Ty Lee knew something was wrong the moment she saw Azula fleeing with a small gaggle of courtiers, filled with the blacks and reds of anger and fear. That Azula's bodyguards, up until then discreetly omnipresent, were missing added to the wrongness.
Azula seemed at the edge of her wits when Ty Lee caught up with her at one of the gardens, wet eyes filled equally with rage, disbelief and sorrow. Yet, the princess stubbornly fended off the darkness gnawing at the edges of her aura. By sheer spite she remained alert and in control, if only just so.
"Ty Lee. Good. You're here." Her voice cracked, relief tainted by a touch of wariness.
"I'm here to help, Azula," Ty Lee immediately replied, to assuage her and stop the cracks from spreading.
One of the courtiers, a neatly groomed man who was as disheveled as the rest of them, hurriedly interrupted the reunion. "We must go. The princess is being hunted."
Despite how her aura quailed at the mention of being hunted, Azula stubbornly shook her head. "I'm not abandoning my people. The people in the dungeons-"
"We'll get them out, your highness," a woman spoke out, earning nods of support from some men beside her. "Your first priority is to secure an escape, Princess Azula."
"But Su-Wei-"
"I'll get them out," Ty Lee volunteered, earning a grateful look from her friend.
"The palace wing will be heavily guarded," Azula warned.
"I'll get them out," the acrobat repeated more firmly.
Sneaking was easy, as was finding Azula's remaining followers. There was some confusion among the guards at what was happening at the throne room, but otherwise they seemed oblivious. Lady Su-Wei and her clique of loyal staff had been surprised at Ty Lee's appearance in the princess' study room, but they quickly fell into cold professionalism when she told them of Azula fleeing the palace.
"The Hatching Phoenix Flees the Swamp," the old woman declared with a hard gaze, and the men and women stiffened with sudden resolve. Then, worryingly, they began to disperse.
Ty Lee didn't know exactly what was happening, but she could make an educated guess. "Azula wants all of you to follow her."
The much older woman gave a resigned sigh. "It does her credit to think about us, but there is much of her work here that cannot fall into wrong hands." The smell of smoke began to waft as a young man firebended a hidden drawer and its contents into ash. Outside, the guards could be yelling something at someone.
Su-Wei fixed Ty Lee with another hard look, this time heavy with sorrowful browns and yellows. "Tell the princess that we will do what we can to keep her secrets. And…tell Xing-"
She put a stop to that nonsense immediately, crossing her arms in front of her. "Nope, no way! You're coming back with me!" Ty Lee vehemently denied, making the other robed men and women pause to stare at her for a moment. The girl drew in a calming breath, and then exhaled audibly before she stared back at Su-Wei. "I'll buy you all the time you need, and then you're coming with me. Azula does not need more tragedy in her life right now."
Someone spoke up. "But there're more documents in the offices on the other end of the hall!"
Ty Lee recalled her royal friend's aloof confidence and grinned thinly. "Then we'll just have to burn down this whole wing to save us the time."
In hindsight, she could've thought up a better plan. But haste won over prudence, so Ty Lee shot out to charge the first palace guards in sight and drew them away from Su-Wei's group.
Or at least that was the intention.
She ended up leaving a trail of twitching, paralyzed bodies as she made her way to the palace wing's main entry, aided surprisingly by several guards who had not only recognized her, but also asserted their loyalties to their princess. If Ty Lee had to guess, these were guards that Azula had secured positions for as an easy means to earn some merit for their disgraced families. With their help, Ty Lee fought back the growing tide of armored men, slowly ground as more enemies poured in from other entrances.
Avoiding bolts of fire and dancing between the firebenders was too easy for her. Unlike the more hardened fighters in the colonies, these firebending elite instinctively held back when she darted between them, too afraid of accidentally hitting their own, too set in their firebending forms to improvise. Paralyzing them instead of killing them turned her targets into convenient obstacles against their comrades.
Her allies weren't having it as easy as she was though. For all their unhesitating bravery, the guards loyal to Azula began to fall. Ty Lee could not help all of them, and she was forced to helplessly watch as one by one the valiant men were overwhelmed by sheer numbers. Most carried Azula's name on their lips before the flames consumed them. In the end, they were whittled from almost two dozen down to just four men by the time one of Su-Wei's people called out.
A glance back showed that the grand hallway was already getting hazy with smoke, partly from the burning mess caused by the fighting. The rest of it was from the fires belching out of study rooms and offices.
It then was a matter of disengaging from the whole mob to get everyone to safety. Easy.
Ty Lee panted lightly, but gritted her teeth and was prepared to fight her way through. Thankfully the flames had weakened a main column which conveniently caved in on the mob. Escaping after that was easy enough. Really.
With the thick smoke all but opaque, Ty Lee led the ministry staff and surviving fighters out through Azula's room, the last place to be consumed by the flames. They held their breaths as best they could and Ty Lee kept watch on the rapidly heating rooftop as some of the men carried an indignant Su-Wei out the window.
Fortunately, the palace guards had yet to make the whole circuit around the palace's perimeter to get in the way, allowing the escapees an easy escape afterwards. More flames rose from other parts of the palace complex, as well as some buildings around the capital.
If she remembered her landmarks correctly, it looked like the breakout of Azula's detained staff was successful. But that did not explain the other fires throughout the city, like the archives and palace guards' barracks.
"The Hatching Phoenix Flees the Swamp," Lady Su-Wei intoned, noticing Ty Lee's confusion. "Sent out the signal as we were burning the documents. Princess Azula put me in charge of overseeing the security of information in the palace and the colonial ministry. Part of that involves preparing…contingencies."
The woman stared out at the columns of smoke staining the evening skies as they continued to shuffle through alleyways. "We had this planned with the expectation that the more ambitious noble houses would dare to defy the Fire Lord's patience and band together to seize power for themselves… Deny them as much useful information as we could of the colonies, the princess' supporters, and hidden assets. It was what we thought was the worst case scenario, in preparation for Xing taking Ba Sing Se."
She let out a heavy sigh. "Never thought we'd be using it because of the Fire Lord turning on her." Su-Wei then gave Ty Lee a smirk filled with reluctant gratitude. "Never thought I'd survive its execution, either."
"You're welcome," the girl answered with a bright smile that pushed back some of the oppressive grays weighing on everyone.
With the fires inevitably spreading confusion in the city, it soon became easy to slip into the streets among the sea of worried citizens and blend in with the chaos. Sporadic roars of flame sent waves of fear in the populace, like the ripples of a dirty rainbow on a puddle of oil. Ty Lee held back her disgust at the ugly colors playing out and tainting her vision.
They reached the ship with only the panicking city slowing them down, meeting a clearly worried Azula under the shadow of a light cruiser. Several smoking corpses littered the area, almost all members of the city guard.
"About time you made it," she said without meaning the words.
Azula went to greet Lady Su-Wei first, both of them sharing sharp whispers before the older woman finished with a conceding nod and walked up the ship. Then Ty Lee became the focus of her friend's attention, and the girl was treated for the first time to panic showing in her usually calm and collected friend.
"You're bleeding."
"Wha-? Oh, that. It's not mine." Ty Lee gave as bright a smile she could muster to reassure the fraying princess.
Before they could trade fussing and reassurance, an unexpected voice called out from the main roads. "Hey! Wait for us!"
Ty Lee turned to see a royal carriage barrelling down at full speed. Behind the reins was Zuko, of all people, his robes dirtied with soot and mud. Beside him, dressed in a noble's dress and wielding a handful of throwing knives, was Mai.
"Zuzu?" The surprise overwrote Azula's dark mood for a flicker of a moment.
The carriage skidded sideways to a stop, the wheels snapping and almost toppling it over. Zuko and Mai were quick to jump out, and the latter was uncharacteristically gentle as she opened the carriage door to help her mother and infant brother out.
"What are you doing here?" Azula asked with a tinge of suspicion.
Zuko gasped for air, hands going to a scabbarded sword by his side. Up close, Ty Lee noted that there were specks of blood staining the prince's hands. "I broke Mai out." A heavy, awkward pause followed, and then: "I'm sorry I couldn't-"
"Not important," his sister interrupted. "We need to leave, now."
With no one else to wait for, they all boarded the cruiser and made for Zilang. It was only in the privacy of their quarters did Azula finally allow herself to break down.
"I disowned my father… My guards…those men… They…they…" Wet eyes, once so keen and sure, met Ty Lee's gaze and radiated ugly colors of loss, confusion, regret.
"All I've done. Everything I've worked for… Why? Why did he…"
It broke Ty Lee's heart to see her usually strong and confident friend, the princess who'd made a huge change over the years, shudder with heaving sobs and tear into the bedding with her manicured nails.
Without prompting, Ty Lee reached for and embraced Azula, hoping that her own faith in her sobbing friend would help push away the blackness seeping into the other girl's aura. "Shh… You did the right thing, Azula. Don't worry, you're not alone… You're loved…"
It felt so wrong to have Azula crying into her shoulders like a child, but Ty Lee ignored the surrealness of the scene and did what she could to calm her down. Eventually, Azula fell asleep, and Ty Lee kept by her bed, cooing soft tunes to ease her into her rest.
Azula had changed so much, and had saved her life. This was the least Ty Lee could do as a friend. Azula would recover the next day, as if nothing had happened, but her eyes betrayed a deep gratitude for Ty Lee. It was more than enough for the girl to know that she was appreciated so earnestly.
The reunion with Mai was no less appreciated but a little less dramatic. The initial guess that she was being used as both stick and carrot for Zuko was more or less correct, and for all of Mai's stubbornness to express as little as possible she did still care enough for her family (well, her mother and brother at least) that she didn't want to risk their lives by leaving with Zuko.
So of course Zuko broke them all out. Apparently he did so quite spectacularly, leaving enough of an impression that Mai was tinted with rather pretty pinks.
"What about your father?" Azula asked while her brother was scratching the back of his head and being rather selfish about the details.
Surprisingly it was Mai's mother, Michi, who answered, and with some venom. "The fool didn't see the prison for what it was, and called for the guards to detain us 'for our own safety'." Her bared teeth complimented the angry reds and oranges she radiated quite nicely, Ty Lee thought.
Azula gave Zuko a look, and he shook his head with some disbelief. "Of course I didn't kill him-!"
"Unfortunately."
The siblings joined Ty Lee in turning as one to the mother and daughter. Oh, so that's where Mai got her dead eyes from…