Cataclysm

Posted originally on the Archive of Our Own at http://archiveofourown.org/works/47821213.

Rating: Teen And Up Audiences

Archive Warning: No Archive Warnings Apply
Categories: F/F, Multi
Fandom: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Relationships: Azula/Mai/Ty Lee, Azula/Mai (Avatar), Azula/Ty Lee (Avatar), Mai/Ty
Lee (Avatar)
Characters: Azula (Avatar), Mai (Avatar), Ty Lee (Avatar)
Additional Tags: Canon Compliant, Minor Mai/Zuko (Avatar), 50 Sentences,
Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied Childhood Sexual Abuse,
Parent/Child Incest, Character Study, for all three of them
Language: English
Stats: Published: 2023-06-12 Words: 1,469 Chapters: 1/1
 Cataclysm
by maizula

Summary

It was always going to end like this.

or: maizulee throughout canon and in 50 sentences

 1. horror

By the time they’re eight, all the other girls in their class are afraid of Azula, but Mai has
never been scared; this is the root of the problem in the end.

2. loot

Azula likes to steal things from her brother, and the least Ty Lee can offer to do is help—it’s
not like she’s so fond of Zuko anyway.

3. sensation

Azula is eleven, and she has just watched her brother burn, and she cannot feel the left half of
her face as she fixes where the kohl around her eyes bled before she goes to see Mai and Ty
Lee.

4. path

When Azula is nine, the path to the throne opens up, and she should seem untouchable to Ty
Lee now, but she can’t stop herself from pulling the princess into a hug at every available
opportunity.

5. cable

Mai stops Azula from cutting the cables at Boiling Rock, and it finally hits Ty Lee that they
will never be girls sharing a bed they shouldn’t again; her heart chooses Mai before she
knows what she’s done.

6. joke

Mai and Azula have always had the same sharpness to their tongue and wit, but Ty Lee keeps
hers dulled to seem all the less threatening.

7. palace

The first time Mai comes over to the big empty palace, it occurs to her just how lonely Azula
must be; she never shakes that feeling.

8. window

Ty Lee runs away, and she doesn’t leave so much as a letter for Azula or Mai or her family
before she slips out the window and out of the Fire Nation.

9. enthusiasm

Enthusiasm has never come naturally to Mai, but even she cannot help but feel something
electrifying pressed to her ribs as she watches Azula lightningbend for the first time.

10. indulge
Even out in the Earth Kingdom, away from the watchful eyes of Fire Lord Ozai and Mai’s
own judgmental parents and Ty Lee’s neglectful ones, they never so much as name what
they’ve been dancing around their whole lives.

11. contrast

Ty Lee has always been afraid of blending in, but in the Fire Nation, Mai thinks she couldn’t
stand out more.

12. light

Over the years, Mai watches helplessly as any light is shut out of Azula’s life, and it kills her
every day.

13. bomb

“My own mother thought I was a monster,” Azula says as if it’s all one big joke, but Ty Lee
feels like the earth has just opened and swallowed them all whole; Azula doesn’t talk about
her mother, doesn’t like to show weakness at all—maybe that’s why she takes it back as soon
as she can.

14. merit

It is not through their merit that Azula chooses her friends as a young girl, but through the
pull she feels towards Mai and Ty Lee both upon meeting them (it won’t even dissipate when
Azula wants it to, years later).

15. youth

The happiest they ever are is when three of them are playing a game of kemari with Azula
yelling out instructions without malice sticky in her throat.

16. lamb

Azula is a butcher in some ways, but Ty Lee has never been the koala lamb to slaughter, no
matter what Azula thinks.

17. extension

Though she dreams of only her father, Azula does not scream in her sleep; Mai still feels
Azula’s numbness as an extension of her own.

18. perforate

Ty Lee trusts Mai completely as she cartwheels through the targets and is rewarded when
Mai’s knives only puncture the bullseyes.

19. scream
Mai has never heard Azula scream, and so she calls Zuko a liar when he tells her of his Agni
Kai with the princess.

20. lock

In the circus, Ty Lee learns all sorts of tricks, including the art of lockpicking, but it’s not
enough to get through Azula’s walls.

21. disappear

When Princess Ursa vanishes into the night, Ty Lee promises she never will.

22. variation

Mai hates the monotony of Omashu like she hates the monotony of the Fire Nation and like
she hates the monotony of everything that is not tied to Azula and Ty Lee.

23. reluctance

Under the starry sky of the Earth Kingdom, when she thinks they are asleep, Azula tells them
that the first time Fire Lord Ozai came to her chambers, she did not say no; how could she
have?

24. reflect

When they’re chasing the boy-avatar down relentlessly, they all use Mai’s knives as mirrors;
it feels almost intimate.

25. sacred

Ty Lee thinks that watching Azula firebend is like visiting the shrines.

26. like

The first person Mai ever likes is Zuko, but she cannot help but love Azula as much as she
hates her.

27. restrict

One of Princess Ursa’s favorite punishments for an incorrigible Azula is that she is not
allowed to play with Mai and Ty Lee because Azula’s mother has always loved her just
enough to know how to hurt her.

28. institution

After the war, Ty Lee joins the Kyoshi Warriors because it is the familiar thing to do, and Mai
takes Zuko back because it is the right thing to do, and Azula is left to rot in the asylum
because it is the easy thing to do.

29. sentiment
Azula is not a sentimental person—except for the grudge she holds close to her heart against
Ty Lee for leaving and against Mai for being taken away.

30. blank

Mai lives in a state of constant ennui; Ty Lee has never understood this.

31. damage

Azula breaks the vase, and Zuko takes the beating; Mai breaks the vase, and there is no one
else to bleed.

32. violation

Ty Lee doesn’t mean to violate court politics, but she forgoes her etiquette all the same and
embraces Azula before she can be reminded of their stations.

33. bank

Concepts like money are far below Azula, but that doesn’t stop Ty Lee from feeling indebted
to her when the princess covers a bill; she wonders sometimes if Azula expects repayment in
blood.

34. combine

They’re strongest together—maybe that’s why the universe keeps tearing them apart.

35. grain

“Don’t leave any grains of rice, or you’ll never be wed,” Azula tells Mai as they eat together,
her eyes impossibly bright (Mai has never wanted to be wed to anyone, but her stomach
opens up into a pit anyway).

36. debt

Though Ty Lee knows it to be futile, when Azula comes to collect on her debt, she tries to
run.

37. portrait

They’ve known each other for as far back as their memories can stretch, but they have not
even one portrait together—“Group portraits are reserved for couples and families,” Michi
always says.

38. enemy

As Mai stares down Azula at Boiling Rock, she knows that she finally has done something
that she cannot take back; she’s an enemy of the throne now.

39. delicate
When she unbraids Ty Lee’s hair for her, Mai’s motions are as delicate as can be.

40. star

A star falls across the sky, and Ty Lee wishes that Azula will be happier, knowing it won’t
come true.

41. wrong

In the eyes of three mothers, there is something wrong with Azula as there is something
wrong with Mai as there is something wrong with Ty Lee.

42. exemption

Ty Lee runs away, and Azula does not hunt her down with all the world’s resources at her
disposal; Mai thinks that this is an act of kindness somehow.

43. prayer

Azula’s name is like a prayer to Mai, one that will come true even if part of her hopes it
won’t.

44. waist

The hand on Mai’s waist is not Zuko’s or Ty Lee’s, so its fingernails bite into the weak spots
of her armor.

45. letter

Mai makes the mistake of asking if Ty Lee has written Azula once and only once; she should
keep her good fortune held closer to her chest where the princess cannot burn it away.

46. tooth

Sometimes Ty Lee watches the outline of Azula’s teeth as she speaks or eats or spits out
flames.

47. history

The first time that Mai and Ty Lee see Azula after the war, they make the mistake of thinking
that Azula will be so doped up on herbs that she does not remember every moment they were
hers.

48. dawn

Azula rises with the sun by nature; Mai and Ty Lee do it by choice.

49. spirit

When Azula returns to them after taking Ba Sing Se and tells them Zuko has struck down the
boy-avatar, killing the avatar spirit completely, they know that she’s lying; neither Mai nor Ty
Lee tell her this, and maybe that’s a mistake.

50. elapse

The war ends, and Mai turns sixteen and Ty Lee fifteen, but Azula is forever fourteen, forever
avoiding the mirror and her mother’s face in Ba Sing Se, forever telling the truth and calling
it a lie on Ember Island, forever spitting fire and screaming for her mother against the grate at
the palace.
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