Avatar One-Shots

P'Li's Account (Tyzula)

A/n Tyzula one-shot for @CelestialKnife. I had two Tyzula one-shots saved and I'm currently kicking myself for deleting one, and thus I'm posting this thing. This is a headcanon I wrote out sometime in early Book 3 of Korra that Azula was somehow related to P'Li and Ty Lee was in the picture somewhere because braids.
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For the first six years of my life, I was happy.

I lived with my mother and father in a small village on the outskirts of the Fire Nation. We weren't rich, but we had love. Or at least, I thought we did.

I remember screaming. My parents yelling at each other. Then my mother coming to my bedroom to pack my clothes. She was crying. I asked her where we were going, and she told me to stay with her family.

I looked over my mother's shoulder to my father as we walked away. He wouldn't meet my eyes, but even as a child I could tell he was upset. Whether it was anger or hurt or both, I'm still unsure.

The trip to the Capital was rough. We barely had enough money to make it, and when we did we almost didn't get into the palace. If it weren't for my Uncle seeing us at the gates, I don't know what would have happened.

Uncle welcomed us with open arms, though Mother made it clear that we wouldn't be there if we had anywhere else at all to go. Uncle simply smiled and led us inside.

The rest of that day is still blurry in my memory, there were so many things happening at once. I was suddenly royalty, meeting family I hadn't known I had. The one thing I remember perfectly was the first time I'd seen my mother genuinely smile since before we left home. It was when a woman dressed in pink came cartwheeling down the hallway and straight into Mother, tears in her eyes, a somewhat pained expression on her face. They exchanged a few words before she bent down to speak to me.

I liked her right away. Her face was warm, if tear-stained. She extended a hand towards me and introduced herself as Ty Lee, an old friend of my mother's. I glanced from Mother to the hand in front of me, and hesitantly shook it, introducing myself. The woman smiled warmly at me and asked if I was as good a firebender as my mother. I replied as honestly as I could, No one is as good a firebender as my mother, to which she chuckled and took my hand, offering to show me around the palace.

She told me all about herself, how she'd grown up with Mother, her time in the circus, joining the Kyoshi Warriors, retiring from active duty. I found her easy to talk to, so I told her how confused and bewildered I was by my situation. She offered council, and told me that I could always talk to her if I needed to. I said that I would, and I meant it.

It didn't take long for me to notice the amount of time my mother spent with Ty Lee. It was as if they spent every spare moment together, not that I minded. Ty Lee had become like a parent to me, and it made me happy seeing the way she and Mother looked at each other. It was the way Mother and Father used to look.

By the time I was ten I knew that my mother and Ty Lee were more than friends. And if I had doubts, they were gone when I opened the door to my Mother's bedroom one day to ask a question and found them in an... indecent, position on the bed. I've never known Mother's cheeks to turn red, but in that moment they matched the palace tapestry. Needless to say, this encounter mortified me and possibly scarred me for life, but it also made me happy. I liked that my mother had found someone again. Although I could've done without the spectacle of it...

For awhile, I was happy again. My mother no longer sat up at night with tears in her eyes, staring down at a picture of my father. Now she spent her evenings curled against the body of someone she loved, and as much as I didn't want to think of my own mother in bed with her lover, it did warm my heart to know that she was finally happy again. She deserved happiness; she'd been through a lot.

My happiness ended when I was fifteen. By then, I was old enough to know what was going on around me. Mother and Ty Lee were in love. They wanted to get married, I wanted them to get married, Uncle wanted them to get married, my cousins wanted them to get married, everyone wanted them to get married. Everyone, that is, except half the general population of the Fire Nation. The mere thought sent the people into an uproar. I watched as my mother's happiness was beaten down and scorned. I was called terrible names myself, but they didn't bother me nearly as much as the horrible insults thrown at my mothers. It made me want to burn them all. I believe that's where I unlocked my combustion bending ability, actually: all the anger pent up within me until it burst forth.

My anger turned to sadness when Ty Lee went missing. Mother would stay up late into the night worrying, and dark bags formed under her eyes. I hadn't been around yet during her asylum days, but I imagined this must be what she looked like. Sometimes I would stay up with her, trying to comfort her, to make her feel better, but it was little use. As if I were six all over again, and she was still staring at that same picture of my father.

Then Uncle came in one day with a grave expression. I remember Mother's eyes widening in horror, shock, disbelief, and then her body collapsing to the ground in tears. My eyes shifted between my mother and my uncle, who stood holding a torn, bloody, burned pink shirt.

Mother never recovered from the loss. I grew to hate the government for what they did to my parents. I blamed them for what happened to Ty Lee, for not doing more to protect us. I joined the Red Lotus so that we can tear down the government once and for all, and finally win justice for the woman who was there when my Father wasn't.