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She stared after Azula as she flounced off, and turned to Ty Lee, who was already back to stretching. “What was that about?”
She rolled out the muscles in her neck and back, and Mai could hear her bones cracking in a way that made her slightly wince, “No idea,” she said, as honestly as Ty Lee ever got.
“Really?” she asked.
“Well, probably something to do with her uncle,” she said, and her voice suddenly turned sugary. Saccharine. “I do hope she’s alright. She’s so-”
Mai didn’t hear the rest of what she said. Something about the way Ty Lee simpered after Azula made her stomach want to reject her body. Would that she were a firebender and could turn this rage into something hot and literally burning rather than this tongue of fire coursing through her body.
“Mai?” she heard from behind her. “Mai!”
“What?” she asked, not turning around, not expending the energy in raising her voice. “What could you possibly want from me?”
“Your aura is black.”
“It’s my colour,” she said, now standing still.
“Hm,” she made a tssking sound with her tongue at the top of her mouth. She spotted it for a moment, flicking up and down.
“What? I have places to be. Do you know how much knife throwing practice I need to do?”
“Not very much,” she appeared in front of her, jumping and landing so daintily it was as if she were controlling the air around her. “You’re a prodigy with those.”
Mai took them from their sheaths, using their weight as an exercise for the muscles in her wrists, “You think so?”
“Of course, and they’re so shiny too,” she enthused, her face lighting up in exactly the same style she’d used on Azula and on whatever young man she had wanted to charm that week at the Academy’s socials. “I’d love to come and watch you practise, though, if you must.” She touched her very slightly on the wrist and the surprise made Mai flinch back. “Sorry! Sorry!” She said, jumping back almost a full metre, her hands held up in apology, “I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable.”
“It’s okay,” Mai found herself saying. “I was just… surprised.” She heard a bell go off and sighed, “I really have to go now though. Sorry.”
“Can’t I watch?” she sounded almost sad. It was a very un-Ty Lee sort of emotion. Too flat and depressing for her usually bubbly exterior.
“Don’t you have a class to go to?”
“Not really,” she shrugged. “I can just say my dog died and bat my eyelashes at the teacher until I cry. It usually works,” she started walking with Mai off to the knife throwing room, although she didn’t exactly remember saying that Ty Lee could come with her. The actual invitation was apparently assumed then.
“How many dead dogs could you have though?”
She laughed, not in her usual glassy style where it sounded more like a set of chimes clinking together in the breeze, but some kind of half-snort. “As many as I want.”
Her hand hovered over Mai’s arm, not quite touching until they reached her classroom.
“Where’s Azula?” Mai had returned to the room at last and Ty Lee let out a breath.
“She wants to spy on Zuko during his training but I said I wanted to drink tea.”
“That was rebellious of you,” she sat cross legged opposite from her and poured a cup. Ty Lee took a sip from her own and winced at the bitterness. Apparently Azula had managed to scorch the leaves while heating up the pot. Not on purpose, she would guess.
“Yes well, she must be awfully anxious with her uncle and cousin on the front line at Ba Sing Se, could you imagine?”
“Don’t need to,” she said, as Ty Lee remembered briefly about her friend’s family. “I never thought Azula was overly fond of General Iroh or Prince Lu Ten though.”
“Her aura is murky,” she said. “I can’t say for sure but she’s got more depth than she lets on, I’m sure.” She shrugged, enough about Azula already, “I heard you got a distinction on your last exam.”
Mai smiled briefly, her eyes glinting slightly, “Yes, I did.”
Ty Lee curled up next to her, resting her head against her shoulder. She wasn’t as warm as Azula - fire benders usually ran hot - but her skin was soft and her hair was like silk so she could rest against her just fine.
“Why do you always have that many boyfriends?” Mai asked, stalking into the otherwise empty room in the house on Ember Island.
“What’s wrong with me having boyfriends?” Ty Lee stretched one leg up until the top of her foot was touching her face, then the other. “It’s not serious, don’t be so ridiculous, Mai.”
“... Nothing, I suppose, but it’s-” she shrugged. “I don’t know. Unusual. Azula said you were making things too easy.”
“Azula is,” she blinked a couple of times. “Very-” She held her face still, “She is right of course, maybe I shouldn’t have as many boyfriends.”
Azula was obviously a cruel bitch with no idea how normal people worked but Ty Lee was hardly going to say that aloud, even though she knew very well that the prince and princess were off firebending on another part of the island and Lo and Li were still in the market.
She couldn’t say it though. She couldn’t even look at Mai meaningfully to see if her thoughts were understood. It would give her away.
She didn’t miss the careful way Mai kept looking after her as she left, cartwheeling out of the room. Maybe she understood her more than she wanted her to. Mai never gave anything away because she seemed to show three emotions a month and two of those were anger. Ty Lee showed a million emotions every day of the week and so few of those were attached to how she was feeling.
Some of them were, of course. It was always more believable to base your lies in truth after all, but if she needed someone to think that she was happy, she could just look for the shiniest, silveriest lining of any cloud to find a sliver of something to dig out a smile even if she was having the worst day in the world. Or imagining someone getting stabbed was pretty satisfying. A lot of her fantasies ended up including that. Or kicking someone in the face. That was pretty good too.
“Nice place,” Mai said, a little hoarsely. She wasn’t wearing the robes Ty Lee was used to seeing her in, but instead wearing something more in the style of the Southern Water Tribe, with a familiar looking blue tunic, her knives hanging at the belt.
“Thanks,” she said, and then: “Is that- is that Sokka’s tunic?”
“Yeah,” she straightened the collar a little. “Well it was?”
“He gave you his clothes?” She hated the horrible twisting feeling that had made itself right at home in her gut.
“Gave- um, no. I took them.”
“Why?”
“Comfy?” She shrugged, “They’re practical and quite warm. I like them.”
“But there’s nowhere to hide your knives,” she looked around her figure, up and down. For some reason this made Mai blush, but what her body language told Ty Lee didn’t logically align with what she knew about her.
“Actually,” she tugged at her boot, and she could see a tiny knife sticking out the top. “But yeah, not as many places, I suppose, but it doesn’t really matter. Everyone knows now that I fight with knives, so who cares if they can see them or not?”
That was true enough, she supposed, as she took Mai’s elbow and started showing her around the island. Their story had made its way all around the world by now, from the Chief of the Northern Water Tribe to ordinary farmers in the Earth Kingdom. “This is one of the training grounds,” she said. “It was, actually. We found a grave there while we trying to smooth down the dirt, and Aang said - well Kyoshi said-”
“You spoke to long dead Avatar Kyoshi?”
“Not me personally,” she heard the dreamy tone in her voice. Mai snorted. “I mean that,” she continued. “She showed up when Suki was talking about it with Aang, like… I’m not sure, I think she technically possessed him, but it was her friend or something? The stone must have worn away but next time we get an earthbender, we’re going to ask them to replace it.”
“Who was it? What did the stone say?”
“Yun, from Makapu,” she said, a little listlessly. It was so simple, so nothing . She’d never heard of a Yun, and nor had anyone else among the warriors. He might be in some history text if she ever tried to research it, but the idea of being simply remembered as a name and where you were from was a little lonely to her.
Being remembered through history wasn’t especially important to her. Perhaps she would be. Perhaps not. It wasn’t as if she would be alive to care either way if that happened. It was the here and now which mattered to her.
And here and now she had Mai with her, for the first time in years
She moved her hand, brushing first against the back of her hand, and then she interlocked their fingers, her knife-born calluses bearing into her own from acrobatics and fighting.
“It’s beautiful here,” Mai said suddenly, not acknowledging their changed positions, but not rejecting it either.
Ty Lee agreed even though she wasn’t even pretending to look at the scenery.