Title: Phobia

Author: holmesfreak1412

Fandom: Avatar: The Legend of Aang

Pairing: Azula/Ty Lee

Genre: Romance, Angst

Rating: T

Summary: No, she was wrong. Everyone was. Ty Lee never stopped fearing Azula and everything that pertains to her. ThreeShot

Disclaimer: I do not own any part of the ATLA franchise.

Notes: A place to stick all my TyZula headcanons. Because the wiki did a convincing job in telling me that their relationship mostly bordered on fear and I want to try something different rather than the established TyZula redemption story. This, I tell you would be a whirlwind of one-sided romance until the happy end we all want for the princess and her acrobat.

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Phobia

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ONE

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Fear

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She was suspended in mid-air, both feet up as one hand supported her weight. Below her was a racket of the wildest animals that the circus nurtured, most of which Ty Lee does not think are that wild. But maybe it was only her. Maybe it was only her that had the infallible diligence to feed the animals not in the way of a good trainer but in a manner of a great partner. It's not control. It's a relationship, she liked to say as the wolf-alligator only but blinks slowly at Ty Lee's affectionate pat. Maybe it was only her who was relieved that the inferno blazing below her was not blue and that maybe the heavens still gave her a chance. Maybe she was the only one more concerned about the animals running in frenzy just below the steadily spreading flames than her own heart in her throat, her then happy life at stake as she met the pair of gleaming golden eyes in the glow of the fire.

My aura has never been pinker.

"I think it is time for a career change." It was a familiar dance, one she had learned to twirl on as soon as once when they were little girls in the Academy the princess' mocking laughter broke her illusions of a beautiful friendship into smithereens. One must never provoke the princess. One must never be better than the princess. One must never reject the princess.

I will come and watch tonight's show.

Ty Lee should have known that in that single year since she left ("Abandoned! You abandoned me, Ty Lee!") Azula had gone from bad to worse because she now knew that shoving Ty Lee to the ground remorselessly was no longer enough to validate her authority, her power over her. Such childish retaliation was no longer enough to remind Ty Lee of how much she used to fear that one girl whose company the whole adoring nation thought she did not deserve.

Azula called a little louder.

There was no trace of sad, wistfulness in her voice as she looked expectantly at the princess. No look of surprise escaping her exuberant features as that small, rare smile curled on Azula's red lips. No tremble in her words as she excitedly prattled on and on about how the three of them will spend time together. Because once upon a time, she believed that they would be the best of friends when everything were unicorns and rainbows and not embers and ashes. And yes, though her aura is grayer and dingier than ever she still loved Mai as much as she feared Azula.

Life in the circus seemed so far away as she now leaped through trees in pursuit of those Azula vehemently called peasants, now aiming to provoke fear, incite pain instead of to entertain. But then again, she feared Azula more than she loved the circus. And admittedly, for the first time in her life, she felt the intoxicating rush of being different, being special, being feared.

Recognition flashed on the waterbender's eyes and Ty Lee, who lived indistinguishable with six other sisters for most of her life, found out that she relished it.

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Circus freak.

The harsh, derogatory nickname had been etched in her long enough for Ty Lee to delude herself that it is compliment. That was always what Ty Lee was good at. Azula was not the only one who always lies.

Circus freak.

Each time, it hurt.

Do you want to know why I joined the circus? She pointedly ignored that gnawing, persistent thought that Azula never did call her that, despite the wince she had not tried to mask when she saw it for herself. Here we go. The knowing shrug momentarily startled her. And from the corner of her eye, the regard that the princess levelled on her almost seemed human, almost unlike the monster that she admitted her mother thought her to be. And maybe the apology earlier is sincere after all.

I was just a little… jealous.

And it scared Ty Lee because she promised that she was just here until Azula got tired of her, that she was only here to help her become the Fire Lord that she was always destined to be, that one day she would be in the books as general to Azula the Conqueror—nothing more. Dreams of prestige and eternal memory were those that kept Ty Lee going even though it was obvious that Azula cared for no one but herself.

But she was wrong. And it scared Ty Lee because perhaps Azula could see through her façade and saw how much of a liar she was deep inside. That moment that Azula started to resemble the friend that Ty Lee thought she never would have. And she feared Azula because she was probably the only person who could ever understand her. She feared Azula because someday when Azula inevitably discards her, Ty Lee might just end up being disappointed.

She feared getting attached.

Azula always lies, Zuko once said.

Many a time, the princess pretended to listen. Many a time, she shut the same mouths that confided up. Permanently.

But it still hurt.

And perhaps, Ty Lee thought as she watched Azula once more dismissed the notion that she could ever empathize, that they were not so different after all. Azula was not as perfect. Ty Lee was not as flawed.

Ty Lee then promised that she would never forget that day.

…

No, you miscalculated. You should have feared me more.

Ty Lee thought the same thing as Mai had. She did what she did because she loved and wanted to save Mai more than she feared Azula, that she wanted to keep her inner peace more than she feared the entire wrath of her homeland. That all in all, she would rather forgive herself for striking Azula than watching that one best friend that actually seemed like one die.

And deep in the bowels of the Boiling Rock, Ty Lee still had wondered why.

Trust is for fools, she heard the now disgraced princess say the next time she saw her, when she was the one behind bars and looked just as helpless as when she fell down that day in the Boiling Rock. Azula is not perfect. There is nothing to fear. Ty Lee decided to further ignore the recurring memory of that momentary flash of hurt in the princess' eyes, the fear on those once steely, golden orbs as Ty Lee did what she herself thought she never could. You miscalculated. And there she got an answer: maybe in that moment that Azula lost control did Ty Lee realize that she loved herself more than she feared the princess. And there was nothing more that she wanted than to finally get rid of that hindrance.

It is like I never even have a name.

Deep inside, she wanted Azula to remember her as more than just a servant.

Because before when all she had to fret about is whether they had enough people in to meet the quota and not the future of the whole, cruel world, she had been happy without Azula, right? Circus freak is a compliment.

Trust is for fools, the patient repeated like a mantra, eyes wild and untamed, even more so when she lost composure for the first time back in the Boiling Rock. Ty Lee knew that she could not see her—Zuko had insisted that it was not the time yet but Ty Lee could not help but think that Azula knows, like she always did ("But you are the smartest, most beautiful, perfect girl in the world!" Maybe Ty Lee is not much of a liar after all), just what are the exact words to hurt her. Stark, raving mad, bound in a strait-jacket and only aware of the white walls that effectively caged her, Ty Lee realized that Azula, oh Azula still had this power over her.

Trust is for fools.

Azula trusted Ty Lee when Ty Lee did not even intend to.

And so she was struck with the epiphany that if only she had let it be, Ty Lee and Princess Azula would have shared such a beautiful friendship: more than the sense of loyalty she felt for Mai, more than a bliss than when the wildest of animals responded to her coaxing. Because Azula had always been the one who knew which buttons to push to keep her on track (and safe! Azula never did anything that she knew would kill Ty Lee), when to do things ("Ty Lee, get over here now!) and what words to say ("Maybe I am just a little… jealous."). Azula had always been the one who understood.

Ty Lee thought that if only she had allowed it to, she would have loved Azula more than she feared her.

And Ty Lee feared that she regretted how they did not have enough time to let that happen.

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Ty Lee once feared being part of a matched set but she guessed that she feared the epiphany of possibly the only person who can love Azula (because she did not! It could have happened but… dammit) more than the anonymity of being a girl who just wanted to forget the Ty Lee from the war, the Ty Lee that once went against the saviour of the world and the Ty Lee who once had the power to make Azula human but did not take the chance.

Being part of the Kyoushi Warriors was a welcome respite. And perhaps, it is more than the comfort of being part of a matched set that dissolved the moment that she washed her face but the marvellous feeling of finally doing something right. In various ways, Azula had wronged these people and maybe, Ty Lee feels obligated to repent for her when she obviously was in no state of mind to do it herself.

Mai already did a good job with Zuko.

Because if her favourite prisoner Suki who she tortured but never broke down could forgive the now broken princess who was haunted by the unseen, Ty Lee thinks, hopes that perhaps the rest of the world can too.

And maybe Ty Lee can also at last, forgive herself.

But Ty Lee fears more than she hopes. And she has seen the distrust in Sokka's eyes, the wariness in Katara's and the stiff stance in the Avatar's shoulders. She knows it would take a lot, a lot for the whole world to stop fearing Azula.

Ty Lee certainly never stopped fearing her.

I do not understand why you have to be so mean, she admonished, feeling slightly peeved that in all the efforts of the people around her to redeem her, Azula still had the gall to think that she was the victim. She expected a fierce glare, an outburst that would console her that the princess had not completely associated her with the feelings of betrayal. Once upon a time when war raged outside and Azula was still a sheltered princess and not a general, Ty Lee had always been afraid of any form of retaliation from Azula. But now, her eyes flashed the same way as when she fell down from being chi-blocked for the second time. There was that relief flooding her chest when the girl still unfailingly recognized her even amidst the heavy makeup of being a Kyoushi warrior but gone was the intense regard that Ty Lee had once attributed to the sadistic pleasure in the midst of her suffering, of the fear she incites. In its place are merely unseeing pools of amber that now classified Ty Lee as an unimportant distraction to the more imminent and prominent demons in her head.

Like the rest of them, like the rest of the world, Ty Lee had become nothing more to Azula than the very image of betrayal, a brush of annoyance, merely a part of a damn, matched set swirling into a doomed oblivion that was mocking Azula's existence.

Nobody would love you.

And she was right. Nobody had ever looked at Ty Lee that way Azula once looked at her, the way Azula did not look at her now, the way that in the periphery of the girl's growing instability, she probably would die without ever doing so again.

You are not making sense Azula.

And Ty Lee had always feared things, people, feelings that did not make sense. Because she feared how disappointed she was too and that did not make sense. And she feared the glimmer of hope that still bubbled on the deep recesses of her broken heart, that they can still rekindle the lost, beautiful friendship that they would have had. This unfamiliar determination scared her. Azula scaled up to Appa without looking back even though many a time during the Hundred Year War, she never failed to spare Ty Lee the smallest of glances. The acrobat turned Kyoushi Warrior could not even muster a personable word of goodbye.

Have a safe trip, she settled. Azula had said the exact same words once, when she was running away. Azula was the only one who ever knew she would. Azula was the only one who ever noticed. You will be missed.

Ty Lee feared how much she missed her too.

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Azula knew Ty Lee like the basic of her firebending katas, could read her better than she could with most complicated of military ciphers and could manipulate so easily like how lightning was second nature to her but Ty Lee did not know Azula.

It had been glaringly apparent as of late that she never did.

Fear is the only reliable way.

Because otherwise, she should have seen all this coming. She could have coax her to speak more about her feelings during that night in Ember Island, could have seen the pain she bottled up inside all these years. She could have learned to love her more than she feared her. Ty Lee could have been more of a friend to Azula. But no, she feared her. Ty Lee, Mai, Zuko and even her own father feared her. And what was once the sole emotion that Azula thrived on and coerce people in her circle became ultimately the one that drove people away from her. If Ty Lee let herself love Azula more, she could have seen that Azula feared being alone in the world more than anything.

"What do you mean Azula ran away?"

And she was alone now. The cruel, outside world closing in on her. Oh Azula.

And for the first time in forever, there is a tremor in her words, an unprecedented surge of emotion that she often usually masked with her exaggerated extroversion. And Ty Lee's eyes are not wide with feigned wonder nor were her lips contorted into an adoring, grinning swoon. There is confusion, shock that she is certain only surfaced that time when Azula spared their lives instead of executing the both of them on the spot as she obviously intended when it was only Mai alone.

She stared Zuko down in defiance.

Because Azula loved you more than she loved Mai, a treacherouspart of her brain reiterates. She had not heard such assumption for years, buried away in calculated disdain as Ty Lee forced herself to believe that fearing that it was all a plot of the endless list of Azula's manipulations was easier than the more unbelievable fact that the princess loved her.

Zuko's scarred face mirrors the same emotion of grief and pain, his lips set on a thin line and the sigh he let out the very picture of regret. Ty Lee wanted nothing more than to chi-block him too because he had no right, he had no right, he had no right. Not for Mai's love that slowly waned. Not for what should have been Azula's throne. And certainly not for Ty Lee's loyalty. Zuko had no right to feel remorse over the sister he had failed to protect, over the broken sister he had failed to bring back home, over the sister he had feared when he should love her.

Ty Lee feared what would happen to Azula now more than she feared the Fire Lord.

Have you ever been chi-blocked?

And in the last moment before her hands rise, Ty Lee stops herself. Because she has done this before: loved someone more than she feared someone else. She loved herself when she finally overcame the power that Azula exercised over her, the fear that she felt on who she realized was not so perfect after all only to find out that no, she never stopped fearing Azula. She never stopped fearing that she would regret it in the end and it is clear that she did now.

She never stopped fearing the truth that Azula may have loved her, loved Ty Lee more than she had allowed herself to, trusted her even the life that she held high above everything else. Azula had loved her. And look where it got her.

Trust is for fools.

And how Ty Lee would have fallen hard too, if she was ever given more time and a clearer mind.

And so, Ty Lee finally lets herself break down in Zuko's arms, begging her to please, please forgive her because she should have seen this coming, should have known. For the fact that nobody loved Azula enough. Not her mother. Not her father. Not Zuko. For the fact that Ty Lee had been too afraid to do so.

"I am sorry…" And she knows that she is not talking to Zuko anymore. She imagines Azula in her arms, the very woman who refused to look at her just a week ago and might now forever be out of reach. In her secret dreams, Azula is always in the brink of redemption, of being the best friend that she was never given a chance of being. She never imagined that she would ultimately lose her."I am sorry."

Everyone would betray me.

In an uncharacteristic show of tenderness, Zuko strokes her tear-stained cheeks, murmuring hushhushes. He takes a deep breath, draws her away from his body, looks into her glittering protuberant eyes and smiles. "We will find her. I will make sure that we will find her."

But you left Hiraa without looking hard enough...

Ty Lee swallows the derision in her voice, extinguishes the note of accusation. "Thank you…" she murmurs and she does not feign the gratitude that she said she had because this time, she wants him to know that the words of reassurance are not enough. Though she does not blame nor discredit him for it. Azula is the one with silver tongue. Azula is the one who knows what the right words to say to Ty Lee,

Tell me, how did you stop fearing me?

"She was wrong you know…" she says for the second time, shrugging off Zuko's hold from her shoulders. Slowly, the Fire Lord relents. "I never stopped fearing her."

And maybe, she never stopped loving her too.

"There is something stronger than fear." Zuko tells her, still smiling. Ty Lee looks up. He pats her head, knocking her breath away. "Hope."

Zuzu?

She is allowed to leave the Fire Nation by the next morning. Zuko sees her off, muttering. I trust you.

Mai offers to join her. "Just like the old days." But this time, they would have to hunt down their own leader.

Ty Lee shakes her head.

"Remember, Ty Lee." Zuko's parting words. Ty Lee had begged for him to entrust her of this mission and her alone. The Fire Nation needs its Fire Lord. The Fire Lord needs his Fire Lady, as shaky as their relationship may be. And Azula needs Ty Lee. Or perhaps, it is Ty Lee who needs Azula. Zuko pats her head again. Ty Lee blushes. "There is hope."

And this time as Zuko finally said the right thing, Ty Lee just hopes that she is not too late.

(TBC)

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