Ty Lee will block your chi for real (ty_lee) wrote in valarlogs, @ 2012-05-28 17:21:00 |
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Entry tags: | !complete, azula, ty lee |
But what are you angry at?
Who: Azula, Ty Lee
What: Aftermath of this log. Ty Lee shows she has a spine.
When: Sunday Night
Where: Azula's Condo, the local ER
Rating: PG-13 for fists through coffee tables.
Status: Complete!
Azula had ended her day early, after she finished with the man she'd so rudely been interrupted with. She simply had too much to think about and she had to decide on what she was going to do. Or say.
She could ignore it. It would drive Ty Lee crazy with frustration if she kept the status quo. She could confront her, but that would be admitting the truth, something Azula loathed. She could come up with a proper lie. It was a bet. She was curious. It was her first time. But she'd acted too confident and sure of herself. Of course, she always did.
Azula drove in circles, not paying any heed to where she was headed. There had been no fear in Ty Lee's eyes, even though they'd been scant inches from her own. She'd known it was her. Ty Lee trusted her. But trusted her to do (or not do) what? It was a puzzle and Azula hated puzzles, unless she was making someone else solve one.
She finally came home, and looked up at her window. A painful truth to admit, was that she envied Ty Lee's ability with men. All her conquests had been with men who were too stupid, dense, or dorky to be able to escape her forcefulness. Otherwise it was the men who came to be her pets, but she wore a mask for those. And the only women had been as Blue Flame, as well.
She realized she could never wear a mask for Ty Lee, real or figuratively. She walked inside, stormed to her room and slammed her door. She stuffed her duffel into the closet, and then stripped. She desperately needed a shower.
The ironic thing about all of this was that Ty Lee often wore a mask in front of Azula, and just about everything else.
It was easier to be bubbly and cheerful than to waste time being sad or upset. Spending time focusing on those kinds of emotions was just bound to throw her chi all out of whack anyway. But the truth was that she was a human being under the veneer of smiles, just like everyone else was. She was often worried or afraid, and missed her family more than she wanted to admit.
Right now especially, her mind was torn in several different directions. She almost wanted Azula to pretend that she hadn't been caught. Ty Lee had never specifically SAID anything to admit that she'd seen Azula at that club. She'd given Azula an out. It would almost be easier.
But it wouldn't be easier, because she knew. And she was tired of just sitting there nodding her head at everything Azula did. She'd left home to become an individual and as much as she'd grown on her own - as much as she admitted to handling Azula, which proved she was her own person - she sometimes worried she was still part of a boxed set.
Couples often were a boxed set, but Azula would never care for her that way. Then you had the whole dog collar thing. It was all one big gigantic emotional mess that frankly she didn't need to be dealing with right now. Especially months before she was about to take a shot at the biggest competition of her life.
So she was sitting on her bed when Azula got home, meditating and pretending like tonight never happened, not even the part where they'd gone to a strip club. When the door slammed shut, she tried to tell herself she didn't care enough to investigate.
Azula tried a cold shower first, but that never worked for her. It was a hot, steaming shower that relaxed her muscles and calmed her nerves. She always needed one after a day at the Thorn, and she always needed one after a teleconference with her father and the Board. And she needed them for different reasons.
Perfect. Not a hair out of place. Calm and collected and very, very sharp as a fire nation battleship. That was Azula at those meetings. She was the perfect one for father and while she'd never admit it, it sometimes took a toll.
Her extracurricular activities could ruin that image, but it gave her an outlet. Not enough of one, she had struck that girl, after all. What shook her most about that was that for a moment, someone had gotten under her skin and she'd lost control.
Azula came out of her room, wrapped in a silk robe and damp hair dangling loosely, and flipped on the television as she sat on the couch.
TV noises could be heard in the background, and Ty Lee peeked an eye open to glance in the direction of her door. Azula'd been home for quite a few minutes by this point, and she figured the coast had to be clear. After all, if her friend was going to come yell at her for some reason, she probably would have done it by now? Right?
But she was still trying to pretend like tonight never happened, and that meant that she'd probably be out there joining Azula for some tv watching while winding down before bed. So she casually hopped up off her bed and headed to the kitchen for a drink, then plopped onto the other couch.
Azula was brushing her hair when Ty Lee plopped down. Since she'd shortened it, it had been easier to manage. She let the tv play, and pretended not to notice Ty Lee's presence.
She knew the other woman was expecting a yelling match.
She wasn't giving her the satisfaction.
They sat there in silence for a few minutes, as Ty Lee was loathe to really bring the topic up herself. Instead she watched the TV and sipped her drink. It was a pretty normal night, all things considered. Yup, nothing new or exciting here.
Finishing with her hair, Azula shifted on the couch, stretching her legs out as she did so. She crossed them, and looked at Ty Lee from the corner of her eye.
"You looked in the bag."
Oh no, were they actually going to have this conversation? Ty Lee took a measured sip of her drink and kept her eyes on the TV.
"I don't have to have looked in the bag..."
"I told you not to look in the bag. If you didn't look in the bag, what were you doing there?" Azula flicked the tv off and tossed the remote onto the coffee table. She twisted to look directly at Ty Lee. Her voice was calm and airy, like she really didn't care about the answer.
At this point she probably could have lied. Kitty'd been there, she could make up 2 or 3 elaborate but plausible excuses revolving around how her and Jubilee had been there just to get Kitty out.
It might have been easier to lie, and at this point Ty Lee wasn't sure which thing Azula wanted to hear. So she sighed, and decided to tell the truth.
"I was worried. About you."
"Worried?" Azula's face twisted into a disbelieving sneer, and she sounded almost a little hurt, "I've never given you reason to worry about anything. What I do in my own time is my business."
Her eyes narrowed as a paranoid thought came to mind, "If my father set you up to do this.." Or her brother, or really any member of her family..
THAT hurt. How could Azula even THINK that? What had she ever done that even remotely looked like she was dealing behind Azula's back like that?
She frowned, "You were acting suspicious. Like you had something to hide. I thought it was ... serious, I was worried about you. What I do on my time isn't any of your business, either, but when I get home late you still wonder where I've been. And how can you even SAY that?! I don't even speak to your father!"
She didn't apologize, but she did drop the accusation. Azula hadn't even really believed it, but she obviously had some measure of..guilt perhaps. Not shame. Azula never felt shame.
"I ask because I'm concerned. You're rarely late. I always go out on weekends." She leaned back, her robe falling open slightly, "I can't afford for this to get out. A lot of people wouldn't understand. You obviously don't."
"But you never talk about where you GO on the weekends, and..." Ty Lee sighed, "How long have we been friends that you really think I would just blabber about this to everyone? You could have tried to explain it to me at least."
"There's no real way to explain it that would make any sort of sense to you." Azula got up, fixing her robe, though she usually didn't care if Ty Lee saw her naked or not.
"You don't know that for certain, you never tried." Ty Lee looked up at her, "I understand a lot more than people give me credit for."
Azula glanced at Ty Lee, looking straight at her again. She still wasn't sure what she'd felt, when her friend had been so close to her earlier. She'd wanted to kiss her, and not to claim possession or control. Because she'd just wanted to.
Of course she had too much self-control to give into those feelings, with or without the Blue Flame persona.
She shrugged a shoulder, knowing her explanation wouldn't do anything but buy her time to formulate a more detailed response, "I like hurting people. And they like being hurt."
"Not ALL people, just those people," Ty Lee pointed out, frowning. This was like a nightmare. Kind of.
No it wasn't. Most of these things about Azula she knew and ignored. Or maybe she didn't know them, but she should have seen them, or... She didn't want to beleive it, or she just wanted to see the best of Azula and not the worst.
"...You really enjoy it?"
"Yes." Azula folded her arms, adopting a wide, immovable stance,but her tone was light, "I can do it without actually hurting someone. I have to stop when they say, so it's not like I'm really hurting them all that much. Not any more than they want me to."
She dropped her arms to her side and walked over to Ty Lee, sitting next to her and leaning in, "I wouldn't hurt you, Ty Lee. Never on purpose. I just get..."
She cut herself off, looking away.
It almost looked like Azula needed comfort, and Ty Lee wasn't sure if she was supposed to provide it, or not. This was probably the oddest conversation they'd ever had, simply because they'd never had any conversation like it.
It was uncharted territory, really. She tried to fill in the sentence that had been cut off, "Angry? Frustrated? Like you need to ... slap someone or something?"
"Angry." Azula nodded her head, eyes seeming to glow as the sun set outside. Her voice had a hard edge to it, "I'm always angry. At everything."
It burned inside her, this fire. She'd always loved fire.
Ty Lee looked down at her hands for a bit and nodded her head. "But what are you angry at?"
Azula didn't have an answer for that, not right away. She'd never bothered to really ask herself. She just shrugged, and started undoing Ty Lee's braid, tugging lightly as she did so.
"I don't know. Does it matter?"
"Of course it matters. Something in in your life is making you angry all the time. We need to get to the bottom of it so that you can stop being so angry."
She was scared that Azula was angry at her. Not just over this recent incident, but in general. Or she was scared that all those times she thought she'd made Azula happy, she'd just been fooling herself. Maybe it was both.
Without thinking, she leaned towards her to give Azula more room to undo her braid. She'd had daydreams about this, or about brushing Azula's hair.
A breath caught in Azula's throat, and she forced herself to breath normally. She still had the brush she'd been using earlier and started to brush out Ty Lee's hair as she finished undoing the braid.
"I don't know what could possibly be making me angry all the time." Her brushing of Ty Lee's hair got a little hard and jerky for several brushes, before gentling.
"You're the only one who can see me as anything less than...perfect" She snarled, catching the brush in a knot of her friend's hair and struggling with it.
There was Mai, but the woman was so monotone it was hard to tell how well she saw her.
The brush yanked on her hair a bit when it caught, and Ty Lee bit her lip to keep from crying out. There was a voice inside of her telling her not to even move or make a single sound, worried that if she did Azula would react like a skittish animal and run away.
She let Azula struggle with her hair for a bit, puzzling through everything, then finally, "It isn't that you are, or aren't perfect. You're the perfect you that you can be. I don't need anything more than that, and even on your worst days, you'd still be perfect if you'd just be you."
Azula let the brush hang in Ty Lee's hair for a moment as she tried to make sense of what the woman had said. Finally, she grabbed the brush again and yanked through the knot. Anything less than perfect could cost her, but she didn't or couldn't vocalise that. She knew very well she wasn't perfect, not even in her father's eyes.
And it was her father that mattered most. Snorting, Azula rested the brush in her lap, "So I'm weak?"
"Never. You're the strongest person I know." There wasn't any hesitation.
"I know," Azula replied, pressing the brush into Ty Lee's hand. "But I can't be just me. You should know that by now."
Ty Lee took the brush and sighed, "You could be just you, here. No one would see but me."
This was arguably the deepest conversation they'd ever had, and Azula never suspected she'd have one like it with Ty Lee of all people. The woman was so..superficial. So eager to please. So without deception.
Deception was such an inherent part of her life that she'd always gotten a guilty pleasure out of the lack of it when Ty Lee dealt with her.
She turned, tilting her head to indicate she wanted her hair brushed, and also keeping her face away from Ty Lee's, "I would see."
It felt a little dishonest, the conversation did. Ty Lee didn't always show Azula her true self, either. She could make arguments about self preservation or just trying to make Azula happy. She wondered if doing that for much longer would make HER that angry.
She'd be crushed if she knew that Azula counted on her not to be false.
Azula wanted her to brush her hair? It felt like they were bonding instead of having a screaming match. Maybe it was better if she stopped pretending that tonight happened, after all. She shifted positions a bit and tried to keep her heart from crawling out of her throat as she gently ran the brush through Azula's hair.
"You should see," She whispered, finally. She was confident that Azula would love the Azula she'd find, in there, if she looked.
Azula's eyes slid shut, and she leaned back against Ty Lee. Whoever the 'she' she really was, she didn't want to see. Azula couldn't afford to allow herself that luxury.
She was a cruel, malicious person, and she knew it. She'd known Ty Lee would brush her hair if she'd asked. She'd known Ty Lee would feel she wouldn't have a choice. A large part of her loved that power. It was just hairbrushing, but she could inspire fear and make Ty Lee do whatever she wanted. Almost.
"You weren't afraid. Why?" Her tone was neutral.
But Azula had never asked Ty Lee to brush her hair. She hadn't demanded. She'd simply tilted her head to the side and waited for Ty Lee to pick the brush up on her own. Ty Lee could have ignored the subtle hints. Many people who knew Ty Lee would even believe that she was incapable of picking up on subtlety.
She was brushing Azula's hair because she wanted to. She took her time with it, allowing herself to savor the moment as fleetingly as it would last.
"I trusted you." Came her simple reply, when the question was asked.
"You trusted me?" Even Azula had a bit of difficulty believing that. There were so many things she could have done to take advantage of the moment, or to hurt her. She'd ordered Ty Lee around often enough in the past. If it had been anyone else (except perhaps Mai), she would have had her on the rack before she'd been able to take a single breath. She was supposed to be afraid.
But it wasn't anyone else. She'd trusted her. Clearly Azula had messed up somewhere but she wasn't sure where.
Ty Lee just kept on brushing Azula's hair. She nodded her head again, though, and repeated her answer. "I trusted you."
Azula's hands balled up into fists, her knuckles turning white. She didn't understand!
Ty Lee started humming a song in the hopes it would calm her down a bit, and just kept right on brushing Azula's hair.
Azula pulled away, getting to her feet. Her robe came undone as she turned around, snapping, "I don't understand why?!"
There we go. Now they were having a shouting match. Or at least, they were closer to having a shouting match. Ty Lee didn't feel much like shouting, though. And she was having a hard time with the not-staring.
Why? Well... that was an answer she wasn't really prepared to give just yet. Not in the way she wanted to. She trusted Azula because she had to, because she loved her, but there were parts of herself she didn't trust with Azula, and her heart was one of them.
"If you wanted to hurt me like that, you would have done it already. I'm your friend. One of the only ones you really have. When the whole world lets you down, we're the ones you call. If Mai could be here, she'd be here too. You might get annoyed with us, but you've never hurt us, not like that."
There were the few times she'd pushed Ty Lee over when she was younger. Childish antics. But Azula'd never hit them or anything. That much was the truth.
"You're useful!" Azula's voice sounded louder than it was in the acoustics of the room. She wanted to hurt her, wanted to prove to her that she was wrong, that she didn't need them. And maybe to chase Ty Lee away so didn't hurt her for real.
"And you're stupid!" She swung her fist.
It wasn't Ty Lee that she swung for. Her fist went down through the top of the coffee table, shattering it. She didn't seem to notice the pain, or the blood pouring from her hand and arm. Her chest heaved as she hyperventilated, shouting, "Stupid and blind!."
Perfect, not even a hair out of place. She looked at her fist, then licked a cut, "Stupid and...happy and smiling and irritating...."
There were plenty of metaphors that Ty Lee could use to try and get Azula to understand her point of view a bit more. Roses and Thorns, Fire's beauty and usefulness vs. its ability to burn, the sun's ability to support life vs ITS ability to burn...
But right now the most important thing was that Azula's hand was bleeding all over the place, and despite the verbal abuse and the general thought that Azula had possibly just lost her mind, Ty Lee knew where her priorities lay.
She sprung up off the couch and ripped her shirt off, firmly grabbing Azula's arm and yanking it over so that she could wrap it up.
Azula tried to pull her hand away, hissing, "I need to get the glass out."
She seemed calmer now, oddly enough. Like her hand dripping blood was an every day occurance. The pain helped her focus, but she couldn't quite meet Ty Lee's eyes.
It shouldn't be all that surprising that Ty Lee's grasp was too firm for Azula to manage pulling away, especially when she was this worried for her friend's well being. "You need to go to a hospital."
It was surprising to Azula, who tried to wrench her arm free again. She stared at her friend in shock, but still protested, "We have a first aid kit."
"You're going to need stitches, Zula. Please. Let me take you. " She absolutely didn't let go.l
"It's not that bad, and I don't need stitches. You're working yourself into a frenzy over nothing, Ty Lee." Why of all the times for Ty Lee to stand up to her, it had to be now?
Because now was one of the times when she most needed Ty Lee to stand up to her, "It's bleeding through my shirt and dripping on the rug."
"We'll need a new rug," Azula commented. Her robe had slipped off her shoulders, and she looked at her hand again, "Towels." She didn't want blood all over the inside of her car.
"It'll be a great excuse to use your father's credit card to redecorate." Ty Lee was right back to being upbeat, if only because it was easier to cope with all of that. She tugged Azula into the kitchen nearby so that she could bleed on the tile instead, then grabbed up some kitchen towels and wrapped them around her hand, too.
"Fix my robe..." There was an unspoken 'please' added to the end of it. This was bad enough, she didn't want to be walking into an ER naked. She was pissed off enough at herself as it was.
With a nod, Ty Lee fixed the robe and tied it back closed, tightly. She grabbed a jacket from the closet, just to have something to wear on top, then tugged Azula to the car before the woman could change her mind.
Azula climbed into the car, taking her time and buckling up like she had all the time in the world and her hand didn't hurt dreadfully.
It gave Ty Lee enough time to mentally calm down to the point where she could ponder driving without running someone over, so that was good. She didn't even know where the nearest hospital was, and had to use the GPS to get them there.
Azula wanted to close her eyes and nap, but refused to give into it, "I hope they give me the good stuff. No one finds out about this, understood?"
"You don't have to keep saying that. I've known you long enough to know that no one ever finds out about anything." Ty Lee poked Azula on the nose playfully, then got the door for her and rushed her into the ER. An orderly was kind enough to give them a wheelchair so they could be faster, even.
Azula was about to refuse the wheelchair, but after swaying on her feet deigned to let them push her. She might have given Ty Lee the tiniest of smiles, the nose boop hitting that teensy tiny spot deep within her black little heart.
Luckily it was that time of day that was too early for the late night drunken accidents and too late for the regular crowd of rush-hour accidents. Ty Lee showed the nurse on duty Azula's bloody towel hand and they pretty much let them right in.
Azula watched them pick out the glass and stitch her up, her gaze never wavering from the work they were doing. Apparently she was lucky - she'd missed severing any tendons. She didn't really care - she'd broken a perfectly good coffee table.
"You're a good friend, Ty Lee." You deserve better than me.
Ty Lee'd spent most of the time filling out the paperwork for Azula and answering the questions. They gave her a bunch of aftercare instructions and some prescriptions to fill, too. Azula was pretty much in her care and Ty Lee thought it would be so easy to take advantage of this situation, but she just couldn't do it.
"You're just saying that because they drugged you up," Ty Lee giggled a bit. It gave Azula an out later, when this was past and she wanted to withdraw and be all ice queen again.
Azula snickered, stroking Ty Lee's face, "You have to feel your face. It's so soft."
"You're soo high." Ty Lee grinned.
Whatever she'd been shot up with was amazing. Airely, Azula said, "Take me home."
"Yes, your highness." Ty Lee booped Azula on the nose again, then wheeled her out of there and took her home!