Work Text:
Roku has loved any number of times and ways. The nation of his birth, the wife who proved his equal, the monarch who had always been his best friend. Each of those loves was lost to him eventually, as the world changed and his friend did, and at last death separated him from his beautiful lover.
This love, though, this love that he's attempting to explain to Aang, the Avatar's love for the world and its people, but also for balance, is not one that can be lost. It's the love, as much as anything, that holds the Avatar to the line of reincarnation. It's the love that pushes the Avatar to do what must be done, or watch the whole world suffer the consequences.
Roku can only hope that Aang is better at honoring that love than he was.