"Hmph." Azula sighed, having gone back 10 pages into the Amazon catalog.

"What's the matter, 'Zula" asked Ty Lee.

"I can't find a gift for Katara." she scowled, shutting her laptop. That was a lie, there were plenty of things that Katara would like. Just not anything Azula could afford. Not since she got fired for blackmailing her duty manager (a truly ridiculous affair that everyone had blown out of proportion).

"Well that's O.K." said Ty Lee with a smile. "Maybe you could make her something? I think it's so romantic how Zuko will sometimes write poems for Mai."

Azula suppressed a laugh. "I'm not a poet, Ty Lee. And I'm not trying to be romantic." she said, finishing with a stern voice.

"Okay." said Ty Lee, knowing that Azula most certainly was trying to be romantic, and that's why she wouldn't just buy Katara scented candles or some other stocking-sized gift that she'd probably received a hundred times over. "But that doesn't mean you can't still make her something. Friends make each other things all the time!" she exclaimed, masking her desire to have Azula succeed in her romantic mission with her usual unbridled enthusiasm.

Azula gave Ty Lee a suspicious look, briefly considering her words before shaking her head. "Maybe I should go all Walter White and cook Katara some methamphetamine. I'm sure she'd appreciate me applying my chemistry degree to please her." she said sarcastically, before sighing. "Look. Ty Lee. I'm not a writer, or a poet, or an artist. I'm not good with my hands, I can't make anything Katara would want." she admitted in sheer defeat.

"Hmm, cooking, that's not a bad idea." Ty Lee considered, Azula's sarcastic outburst giving her an idea.

"If the goal is to get us all arrested, then sure, absolutely. A fantastic idea." Azula waved her hand to emphasize her already dripping-with-sarcasm tone.

Ty Lee shook her head. "Not meth, silly! Cookies!"

Azula's brow furrowed. "Cookies? You think Katara would like cookies!?" she asked, suspicious. There wasn't a day where the feminist, environmentalist, moral and health busybody that was Katara wasn't trying to make everyone make the 'right' choices, including not eating junk food. Because not only is it bad for you, it's bad for society and it's bad for the environment too! Do you know what percentage of their meat comes from factory farms? Where they lock the poor animals in cages and feed them inordinate amounts of anti-biotics, producing new resistant strains of bacteria? Do you have any idea how much electricity a fryer consumes? Or how much of their supply chain relies on third-world slave lab-

Azula shook her head, trying to get Katara's endearing yet annoying voice out of her head.

"Okay, Katara told me not to tell anyone... but, when she's not busy mothering anyone she had a little bit of a sweet-tooth. She likes molasses cookies." Ty Lee explained in a hushed voice, even though with Katara out attending classes and Mai visiting a friend there was nobody in the entire flat that could overhear them.

She frowned. "I don't know how to bake, Ty Lee."

"You can learn!" Ty Lee exclaimed with a giddy smile, before thinking up a way to motivate her friend. "Think of it as just another kind of chemistry. A certain amount of one ingredient, a certain amount of another, and then you get a reaction that produces something else!"

"I don't know..." Azula trailed off. "Before father went away, my Uncle used to tell me cooking was just like any other creative art, you have to have the heart for it or it won't work." she said, truthfully never having put much stock in Uncle's ramblings, but nevertheless convinced cooking of any kind was simply beyond her ability to do. So many unwritten rules, ambiguous instructions, and room for creative flair. Azula was a scientist, not an artist. She didn't have the mind for it.

"That's silly." said Ty Lee. "There are recipes online. Whenever I want to cook something, I just follow those. It's actually really easy! Your uncle was probably just trying to make it sound cooler than it really is." she explained, having many times been content to soak up the praise for cooking things that she'd just made following some instructions online (or sometimes even things born from a storebought mix).

"Really?" Azula asked, genuinely considering her words but also wondering if this was just one of Ty Lee's ploys to make her feel better or genuine advice.

"Of course!" said Ty Lee, beaming, beyond excited that she had summited the mountain that was Azula's skepticism. "If you start now, you should be able to finish by the time she gets back from her feminist club." she said, looking at the time on Azula's laptop.

"Hmm." Azula considered. Truthfully, it wasn't a bad idea. Especially not for Ty Lee, who was usually an unending source of bad ideas. The only reason Azula wasn't rushing to pull it off was because... it just wasn't right. It just wasn't very Azula to bake people things. Azula wanted to be the person who showered her friends in expensive (though meaningful) gifts, purchasing things that they needed but couldn't afford.

But seeing as she was about one month's rent away from putting her account into overdraft (and couldn't take out any lines of credit after what her father did before going to prison), Azula figured that now was the time to improvise.

"Let's do it." she said, now committed to Ty Lee's not-so-bad idea. "Where do I start?"

Ty Lee suppressed a laugh. "Well, go look up a recipe, silly!"

Azula's brow furrowed. "You're not going to assist me?" she asked, her prior enthusiasm immediately dampened by the realization that she'd have to do work.

"Well, it wouldn't be, um, you know, right." she said awkwardly, truthfully wanting to help as much as she could. "It's your gift to Katara, I can't make it for you."

"Oh, right." Azula said. Obviously. "Of course."

So Azula set to work, putting 'molasses cookie recipe' into Google and clicking on the first few results, not really knowing what she was looking for. Each one had a characteristic list of ingredients and preparation instructions to compose one 'batch' (how many cookies that was, Azula wasn't sure), a few of the sites containing annoying flavor texts she had to scroll through to get to the actual recipe.

Azula turned around. "So you're not going to help, but you're going to breathe down my neck while I work?" she asked Ty Lee, who'd been standing behind her watching her every keystroke.

Ty Lee let out one of her characteristic giggles. "Sorry, Azula. I'm just, um.." she paused rewording watching into an answer Azula would accept. "...making sure you're not doing anything wrong, that's all!" she said, beaming.

"...very well." Azula accepted her answer, turning her head back to the screen, and pulling out her phone and starting to make a list of everything she needed to buy. Butter, Molasses, Eggs, Vanilla, Flour, Bak-

"Oh, you don't need to get the basics." piped up Ty Lee from behind her.

Azula turned around. "The basics?" she asked, only vaguely knowing what qualified as 'basic'.

"Yeah." Ty Lee affirmed. "I already have flour you can use. As well as baking soda, sugar, and-"

"I thought you said you weren't helping me?" Azula interrupted, confused.

Ty Lee smiled. "I'm not! You still have to put everything together yourself. But I figured you could stand to save a few dollars." she justified herself.

A pause.

"Thank you, Ty Lee." she accepted her charity, feeling almost guilty for doing so but unable to deny her reasoning. The lest she spent on groceries the better. "Very well." she said, finishing up her list and crossing out the items Ty Lee had excluded. "I'll return once I have the ingredients." she finished, standing up and moving for the door.

"...what are you doing?" Azula asked, watching as Ty Lee followed her

"Don't you want me to come with you?" she asked.

Azula snorted. "I know how to go to the store, Ty Lee." she said, one part insulted and five parts amused at Ty Lee's barely-contained enthusiasm.

"Oh, right." she said, as though just realizing. "Good luck!"

In truth, Azula probably could have used Ty Lee's help, not knowing where half the ingredients she was buying could be found and having the circle the aisles more than once to find everything. But she did, and in just under twenty minutes plus travel time, she was back at their flat with all the ingredients (minus the basics) in hand.

Azula shouldn't have been surprised to find Ty Lee at the door, almost as if she hadn't moved since she'd left. "What took so long?" asked Ty Lee (who, while not exactly having been standing at the door, might as well have been).

"Stuck in traffic." Azula replied, in a vain effort to hide her own incompetence.

"Well, she'll be home soon, and we haven't started!" she exclaimed, taking Azula's bag and leading the way to the kitchen.

"We?" Azula said as she followed. "I'm the one doing all the work."

"Oh, right. I mean you haven't started, sorry." she corrected herself, seeming almost disappointed somehow.

Azula sighed and got to work, placing her laptop on the kitchen counter, reading the instructions. Apparently she was to mix all the dry ingredients and the wet ingredients separately before adding them together. She paused, trying to remember where the mixing bowls were stored but failing to recall as, well, she had never cooked anything before.

"What do you need?" Ty Lee asked, noticing Azula's hesitation.

"I can handle this myself!" she shot back, starting to take Ty Lee's constant help-but-also-not-help as a challenge. "Why don't you find something to do while I work, or at least stay quiet." she said, her irritation shining through more than she intended.

Ty Lee looked at the ground. "O-Okay." she acknowledged, dejected. "I'll be in my room if you need me."

Azula watched Ty Lee leave the kitchen before methodically searching all the cupboards for the mixing bowls, grabbing two when she found them in a particularly wide one in the corner, setting them down on the counter and mentally going through what she needed to do next.

How does one measure... a cup? she asked herself. Is it just any cup? or is it a specific unit. And what's the difference between a tablespoon and a teaspoon?

Azula typed in her question into google, not even for a moment considering asking Ty Lee.

This can't be it, can it? she thought, finding a measuring jug with the correct units in the same cupboard she found the bowls in, imagining the unwieldy process of measuring a powder in something that looked as though it was designed for a liquid.

It took her a while, but eventually Azula found a string of measuring cups in one of the drawers, each one a different volume ranging from 1 cup to 1/4th a cup. The same drawer also contained the measurements for a teaspoon and a tablespoon, so she took those as well.

She began mixing the dry ingredients starting with the flour and working her way down in vol-

"Fuck." she said out loud, getting some if the impossibly fine powder on her dress, trying to wipe it off with her hands to no avail. She probably should have worn an apron, or at least clothes she didn't care this much about.

Ty Lee probably would have told me that, Azula thought to herself, glad she wasn't in the room to tell her I told you so! In that bubbly, patronizing-but-also-not voice.

Moving on from the dry ingredients to the wet ones, stopping to get the measuring jug rather than using the cups to measure out the molasses. See? I don't need any help. I have this measuring thing all figured out, Azula thought to herself.

1 Large Egg

An entire egg? Surely they didn't mean just to drop the entire thing in the bowl, rather just its contents. Which device here does that? Azula wondered, looking around for anything that might be able to extract the center of an egg leaving the shell behind, only to be interrupted by soft beeping of her phone's alarm. Katara's club had started, which meant she'd be home in less than an hour and a half.

Forget finding something to do it for you, she thought. just do it with your hands, that can't be so hard, right?

Azula held the egg over the mixing bowl before stopping, getting a much smaller bowl to crack the egg over in case any of the shell bits flew off.

She hesitated. What if the the yolk got caught on her fingers, would it stain her skin? Would she contaminate it? Is this really the best way to do this? she asked, before going ahead with it anyway, cracking the shell with her nails and letting the yolk and the white fall into the small bowl.

...

Well that wasn't so bad.

Azula felt rather silly all of the sudden.

After putting the egg into the bowl with the other soft ingredients, she began to mix them all together. Had you asked Azula how long this would have taken before she started, she would have said one, maybe two minutes.

She was on minute ten and the stupid ingredients still hadn't blended. Her arm was tired. This was ridiculous, shouldn't there be a machine or something to do this? There are a dozen ways to cook things, from microwave ovens to toasters, but only this lousy wooden spoon when it comes to mixing?

Azula took brief moment to give her arm a rest before starting again. Another three minutes and the impossible stuff finally blended into a nice brown dough. Azula breathed a sigh of relief. Now on to the easy part, separate the dough into small easy pieces, and sit around while they're baking. That shouldn't be that hard, right?

Preheat Oven to 325 degrees.

She really should have read ahead into the instructions. Azula had just about an hour, and even she knew heating an oven took a while. There would be no way she could heat it and bake the cookies in time for Katara's arrival, she was-

...

Why is the oven already hot?

Azula looked over to the dials, noticing the correct temperature was already set in the lower oven.

Ty Lee.

Okay, so maybe she really was helpful after all. Ty Lee didn't need to know that, though.

Rolling the dough wasn't so hard, even if it got her fingers a little dirty. Azula made sure not to roll them in the sugar too much - Katara may have a secret sweet tooth but these cookies were mostly sugar already. Best not to compound it.

And then she set the timer and waited for it to fall to zero. The wait was agonizing. What if she had done it wrong? What if the cookies wouldn't rise? There wouldn't be time to fix it.

Azula restrained herself from biting her nails.

"How's it going, Azula?" asked a certain bubbly voice, causing Azula to jump.

"Fine." she said gruffly, lying through her teeth. "It's going fine."

"Let me see." said Ty Lee, grabbing a spoon and taking a bite of the cookie dough directly from the bowl.

Azula glared at Ty Lee. "What are you doing?! These are for Katara." she exclaimed. "And... it's raw!"

"Just a spoonful!" Ty Lee cried. "And I helped you with the ingredients. That means I can have at least one cookie, doesn't it?"

Azula sighed, conceding that Ty Lee did indeed deserve a commission for her efforts. "Very well..."

"Thanks Azula! Oooh, can I scrape the dough that you don't use from the bowl when you're done?!"

"I don't see why not." said Azula, taking a spoon and having some of the cookie dough for herself, wondering what it was about it that had Ty Lee so excited.

"Mmm." she exclaimed. "That is very... sweet." she said, barely restraining herself from getting seconds.

Ty Lee laughed. "I figured you'd like it. When is this batch going to-"

Her question was most fortunately interrupted by the beeping from Azula's phone.

Azula opened the oven, before pausing, realizing she had no way to get the tray out of the oven without burning herself.

"Azula?"

She looked around, searching for some means of grabbing the tray. Some kind of attachable handle maybe?

...

"Ty Lee." Azula spoke, dreading her next words.

"Yes Azula?"

"I'd appreciate it if you'd show me how to get these cookies out of the oven." she said, trying not to show her own humiliation at the question.

Ty Lee did her best not to laugh at the question in an effort to save Azula's pride. "Easy. Just use these." she handed Azula a pair of oven mitts.

Azula again tried to restrain her embarrassment at overlooking such an obvious solution.

Now that she had the process down, Azula was able to complete the other trays without much hair-pulling, the only difficulty being not bumping into Ty Lee, who was practically bouncing off the walls in anticipation of the cookies cooling down. "What about now?" she asked as Azula took out the final tray.

"Oh, very well." said Azula, watching as Ty Lee grabbed a cookie and scarfed it down. "Mmm." she said in between bites. "These are good, Azula."

"They are?" she asked, again wondering if this was another one of Ty Lee's feel-good comments or actual commentary.

"Oh, yeah." Ty Lee eagerly eyed the other cookies. "...can I have another one?" she asked.

Azula sighed, looking over the batch. She had ended up making more than she had expected. Over two and a half dozen cookies, not including the one Ty Lee just ate. "How about I give you an extra cookie if you help me with the cleanup." she offered.

"Deal!" Ty Lee said immediately, scarfing up a second cookie, leading to a sigh from Azula.

So Azula waited at the door.

With a brown bag full of molasses cookies.

She felt kind of silly. But, at this point, it was a bit late to back out. She had already made them, might as well gift them. Worst comes to worst she could make up some excuse about it really having been Ty Lee's idea and she thought it was stupid all along.

A key turned into the lock as the long-awaited birthday girl stepped through. "I'm home!" she shouted for everyone to hear, before noticing Azula. "Hi Azula." she smiled, happy to see her.

Azula restrained a blush as her body betrayed her. "Good evening Katara. How was..." she trailed off. "your meeting?" she asked as Katara finished taking off her shoes. Somehow, asking about Katara's feminist club was more palatable than having to say 'Happy birthday, Katara, I just baked you a bunch of cookies like a big happy idiot.'

"Oh, it went fine. Well," she paused. "we actually had to chase out a terf. But that was fun, in its own way."

"I see." Azula said, not knowing what a 'terf' was and not having much to add beyond that.

Katara sniffed loudly. "...did Ty Lee cook something?" she said, entering the kitchen, following the scent with her nose.

Azula stopped, almost feeling guilty about what she'd done.

"No." she said, struggling to find the words. "...I did." she pulled the brown bag out from behind her back. "Happy birthday, Katara." said Azula, putting on the most natural smile she could muster.

"You baked for me?" she voiced her surprise at Azula's unexpected behavior, taking the bag and opening it. "Molasses cookies? Did Ty Lee put you up to this?" she asked, her voice turning suspicious as she looked around for a surprise Ty Lee.

"No, she didn't put me up to it." she said, committing to her gift. "...but I may have asked for advice on what kind of gifts you wanted." admitted Azula, fighting the strange compulsion to put on a wide, giddy smile.

"And you did it yourself?" Katara asked, reaching in to the bag and taking a bite.

Azula almost felt wounded by Katara's doubt in her, but she shrugged it off. "Indeed. Ty Lee was quite adamant about not so much lifting a finger to help."

Katara smiled. "Aww. Thanks Azula." she said, giving her a hug. "You didn't have to."

Thankfully, from her position on Azula's shoulder, Katara couldn't see how red Azula's cheeks were.