enough time to think and change.

Maybe the two of them will discover who they are together.

#avatar the last airbender #azula #tylee #tyzula #fanfiction #one shot

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