Work Text:
"Kya! Secure the mainsail!" Hakoda's voice strains to carry over the roar of the ocean. They're being assaulted from all directions—monstrous waves bearing down on the hull of the drua, thundering whitewater washing over the lip of the deck, thick sheets of rain pelting down from above—and the storm squall is pushing them too far to the left.
"Aye, Hakoda!" Kya ducks under the un-tethered boom that swings wildly in the wind and pulls the fabric of the larger sail flush to the main pole. Immediately, Bato shoves hard on the little boat's wooden tiller. The stern responds, and the drua orients perpendicular to a cresting wave—sailing out of the wind. Bato holds down with all his weight, fighting the current. Gravity gifts them a burst of speed, and their sea craft sluices through the turbulent waters below.
The Fire Nation ship tailing them cuts through the tide with nothing but the density of its metal shell.
The situation looks dire. A sudden summer monsoon off the coast of the Southern Earth Kingdom hit them like an ambush. Hakoda, Bato, and Kya were separated from the rest of their fleet, managing to pull an enemy naval vessel away from the skirmish in pursuit. Their wooden sailboat is faster, more nimble—better suited for quick turns and adapting to unsure waters—but they're being hammered on every side, and the bearings on their ship groan under the strain. The assaulting Fire Nation steamboat rocks unsteadily on a top-heavy frame, but they can move just as quickly against the wind as they can with it. If the three Southern Water Tribe warriors are to survive this, they have to be more clever, more unpredictable, more lucky than the other crew.
Bato can see Hakoda's blurry figure on the forward starboard bow of the drua, fighting to keep the jibs from overcompensating now that the mainsail is closed. The boat tips dangerously to one side, and Kya shouts in alarm.
"The wind is going to turn!" Hakoda yells, holding up a closed fist. "Pivot on my mark!"
A mighty crack of lightning illuminates the deck briefly, and Bato sees Kya's face through the chaos for only a moment. She looks sick, but she's biting it down—steely determination in her eyes. Rain and saltwater run down Bato's face, into his nose and his mouth. Every inch of him is soaked. He feels nothing but his own heartbeat, and somehow above the rage of the ocean and the thrum of battle and the tattoo of raindrops he knows that his beats in time with Hakoda's. With Kya's. Bato leads the rudder to the right—the boat follows his guiding hand.
A plume of angry orange fire singes the errant whips of their top fabric jib. Bato feels the heat of it from ten feet away. The Fire Nation ship is closing on them—no. Hakoda's steering them into the enemy's path.
"Now, Bato!" Hakoda collapses the rope line of the front sails, only the naked mast remaining. "Kya, ready!"
Tui and La help us, Bato prays and braces his legs against the raised edge of the boat deck. With his right shoulder, he shoves all his weight into the stern, pulling the drua in the opposite direction. The bow stops less than twenty yards from the steel hull of their assailant, and the back of their skiff is thrown sideways into a coming tidal wave. The aft stern traces a wide circle and starts to dip. Bato is wedged between both sides of the boat's railings, his hands in a vice grip on the tiller line.
"Hold steady." Hakoda's commands cut clean through the air, booming like thunder above. "Open the mainsail!"
At it's lowest point in the turn, the mast of the drua is horizontal and skims the top of the wave below them. Hakoda and Bato cling tight to the port beam—using the weight of their bodies to keep the sailboat from tipping—but Kya is in movement. She moves with the speed and grace of the wind. With the mainsheet line clenched tight in her fist, she launches herself towards the aft rudder. She collides roughly with Bato's right side and wraps the fiber rope around the boom as a brace—then a sharp snap above the sounds of the storm and the mainsail unfurls into an oncoming gale.
A gust of wind fills the mainsail and pushes them into the curl of a dark wave. Bato's stomach heaves as the drua rights itself suddenly. Hakoda whoops and releases the jibs and the additional maneuverability shaves off the air resistance, gracing their ship with a burst of speed. Their direction stays true—they miss the hull of the enemy and outpace it in the opposite direction. They've managed to completely reorient themselves in a move that would take the Fire Nation metalship thrice as much engine power. Bato and Kya fall into tacking position with a shared glance. If they can manage to make the edge of the swirling black storm clouds above them before the Fire Nation vessel, they'll be home free.
Bato sees the firebender first.
The soldier launches a fireball at their retreating form from the aft bow of his metal steamboat. The last thing Bato remembers is curling Kya against the cradle of his right side, and the sound of Hakoda's scream.
Bato blinks awake slowly. Kya is running her fingers through his long hair, and the action sparks a pleasant wake from the crown of his head all the way down to the back of his neck. She weaves a braid, then gently undoes it. Again—fishtail. Once more, this time starting from his hairline. The lit lantern—swaying from the highest arch of their personal chambers in the chieftain's igloo—create enchanting orange shapes on the curved ice walls. Its lamplight dances lovingly over Hakoda's dark skin, and the hypnotic repetition of Kya's hands makes Bato feel intoxicated.
Hakoda is still asleep against Bato's right side. He rests his head in the crook of Bato's neck, and his breaths puff hotly against the skin of Bato's throat. One of his hands rests delicately on Bato's undamaged collarbone, and in his sleep Hakoda shifts so that his leg is thrown over Bato's hip.
It's already the winter after that summer monsoon in the waters off the Southern Earth Kingdom's craggy coast. Bato's entire left arm is still wrapped in layers of medical dressings—burn salve and hide bandages and thick, warm furs. The cold makes him feel brittle, like his bones might actually shatter if he's jostled too hard. He sleeps a lot. The healers tell (Hakoda and Kya, who then inform) Bato that the drowsiness is expected, that his body is expending energy to recover. He's lost weight.
Kya notices that he's awake, and that he's lucid.
"What were you dreaming about?" She asks him in the softest voice, and maybe Bato's still not all the way there because he swear it sounds just like waves kissing a shoreline.
Hakoda sighs in his sleep, shuffles a little closer.
"You." He croaks. She doesn't have to ask—she knows he means both of them. It's the truth.
[SEVEN YEARS LATER]
Hakoda doesn't even flinch when Bato throws open the animal hide curtain of the healer's igloo and steps out into the cold night air—and finds himself falling through space. Over his head the indigo sky is rippling with stars, densely clustered in some regions, almost blocking out the darkness between them, and more loosely scattered in other areas, puling and beckoning to each other. Behind them all streams the great river of light with its several tributaries. (Bato remembers the stories told by elders of his youth—who have since passed—stories of great spirits that swim through air just as a canoe will cut through water).
Yet the stars churn beneath him as well, for the healer's igloo is remote: set on the shore of a great glacier. And springtime brings days that grow in length, precious heat that fills paddies with water—turns frozen rivers of ice into holy lakes. The surface of these melt-pools, by day, mirror the perfectly blue sky, reflection unbroken. But by night the stars themselves glimmer from the surface of the pools, and the river of light whirls through the darkness underfoot as well as above. There seems to be no ground beneath Bato's booted feet, only the abyss of star-studded sky falling away forever.
Bato is no longer simply beneath the night sky; he is above it as well. The immediate impression is of weightlessness. Bato might not have been able to reorient himself—to regain some sense of ground and gravity—were it not for the sight before him.
Hakoda's lone figure is illuminated by a shaft of baleful moonlight. He sits on the hill of a lonely snowbank, uncaring of the powdery ice that coats his tunic, his pants. He looks ethereal, seemingly immune to the frigid frost-creep that Bato knows seeps into the smallest recesses and cavities of the body; the mind. Hakoda's hunched form fumbles within the folds of his thick parka, and Bato watches as he raises a long, pale pipe carved from the most delicate of whalebones to his lips in a practiced kiss—his hands visibly shaking from the cold or something else entirely.
The sparkstones shatter the fragile silence of the midnight—but the glow of the pipe bowl bathes Hakoda's handsome features in an alien orange warmth. For a moment Hakoda sparkles like the stars that blanket him on all sides, and Bato once again feels the sensation of falling. He grips the woven afghan clenched between his gloved fingers tight like it might prevent him from landing—from loving.
"Ironic, isn't it?" Hakoda's voice always reminds Bato of animal fur, for some reason or another. The texture, the silkiness, the timbre or the pitch. Now, however, he speaks like the words are wretched. Like he has to pull them from somewhere deep inside of himself and spit them out all over pristine white snow. He exhales a cloud of thin smoke. "That I'll sit here and pull fire into my lungs willingly, after twice everything I—" Hakoda's breath hitches, "—everything I love is burned to cinders."
Bato crosses the distance between them with the most gentle steps he's ever taken in his life. Bato drapes the blanket still folded in his hands over Hakoda's broad shoulders as Hakoda takes another deep draw from the herb burning in the pipe. It smells heady and calming, but when Hakoda finally looks up at Bato (always looking up) there are tears reflecting starlight in his dark eyes. Bato's heart aches for this man. And for Kya.
"Kya is strong." Bato assures. It's the truth. "Just as I am strong. She will live." Bato reaches out to soothe, and feels relief when Hakoda leans in to his hand, eyes closing briefly as heartbreaking tears run down his cheeks. "Just as I live."
"Twice, Bato." Hakoda argues hoarsely, anger at himself rearing its ugly head. "The first time I was in leadership of our drua and it cost you your arm—more than that. Your mobility, your-you can't even do your own wolf-tail, I—" He huffs. "—and now. Firebenders in our own home. I couldn't even protect her in our own home, Bato. How am I supposed to live with that?"
The pipe dangles forgotten in Hakoda's loose grip.
The Fire Nation raids are increasing in their frequency. The enemy is obsessed with the extermination of all Southern Water Tribe waterbenders. The elder treating Kya at this moment is one of the few their tribe has left. The most recent siege of the Southern Pole cost them several lives and more injuries. Bato feels a tiredness that is becoming more familiar—more seductive. He would like to sleep.
Instead he finds himself leaning back to gaze up at the constellations above—below.
"Let me breathe of it..." Bato murmurs. Hakoda raises the pipe—once more remembered—back to the cradle of his mouth. "One has to put his poem in order on the threshold of his tongue."
Hakoda inhales deeply, all the way down to his navel, and holds the burning air in the depths of his lungs, like he's trying to warm himself from the inside with nothing but intoxicating tobacco smoke. Luckily Bato is fluent in all of Hakoda's silences, and knows that this is an invitation to continue his story.
"My Breath—that is what I call this song," says Bato, "for it is as necessary to me to sing as it is to breathe."
When Hakoda exhales, his breath crystallizes in the frozen antarctic air, shimmering and beautifully mesmerizing. The Water Tribe word for poetry is the same as its word for to breathe. Both come from the root anerca—the soul.
"There are some stars," Bato dips his chin northward, towards the Pole. "like those above us, that were planted like seeds by the spirits of great birds—and so still they remain, even after thousands of years—that the descendants of the great birds may always know the direction of their homeland. These stars are forever, so loved for what they are and always have been and always will be."
Bato's mouth tugs down a little at the corners, creasing his face. Hakoda looks up at the heavens in curiosity.
"Hakoda, do you remember your birth?" Bato asks, because this is how the story goes.
Hakoda turns to looks at Bato quizzically, and his wet lashes are starting to freeze and clump like clinging snowflakes.
"No." He says. "I don't think anyone does."
"There are some stars," Bato continues, and his eyes fall to a cosmic mirror of constellations reflected in standing water, "that move like stones down an ice floe. They're untethered—they travel patterns that sailors cannot name. And because of this unpredictable behavior they confuse the descendants of great birds and lead them away from the direction of their homelands. Some of these stars remain unnamed and unseen for the entirety of their existence—for we cannot love what we do not know. No one loves a ghost."
"What happens to them? The ghost stars?" A thin curl of blue smoke draws distracting patterns in the space above Hakoda's smoldering pipe.
"With hope, they will meet another of their own." Bato turns to Hakoda fully now. "Another ghost star. The two will share everything—all abandonment, all dreams," Bato pauses significantly, and like a good storyteller he lets his eyes drift back to the lonely healer's tent, nearly camouflaged under unwavering moonlight, "all loves."
Hakoda's eyes shine with a depth only rivaled by the light-dappled sky above.
"They will see each other, in a way that they have never been seen before. And they will name each other instantly, and thus the day they meet will become the day they are born." Bato lets his voice drop to a private pitch, and Hakoda leans in beautifully, captivated by the story. "One will name the first Lost, for all that they were, and the first will name the other Found, for all that they become."
Hakoda lets the pipe in his fingers tip, and the contents of the bowl fall gently to the snow, sparks jumping to the ice. His hands reach up, up to grip the fur-lined collar of Bato's overcoat. Emotion softens the lines of his face, around his eyes and his mouth. He leans into Bato's space, the hard shape of this thigh flush with Bato's hip.
"Bato," Hakoda breathes, and presses their lips together.
Humans are built to hold others. The physical body—the eyes, the skin, the lips, the mouth, the hands, arms, and feet—all are gates where the soul receives the nourishment of otherness.
Hakoda's lips are cold, but his mouth is warm and tastes like smoke and herbs. He kisses Bato with single-mindedness and sensitivity. Bato's right hand presses into the front of Hakoda's shoulder, and the swell of Hakoda's bicep connects with the shape of Bato's palm like his hands were made to rest there. For the third time tonight Bato feels weightless buoyancy, but this time his eyes are closed and he cannot see the stars besides the ones that Hakoda's sweet kisses paint behind his eyelids. Hakoda's mouth moves slowly against Bato's, unhurried. Even after years by Hakoda's side, his tender affections still manage to make Bato dizzy. Bato's entire world is narrowed to the places where he touches Hakoda, where they fit together.
A sharp hch-hm breaks whatever spell that Hakoda's kiss bestowed on Bato's sensibilities, and he disentangles from Hakoda feeling young and chastised and embarrassed. The elder waterbender from earlier that day is standing just outside the entrance of the healer's igloo, her frail arms crossed and an unimpressed but not unsympathetic expression on her wizened face.
"Kya is asleep." Healer Imona croaks. "She will rest easier if love shares her bed."
Imona's stooped frame bends lower as she bows her head, and leaves down the packed-snow path on the southside of the glacier hill while Bato and Hakoda sit still like ice sculptures, until the chill ushers them inside with the promise of comfort and warmth, and the moon bids them goodnight.
"You know," Hakoda whispers against the soft hairs on the back of Bato's neck. He can tell Bato's awake by his heartbeat. Bato is curled into the space by Kya's right shoulder—and he fits like a hand in a well-loved glove. Her breaths come even and deep, betraying a dreamless sleep. "Sometimes, I...I think we all have many different birthdays."
Bato can feel the caress of Hakoda's eyes even though the only light in their room filters in from behind an animal hide curtain on the other side of the wall.
"Because, you know, in our lives," Hakoda explains quietly, "in our lives, we're a bunch of different people. I'm not the same person I was ten years ago, you know?"
Bato thinks about Hakoda as a late teenager, and realizes a little sadly that even though the blanket of his memories is pulled tight over their heads, the face of an eighteen year-old Hakoda blurs in his mind—in and out of focus—like something half-remembered.
"I'm not even the same person I was seven years ago. Or three. And sometimes I wonder if...there was a day, or a moment. When I stopped being one and started being the other. I think those are like birthdays." Hakoda's words grow slurred near the end, and Bato knows that he's already almost gone, almost dreaming.
Bato considers that he can still see parts of himself—parts that he lost along the way, as if all of him is hidden somewhere deep beneath his own heart—reflected like stars in seasonal water puddles when he looks to Hakoda and to Kya.
Bato is surprised when Hakoda speaks again. He thought he'd fallen asleep.
"I want to have a family with you." Bato doesn't have to ask—he knows Hakoda means both of him and Kya. Bato feels the nonsensical urge to laugh, but not because anything is particularly funny, because he feels a pressure building in his chest. Like he's got starlight pouring out of him. Hakoda hums a little sleepily.
"Bato," He mumbles, "I think today is my birthday."
Bato lies sandwiched between the two most important people in his life, warm and safe and gloriously alive—intoxicated by the daydream of a family (a family!) to share his heart and life and love with. The War feels like it's a thousand miles away.
"Oh?" Bato's voice nearly cracks under the weight of all that he's feeling. But it's good. It's good.
"It must be," Hakoda says, and gently drops off into sleep. "It must be. I'm someone new."