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Every child in the Earth Kingdom knows the story of the Red Thread of Fate.
The legend says that the ancient gods would tie the invisible Red Thread between those destined to find each other in life. Those tied together by the Thread will have an important story, regardless of time, place, or circumstance.
One of the eastern Earth Kingdom variations tells of an old man who lived on the moon and came out every night to reunite people on Earth who have something, anything, to learn from each other. When the old man found those people, he would tie a red thread between the two of them so that they would be able to find their way back to each other time and time again.
The Thread traces the thin vein that begins in the heart and ends at the tip of one’s smallest finger. It serves as an invisible tether from heart to hand, only to end once it reaches another’s heart.
The Thread may tangle, contract or stretch, as happens naturally throughout human relationships, but it can never, ever break.
Kuvira and Baatar are both far too pragmatic to believe in such things.
In this lifetime, in their universe, they are children when they meet.
Baatar is nine and hiding timidly behind his father, with glasses too big for his face and a certain kind of hesitancy he won’t grow out of for another decade. Kuvira is a girl with dirty ink-black hair dressed in too many layers with a hole in her tunic large enough for Baatar to stick his hand through.
Baatar and Kuvira grow up together until they don’t. They build blanket forts and tell stories with flashlights pressed against their faces. They paint glow-in-the-dark stars on their ceilings, rope the rest of Baatar’s siblings into the world’s most relentless game of tag, and fall tangled together into the grass of the estate, shrieking with laughter.
The Thread stretches.
They’re teenagers. Baatar spends more time with his dad, and Kuvira spends more time with his mom, and Baatar and Kuvira drift apart.
They fall apart and fall back together, and it’s like no time has passed at all.
They’re barely adults, and they get lunch together on the days where Kuvira’s shift finishes just after noon and Baatar doesn’t start work until later. Most days, it’s easy for Baatar to push down the feelings that have been rising in his chest since he was sixteen because Kuvira is his best friend, and that is all she’ll ever be.
Harmonic Convergence happens, and the world changes overnight.
Opal becomes an Airbender, and Opal leaves. It grates at Baatar more than he expects. Baatar knows his family sees it. He knows that Kuvira sees it, too. For all that Kuvira claims she’s too busy for things like feelings, she starts inviting him out more and more, keeps him out of the house and away from the excitement of Opal the Airbender. It is a welcome reprieve. Eventually, Baatar is at her apartment every day. He drinks baijiu with Kuvira’s roommates, and they wait until she is out of the room to start heckling Baatar about when the fuck he’s going to make a move, and all he can do is blush furiously and stumble his way through another we’re just friends, even as he believes his own words less each day.
The Red Lotus happens, and the world changes overnight again.
The Thread pulls them impossibly closer.
Being with Kuvira is different, better than anything he’s ever experienced. Like he woke up one day, and the world had exploded in front of him in a blinding flash of color.
They’re a few blocks away from her apartment when she says I’m going to Ba Sing Se. Come with me.
(He says, of course, I’ll come because he’s tired of living in other people’s shadows, because Opal is gone, and if Kuvira’s leaving, too, there’s nothing that can make him stay.)
Baatar isn’t prepared for the sheer devastation that permeates every corner of Ba Sing Se’s poorest neighborhoods. The morgue overflows with bodies. Children cough up their lungs in nasty bouts of tuberculosis and cry over dead and missing parents and siblings.
He hardly sees Kuvira, who spends their first weeks arguing with Ba Sing Se’s ineffective generals that refuse to take her seriously. Too young, too inexperienced, they say.
The generals get two of her metalbenders killed, and Kuvira stops arguing for a place at the table and starts demanding.
(That night, she tells him about her life before Zaofu for the first time. They lean against the side of a broken tank, pressed together from shoulder to knee. Kuvira stares straight ahead and speaks with no emotion as she goes through the trauma of the first eight years of her life, and a thousand pieces in Baatar’s mind move violently into place.)
(Baatar feels so endlessly grateful that Kuvira told him. That she felt safe enough to tell him. It doesn’t stop Baatar from throwing up behind his tent when he wakes up thinking about it later.)
Baatar wires generators until the thick, hard calluses on his hands bleed. After he upgrades the city’s electric grid and ensures all of Ba Sing Se has consistent, running electricity, he teams up with Varrick to implement new water well technology. He borrows a handful of metalbenders, and soon, the notoriously brown tap water in Ba Sing Se runs clear.
Kuvira tells the generals that she will not resurrect the great rings of Ba Sing Se. Baatar knows that if the generals call on her to raise the walls anyway, she will do it without question. It is a test.
The generals do not fight her, and the great interior walls of Ba Sing Se are no more. Kuvira has the last of the rubble cleared the next day.
Kuvira becomes Interim President of the Earth Kingdom. They go from sweating in the Si Wong Desert to freezing in the northernmost corners of the continent, where the towns have no electricity, but the glow of the Northern Spirit Portal illuminates the streets brighter than any lantern ever could.
They lose a lot of people on their campaign. People who had followed them blindly into the inferno and back out again only to die in explosions or be crushed by boulders. Their people. Baatar’s childhood best friend. Both of Kuvira’s roommates from Zaofu, the closest thing she had had to a family. People, good people, who had joined and followed them blindly because they had asked.
Blind faith has consequences. Baatar learns that lesson, too, eventually.
When the spinning wheel breaks free from its frame, when everything spirals too far out of control, Kuvira raises the weapon he built her and aims.
She fires, and their future goes up with the flames of the warehouse.
As Baatar’s vision is overwhelmed by the fluorescent purple glow of his own creation, he wonders if he ever really knew Kuvira at all.
The friction intensifies until it is finally too much.
The Thread burns.
There’s another universe, slightly to the left of theirs, where Kuvira is still a girl and Baatar is still a boy, and everything is different except for when it’s not because the Thread still pulls them together.
In this universe, Kuvira still has an emotional outburst when she’s too young, too wild to control her Earthbending, and brings down the entire southern side of her parents’ tiny house by the sea on top of all three of them.
Kuvira screams as she bends the ruins of the house apart, crying desperately because she is eight and a child, and Kuvira didn’t mean to, but she knows with every fiber of her being that they will never, ever forgive her for this.
(She hopes she’s wrong, that her parents will get up and say it’s okay, accidents happen.)
(She doesn’t know yet that when it comes to her parents, she is rarely wrong.)
Her father slaps her across the face as they wait for the healers to arrive. Her mother will be okay, and that is enough for now.
(When the healer asks Kuvira what happens to her face, she silently points to the pile of ruins that was once her parents’ living room. The healer doesn’t ask any other questions.)
In this universe, Kuvira and her parents move to one of the poorer parts of Zaofu six months after the incident to escape it. Kuvira knows the Beifongs fleetingly because one is a year above her and another is a year below her, and she’s not stupid. But she doesn’t need to know them yet, so she doesn’t.
Even though Kuvira’s parents see her as an unwanted financial drain, even though Kuvira has forged their signatures on every form since she was eight, watching their marriage split in Zaofu still breaks her. She knows, as instinctively as she can hear the metals of the world sing to her, that it is her fault. It was Kuvira or their marriage. They couldn’t keep both.
(Was Kuvira even theirs?)
Kuvira’s mother hasn’t been able to look at her in the years since the incident. Her father yells at them both. Kuvira wants to scream but doesn’t dare.
Kuvira works harder until she is finally one of the best metalbenders in a city made of metal, and her parents still don’t care.
(She knows she’ll be the best one day. All she has to do is keep working. She’ll show them. She’ll show everyone.)
She starts spending as much time as possible out of the apartment. She hones her metalbending further, joins a dance team, gets a job, does anything to get out.
She befriends Huan Beifong at some point along the way. The two of them sit together in the empty art room at the end of the hall by themselves because neither of them has anyone else to sit with at lunch.
They speak on some days and don’t on others. On the days they don’t talk, Kuvira reads books about people that are anywhere but there, and Huan sketches in charcoal until Huan’s hands are covered in the smooth black powder.
“I don’t think I’m a boy,” Huan says one day, peeling a mandarin carefully. Kuvira looks up from her book. Huan slides half of the mandarin over to Kuvira because Huan knows her work schedule and knows she never has lunch money the week before getting paid. “But I know I’m not a girl.”
Kuvira shrugs, pulling the pith off the mandarin. “Why do you have to be either? You can always just,” She separates the citrus further, frowning a little a piece stings a cut on her thumb. “Be Huan. Did someone say something?”
“Huan!” A voice calls as the door to the art room bangs against the wall. A harried-looking boy with dark hair stands in the doorway, oblivious to the important conversation he just interrupted. He pushes his glasses up the bridge of his nose. “I need to tell you– oh, sorry,” He notices Kuvira for the first time. “I didn’t, uh-“
Huan rolls his eyes before he shoots Kuvira a knowing look. We’ll finish this later. “It’s fine, Junior. Come sit.”
The boy sits down on the stool next to Huan. Huan hands him a piece of the fruit.
“I, uh, don’t think we’ve met.” The boy starts lamely, sticking his hand out. “I’m Baatar.”
“I know.” Kuvira wipes her hand off on her napkin and prays it isn’t sticky from the fruit. “I’m Kuvira.”
“Kuvira,” Baatar repeats, softer this time. Huan gives their brother a curious look. Kuvira doesn’t pay it any mind. “It’s nice to meet you.”
The Thread contracts.
In yet another universe, in what is objectively a happier timeline, Baatar and Kuvira are about to meet. The Thread pulls them together at Huan’s wedding, where Huan is, incidentally, marrying Kuvira’s friend Jiayi.
They don’t know each other yet. Baatar sees Huan’s new husband at the bar chatting with a woman in a backless green dress, and Baatar thinks fuck it, finishes his whiskey, and turns to Huan and asks, “Who’s that talking to Jiayi?”
Huan looks at the bar. “Her name is Kuvira. She and Jiayi lived in the same foster house for a time. Ex-military. She currently owns a gym in Ba Sing Se, and she is in business school.” Huan takes a contemplative sip of his wine. “You two would get along very well. She’s a year younger than you. Very single.”
Baatar sputters. “I wasn’t-“
“You were.” Huan grips Baatar’s forearm and propels them toward the bar. ”Kuvira!”
The woman – Kuvira, Huan had said – turns her gaze to them.
“Kuvira, I wanted you to meet my older brother, Baatar Junior,” Huan says. “He completed his Master’s degree in engineering from Ba Sing Se University. He also recently took up working out. You two have many similarities you should confer on.” Huan turns to his husband. “Jiayi, let’s go find your acquaintance with the bird. I’m sure we’ll converse with Kuvira and Baatar later.”
Huan grabs his husband’s hand and pulls him away much more delicately than when Huan had dragged Baatar across the room a minute earlier.
“Uh,” Baatar says, pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose. What does he say to her? “I’m sorry about that.”
“It’s alright,” Kuvira takes another sip from her drink. “So. You’re an engineer?”
Baatar nods, nervously wondering what he’s supposed to be doing with his hands right now. “I do a lot of work in, uh, civil engineering. I worked on the monorail project in Zaofu. Been consulting more recently with a company in Republic City on a new project that would enable the entire city to run on renewable energy.” He grabs a drink, downing half of it in one go. “You own a gym?”
“Yes.” The song changes, and Kuvira’s expression lights up. Or maybe Baatar imagines it, and it’s just the alcohol coursing through his system. “Do you want to dance?”
“Uh-yes?” His brain catches up with his mouth. “I mean, I’m not very good, but-“
“Don’t worry. I’m good enough for both of us.” Kuvira down the rest of her drink before putting it back on the bar. She takes his hand in hers and pulls him towards a corner of the dance floor.
The Thread tugs gently as Kuvira slips an arm around his neck and another around his back, leaving no space between them.
Baatar doesn’t mind.
Somewhere, there is a universe where the worst has already happened, where the monsters have taken control, and everyone else they’ve ever loved is gone.
In this universe, Kuvira and Baatar sleep in until the sun is well past the horizon.
There is nothing familiar in this world. There is no bending to practice or strategies to discuss. There is chaos, and there is the phantom pain of everyone they’ve lost and the small pockets of people trying to put something, anything, back together.
(It doesn’t matter. The monsters will still find them, still rip them apart in every possible way until there is no one left. The rivers will still flow, and the world will still spin, and eventually, it will be like they were never there at all.)
Kuvira sleeps soundly with her head pressed against his sternum, and her arm slung across his body. She always slept too little seemingly ever to rest, far too paranoid about keeping watch over what lurked just beyond the shadows. But Kuvira had spent much of the last week sick with a fever. The residual worry means that Baatar is content to lie precariously still until she wakes on her own.
(For a devastating, harrowing few hours just before the fever broke, when Kuvira was hallucinating and asking for people that hadn’t been there in years, Baatar was sure he was going to lose her. And then what? He and Kuvira were all each other had left. Baatar couldn’t consider a life without her.)
He runs a hand through her sweat-damp hair in the disgusting humidity of the swamp. Kuvira sighs in her sleep in the place closest to his heart.
There is nothing familiar in this world except for each other.
The Thread rests. There is no rush. They are precisely where they are supposed to be.
In one universe, where Kuvira and Baatar have completed their mission, they are both out of time.
They have minutes. If that.
Kuvira fell badly on her leg earlier, and she pushes through the screaming pain in her calf as she stumbles over to Baatar.
He catches her immediately. She can feel the blood from the wound in his side seeping into the fabric of her jacket. Kuvira wraps her arm under his and drags him to the beach.
Kuvira and Baatar stare up at the clear blue sky. It won’t be blue for much longer. They watch countless ships make the jump to hyperspace that will carry them further and further away from the nuclear blast that will wipe out the surface of this planet.
She watches Baatar realize the Empire isn’t coming back for them. The calm, quiet resignation that they are both about to die.
It doesn’t matter. They knew the risks. They did everything they had to do. Their mission is complete.
They sink into the coarse sand of this foreign planet’s surface a foot from the water’s edge. The sand is damp beneath their knees. They will not stand again in this lifetime.
“Do you think anyone’s listening?” Baatar asks, turning to Kuvira.
A thousand confessions stick in her throat. I wish I could have known you longer. I think I could have loved you.
Kuvira swallows, pushes down the waves of feelings demanding to make themselves known, and nods. “Someone has to be.”
The sky is overrun with the white glow of the nuclear explosion sprinting ever closer towards them.
Seconds, now.
Kuvira takes Baatar’s hand tightly in hers, and the invisible Thread glows. A tether from heart to hand and back again.
Kuvira, selfishly, doesn’t want the explosion to be the last thing she sees. She tugs on their hands, and her arms wrap tightly around Baatar’s shoulders until they are pressed together, his arm around her back as the other strokes the base of her neck.
I’ll find you faster in the next life.
They did not have the privilege of living together for long. The best this universe could grant them was the freedom of dying together.
The Thread had reached its end.
The blinding light consumes them both.
In some universes – the ones even more unlucky than theirs – the thread frays. The tapestry falls apart until it is only a pile of loose fibers.
Maybe this action was the old man on the moon trying to save them both.
In one universe, seconds or lightyears away, Kuvira and Baatar lie in purple grass as twin moons rise higher in the amber sky above them.
Their arms are loosely tangled, with their hands clasped together. Baatar strokes the back of her hand absentmindedly as they watch the clouds pass overhead.
“Do you remember that story from when we were younger? About the Red Thread of Fate?” He asks suddenly.
“The String of Soulmates,” She hums, propping herself up on his chest. “Two people destined to have an important story together. The Red String may tangle, contract, or stretch but never break. And something about a man on the moon that wove them all together.” She considers it for a moment. “I don’t believe it. Do you?”
Baatar shrugs. “I don’t know. Some of the Air Nomads believed that we lived in an oscillating universe that expands outward from a single point, only to collapse again. Infinite universes in infinite combinations. So if the Thread of Fate doesn’t exist in this universe, there must be one where it does. Or maybe it exists across multiple variations of the known universe.”
Baatar runs a hand absentmindedly along Kuvira’s shoulder. “The theory doesn’t work, of course. The idea of multiple universes is inherently a paradox. If the universe exists in infinite combinations, then by definition, there must be a reality where the universe is finite. But it means that there’s at least one world where the threads exist. Or several, moving among the universes.”
“Invisible strings, tying people together across space and time,” Kuvira says. “I still don’t think I believe it. But it’s a nice idea.”
“You want to know something I used to believe in?”
“Of course.”
“When I was younger, I used to think the entire planet had a glass case over it. Like the domes in Zaofu, only bigger.”
Kuvira leans in, so their faces are only inches apart. She scrunches her nose at him. “That makes no sense.”
“I know,” Baatar reaches out to push a lock of hair out of her face. “I still thought it was true, though.”
“Do you want to know a secret?” Kuvira whispers conspiratorially.
“Of course.”
Kuvira strokes his cheek with her thumb. “I love you.”
“That’s not a secret,” Baatar says even as his heart beats dangerously fast in his chest. Kuvira says it first so rarely that it takes all of their air from his lungs every time she does. Kuvira’s smile widens, and he knows she sees right through him. She always does. “But for the record, I love you too,” he says, pulling her down to kiss him.
In a fair number of universes, they grow old together. They have and adopt children in Ba Sing Se or a coastal town on the Eastern Sea or other farther, distant places. They watch their children grow up and have children of their own, and their tiny peals of laughter fill the crevices of their home.
The kids groan at their embarrassing parents and comment on how maddeningly in love they are even as decades fly past them like the wind in the old Airbender stories Aunt Opal used to tell them.
In these universes, they have a cat or maybe a garden, and they sit outside under the sun’s fading light and drink wine in splintering rocking chairs on their front porch until the world goes dark around them. They dance slowly around their kitchen on their wedding anniversary, the house quiet except for the music playing softly over the radio and the dim glow from the incandescent lights. They wrap their arms around each other, and Baatar leans down to kiss her.
In these universes, in these moments, where the Thread gives and lets them keep each other, everything is perfect.
But those universes are not this one. In this one, they are not so lucky.
In this universe, a mecha-giant aims at a warehouse during the annexation of the United Republic, and the world around them erupts in flames.
In this universe, the Thread snaps.