Glorifying my Azutara addiction

These are from a long while ago. I wanted to do a Gaang's eyes series but never quite found the motivation; this is all I got through and none of them are even fully rendered.

Bonus Azula ragebaiting:

• Katara's affection is so, so soft. Unbelievably, frustratingly so. Katara will braid Azula's hair and kiss her temples and play with her fingers like she's the most precious little meow meow in the world, and Azula doesn't really know what to do with all that tenderness. She doesn't reciprocate it much at first, if at all, because she's not really sure how to, but she eventually gets to a point where she stops pretending to hate it and starts to crave the smallest acts of affection very deeply.

• Azula has a hard time saying, so she often has to write stuff down when she feels a certain way about Katara that she can't readily express with words. And good gods is she Shakespearean levels of poetic without even meaning to be, especially when Katara is gone for long periods of time. We're talking, "It's so frustrating that when you're gone, the thought of you rattles around my chest like a storm, that I clutch onto my ribs and cling to the feeling as though I've never felt rain before. I miss you even when you're standing right here. I think even the worst parts of me would kneel just to wait for you."

• Azula finds respect in power, so she comes to develop a reverence for bloodbending. It makes Katara feel less guilty when she has to resort to it (which is rarely). There's this way Azula will look at her afterwards, too, like she's hungry, like she's going to devour her the second they get home. Azula considers bloodbending to be the waterbending equivalent of lightningbending.

• Azula is very muscular underneath all those sleeves. Katara will ask her to lift heavy things that she can definitely carry herself just to see her arms flex.

• Azula only cries in front of Zuko and Katara, though mostly the latter. She constantly wakes up from horrible nightmares and Katara is always there to comfort her through them. Most of the time Azula doesn't talk, because she hates being perceived when she's crying, even after years of dating her. Katara never pushes. She'll either sit there in silence with her and trace fingers through her hair, or tell Azula little stories about her life until she falls back asleep.

• Mentioned in part 1, but Katara has a fixation with Azula's hands. She knows they have the capability to be incredibly destructive, and yet when they're alone, Azula gets all touchy, and in the gentlest way too. Like, here are these hands that can produce lightning strong enough to kill dozens of men in a single blow, and yet the same fingers they belong to are absentmindedly drawing shapes along Katara's collarbones in soft exploration. Katara likes to study them. The way Azula's fingers flex, how precise she shapes them when she firebends, how they're so featherlight when they're touching her.

• Somewhat going off of that, Azula subconsciously thinks she might hurt her, so she's always incredibly delicate. This doesn't stop her from being very exploratory, though.

• Azula kind of likes losing to her, deep down, even though she'll never let Katara ultimately win a sparring match. She does find a thrill in the few moments Katara gains the upper hand, because it's only with Katara that she has ever felt safe in surrender.

• Katara finds an excuse to have her hands on Azula constantly. On her back, brushing strands of loose hair back into place, fixing the already perfect collar of Azula's uniform. It's such a normal thing for them that Azula feels out of place when Katara isn't touching her. She has that military walk where she marches around like she has places to be, but she makes it a point to slow down just so that Katara will put an arm around her waist and keep guiding her forward.

• Azula is pretty much exclusively physically affectionate with her when they're in private. Even so, she's quite excessive about it. She'll sit on Katara's lap when she really doesn't need to, lay on top of her chest to chest when she has an entire side of the bed available to her, lean in very close when Katara talks. Being next to her isn't enough, Azula wants to fuse Katara's very being with hers.

• Their rare sparring matches are mostly held to work out pent-up tension, which is especially common for Azula who still struggles with sorting through her emotions. But "sparring" devolves into panting, pinning, growling, accidental straddling, even more accidental kissing, more often than not.

• Katara says "I love you" often. Azula doesn't, but she does have her own way of showing Katara she loves her. She's kind of like a little magpie and will bring Katara things that either 1. remind her of Katara, 2. encompass something she thinks Katara might like, or 3. are as pretty as her. There's something to be said about Azula seeing the person she loves in everything around her.

• Going off of that, Katara's love is frustratingly stubborn. Katara will tell Azula she loves her in Azula's worst moments, like when she slips, or when she snaps at her, or when she gets cold, and distant, and horribly dry. Azula doesn't understand it until she just does, one day. It's unconditional love. Something she'd never really known until Katara showed it to her.

• Azula really likes being told she's doing a good job. She eats at Katara's praise like it's a meal.

• Azula usually starts out straddling her in bed but Katara almost always flips her around with zero warning and pins her down. Katara is quite... thorough, so she takes her sweet time undressing her and kissing every inch of her skin. Azula never outright admits to liking being the submissive one but her barely held back sounds say otherwise.

• Azula doesn't listen to anybody. In fact, she makes it a point to be as annoyingly defiant as possible. But... She does literally whatever Katara says without an ounce of hesitation. Even something as inconsequential as being handed a scroll? She has servants for that, unless Katara's the one asking. Then she just holds her hand out and takes it.

• Katara's darkness is quieter than Azula's, but no less brutal. Katara would never intentionally kill anybody, but she'd spill blood for Azula if she needed to.

Azula was serving so much heat when she wore this and just for that this is my favorite of her outfits