When Azula sees the dress Ty Lee will wear she nearly falls over. She wasn't there when she picked it out; Mai had been responsible for that. She wishes she'd been there to see her try it on, but in the meantime she's thankful to be helping her put it on, for whatever it's worth. It's mostly pink (no surprise) with lots of red trim and frills. When she puts it on it hugs her body in a tantalizingly sexy way.

Ty Lee lifts it out of the box and shows it off first. She dances a bit, holding the dress to her body like she's wearing it. Azula follows her erratic movement around the room. She wants to join. As soon as Ty Lee steps behind the privacy panel to put on the dress Zuko knocks on the door and calls Mai away, leaving Azula alone, separated from a mostly-naked Ty Lee by a sheet of paper and wood. It's torturous. After an agonizingly long amount of time Ty Lee finally step into view, holding most of her dress on. She asks Azula for help with the back. Azula's mind races with possibilities. There's no way she can't reach the ties herself, right? Maybe the dress is too restrictive. Or maybe she wants Azula to be close to her. She tries not to think about running her hands down those creamy shoulders while she works the ties on the back of the dress. Ty Lee says it's very tight and Azula apologizes and offers to adjust the knots. Ty Lee says it's fine and explains that the dress is supposed to be tight. When Azula tells her she looks beautiful in it Ty Lee agrees with her and swishes towards the vanity table.

They start applying makeup. Ty Lee wants to go for a minimal look. Through sheer force of will Azula keeps her hands from trembling as she applies creams and powders to Ty Lee's face. They make eye contact far too often, at least as far as Azula is concerned. Ty Lee doesn't seem to be bothered by it. Azula tries not to spend too long on her lips. They're too beautiful, even without makeup. She bites her own in discomfort. Ty Lee tells her she got lipstick on her teeth. Azula does her best to ignore the taste as she works.

While Ty Lee inspects her face in a mirror, Azula stands to the side trying not to look awkward. Ty Lee tells her she did a great job and offers to touch up her lip but Azula declines. Thankfully, Ty Lee is talking so there isn't an uncomfortable silence between them. Azula knows that would end badly. Instead she listens with interest as Ty Lee goes on and on and on. She's trying to listen to what she's saying while simultaneously ignoring what she's talking about. She knows she shouldn't, that she should just accept the circumstances she's in, but she wants to hang onto the magic as long as she can. It hurts to think about.

She thinks about Ember Island. She doesn't particularly enjoy Ember Island, at least not the party scene. Azula preferred to spend time in the beach house, watching the ocean or reading a book. She remembers the time Ty Lee fell asleep on her while she was reading in the lounge. It felt so comfortable, the way their breathing synchronized after a while. The sounds Ty Lee made as she slept. When she woke up she apologized profusely but Azula insisted it was fine. After that Azula found that Ty Lee seemed more comfortable with her. They'd gone to the market the next day and Ty Lee held her hand. It was only for a few minutes while she dragged her from stall to stall, but Azula's heart skipped nonetheless. That night they stayed up late and talked about everything from animals to dreams to stuff they did when they were kids. Even years later Azula thinks that that was the day that changed how she felt about Ty Lee.

That's where Azula wants to be. Not helping the woman she loves get dressed for her wedding.

Mai finds Azula at the bar. She's hunched over the glass of clear drink in her hands. Mai takes the seat next to her.

"Sorry for abandoning you like that, something came up."

"What happened?" Azula says, mostly to her drink.

"Zuko is a terrific father and everything, but there are still some things that even he can't do."

"Like what?"

"Breastfeed." She pauses to ask the barkeep for a glass of water. "That must have been awkward, you and her alone like that."

"What are you talking about? Everything's fine. It wasn't that awkward."

"Azula, why did you even bother to come? I can tell it's tearing you up."

"Because..." Azula lifts her glass to her mouth but does not drink from it. "Because she asked me too. She's my friend, above anything else." She sets the glass back down.

"I think there are special exceptions for cases like this." Mai waits for Azula to respond, then continues. "I mean, if you want to leave, I'll cover you."

"No, it's fine. I'll stay. This is her big day and it wouldn't be fair to run off because I can't handle my own feelings."

It takes Mai a few seconds to figure out how to respond. "Well... Okay, I guess."

"It's fine. I'll just... avoid her and her husband-to-be for the rest of the night. And then for the rest of my life." She again lifts up her drink but stops just short of her lips, as though she's projecting a force field from her mouth. Mai grips Azula's shoulder and leans in.

"I'll tell her you had a headache, or food poisoning, or menstrual cramps. I'm serious Azula, you don't have to be here."

"Get off me. It's alright Mai; I was being dramatic before. It's not a big deal. I'm mostly over her anyway."

"Right; Mostly." Mai's hand slides down Azula's arm as she gets up to leave. "Vows start in fifteen minutes. I have to go get ready."

"Have fun," Azula mumbles while waving lazily in Mai's direction.

The actual proceedings took much longer than Azula anticipated. Twenty minutes after she found a seat in the back corner of the cathedral she was still staring at Ty Lee and her fiancé holding hands on the altar. Was he still a fiancé? Had they been pronounced yet? Azula was watching the minister's mouth move but she wasn't paying any attention to what she was saying. It was torturous, as though the minister had picked the biggest book she had specifically to draw out the ceremony and force Azula to watch every moment.

Mai was standing behind Ty Lee, hands clasped in front of her and frequently glancing between the seat Zuko had been sitting in before he had to take Izumi outside and the far corner, where Azula sat glazed over like she was paralyzed. Mai looked pretty in her Prime Matron dress but Azula wasn't in love with her and also she was married to Azula's brother she she was off-limits.

A year and a half ago Azula had been Mai's Prime Maiden. She remembered standing awkwardly behind her, watching Zuko stutter through his vows and smugly priding herself on how well she'd written them for him. Zuko couldn't write a recipe for a glass of water. She found it more than humorous that when Zuko kissed his bride he did so with his sister's words on his lips. Three times Azula glanced into the crowd and swore she could feel Ty Lee's eyes on her. One time she was right, and Ty Lee gave her a smile and a subtle wave and Azula's heart melted, and she looked at the back of Mai's head hoping no one was paying attention to her. No one except Ty Lee. Her mind had raced and in her head she replaced Zuko in his classy robes with herself in an iridescent blue dress and Mai with Ty Lee, wearing a coral gown that flowed past her feet and had to be carried by a small army consisting of her nieces. There was no way she'd give her future wife anything less.

Six months after that Ty Lee introduced Azula to her new boyfriend, a son of a minor nobleman whom she had met at the Summer Solstice festival. Azula's chest burned as she bowed politely to the man courting the woman she'd been in love with since last year.

The man sitting to Azula's right looked old enough to have been a general at the beginning to the Hundred-Year War, and throughout the proceedings he seemed to shrink into a pile of robes, snoring softly, until the woman sitting next to him poked him awake with her walking cane. Azula had no idea whose family he was with. She also didn't care.

The rage that burned her heart had long since faded, replaced with a dull ache that lit up with little prickles of nausea when she saw Ty Lee kiss her boyfriend or hold his hand or when she talked about him. When she broke the news of their engagement Azula got home and threw up, cried, then drank a bottle of gin and passed out in front of Zuko's bedroom. She wasn't proud of that night but she remembered it as the night she looked into her friend and sister-in-law's eyes and admitted for the first time to a living human that she was desperately in love with Ty Lee and how much it hurt to see her with someone else. Mai attempted to comfort her to the best of her ability (she spent half an hour offering her food then told Azula that Ty Lee probably wouldn't have reciprocated).

Azula blinked back to the wedding. The old man next to her was now snoring again, the minister was still droning on (Azula wondered how many breaths she'd taken during her whole speech). Ty Lee looked so beautiful in her dress and her fiancé was so handsome and his smile was so genuine and warm and for the first time Azula considered that maybe their relationship was actually based on love and friendship and mutual attraction and wasn't in fact the result of a cruel and malignant universe that fought to kill every sapling of hope Azula ever held in order to drive her to the brink of insanity again and again and again until she lost her footing and plummeted into the depths of her stunted and depraved mind never to be seen again.

Standing at the other end of the room on the altar, Mai sighed imperceptibly as she watched Azula stand up quietly and exit the hall through a side door. She found herself in a long service hallway running parallel to the length of the cathedral. At the very end was a door signed Maintenance Only. She opened it and stood still in the silence of the room until she saw a door marked Stairs. She went through.

By navigating narrow service corridors and winding staircases Azula landed on a small rooftop platform overlooking the city spread out before her, the city of Jiubal which was where Ty Lee's new husband grew up.

Ty Lee's Husband. The phrase felt prickly and ragged as it passed through Azula's mind. Ty Lee wasn't supposed to have a husband. Azula hopped over the short railing separating the platform from the angled surface of the rooftop, onto ancient clay tiles older than her family's dynasty. The night was silent and pleasant, and a cool breeze rolled lazily over the top of the cathedral, wrapping Azula's loose dress around her legs and tugging at the twin locks of hair on either side of her face. She reached back and undid the fancy bun Mai had put her hair into that afternoon, guiding her now-free hair out of its shape and over her shoulders.

Azula stopped at the crest of tiles marking the highest part of the roof surface; the steeple behind her notwithstanding, then brought herself down, sitting on the hard ridge and gazing out over the city, barely lit save for expensive gas streetlights burning in the nicer parts of town. Above her, the stars stretched forever. Azula followed the pearly streak of the Milky Way up, tracing out the constellations that she knew. She picked out the curving body of the Eastern Dragon, the boxy shape of Zhang's Chariot, the hazy blotch of Yongjari. Azula never took the time to study the constellations, preferring to learn about the ones she found interesting or relevant. The more she stared into the sky, the more stars seemed to fade into existence before her eyes. She began to create her own constellations, filling in the gaps between the ones she knew. Three stars in a line made a sharp throwing knife. That quadrilateral was the cradle of a royal baby. The jagged streak was lightning arcing through the sky. A bright red star was the broken heart of a woman who didn't think she had one. Azula sighed, staring upwards into the sea.

There were so many stars. There was only one Ty Lee.

This isn't connected to any other story I've written (So far); it just sort of popped into my head and this was the only way to get rid of it.