Disclaimer: I do not own Avatar: the Last Airbender. Or the general idea of this plot. Haha, that belongs to Inu Star Angel.

Notes: Made it as Ty Luko-y as I could. It instead developed into some like unrequited love between friends. Haha, sorry, Inu Star Angel. I hope you still like it. The thing that surprised me was how fast I wrote it. She gave me an idea and it was like "BAM". Had to write it exactly like this. It was easier than I expected such a thing to be.

Playing House

there is a difference between house and home that you could never get

Part One: When Playing House Means Playing Pretend

It is because Azula is feeling cruel. Mai has bested Azula with knife throwing during one of their private tutoring sessions, a dangerous thing. So Azula oh-so-innocently suggests playing house. Zuko (forced to join them for "socialization" by Ursa) groans loudly. Ty Lee is instantly cheered by the prospect of a non-violent pastime. Mai grins in her quiet way and darts looks at Zuko from beneath her bangs.

Then Azula announces that Zuko will be married to Ty Lee. Silence drops over the group. Eventually Zuko shrugs and grabs Ty Lee's hand, because he thinks if he can just make it through this one game then he's free. Mai, however, wilts into a puddle of self-pity and broken heart. Azula has accomplished much.

They play the game, Zuko the father and Ty Lee the mother and Azula and Mai the daughters. It is a silly game and Azula quickly grows tired of being ordered about by Ty Lee the Mother and declares a new game of Flaming Apples.

Zuko runs away quickly despite the girl's protests. Ty Lee stares down at the hand that the Crown Prince had held. It tingles weirdly and suddenly she realizes what it is about him that can make unflappable Mai blush like the schoolgirl she is.

Part Two: When Playing House Means Playing Politics

In a strange (nigh unbelievable, actually) twist of fate, Mai has run off with Haru (of all people). The Fire Nation spends a good solid three weeks in shock, gossip stilted and static by the news. Mai, noblewoman of the Fire Nation, fiancée of the deliciously handsome (with the fan girls to prove it) Fire Lord himself, running off with a lowly Earth Kingdom peasant with girly hair and an utterly ridiculous mustache. Shock, all things considered, is really a rather mild and controlled response.

(Really, it is.)

But once the three weeks are over there is a sudden realization that the Fire Lord has no fiancée. More to the point: he has a wedding in two weeks and no noble born Fire-Lady-To-Be. Noble born being the key words, because the Fire Lord Zuko cannot marry a commoner because at this point he's walking a very thin line with his nobles (even if the commoners love him).

(He reads Mai's letter [which sounds nothing like her, much too cheerful] with a leaping heart and something very near europhia. Because visions of Katara in red walking down an aisle are suddenly prancing through his head. Unfortunately, the hysterical tears of Mai's father behind him reminds him that he needs a noblewoman of the Fire Nation. He scowls at that thought.)

So he, his advisors, and his nobles spend the next week going over eligible girls. Midway through yet another meeting―listening to the list of gold diggers, back stabbers, fluff brained idiots, and general rabble that passed as the feminine half of his court―Zuko happened upon a brilliant idea. Ty Lee was, after all, a noblewoman. And alright, currently she was running around on Kyoshi throwing fans at tree stumps…but it could work, right?

Ty Lee arrived punctually, back flipping down the aisle in travel stained garmets and with mud as her face paint. Everyone was so relieved to have a living, breathing, Fire Nation noblewoman that Zuko would marry that they didn't even complain.

(Except the Lord Chamberlin, but everyone ignored him.)

Part Three: When Playing House Means Playing Pretense

The first months of the marriage go with relative smoothness. Well as smooth as can be expected when the husband is a workaholic Fire Lord in love with another woman and the wife is a ridiculously cheerfully Fire Lady who spends most of her time swinging off the rafters of the Throne Room or playing in the menagerie.

Mai comes back to the palace, seven months pregnant and wailing about "that girly bastard" who left her in the middle of a podunk swamp. So the former Fiancée-Turned-Runaway is now the Fiancee-Turned-Runaway-Turned-Member-of-the-Royal-Household-That-Does-Nothing. (It's a hard job, but someone has to do it.) Everyone expects an adulterous affair. There isn't one. In fact, two months after the baby is born Haru comes crawling back. Mai spends the next few months abusing Haru until she feels properly satisfied that he's not going to leave again.

Zuko and Ty Lee spend this time becoming sort-of friends. They clash though, they clash like pink and orange. (Or like King Bumi's outfits.) They have more arguments then they do civil conversations, and they aren't the type to have make up sex so even that point is moot.

But by the time that Mairuee (poor, unfortunate girl-child) turns one, the Fire Lord and the Fire Lady have figured out how to coexist. More than coexist, really. (They finally gave into the council and went on the honeymoon. Nobody needs to know they spent the entire time playing dice games and swimming.)

The palace settles into a routine. The Fire Lord is still a workaholic in love with another woman. The Fire Lady is still irrevocably cheerful and fond of swinging off rafters and freeing the menagerie animals for "playtime".

(Poor Zuko. Poor servants. Poor animals. Poor Fire Nation. No "Poor Ty Lee". She's having the time of her life.)

Part Four: When Playing House Means Playing Perfect

It's on their second anniversary that several things happen. The first is a grand celebration that Zuko and the Royal Palace have survived the Fire Lady Ty Lee (and her obsession with riding rabaroos through the ballrooms). Of course everyone important in the four nations is invited. This includes the Water Tribes, something that Ty Lee didn't know was bad until the party was actually happening.

Because Fire Lord Zuko asked Master Waterbender Katara for a dance. They were friends, it was technically expected. But in a moment of utter brilliance (which most people wouldn't consider Ty Lee capable of) Ty Lee finally got who Zuko had been in love with. Was in love it. Is in love with. She was not the second choice of Mai. No, she was the third choice behind Mai, who had been behind Katara of the Southern Water Tribe.

Ty Lee quickly grabbed a bottle of fire whiskey and downed it with surprising intensity. The fire whiskey put things in perspective and all of a sudden the Fire Lady was struck with the realization that she did not need Zuko just as he did not need her. They were always a marriage of convenience.

(Later that night Zuko had to drag a very drunk Fire Lady off of poor Teo the Mechanist, who had just wanted a mochi and had instead gotten a lapful of horny circus girl. It was embarrassing, to say the least. Poor Zuko. Ty Lee is still having the time of her life.)

Part Five: When Playing House Means Playing Peace

Ty Lee discovers an ancient law. It says that should a Fire Lady run off of her own free will, her husband is allowed to chose whomever he likes as his next wife. Noblewoman, commoner, or even Water Tribe peasant. All things considered it's not the most intelligent of laws, but Ty Lee rather likes it anyway. It makes things easier.

So she fakes a terrible fall and caterwauls whenever one of the healer's come to close. She demands Master Healer Katara in loud and imperious tones and whimpers when people attempt to reason with her. Eventually everyone gives in. Fire Lady Ty Lee has always been a force to be reckoned with.

"You can't die," Zuko says. There is a quiet strength in his words, the strength that has carried Ty Lee for years (actually only three but who's counting?). "I won't allow it."

"You won't?" she says cheerfully. Too cheerfully, really, for someone who's supposedly dying. "Really?"

Zuko rolls his eyes, but there is worry etched into the wrinkles of his forehead. "No, I won't. You have to live. Just…just hold on until Katara gets here." His voice, as ever as always, catches on Katara. Gives it an almost wistful air. So he still loves her after all these years (okay, only three but still) of waiting? Ty Lee could smile at the romance if she was not the Other Woman, Standing in the Way of True Love. (Only for a few more hours.) "It's only a few more hours."

"I think…I think I will," she says carefully. He smiles at her with such gratitude that it nearly breaks her heart. She will survive till Katara comes. And she does. (Not that it was hard, considering the worst of her injuries is a bruise the size of a papaya on her thigh, gained when they were transporting her from the site of her "fall" to her rooms.)

"Go, go, greet her you idiot," she says playfully, shooing Zuko out to meet the younger woman and smiling quietly to herself at his lovelorn expression.

A little part of her breaks. Just a little. She has learned to love him, has learned that there is more to him than Azula's Brother or Mai's Boyfriend or Fire Lord or Hero. "I love you," she whispers to his retreating back.

He stops. He has never said those words, because the truth of them is reserved for the very girl he is going to greet. "Just keep holding on," he says finally.

A glowing smile lights her face. She really is beautiful. And his words tell her all she needs to know. "I will. Just as long as I need to."

Quiet falls in the darkening room. It must be nearing twilight, she thinks. Ty Lee has never liked twilight. Pity then, that she's going to have to make her escape into the twilight. Before Katara has a chance to come heal her from her "terrible wounds".

The brush, inkpot, and spare scrolls that always grace her bed tables are still there. She writes a letter to Zuko, to Katara, to the world even. With it she places the scroll detailing the ancient silly law. Then she slips into the twilight (at least, she decides, it sounds dramatic).

She waits to make sure that Zuko or Katara will find it. The doors creak open and she sees them come in. "Ty Lee?" Zuko asks, eye wide. (It's good that she left all those lamps going. This is entertaining.)

"She's gone."

"Well where is she?!" Zuko explodes. Fire flames down his arms to burn the nice wood floors. Katara rolls her blue eyes and walks to the bed tables with their all important scrolls. Zuko keeps throwing his temper tantrum. (Ty Lee never was very good with dealing with those.)

Katara reads Ty Lee's letter first, her eyes narrowing. Then she looks at the marriage law scroll and squeaks pathetically, her eyes going impossibly wide. The temper tantrum stops in an instant as Zuko rushes to see if she's alright.

"What? What's wrong?"

"Ty Lee ran away so…so we could be together."

A choking noise. Zuko snatches the scroll away from Katara. "Agni above."

"Yeah."

They're very articulate, Ty Lee thinks sarcastically.

"So…marry me? Or do you think we should have a mourning period with a very pathetic search party?"

"Pathetic search party."

"Why?"

"She's probably outside right now listening to us. Thank you, Ty Lee. We'll be sending out a search party soon though so you should probably run. Also, you are invited to the wedding that's going to take place in a year."

Ty Lee's smile broadens.

"A year?"

"Yes a year. I need to figure out how to have a blue dress at a Fire Nation wedding."

"I always pictured you in red…"

"Of course you did."

"Hmph…"

They will make it, she knows. They will live and flourish and rule and be perfectly content. One day, she will tell them that she is living on Kyoshi Island with her friends and they will come visit with their 2.5 kids (who will call her Auntie Ty Lee) and pet komodo dog. And that is enough to send her happily back flipping into the darkness.

(The search party is sent out almost two hours later by a very flustered and discombobulated looking Fire Lord.)