Learn As If You Were Following
Though, heh, one of those festivals is SO MUCH MORE PROBLEMATIC than the other. I mean:
Thanks, Lancelot Andrewes! There is a reason why you were James I and VI's most favourite of preachers! But I'm not sure how great it is that England's big autumn festival of bright lights and blowing shit up is founded on Jacobean luxuriating in memorialisation and unseemly fondling of the skull beneath the skin. Not to mention religious intolerance, though that really goes as read in this (particular, sixteenth-century) context.
... Doubtless I will feel better once I've actually had the chance to set off some fireworks.
Talking of which, apparently I have made it my fannish business to perpetrate ANGSTY TY LEE? Whhhhy, I do not know! Here she is, however, assisting in a jailbreak (more or less).
Fandom: Avatar
Title: Learn As If You Were Following
Characters: Azula, Ty Lee, Suki, Mai, Zuko
Rating / warnings: T. Violence, onscreen and off; implied character death. Mention of sexual activity. Massive overuse of John Woo-ish blossom.
Fire is rising over the city in dragons and scatters of stars. The end of summer; three years’ peace. Ty Lee watches the fire swoop and scatter in the harbour’s dark water, feet on the rail, sails creaking behind her. Fireworks burst with soft thumps above the city, above the caldera. Like the sound of something collapsing inwards, deep inside your chest.
A salty-sweet bloom of red, like an overripe plum grown by the sea, in her family’s twisty orchards, old trees with slack silky skin on their branches; thick scabby old bark on their trunks. She had lived in them as a child, or wished she could, the network of branches strung over the valley, the sharp sound of the stream at the bottom, flat out for the sea over rounded black stones.
That was before her friendship with the princess made it expedient for her family to stay in the city all through the year.
Old women inside at their clacking little looms up in the village, fish drying between houses, clothes drying under eaves. The boughs whipping under her feet as she swung down to the sea, faster and faster. A soft bloom of black dust on every white petal, in the right light, after the factory came. They had sold the farm in the end: six daughters, her court-clothes, her training. Soft sticky cloth in the heat of the palace.
Ty Lee thumbs the fans at her belt and spreads out her smile at the lights of the harbour, red lanterns all along the waterfront. Raises her hand, the fingers webbed with her pink spiking aura, salt-sugar sharp. Her hands are calloused in new places, from the fans and the sword.
“Glad to be back?” says Suki, behind her.
Ty Lee flips off the railing, smiles broadly at her. “Of course,” she says.
Suki waits, one eyebrow cocked. Under the face-paint, expressions stand out like semaphore.
“Well,” says Ty Lee. “Sort of. I’m not really sure.” She pats the fans again, bows her head. “I don’t know.”
“Fair enough,” says Suki. She looks out at the shore, the tall black ships, the round red lanterns. “We need you, Ty Lee,” she says. “You’re the only one of us who has any idea how things really work around here.”
Ty Lee raises her head and grins. “Well,” she says, hooking an arm round Suki’s shoulders, “we’re all pretty good when it comes to prisons, at least.”
Suki snorts. “Let’s hope that’s not a stop on our itinerary this time.” She sighs, cracks her shoulders. “Meetings, demonstrations of Kyoshi skill, giving Sokka’s napkins to Zuko – ”
“They aren’t napkins. They’re plans for machinery.”
“Written on napkins,” says Suki. She smiles fondly and extricates herself from Ty Lee’s arm.
“Court stuff,” says Ty Lee. Noise rises from the shore; Kyoshi sailors shout overhead. The ship nudges its way into the dock.
“It won’t all be boring functions. We’ll see the new war balloons,” says Suki. “I mean, balloons. The ones made for non-firebenders. And we have some contacts amongst Fire Nation sword-makers.” She sighs, digs Ty Lee in the ribs. “I have to admit that there’s no beating Fire Nation metalwork.”
The city rises up before them, red and black in the warm night.
--
Ty Lee walks through the city, in line with the others, wearing a foreigner’s face. People stop and stare and whisper; some of them look as if they would like to spit. Two palace officials walk behind and before the Kyoshi warriors, however: Ty Lee sees that their stance is excellent.
The streets are strung with lanterns; at the corners people are selling mango dusted with chilli, in little paper cones. Fried meat sizzles on food stalls and batter drizzles down on hot oil, making sweet orange coilwork. Children run through the streets, sending little claps of fire from their hands, waving loud rattles.
The crowd bobs and knots itself around stalls and performers; there is a scuffle down a side street. It is the first time Ty Lee has seen so many young Fire Nation men and women out of uniform.
Overhead, fireworks bead the sky, their sound muffled by the crowds.
--
Ty Lee eats sweets on a terrace overlooking the city with the Fire Lord and Fire Lady. Red lanterns bob over their heads, in the wind from the sea. She rehearses the scene, tucks it up in up in fold upon fold of pink paper, in layers of bright boxes. A present for her parents, for her sisters and their suitors, for Ai Lin and Taza who should have been in the army by now, for the rest of them, cooped up in the city house, straw sandals over their good boots, slipping quietly across the hot courtyard with its dark deep well, the metal-tasting water. Going to learn the old dances in the evenings, now, they had said, in their last letter. Young men looked for that kind of thing in a girl, these days.
Zuko holds Mai’s hand and talks about taxes. Mai yawns roundly, and he stops mid-sentence, mutters, smiles sideways at Ty Lee, a little sheepish. He raises his free hand and sketches a dragon in the air, fire looping and coiling.
“Welcome home, Ty Lee,” he says.
She grins hugely, points up. “Make it fly!”
The dragon curves up over the palace, bucks in midair, and dissolves in a shower of red sparks over the rooftops. Ty Lee cheers it on.
Mai watches her, head tilted.
“And here was me thinking that you needed to expand your repertoire,” she says, leaning her head on Zuko’s shoulder.
“I can do flowers as well!” he says.
“Can he really, Mai?” says Ty Lee. Mai glares at her from under her fringe.
“Firelord Zuko,” says an attendant, from behind them. “The report has come in from Fenzin Island Province.”
Zuko sighs and shrugs apologetically at Ty Lee. They rise as he leaves.
Mai slides back down, lounges back against the wall.
“Are you staying long, Ty Lee?” she asks.
But Ty Lee’s mouth is full of sweets from the table, dark rounds of hawthorn jelly, chewy and dense. She is swallowing when Mai is handed a letter; when she slits the ribbon with one long black nail. She reads, face bland. Ty Lee takes another sweet.
“Probably not, I take it,” says Mai. The letter vanishes into her sleeve.
“I don’t know,” says Ty Lee. “It depends.”
“Not on me, I hope,” says Mai. “Or Zuko.” She reaches for a sweet, holds it up to a lantern, a dark glossy circle against the red light. “You know where I stand, I suppose.”
Ty Lee quirks her head at her, gives a little laugh.
“Oh Mai,” she says. “You’re so funny, sometimes.” A slip of sweet catches on her teeth, salty-sweet blooming like dried plum, stiff with summer, dense with the half-black of bright red in the night time. Ty Lee turns round, grabs Mai’s hand. “It’s good to see you, Mai,” she says. “Really it is.”
Mai smiles, a little slowly. “You too,” she says. She takes her hand back, and Ty Lee tenses, but it does not vanish up into her sleeve. Instead she taps the curl of ribbon from the letter, trailing it across the table on the tip of her nail. “You’re a good person to be around, Ty Lee,” she says, abruptly.
Ty Lee swallows the last scrap of jelly and hugs Mai close, mouth tight with traces of sweetness.
Mai pats her back gingerly. “Oh, Mai,” says Ty Lee, brocade scratchy against her cheek. “I don’t know how you can stand to wear clothes like this.”
“A mystery,” says Mai, “for the ages.”
They sit and watch late fireworks burst out over the city, sparks of white and red at the rim of the caldera, suddenly snapping it out of the dark.
--
Ty Lee’s mother pats at her shoulder, twitches the stiff cloth into place.
“The princess has asked for you in particular, Ty Lee,” she says. “Please remember what an important visit this is.” She smoothes Ty Lee’s hair down, smiles at her. “I know you’ll make us proud, Ty Lee.”
At the doorway, her sisters gather and whisper. Ty Lee holds her face up for her mother. Her new clothes smell of the shop where they bought the cloth, of dark wood and ladies with low voices, fetching down bolt after bolt of bright silk.
Ty Lee knows the princess from school, but when she bows before her in the gardens of the palace she feels as if she is on the highest branch of the orchard, where the rock slices away down below to the streambed. Sound curls past her ears like white water or blossom. The palace is very big indeed.
“Well,” says Azula. “Don’t just stand there. Let’s go practise climbing.”
She runs off through the palace, weaving round tall dark pillars. Ty Lee looks round, but the attendant who brought her has vanished. She sets off, running after the princess.
Later they edge out along a roof-ridge, tiny courtiers bright against the dark courtyard far below. Azula suddenly slides down behind the roof ridge and puts a finger to her lips. Ty Lee follows her, belly down on the hot roof. Azula points across to an open window, a little below them. In it, a beautiful woman is leaning forward into her mirror, mouth a little open, painting on her eyebrows.
Azula pokes out a finger and sends a tiny thread of fire whipping through the air. The woman gasps and drops her brush; swats her neck. Her paint has left a thick streak of black across her face. She looks out of the window briefly, shakes her head.
Ty Lee dissolves into giggles. “That was amazing,” she says.
Azula is already eyeing the next rooftop. She frowns. “It’s too far,” she says. Her fists clench.
Ty Lee looks across. It is not too far for her, she thinks. She is about to say so when Azula breaks in. “I’ll be able to jump it when I’ve grown a bit,” she says firmly. “We’ll just have to go round the other way.”
Ty Lee hangs back, waiting for the princess. But Azula waves her ahead. “Go on,” she says. “I want to see how you make the jump back to the balcony.”
She takes the lead afterwards, though, threading her way across jutting eaves, through empty roof spaces. Sometimes she will stop and watch empty windows for what seems to Ty Lee like hours. She kneels behind the princess and tries not to fidget. Azula turns, once, and smiles at her.
“Sometimes you see something useful,” she says.
Ty Lee’s neck is red with sun and her new clothes are dirty at the knees by the time they reach the royal apartments. It is the building where they saw the woman, Ty Lee can tell by the carvings. Azula jumps for an open window, catches a hand on the screen and scrabbles up and inside. She brushes herself down and stands up, every inch the proper princess. She looks back at Ty Lee.
“Come on,” she says. “What are you waiting for?”
--
“And of course you’ll come, Ty Lee,” says Suki, brushing the snow off her gloves. “There’s a while to go yet, though, so don’t tell Mai we’re about to land up on her doorstep. We’ll probably wait for the end of the summer.”
“I wonder what it’s like for her now,” says Ty Lee. “Now that she’s married.”
Suki sighs. “Well, if it hadn’t been for the riots in Ba Sing Se we’d have been there.” She snickers, suddenly. “Perhaps it will mellow her. You never know.”
“Mai is always mellow,” says Ty Lee. They both snort with laughter.
Suki leaves her at edge of the village; goes to chat with the merchants in the smoky little bar. Ty Lee trudges on to the warriors' quarters. Around her, snow slumps and falls from the pines, out in the forest, soft bursts like something collapsing inwards, deep inside your chest. The air is cold and her lips taste like well-water.
Ty Lee pulls her covers up around herself, in the sleeping room. The other girls are all out in the snow, their covers left in neat fat folds. She spreads her fans in her lap, in the dark warmth. Her hands are cold, sluggish. She snaps them closed.
Kyoshi fans are made with compartments in the handle, for weights or for charms or for lock-picks. Ty Lee opens hers now, under the covers; slips out a scrap of battered paper. It has a few names and addresses, all in the Fire Nation; and a mark as well, burnt into the paper. The seal of the heir, marked out with a fingernail.
She slips a hand down past her sash, past the folds of her clothing. Her fingers are still cold, thick strange pads on her hot wet flesh. They could almost belong to someone else. She moves them faster and faster, fast as the flick of a fan. She thinks of running, very high up, over roofs of white blossom. There is a jump; she knows she can make it. Ty Lee holds her fans now, in her free hand, palm wet round the metal. “Well,” she says, under her breath, “what are you waiting for?”
--
“And then he says that I’m just not serious enough for him!”
The mechanic wipes her hands on a rag; swipes it absently over the shining gas cylinders. “What does ‘serious even mean, anyway? I’m serious about lots of things!”
“I can see you are,” says Ty Lee. “You seem pretty serious about war balloons.”
“Balloons,” says the mechanic automatically. “That’s part of the problem, you see. He says I pay more attention to them than I do to him. When we couldn’t even afford to live in the lower city without my take-home! Just because he found a bolt in his soup that one time.” She taps at a dial. “So, pressure, and this here’s speed. Don’t touch the casing round here unless you’re a bender, and even then don’t bend the heat out or you’ll stress the metal.” She pauses, squints at Ty Lee in her Kyoshi regalia. “I mean, sorry, not that you would be a bender. Or, well, a firebender.” She steps back. “You’re not an earthbender, are you?”
“Nope,” says Ty Lee, sunnily. “Thanks for asking, though.” The mechanic looks blank. “Never mind,” says Ty Lee. “I really appreciate the tour.”
“Well, we heard you were coming. Not until later, though. I mean, two days later. Lucky you got past the guards.”
“Oh,” says Ty Lee, “it wasn’t a problem.” She shrugs. “Until this morning, I thought it would be two days later, too. My orders keep getting switched around.”
“Isn’t it always the way,” says the mechanic. She frowns and pats the side of the basket. “Well, anything to make the Earth Kingdom see reason about war balloons so we can get the big ones off the ground again. Crying shame, that treaty. I mean, that part of the treaty.”
“Balloons,” says Ty Lee. “And,” she says, “I’m sure it’ll work out with Li Sun in the end. He just needs to appreciate the you-you, not the girl the marriage-broker told him he was getting. And if he doesn’t, you know where you can stick your next bolt!”
“Where?” asks the mechanic. “What?”
Ty Lee winks stagily. “Think about it,” she says. She punches out, three strikes on three pressure points.
--
When Ty Lee reaches Seika Island, thick black smoke is coming from one wing of the Institute. Azula is waiting on the roof of the watchtower, two guards lying beside her.
Ty Lee steers the balloon in; swings down with a mooring rope trailing behind her. She lands before Azula and folds into obeisance, forehead on the floor. It is a position people laughed at, on Kyoshi, out of surprise more than malice.
“Ty Lee,” says Azula. She is wearing a guard’s uniform, apart from the helmet. Her hair is tied sharply back. Ty Lee hands her the triple flame of a child of the blood, flat on her paired hands. She smiles, nervously.
“I'm sorry, Azula,” she says.
“So you keep saying,” says Azula. She looks at the hairpiece, shrugs, and slips it into her sleeve; sweeps a casual ring of fire around the walls of the tower. There is a clatter as grappling hooks fall away. A siren is blaring close by. Azula nods towards the fallen guards.
Ty Lee strips off her Kyoshi uniform; strips one of the guards and snaps and buckles it roughly into place around her. The other guard is already wearing Azula’s red. They are both young women, limp and clammy. Ty Lee looks up at Azula, but she is looking out past Ty Lee’s left shoulder. Her lips are moving, just the slightest bit.
“This wasn’t – this wasn’t the plan, was it, Azula?” says Ty Lee.
“It wasn’t the plan I told you,” says Azula. “What made you think I’d make you privy to my intentions?”
She has not yet looked at Ty Lee’s face.
Ty Lee pulls in the balloon while Azula sends out covering fire, her face set and smiling in the blue light. She props the guards up in the basket, hooks their arms into ropes so they show over the sides. She is about to toss the mooring rope in there with them when Azula holds up a hand.
“Leave it,” she says, over the siren.
“Of course, Azula,” says Ty Lee.
Azula leans into the basket; clicks round a dial to set the steering coordinates. She steps back and sends down a wide billow of fire; they push the balloon off and duck down. It glides away, its trailing rope bouncing over rooftops.
Ty Lee buckles herself into her guard’s uniform; jams on her helmet.
She holds the other helmet out towards Azula, who raises an eyebrow and sighs. “Well, if I must,” she says.
The balloon is making a wide loop, out over the island. Black rock and sharp green undergrowth; gouts of fire spraying up from the perimeter watchposts.
Ty Lee makes to crouch behind the door, but Azula leans out over the parapet. “They got away!” she shouts. Guards begin to thunder up the stairs.
--
Five minutes later they are at the docks, shouting still rising through the island behind them. There is very little here; a scrubby street for workers at the Institute; stalls hung with onions and ash-bananas.
Azula is laughing softly as they walk, carefully not too fast, not too slow. It is not obvious, though, and Ty Lee says nothing. She has ordered a fast, well-stocked boat, small enough for two to handle. No-one was willing to question the Fire Lord’s seal, lying on Zuko’s desk in the moonlight, guards at the door and window half open. They would have a head start. Always be prepared, says Suki, sword to the whetstone, smiling up at Ty Lee. Always secure an escape route. The air is full of the smell of pines, thick with snow like white blossom.
Ty Lee’s fingers twitch for her fans. She has given up the right to wear them, she understands that. But they are there under her belt, against her skin. You should be careful of the weapons you can’t see, says Mai, flicking brushes at the waterspouts of the school fountain. They’re the ones you need to worry about. The spouts, all blocked, trickle to a halt. Under their feet, plumbing groans ominously.
Ty Lee sniffs, under her helmet. They will understand. She has written Mai a note. Behind them, the siren cuts off, abruptly, and Azula quietens too, with a tiny gasp. They march round the corner, out onto the docks.
Mai is waiting before them, on the wide gangplank of a vast destroyer. She is flanked by royal firebenders, and her hands are hidden in her sleeves.
“Ty Lee,” she says, nods. “Azula.”
Next to Ty Lee, Azula’s aura sparks out in tough snarls of blue. She laughs, again, curtly. Ty Lee bites her lip; curls her fists.
“You’re early,” Mai says. A scrap of ribbon flutters to the ground by her feet.
Ty Lee smiles nervously. “Two days early,” she says. “It was a surprise to me too!”
There are soldiers on the rooftops all around them; they make much more noise than Kyoshi warriors.
She and Azula are surrounded. They are not, however, Ty Lee notices, pinned to a wall.
“It isn’t going to work,” Mai says. “I wanted to tell you in person.”
“Did you indeed,” says Azula. “How considerate.” She raises her hands, but her eyes flick sideways and she lowers them again, palms flat to the ground. “You’ve obviously acquired a taste for the dramatic.” She takes a breath, teeth showing. “It’s nice to see that Zuko has some influence.”
“Oh, please,” says Mai. “Like it isn’t a family trait.” She raises a hand; an arrow snaps through the air and buries itself at Azula’s feet. Yu Yan.
“This isn’t doing anyone any good,” says Ty Lee. “Please - ”
Her tongue feels thick in her mouth. She knows from what Mai didn’t say in her letters that she has visited Azula often enough. Running in circles, it looks like.
“Indeed,” says Azula, sweetly. “Why can’t we all just get along?”
She smiles, on and off, like the flash of a firework.
Seagulls mew overhead; a shadow drifts across the quay, some way down the harbour. Azula smirks, suddenly, and takes off at full tilt round the rim of the harbour, skating on an edge of blue fire, knives thudding into the pavement behind her.
Mai spins back; says, evenly, to the harbour at large, “Well? What are you waiting for?”
Ty Lee is running before the first of the soldiers is down from the rooftops. She cuts off a curve of the harbour by vaulting from ship to ship, feet thrumming off hot metal; punching an archer into the deck as she passes. Out of the corner of her eye, as she flips for a smokestack, Azula leaps up on a long brace of flame, arcing out over the water, hand out for the rope snaking down. The balloon jerks as she grasps it, as she tugs herself up the rope. Out over the water, now, off to the right.
It is not so much further than the jumps Ty Lee made in the circus. She reaches the roof of the ship’s highest tower as the first jet of fire brushes past from the soldiers below. She breathes in for the run, ten paces, hot roof. Out for the leap, her hand reaching out for the rope, at the sea-salty air and the light like white blossom.
It will probably depend, she thinks as she jumps, on whether Azula decides to fire the engines to full burn without waiting.
She bites her tongue, blood salt-sweet in her mouth. She knows she can make it.
--
If, however, you prefer your Ty Lee non-angsty and sometimes upside-down (you know, the canon-approved flavour), I would recommend the fic
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lizbee posted this morning (as far as my timezone goes, anyway): the very excellent Escapee.
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(Also, thank you for the rec!)
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And, hey, your story was definitely rec-worthy!
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I love angsty!Ty Lee--when her angst is appropriate, as it is here.
As always, your writing is lovely.
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Thank you very much!
And I would feel less guilty if I'd ever written happy Ty Lee! A situation I'll have to rectify sooner or later...
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And, I know, poor Ty Lee. I'm so glad you found this believable - and, heh, culture-building is the best! Especially when it involves GIANT
WARBALLOONS. One of steampunk's better contributions to society!no subject
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