Work Text:
In one universe, Baatar is sitting at the corner table of some cramped dive bar in Ba Sing Se with two of his friends. One of them returns from the bar with a drink in her hand and shouts over the music, “Your ex is working the bar.”
“Bullshit,” Baatar says and drinks his whiskey.
“I’m serious!”
“Why would Meili be working at a bar in Ba Sing Se?”
“Not Meili,” Chantin clarifies, flipping her hair behind her shoulder. Yangir raises an eyebrow curiously at his girlfriend. “Kuvira.”
The unexpected mention of Kuvira stops Baatar in his tracks, his drink halfway to his mouth. Baatar doesn’t even bother to correct Chantin by saying that Kuvira isn’t his ex. “What?”
Chantin gestures towards one of the bartenders with the hand that’s holding her Republic City Sunrise, and even though Baatar has notoriously shitty eyesight and he hasn’t seen Kuvira in three years, Baatar can tell that that’s definitely her in the black tank top behind the bar.
Three years ago, Kuvira had snuck into his room after an explosive fight with Suyin. Baatar hadn’t understood their argument at the time and suspected he never would. In the darkness of his bedroom, Kuvira had kissed him and told him she was sorry. She left without another word.
The following day, she was gone. When Baatar went to look for her, he found her apartment deserted with no trace of Kuvira anywhere. If it wasn’t for the aching loneliness Baatar felt in the center of his chest, the feeling that something was wrong, Baatar maybe could have believed that she had never been there at all.
Baatar knocks the rest of his drink back in one go. The whiskey burns sharply as it goes down. He’s going to need it. He can already feel his nerves creeping up and threatening to swallow him whole. “I’ll be right back,” Baatar takes his glass to the bar as his friends shout teasing comments after him.
If Kuvira is surprised to see him, she doesn’t show it. There’s the slightest hint of a smile on her face as she props her head up with her hand. It reminds him of when the two of them used to do their schoolwork together in Zaofu. It feels lifetimes ago now. “When I saw Chantin at the end of the bar, I figured you couldn’t be far behind.”
“Have I always been that predictable?”
“Something like that,” Kuvira says, and he doesn’t know whether it’s her or the alcohol, but Kuvira’s words cut straight through Baatar’s nerves, and it’s suddenly like no time has passed at all. “What were you drinking? I’ll make you another.”
Kuvira looks different now. A little older, like he probably did as well. She had cut the braid that once hung down to her waist, and now, her hair just barely brushed the top of her shoulders. The top part of it was braided across the crown of her head, almost like a headband. Baatar could see the hard lines of muscle on her arms, much more solid than they had been years ago in Zaofu.
But, Baatar supposes, he’s changed too. New glasses. New hair. Both of them unquestionably older but still with the same hint of familiarity.
Kuvira makes Baatar his drink, and Baatar spends the rest of the night sitting at the bar and talking to Kuvira as she makes drinks. Kuvira runs circles around the bar, moving back and forth with a level of careful, practiced ease that reminds Baatar of when he used to watch her dance.
He offers to leave Kuvira to her job if he’s distracting her. She says he’s not distracting him and tells him to stay if he wants to stay. Baatar does.
He never thought he’d see Kuvira again. But here she is, bartending in Ba Sing Se. The same bar he and his friends randomly stumbled into a few hours ago.
Baatar doesn’t believe in things like fate, but if he did, he’d probably think the universe had worked to ensure he and Kuvira would both end up right here, in this exact moment.
(The Thread cannot be cut by time or distance.)
Baatar glances over to see Chantin and Yangir passionately making out in the corner. If his friends had had any issues with Baatar leaving them to talk to Kuvira, they had seemingly already gotten over it.
Just before closing time, as the other bartender puts on some indie song about longing or something cliché like that, Kuvira reaches out and grabs his hand, pulling it on top of the counter she had just wiped down.
She pushes up his shirt sleeve and pops a permanent marker out of the jar behind the bar. “I know you’re working,” Kuvira says, scribbling what must be her new phone number on his arm. Baatar holds his breath, unable to focus, with Kuvira holding his arm in place with one hand while her other presses ink into his skin. “But you should text me while you’re still in the city. If you’re free.” She doesn’t say if you want to see me. She doesn’t have to say it for Baatar to know what she means. After all, Kuvira was the person Baatar had always known best, right until he didn’t know her at all.
Baatar wants to make some kind of witty comment, but his throat goes dry. Of course, he wants to see her. He wants to know everything that has happened in the past three years. He wants to know everything that happened before and after Zaofu and everything in between, and he wants to know about the night she left. But perhaps most importantly, Baatar doesn’t want to lose contact with Kuvira again. He'll listen to whatever she wanted to say as long as she's willing to say it to him.
Baatar has a thousand questions, and here he is, sitting at a bar in Ba Sing Se with the only person that can answer them, her phone number scrawled on his forearm in permanent marker.
He goes back to his friends, who tease him an appropriate amount over abandoning them to talk to (his ex-friend? ex something?) Kuvira the whole evening.
“I'll meet you guys outside,” Baatar tells them as they head to the door. "I have to say goodbye."
Kuvira looks up at his return as she wipes down a glass.
“It was really good to see you, Kuvira. I’m glad you’re…” Good seems like too ambitious a word when Baatar doesn’t know what she’s been doing for the past few years or how she ended up working at a dive bar in Ba Sing Se. “…okay. I missed you.”
She smiles unconsciously for a moment before she realizes and looks away. “It was good to see you, too, Baatar.” She gestures to his arm with the glass. “I was serious about you texting me.”
It’s as close to an I missed you as Kuvira gets, and it makes him ache.
Baatar rejoins his friends, and Chantin immediately starts hounding Baatar for details. The three of them barely make it out of the building before Baatar finally relents and pushes up his sleeve to show them the phone number written on his forearm.
Chantin screams as Yangir punches him in the arm. “What the fuck are you doing, Baatar?!” Chantin yells. “Get your phone out! Text her now!”
The two of them calm down eventually, even as Baatar’s heart threatens to beat out of his chest. He waits until his friends are a few steps ahead of him, Chantin and Yangir holding hands peacefully under the night sky.
Baatar stares after them for a second and pulls out his phone.
He copies the number that he’s already committed to memory into his messages and starts typing.
Baatar at 2:14 AM
It’s Baatar
Want to get breakfast? I’m free tomorrow morning if you are.
He’s lying on the pull-out bed of their tiny weekend rental apartment half an hour later when his phone vibrates.
Kuvira at 2:49 AM
I’d love to.
Where in Ba Sing Se are you staying?