October 31st
Candles and The Hanging Tree

The party rages past midnight. Zuko has yet to get into a fistfight with Ozai, but he has hidden himself from most of the partygoers by staying in the kitchen and pounding drinks. Katara walks through the sea of people talking, a few dancing, most lingering and drinking.

She finds Mai in the corner at her own Halloween bash.

"So," Katara begins, sidling up beside her mother-in-law, "why did Zuko break off your engagement?"

"Who the fuck starts a conversation with a question like that?" Pause. "It doesn't matter that he broke it off, since it wasn't going to last anyway. It matters that he broke it off through a text."

"He never told me that part. Why wouldn't it have lasted?"

"Because we actually hated each other. We thought we liked each other when we saw each other four times a month, then we spent a summer together and realized we hated each other. He was the real problem."

"How?"

"If you want to understand exactly how Zuko was the problem, go back in time and have a threesome with Oedipus and Sigmund Freud."

"Are you talking about yourself or Ursa?"

"Who do you think?"

"I honestly don't know. He's had sex with you and your technically his mother so I mean…"

"He's not my son; he's older than me."

"That's not always the rule when you marry someone born before the moon landing."

"Th-the moon landing? You measure time by the moon landing?"

"I guess I do." Katara sighs.

[X]

Azula has not gone a few feet before she walks into the packed parlor and sees Ty Lee talking to a man in a Hercules costume. She crosses her arms, able to tell from across the room that the guy is flirting with her. She starts to walk over to smash Hercules's head against the wall, until she sees him lean in and kiss Ty Lee.

Ty Lee does not stop him.

Azula crushes the thankfully-plastic-glass in her hand and rushes out of the room.

She walks blindly through the party, ready to hook the first person who wants to get in on some Evil Witch Queen action. Unfortunately, the first person who stops in front of her is Katara.

"You're on a mission," says the hippie disguised as a sexy nurse.

Azula will admit that her brother somehow managed to snag hot women on a regular basis. They all had dreadful personalities—including Ty Lee and Mai—but Azula never cared much about that part of a partner.

"I am on a mission to cheat on my wife," Azula says. Katara's eyebrows shoot up. "Get me drunk enough and I'll let you… poke me with your syringe? Is that a good metaphor? Don't answer; I don't care about your opinion."

"I don't know how to respond to that."

"It wouldn't work anyway. It's a Catch-22. The amount of alcohol that would require would kill me."

"I also don't know how to respond to that."

[X]

"Hey, Hercules, want to make a thousand dollars?" is by far Azula's best pick-up line to date.

[X]

"So, I tell people I had sex with you, and you're going to pay me for that?"

"Yes. But you must tell Ty Lee. Must tell her. She's the only one who matters."

"I…" Hercules scratched his head. "Why not?"

Azula counts on him being too drunk to notice that she does not pay him. He should be the one paying her, after all. Being wholly allowed to claim you slept with Azula Shinohai is worth a quarter of a million at least.

[X]

"So, he paid me a hundred thousand to go on a dinner date and another hundred thousand to take my clothes off. The sex part was free so it does not count as prostitution," Mai explains to Katara as they sit in the kitchen, surrounded by parts of costumes and half-empty drinks.

Katara sets her chin on the palm of her hand and gazes at Mai.

"Are we friends now?" she asks. She did just hear the story of how Mai and Ozai got together, after Katara explained how she and Zuko did. Katara's story was by far more interesting; she and Zuko worked together on a charity involving doctors and hated each other's guts until one evening they got trapped in a basement with nothing but green novelty candles and time. They got together after that and still had a fondness for candlelit nights to this day.

"We can be friends until this party is over," Mai offers.

Katara exhales softly and tries not to gouge her own eyes out.

She wishes she had the key to that basement and never fell in love with a man who had a family as monumentally terrible as this one.

[X]

At sunrise, Ty Lee throws a candle at Azula.

A candle that is still on fire. The hot wax bursts out and spills all over the marble floor, but Azula dodges before it can do her any harm.

"I can't believe you—"

"I can't believe you kissed that man!" Azula exclaims, snuffing the candle out by kicking it against a wall.

"He kissed me and you did something so much worse!" Ty Lee sobs.

"I did it in retaliation, therefore any suffering you feel right now is entirely your fault!" Azula screams, her hands twitching towards a chair. She wants to smash it to bits, but manages to contain herself.

Ty Lee runs away, crying hysterically.

A woman slinking away from the party shoots a glare Azula's way.

"Loud bitches," she mutters under her breath as she leaves.

Azula sits down on her sofa and glares at the fireplace.

[X]

In the afternoon, Bunny performs her usual Halloween ritual of making anyone she can get her paws on watch Hocus Pocus with her, which was Ty Lee's tradition before she passed it down. Mai sits with her granddaughter nestled beside her, Azula and Ty Lee reclining side by side on the sofa.

Something happened between them last night but Mai is not getting involved. She is way too tired and hungover to referee relationship problems.

"This movie is making me sad," Ty Lee blurts out, no longer able to take the tension between her and Azula.

Azula crosses her arms. She only could bring herself to sit beside Ty Lee for Bunny's sake; she was not about to talk to her. Azula Shinohai keeps silent.

Mai sighs. "Fine, I'll bite. Why is this movie making you sad?"

"Because it reminds me of us and how good of friends we always were and how we were the three witches for three Halloweens and now everybody and everything is ruined." Tears blossom in Ty Lee's eyes. Bunny pauses the movie.

"I didn't really cheat on you, okay?" Azula says, patting Ty Lee's hand. She had no idea she would cave so easily. God, is this what love is? "I just wanted to emotionally devastate you for kissing that guy."

Mai turns to her granddaughter as Ty Lee throws her arms around Azula. "Never, ever, model your relationships after your parents."

Bunny is clever enough to nod and agree with her grandmother.

[X]

Mai loses a game of rock-paper-scissors and takes both Valerie and Bunny trick-or-treating, along with Katara and Kya. Azula and Ty Lee sit in Azula's bedroom with a flashlight, sleeping bags they dredged up and a flashlight.

"Let me tell you a horror story that's a love story too," Azula says, holding the flashlight up to her face. "There once was a peasant man who fell in love with a noble girl. He got her pregnant, and when her father found out, he had three men sent after him. The man fought back and killed all three of them. The town, incited by the words of the old rich man, lynched the peasant on the night of October 31st."

"Lynched?"

"Strung up in a tree."

"Strung up?"

"Hanged in a tree. By the neck. With rope. To kill him."

"Oh."

"The noble girl gave birth to a son, now an outcast so her son grew up a bastard and a peasant. He fell in love with a noble girl who was engaged to a total jerk. He got her pregnant and they planned to elope on Halloween night while the town was busy celebrating. Her fiancé found out and claimed the peasant kidnapped her. The peasant boy told his love to play along with that lie so she wouldn't meet the same fate as his mother. She fled, like he told her to, and he was arrested.

"But her fiancé beat her and she lost the baby. Broken by this, she ran to break her love out of jail. They didn't make it far, and decided to die on their own terms. They hung themselves side by side in the same tree his father was lynched in.

"They say, to this day, their ghosts still haunt the Hanging Tree, and every Halloween break free of their bonds in order to kill young couples who take their love for granted."

Azula flicks off the flashlight and Ty Lee flinches.

"G-good thing we don't take our love for granted," Ty Lee whispers. She feels Azula's lips against hers in the dark.

Azula bites down on Ty Lee's lower lip. It is perfect.

Then Zuko pounds on the door.

"Katara says we have to say goodbye to all of you," he shouts, because he apparently never talks quietly.

Azula sighs and flicks on the lights of her bedroom. When she opens the door, she sees Kya holding Zuko's hand. Her niece hugs Azula's knees and then skitters away to go find her mom.

"This was slightly less horrible than it could have been," Zuko says and Azula shuts the door in his face to return to her wife.

"Now that there are no more tedious interruptions..." Azula purrs.

[X]

"Goodbye, father," Zuko says after Ozai gives a somewhat convincing hug to his new granddaughter. "I hope you enjoyed this because it's the last time I'm ever coming here."

"You keep saying that but you never follow through. It's flaky and pathetic."

Zuko sighs and turns to his girlfriend. She jingles the car keys and they leave the mansion.

On the doorstep, outside of Mai and Ozai's mansion, Zuko says, "I actually have no idea why they hate me. I know I say stuff about girlfriend-stealing and disappointing my father but I just don't get why they want me in their lives about as much as they want the plague."

Katara shrugs. "They're all just a bunch of assholes anyway."

They exchange a glance and walk away with Kya in tow.

The End