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Their tale is so old it is new. It makes perfectly no sense and all the sense to start at their ending.
On the eve of the beginning of everything, she takes him somewhere special. A place that is breath-taking and distracting. This position in the middle of nothing is loud and quiet all at once. It is burning and dimming together. It is pushing and pulling at the seams of everything.
It is her greatest hope that she can imbed this exceptionality into his mind, before everything falls apart.
He looks to the stars around them. The emptiness of their surroundings is painted with beauty that he can never seem to grow tired of. The sharp points of light shine and shimmer like it is all they are made to do. Great clouds of gas burn the brightest colours in his vision and tempt him near. Large gatherings of rock float in their orbits, dainty despite their weight. The universe is dazzling while it is still so new.
Above their heads, far away, they see the fine line of Time that is everywhere. Stretching out from it, much later down the golden thread, are millions of branches of alternate realties. The branches are whips of more golden thread, pretty and delicate against the background of chaos that erupts not so far from here. If they watch closely enough they can see some of them break off as choices are made and fates are sealed. Time has not yet begun but destiny is being sealed.
He does not know their place in all of this. But he doesn’t think he cares much as along as he is with her.
In the darkness of the abyss, from the very start, he has found something that fills him with a sense of bliss that he could never explain. It is her, glowing with light that comforts him to the depths of his being. She is everything to him. All the power and brightness and darkness and sparks and crashes and warmth and chill would not be enough for him to give her up. He loves her with a kind of devotion not one living thing can ever imagine.
She pauses before heaving a breath, “It was decided today. The eras we would be thrust into the human world. I saw it, I was peering into Time.”
He looks to her finally, white lips pulling into a thin line, “And what did you see?”
She shakes her head, tears already brimming, “We’re too far apart. We never overlap. Not even once. Not for one night or one sunrise or one twilight. We are fated to be separate.”
“How is that possible?” his voice is angry and tough.
“You are bound there for a time much shorter than mine. My arrival comes right after you—” her breath catches before she continues, “You suffer your end in the human world, before I leave the spirit world.”
His lips fall back into a scowl, the blue in his face darkening impossibly, more than ever before.
“Then I will wait. I will go with you. In your time.”
She sighs, everything in her aching as she speaks, “It isn’t our choice.”
“I don’t care. I’ll fight every power that tries to stop me. I’ll follow you to the ends of the world, spirit or human. I’ll run at your side every sunset. I’ll swim with you through every river and ocean. I’ll fight the shadows that pull me away from your light for a thousand years, if it means I get to stay with you.”
“It won’t work. You won’t be able to join me. Our fates are sealed.”
He doesn’t believe her, simply because he doesn’t want to. How can nature separate them only when they’ve just started? How can he let her go when he has finally felt how it is to hold her? How can he give up so easily?
He won’t.
It isn’t fair. She is the defining feature of his existence. Nothing else could satiate the need he has for her love. Without her, there is no point to anything at all, even before it has begun. Everything is hideous if she is not there with him. No new colour that bursts into existence, magnificent and enchanting and more vibrant than the last, could ever compare to the beauty she holds. Everything is dreary if she can’t be by his side, dull and depressing like the world has not yet known. Her happiness is the only thing he strives for, the only thing that makes him feel whole. If she wanted, he would ravage everything that has yet to exist, just to see her smile. The slightest touch of her hand, her gentle voice, and her soothing presence is all that he could ever want. So he can’t— he can’t give any of it up.
He won’t give up.
He runs towards Time. She sighs as she trails behind him, running her fingertips across the bright glints of stars.
Once he stops, he squints. Short visions play in front of his eyes when he peers into the thin width of the threads.
A century passes as he searches, but neither of them notice. He turns to his beloved. He looks more dour than ever, pained and broken as the universe has granted him a fate that will eat him alive starting from the inside.
She hates to see him so hurt. She wants him to be happy, everything in her aches for it. He is the reason for her being. Always, when he beckons her to hold him, she feels like she could soar. He understands her like nothing in their short span of existence could. And it his love that makes her cry with joy, the tears make her realize no one else could make her feel this way. It is his touch that warms her and promises her an existence of happiness and passion. It is him who makes this endless abyss of matter seem full and closed and comforting— like a home, their home. She loves him with a passion so strong it could rival the violence in the birth of the cosmos.
So she will try. She will always try for him.
She pulls him away, to a cloud of blue and red that engulfs them in heat and cool. They rest in the comfortable contradictions.
“Let us find each other. In a different way. A permanent way,” she says.
“How?”
Slowly and carefully like the universe has never known since inception, her hand comes to his dark torso. She pushes a fist into his chest, with a force that matches the death of stars, until her whole hand dips into his skin. Past the saturation of his being, her delicate hand searches. He groans as she finds her mark. Then she grabs, and pulls. Every bit of him around her hand spits tufts of black substance in anger. But she is unyielding like the new universe is, and she prevails.
There in her hand flickers a flame that puts all the other lights in their vicinity to shame, the brightest of all lights in this reality. The fire burns with the fury of an exploding galaxy and shines like the first light that ever touched the emptiness around them. It is more beautiful to her than anything she has ever seen.
Her eyes look up to his, she nods and he moves to mimic the action she has just done.
It is more complicated for him, he doesn’t want to hurt her. When he pushes, it is with restrained force and it is gentle like expanding clouds of gas around them. She is shining silver and red that burns his hand when he searches inside her, but still, in the stinging sensations from her exterior that attack him, he is afraid that he will hurt her. He finds it then, and somehow a wave of relief passes over him. When he pulls he does it quick, he wants her pain to be over much faster. She chokes slightly, her free hand clutches at his but she does not stop him. Finally, she gives a weak smile.
When he brings his hand out he sees a glistening ball of water. It sloshes around on its own axis and the droplets that slip through his fingers are pulled back to the centre of the ball almost immediately. He smiles, it is sweet, cool and comforting just like her.
“We will bind our souls to human ones, just as Raava will soon. I saw it in the Time.”
“What will that do?”
She brings one hand forward, picking from the fire a much smaller bit of flame, barely the size of a finger. She drops it into the ball of water in his hands, it sizzles and hardens but never goes out. Finally when it settles to the centre of the sphere of liquid, it glistens orange like a gemstone. Its fiery extensions push the water as it continues to burn. She looks up to him again and nods.
With hesitant fingers he reaches into the water, it is surprisingly easy for him to pick one droplet. It squirms in his touch, sweltering in the heat from his dark hands. He reaches to her and drops it into the flame. It bounces against the arms of the fire, dancing around the top before it slowly dips in. No bit of it is evaporated, the drop continues to swirl until it stops at the root of the flame and takes its place. It shines like a pearl in the centre of the dark reds.
“Now we are bound.”
His eyebrows raise as he looks to her, in awe and confusion all at once.
“You have in your soul a part of me and I have in mine a part of you. We will tie our souls to human souls. Our essence will itch and tremble. Forever, our lost pieces will search for their whole and our wholes will beg to complete themselves. No matter how far we may be or what obstacles break our path, we will ache to find each other again. And we will. Every time the human souls are reincarnated to their next lives, we will find our way back to each other again. We will love each other for a thousand life times.”
He nods. His heart feels full.
And then Time begins.
All the trust they put into each other is not lost. Their plan works every time their souls are transferred.
Every time, they find their way to each other. Even over oceans that no one dare cross alone. Even through desserts that are endless with sweltering heat too excruciating to bare. Even through the most frigid winters at the poles of the earth. Even under and over a mountain that divides two clans.
Each life is difficult, but it is always possible.
But unequivocally the most extraordinary is the one that comes much later.
When one soul burns in the body of a banished prince to feel loved and the other overworks itself in a water bender to soothe a hundred hearts. It is then that the son of the sun and the daughter of the moon meet. And it is challenging like never before. Their spirit souls ache to find their final pieces but their human souls are angry, then confused, then hurt, then desperate. Agony almost swallows them alive and years apart do no good but to steer them closer together. Their path to each other in this life is twisting, turning, rounding and falling and it is all wrong and so confusing.
They give up, but that is the human souls that do. The spirit souls never relent, they are eager and persistent and determined. It is difficult, but for them it is never impossible.
And finally, after all the pain they could ever bear in their lifetime they find their path to each other in the next. And this time they do not walk away. The pieces are brought together and they thrive in proximity to their whole. They are alive again, more than ever before and the happiness that follows brings euphoria like no other.
The Painted Lady and the Blue Spirit share many lives together, but their souls agree that the most beautiful one of all is the one of Zuko and Katara.