Chapter Text
Unlike the frail non-polar people, Yue does not get colds. In the winter months in Caldera City, when the temperature drops to something everyone else considers chilly and Yue considers finally bearable, Yue is often found tending to the various residents of the Fire Palace who fall ill. Her inklings of waterbender healing ability are stretched to their limit, and her famous Northern Water Tribe-Earth Kingdom soup fusion recipe, with a sprinkling of Fire Nation spice, is made in barrel batches.
Zuko ends up being the first this season, but then again, he usually is. He has a terrible constitution at the best of times, being constantly stressed, and has the least tolerance to cold to boot. Azula, Mai, and Ty Lee are the next to go, and Suki is taken down with the rest of the Kyoshi warriors.
Suki always gets hit so hard. After clearing Zuko for doing bending exercises again but telling him in no uncertain terms he is to take it easy, Yue goes back to Suki's apartment with a bag of groceries on her arm.
She knocks on the wooden door, and Suki's voice, muffled in several ways, says, "Who's there?"
"Me," Yue says.
"Come in!"
Yue does so, toeing off her shoes while still clutching too many groceries in her hands.
"What's that?"
"I'm making dinner," Yue says, as if it's normal to bring a bunch of raw ingredients to your friend's house to make dinner. Sokka, naturally, had seen her at the market and immediately pointed out it was slightly beyond friendship; Yue had stubbornly maintained that she and Suki just had a particularly close kind of friendship. And if Yue wanted more, well. That wasn't Sokka's business anyway.
Suki responds only with loud nose-blowing, so Yue begins the recipe and decides to go heavy on the garlic-pepper to clear the sinuses. Suki does her best to help while Yue cooks, insisting that she should properly host, but Yue only reminds her of all the assassination attempts Suki's warded her from as Yue takes her biannual solstice visit to the North and says that, really, Suki's done more than enough for an entire lifetime.
"Yeah, and who convinced the North to stand with the Avatar against the Fire—" Suki starts, before breaking into sneezes. Yue laughs and pushes her away from the kitchen.
Yue isn't actually one to downplay her own achievements, so she brings the bowl to Suki, who's sitting at the table, and says, "My finest creation yet."
"You're a blessing from the spirits," Suki says, and digs in.
Over their meal, they talk about anything that comes to mind. Winter tends to be the time of year everyone gathers in the Caldera, as it's the most hospitable season. Suki spends summers on Kyoshi, Yue travels between the Water Tribes with Sokka and Katara, and Toph, when not spending a month teaching, is all but nomadic and as a result spends the most time with Aang. Zuko is often stuck in the Fire Nation, being the only one of the group with an active leadership role, but Iroh can still step in for weeks at a time so Zuko can visit other nations. For diplomacy, technically, but also the last time he followed Sokka to the South, the only thing on the itinerary had been penguin-sledding and everything else was incidental.
Suki does her best to recount her recent Kyoshi Warriors exploits, as usual, but has to keep breaking off to cough, and Yue winces in sympathy every time. After a latest coughing fit complete with soup-spilling, Yue leans over the table to pat Suki dry with a cloth and Suki smiles back. "Sorry. You know how I get."
"You know you can take your time," Yue says. "I'm always listening to you. No matter what."
"I know," Suki says.
Yue cleans up the meal with Suki, and then forces her back in bed to rest. "I'll be back tomorrow."
"I'll probably be better tomorrow. This cold is on its last leg."
"I hope so."
…
Yue returns the next day, and the next. By the third, Suki barely has a sniffle, and has stopped calling out sick from any of her duties—
But they both freeze in surprise when Yue begins to cough.
"You don't get sick!" Suki exclaims.
"I know," Yue wheezes. She's been taking care of the entire group every winter for four years, and never once has she so much as sneezed. Now, though, she's doubled over with a horrible cough, feeling a tickling on the inside of her throat.
She doesn't get the tickling to go away completely, but she does manage to stop coughing.
"It's probably nothing," she says, not really believing it.
"No, you got a cold! I'll tell everyone," Suki teases. "And then I'll come to your room and make you soup and take care of you."
Yue's face burns. But Suki doesn't notice, because Yue catches another coughing fit and Suki is too busy rubbing her back and looking around for a glass and water.
"Here," Suki says, handing Yue the glass, and all Yue can do is smile and take small sips under Suki's watchful eye.
Weirdly, though, it doesn't seem to be a normal cold. The cough gets steadily worse, and it feels like there's fluid in Yue's lungs that she's expelling with every cough, but there are no other symptoms. Yue begins to physically tire of the coughing; her ribs ache and her throat feels like it's being torn apart.
And it's been over a week.
It's no longer so funny to either of them. Suki suggests it might be pneumonia, but Yue isn't running a fever. The idea that it's an unknown disease is definitely worse. Katara, tens of times stronger a bender than Yue, does her best with water-healing, but water-healing is good at wounds and burns and less good at curing mystery lung problems.
Suki all but moves into Yue's house. Still focused on her work, Yue doesn't have much energy left to cook and clean. Reluctant to leave her alone when Yue's coughing fits are most intense in the evenings, Suki started sleeping over on day four.
And on day eight, the first flower petal falls from Yue's lips.
It seems like such an innocent little thing, but Yue instantly recalls the feeling of forcing it through her trachea. It had been there, in her lungs. It had been starving her of a petal-sized amount of air.
It happens when Suki's in the other room, and for a panicked moment, reminiscent of her time being the demure and unproblematic Chief's Daughter, Yue considers tossing the thing, pretending to Suki nothing's gone wrong, and pretending this is a normal cough. But instead, she leaves it there, which is really all she has to do. Suki reenters the room.
"What's that?"
"It looks like it's from a poppy-hydrangea," Yue says. The distinctive thin, papery, green petals form the outer layers of the flower.
Suki picks it up and turns it over in her hands. "Those only bloom in the Earth Kingdom."
"I know. I coughed it up."
"You did?" Suki shakes her head. "Must have breathed it in last time we were there."
Yue hadn't considered that. She smiles, and nods. "That must be it."
With a hand suddenly cupping Yue's cheek, Suki says, "I'm glad you're okay."
"Thank you," Yue says. "You didn't have to take care of me all this time, you know."
"Of course I did."
"Zuko would have sent palace servants."
Suki rolls her eyes. "Of course I did," she repeats, vehemently. "What else are friends for?"
Yue nods.
But at the word 'friends', her chest constricts.
The next morning, Suki and Yue begin walking to the palace. It's sunny, as usual, and though the season isn't quite turning over to spring, it does seem to hint at it a little.
"More training today?" Yue asks.
"No, I'm on guard duty today," Suki says. "No entertainment for you."
"I should get work done, anyway," Yue says. "I've put off a few too many meetings because of the cough."
Suki nods. Yue catches her eyes darting to where Yue's ribs are still tender. "I'm glad you're better."
"Are you going to move back out?" Yue asks without thinking— and then feels like an icicle just stabbed through her. She'd implied Suki had moved in.
But Suki lets it go. "I shouldn't keep taking up your space while you don't need me."
But I always need you, Yue thinks.
And then she coughs.
At first mad at herself for inventing some excuse to get Suki to stay, she tries to suppress the cough. In moments, though, it becomes clear that this isn't some phantom thing. Yue begins to hack, abandoning her dignity entirely to curl up around her sore abdomen, until the fit subsides.
"Yue," Suki says. Her hand is rubbing soft circles on Yue's back. "Not gone after all, huh?"
Yue shakes her head, and then wraps her arms around Suki's legs and squishes her face against the side of Suki's thigh, wishing for a respite from the dual sensations of the throat-scratch and the stomach-hurt. Neither retreat further than a dull yet noticeable ache. After a moment of indulgence, Yue stands.
"Well..." Suki says. "Do you want to keep going?"
Yue only nods. They keep walking, and Suki has to split off to her guard duty and Yue goes to the rooms designated for visiting foreign ambassadors and tries to think about her work. Step one, writing a letter. She's still sick and perhaps contagious, and she will be performing all correspondence over written word.
Yue coughs up the second and third flower petals inside the little office.
Despite how difficult it is for her to force them up, they emerge unmarred, a pale green at odds with their violence. Yue pushes them around her desk with a finger. The first petal had been unceremoniously discarded by Suki, but these petals, Yue hesitates over throwing away. They're clues now.
Someone stomps towards the office, and— it's Sokka, because he calls out, "That cough sounds bad! Have you gone to see—"
He rounds the corner, and finishes the sentence at the same time he sees her: "Yue?"
"Why do you send everyone to me?" Yue asks, grinning through her growing exhaustion.
"Cuz you're a healer," Sokka says. "And Katara has a much worse bedside manner, but don't tell her I said that."
"I'm not much of a healer," Yue says. She's among the weakest of the North.
"Shut up," Sokka says. "What's wrong? I haven't seen you all week."
"I've had this cough all week," Yue says. "It's weird."
She hesitates. Pokes the flower petals again, wondering whether to bring them up.
"Hey, those don't grow here," Sokka says.
"I coughed them up," Yue admits.
"Huh?!"
"I coughed—"
Yue doesn't have to explain further; another coughing fit adds another poppy-hydrangea petal to her pile.
"Huh," Sokka says, in a much more considering way this time, then, "Can I touch them?" and just as quickly, "actually, I'm not sure I want to touch them if they have your spit on them."
Yue holds back a we've kissed before! protest and pushes them silently toward Sokka.
"They're real flower petals," he says in wonder, poking them.
"They're poppy-hydrangeas," Yue says. "They grow around the Earth Kingdom. I saw them on Kyoshi Island."
"This doesn't look good, you know," Sokka says, and squats next to her to manhandle her face. He puts a hand on her forehead— "No fever—" and tilts her head up to look at her neck and throat. "It doesn't look swollen or anything."
"How much do you know about coughs?" Yue asks.
"Barely anything," he says with a shrug. "But I do know that you can't have Earth flower petals in your lungs when you're in Caldera City for the winter. If you ask me, this stinks of Spirits."
That sets off another coughing fit for Yue. Sokka rubs her shoulders as she tries to force the flower petal out her throat. After far too long, she does— only this time, it's red-orange. From the center of the flower.
The petals, when arranged on her desk, remind Yue of why she liked the flower so much. Red-orange, for Suki's hair, and green, for the clothes she often wears. Yue had seen one on Kyoshi Island, picked it up and gifted it to Suki, but been too afraid of revealing her feelings to admit why she'd picked it up.
"You need to figure this out," Sokka says. "Library trip?"
"You suggest that for everything."
"And you have a better solution?"
Yue does not. She does, however, insist on finishing the work day. Sokka can come talk to her again at her house. She waves him out of her office and settles into her work, collecting the petals in a small jar she finds in her desk drawer.
...
Their initial trip to the palace library yields no results, so the next step is to determine what other clues they have.
"Spirits," Suki muses. "What have we done lately?"
Yue shrugs. "The solstice?"
"That went well, though."
Sokka drums his fingers against Yue's table. "You gotta figure this out, though. If you cough yourself to death on spirit-flowers..."
"What do you suggest, then?" Suki asks, as she putters around the kitchen, cooking for herself and Yue.
"I hear spirits, and I hear learning. You know what that means?"
"No," Yue says, honestly.
"Wan Shi Tong! The spirit library! Huh?"
At their blank looks, Sokka presses forward. "I must have told you how we found it in the desert, and we went to look for eclipses... Right?"
Suki and Yue continue to shake their heads.
"Oh. Well, you can't really get there by normal means anymore, but you'd probably be able to visit the Spirit World at the Oasis. Or— Yue would, she's connected enough to the spirits."
"Sokka, you'll come along, right?" Suki asks.
"Yeah, of course. I'm the only one who knows the way," Sokka boasts.
"We're leaving tomorrow, then," Suki says. "Yue's cough has only been getting worse, so we should act like we don't have any time at all."
Yue considers protesting. Packing takes so long, and it's energy she doesn't have. Despite her earlier conviction about her work, she wants more and more to call out sick with every cough, and was considering doing so tomorrow regardless. But Suki looks down and says, "Don't worry. I know what you need packed. I'll do it."
Yue wants to argue she'll do her share, but she really is getting tired. The petals are beginning to reduce her lung capacity, she thinks, and then tries not to think about it much more. So she smiles at Suki and says, "Thank you."
...
They leave for the North after telling Zuko directly. In lieu of Aang's existence within a reasonable travel distance, Zuko threatens to send Katara with them, but Sokka convinces him that the three of them will be fine on their own. They do have a bender, technically. Even so, Yue suspects that the letter Zuko begins to pen as they leave will be marked, "To the Avatar."
As they lift off in an air balloon, Suki guides Yue to lay down and put her head in Suki's lap. "Does this help?" she asks, rubbing Yue's back in firm circles.
Weirdly enough, it seems to. Yue still coughs up a couple flowers on the journey, but the petals are small and soft. That's both comforting and not; there's a clear progression from the outside to the inside of the flower, and Yue is scared to imagine what happens next.
The trip is long, as it always is. The stopover inns are as familiar as their travel bags. Sokka gets work done when he can, scribbling in a grid-lined notebook, but all Suki can do are daily workouts, and Yue can do even less.
She tries to think of it as a vacation. She has no responsibility. Even Sokka is taking it easy from work. But Suki's constant flitting over her is making it hard to forget their purpose.
There's a hot spring at nearly their halfway point and Yue puts her foot down and insists on stopping by. Suki takes one look at her face and says, slowly, "Well, maybe the steam will be good for your throat."
"It will," Yue says.
They didn't pack for leisure, which means no swimsuits, so Yue strips to her undergarments and races for the spring before anyone can stop her. Suki is quick to follow. Yue slips into the spring gracefully, but Suki's cannonball soaks her.
"Hey!"
Suki only laughs as she emerges, shaking out her hair. Yue flops over to float on her back. "Isn't it nice to take a break from travelling? We usually go so much slower."
"I guess it's nice to get a break," Suki admits. Sokka has finally wandered over, still clutching his notebook, and Suki looks up at him. "Are you getting in?"
"I'll put my legs in," Sokka offers, and does just that. "You two have fun."
While Suki is looking Sokka's way, Yue swims over until she's just behind Suki. In one motion, she hooks Suki's legs with her own, and shoves Suki's head under the water. Suki sputters to the surface. "Yue!"
Yue is already on the other side of the spring. Sokka is watching this go down in delight. Suki sprints after Yue. Unfortunately, Suki is the stronger swimmer; her retaliation is swift and unmerciful, and Yue comes up near-drowning in her own hair. Before she realizes her hair is sticking to her face, an ill-timed breath makes her cough.
Her hair is shoved from her face, Suki's gentle hands breaking through and her worried face all Yue can see. "Are you okay? I'm sorry!"
"I deserved it," Yue says with a grin, recovering from the hair-trap. "One moment."
She ducks under again, straightens up her hair, and re-emerges. "There."
"No flower petals?"
"It was just the hair."
Suki reaches around Yue and pulls her hair into a ponytail, then motions to Sokka. "Throw a hair tie!"
"You won't catch it," he retorts, and walks around the rim of the pool to bring it to her. Yue waits immobile as Suki fixes her hair, memorizing the feeling of Suki's arms brushing her cheeks, and tries and fails not to blush. Maybe she can blame it on the water's heat.
Suki finishes the tie, and gives Yue's ponytail a tug.
Yue and Suki swim around, then lounge for a while as Sokka shows them his doodles of various things around the springs, kept in the same grid-lined notebook he’s used this whole trip. His crosshatching is improving by the day. Suki leans on Yue and invents spiritual origin stories for funny-shaped rocks. Yue coughs up only a single petal, but puts her face near the surface of the water and breathes in the steam, and it really does feel better.
Sokka is looking for more things to draw, having run out of interesting plants, so Yue looks up from where Suki's all but napping on her shoulder and says, "Do you do portraits? I want to remember this forever."
"Of course," Sokka says with a knowing smile, and draws them together in the water. He captions it with Yue's exact phrasing. "I'll hold onto this for you."
"Thanks," Yue says, and nearly falls asleep herself.
Yue finally steps out of the water and runs to get a towel for Suki. As she leaves the water, for some reason, it hits her that the memories— the memory— of Suki's head on her shoulder, slowly drifting to sleep, of the warm steam and the nearby rocks and the soft birdcalls, is already tarnished by time. She surely doesn't remember every detail, and hadn't even tried that hard to commit the image to memory.
So she does now. She dredges up every bit of remembered sense and sensation and drags it to the forefront of her mind, scanning it, archiving it and sorting and filing it. Suki's head on her shoulder and Suki's eyelids fluttering closed. The roughness of the rock seats on Yue's thighs, and the gentle underwater eddies. Beautiful landscape all around, and a little butterbee had landed on a flower growing by the water.
Yue is still replaying the moment that night when a coughing fit rouses her from her half asleep state later that night. Sokka sleeps like the dead and doesn't wake when Yue stumbles outside in the hopes of insulating the sound. After a moment, though, Suki's hands are pulling at Yue's hair and offering her a waterskin.
The softest of petals precedes a clump of pistil. Yue spits them into the jar that Suki has also grabbed, resists the urge to hurl the jar as far as it will go, and gets back in bed.
The dreams aren't good ones. They're suffocating, drowning things, only this time Suki stands on the shore and watches silently while Yue chokes.
Yue's waking gasp turns quickly into a cough, and she doesn't bother to try not to wake Sokka this time (though he ends up sleeping through it, or maybe ignoring it, regardless). This time, it's two petals at once; more pistils. The tiniest bit of leaf. More clumps of green and orange and yellow stretched out over two hours, and Yue can't even catnap between, too uncomfortable.
In between, she sits against Suki's chest and tries to at least close her eyes.
Sometime a few hours before dawn, when her night's been thoroughly ruined, Yue has a thought with sudden clarity that as her illness gets worse, she'll probably spend the rest of it tired after fitful nights. So she turns to Suki and drags the verbalization from her sleepy brain, "I'm glad I got to spend the last day with you."
"Huh?" Suki says. "What do you mean, the last day?"
"The hot springs," Yue says, because that explains everything.
...
Yue wakes up in the airship, the sun below. She shoves herself up on her elbows. "How'd I get here?"
"Sokka carried you," Suki offers, and only then does Yue realize she was imagining Suki was the carrier. "I brought your stuff. What did you mean about the last day?"
"Huh?" Yue says. "What last day?"
"Last night, you told me you were glad to spend the last day with me."
"I don't really remember," Yue says honestly. "Maybe I was thinking about how my days are going to be terrible now that I'm waking up at night."
Suki nods, face pinched.
"I— I didn't mean to worry you..."
Suki smiles tiredly at that. "It's okay, Yue."
Sokka yawns where he's got a hand on the rudder, and Yue turns to him. "Did I wake you up?"
"No, no," he says, flapping a hand at her. "Early morning, that's all."
The day goes quietly except when it's broken by Yue's coughs, and that day-night cycle sets the tone for much of the rest of their journey. Yue is hacking up clumps of poppy-marigold, and it seems like they should be mangled by the violence of their expulsion but they're pristine. And that almost seems worse. Yue considers, more than once, crushing them, grinding them up so that they'll look the way they should for the pain they've caused her, but she can't do anything more except continue to try to find a position to lay that doesn't exacerbate her aches and try to take full breaths even though her lungs feel at half capacity.
Then, one day, they draw within sight of the ice wall— Yue coughs up a whole flower— and Sokka falls asleep at the rudder.
It’s barely a doze, but the ship careens sideways. Knowing that it was her coughing keeping them all awake, Yue forces herself upright to wrestle with the rudder and vent control, shoving down her coughs so she can stay steady. Suki forces Sokka to lay down when it becomes clear that Yue will keep the ship from crashing, taking Yue’s silence as a positive.
It is not. Yue is holding her breath.
With a trick learned once from desperation, Yue heals her bloodstream, pouring oxygen into it. It is an exhausting thing; Yue points the ship forward, lodges her body to the mast, and breathes through water.
It works for long enough. Given an ice-cold sip from a waterskin, Sokka is ready to land the airship. As soon as his hands are back on the levers and Yue’s are off, her lungs explode and there is a flower sitting on the deck of the ship.
“Oh,” Suki says.
Curious, Yue holds it to her jaw and decides that the thing could not have even emerged from her mouth, let alone travel from her lungs. Spirit magic indeed.
“It’s a pity,” Suki says. “They used to be my favorite.”
“They aren’t now?” Yue wheezes.
“Yue, they’re killing you," Suki says, like it's the most obvious thing in the world. "How could I forgive them?”
...
“Yue! You look terrible,” Hahn says as they land. “What happened?”
“Hi, Yue,” Yue mocks, “Welcome home. How have you been?”
“Princess, with all due respect,” Hahn says, with no respect in his voice, “we weren’t expecting you back, and you all have purple eyes.”
Yue touches under her eyes, undoubtedly bruised from sleep deprivation. She’s about to answer, but feels a tickle in the back of her throat. She holds up a finger and politely hacks up a flower.
Hahn stares.
“Spirit illness.”
“Yeah, I see that.”
Hahn had taken Yue’s departure from the North surprisingly well— in that he had only delivered Yue a single bout of scathing insults about how she was abandoning her tribe, and back then, she'd expected such a thing from him. But in the years since then, he's grown into a better man. Now, he leads Yue, Suki, and Sokka to his own place, offering his own guest room for their stay. As they walk, Hahn quizzes them about what they've done so far for Yue's cough.
“You really have done all you can," he says finally, defeatedly. "Okay. Most of the healers are asleep, but you know they'd lose any amount of sleep for you."
"We're not going to the healers," Yue says. "I tried already, but it didn't feel right. This disease is spiritual. I have to follow its rules."
"You're not a master healer, and you can't just ask the spirit— wait, why are you here?"
"I've been following you," Yue says.
"No, why are you at the Northern Water Tribe? You're going to the Spirit Oasis, aren't you,” Hahn says. “You’re going to sneak in, against your father’s wishes.”
“I don’t want to worry him,” Yue says. “If I can get to the spirit world, I can find a cure and everything will be fine.”
“Fine,” Hahn says, clearly seeing that arguing will get him nowhere. “I’m coming with you. I won’t be able to enter the spirit world...”
"There's something you can do," Yue says. "I need you to do it, actually. I need you to guard us when we meditate at the Oasis." The sanctum hasn't felt safe since the attack.
Hahn nods. "I can do that. And I can find you a place to sleep. You all look exhausted.”
“The coughing keeps me up,” Yue says.
“It looks like it’s keeping everyone up. Yue, I have a cot in my room. I’ll find a room for Sokka and Suki nearby.”
“What— hey!” Sokka says. “One of us can share with Yue just fine.”
"If I'm helping you do this," Hahn says, jabbing a finger at Sokka's nose, "you're going to be rested and ready."
"Please," Yue cuts in when it looks like they're going to keep arguing, "get some rest. For me."
(Suki looks dead on her feet and Yue can't stand it.)
Yue has to accept Hahn's offer to sleep in the same room as her, because she's been having trouble sitting up to cough at night.
"I still think you should go to the healers," Hahn says, as he sets up the cot for Yue.
"Katara already tried," Yue says. "You know, the Avatar's teacher?"
Hahn nods stiffly. "Fine. Get some rest, then, and we'll go to the Oasis in the morning."
Fifteen minutes later, Yue is coughing.
It becomes clear that she isn't getting back to sleep tonight; it's a bad night. She makes Hahn take an hour-long nap, but wakes him to ask pathetically if he'll bring her some water.
"Anything for you," he says, and pats her on the shoulder as he stands.
When he returns, she drinks, and he sits down next to her. "So, how has your work been?"
"It's bedtime; you want to catch up?" Yue asks incredulously.
He doesn't say anything, just stares pointedly as she suffers through another coughing fit and takes the flower once it emerges, turning it in his palms. "What kind of flower is it?"
"Poppy-hydrangea."
"That's Earth Kingdom," he says. "Think it has something to do with Suki?"
"Why would it?"
"Because it's Earth Kingdom."
"That's just a coincidence," Yue says, any strength in her words severely undermined by a cough. Just a petal this time.
They sit in silence for a little while longer, a gaping silence that has Yue thinking maybe, what if? No, it can't be, because she knows why the flower is her favorite.
Finally Hahn stands and says he'll get them something to eat, and Yue nods.
Once alone, her thin pretense of being on a visit to Hahn cracks further. She has rooms here, in the palace with her father, and she's not going to them.
But it's late at night— she shouldn't wake her father up— she's not hiding in her ex-betrothed's room like some stowaway, really. She's not going to the healers because there's nothing they can do, and she's not letting Sokka and Suki stay with her for their health.
Yue curls around herself and shivers. It's not actually that often that she's alone.
Hahn's returning footsteps have Yue perking up and turning toward the door.
"I'm back," Hahn says. "I brought us both stew."
Yue takes the food. "Thanks."
Hahn shrugs. "I was hungry."
"How's home?"
He answers. Mostly unchanged; she was here fairly recently. He asks about her work, and she answers. He asks her about Zuko— “Still Firelord,” she says, wryly.
“Still busy?”
“He takes time off when he can.”
“What about Sokka? They’re still...”
“I think that Zuko’s finally going to overturn what laws he needs to,” Yue says. “They’ll get married. I know it. Suki and I have been bringing about the idea of adoption, but in the Fire Nation, right-to-rule is passed down Agni’s lineage.”
“But... the Wartime Firelord and Zuko’s Uncle, they were both fit to rule, right? And each had kids, and those kids would be fit, and... you’d think half the nation would have Agni’s lineage by now.”
“I hadn’t thought of that,” Yue chuckles. “You’re right. Zuko’s still thinking about it. At some point, it’s not my place to tell the Fire Nation how they should lead.”
Hahn scoffs but doesn’t pursue the topic. “Katara, then? She’s not with you this time. Is she busy?”
“Always. She was finally planning on visiting Aang when we decided to take this trip, so we told her to keep to her plans.”
“Where are they?”
“Omashu, I think. With Toph, the Earth Master."
Hahn likes to hash out the intricacies of the world’s politics with her. In return, he keeps her informed on the internal affairs of the tribe, which he is keeping strict tabs on. He’s growing into quite the leader.
“When are you coming back, Yue?”
“I’m back,” Yue says, confused. “Or did you mean, next solstice?”
Hahn doesn't say anything for a moment, collecting his words, then sighs. “I mean, when are you back to stay? When are you going to live here again?”
Yue crosses her arms. “You know my father is going to be chief for a while yet. And I’m doing good work in Caldera City.”
“But that’s not what you plan to do forever.”
The truth is, Yue doesn’t know what she plans to do in the next ten years, or even five. Hahn keeps pushing her to come back, saying she’s grown distant from her tribe— she has. She sometimes thinks it would be easier to just... let herself break away. Tell Hahn to take over. Decide not to continue her family’s lineage and reign, and move to Kyoshi Island with Suki.
It all breaks down around that last point, and the nagging fact that she does love the Northern Water Tribe too much to leave for good.
Yue fakes a yawn and turns away. "I'm tired. And the talking isn't helping my throat. You should get some rest."
Hahn leaves her alone after that.
...
“How did you sleep?” Yue asks, doing her best to keep her voice chipper.
“Great,” Sokka says, stretching, and Suki nods as well, flaring her fan before refolding it and tucking it away. “Were you okay?”
“Yes, I was.” Yue spreads her arms. “Look, I’m right here.”
“I worried about you,” Suki admits. “Your voice is raspy. Bad night?”
“It wasn’t the quietest,” Hahn says, “but I can survive a single night of broken sleep. Let’s get to the spirit oasis.”
They go. The pathway has changed; it now involves waterbender-designed tunnels and halls, intricately carved; a maze to keep out unwanted guests. The members of the tribe know where to go by fragments of a water-tribe-specific script etched on the tunnels. After last night’s conversation, Yue finds herself needing to be the one choosing the path, reading the inscriptions. Maybe she’s subtle enough about pushing to the front that no one notices, or maybe she isn’t, and the rest are only choosing not to say anything.
They make it to the oasis, and Yue would let out a breath if she hadn’t spent it all coughing the whole way here.
Hahn stops at the door, planting his spear in the grass and loosening his knife in the sheath. “Go. I’ll be here.”
They sit. Sokka puts them into position and takes up their hands— “I learned this from Aang,” he defends, because he’s always hated his inadvertent position as the most spirit-connected person in Team Avatar save Aang. “Suki might not make it. We might have to go without her.”
Yue only clenches Suki’s hand as if she can drag her to the spirit world herself, if she only holds tight enough.
“Now we meditate,” Sokka says, and they do.
...
Yue opens her eyes to a glittery sort of sunlight. Everything swims just the slightest bit; the colors dance; the rocks have life and the trees would speak to her if they cared. The air even tastes sweeter, though it still can’t fill her lungs through the bouquet inside.
And holding her hands are Suki and Sokka.
“Spirit world,” Sokka says confidently, and drops their hands to set off in a direction that he seems to know. Only a minute later, or maybe an hour, they're standing in front of the doors of the spirit library.
Sokka is clutching his notebook.
“Why do you have that?” Yue asks.
“You’ll see,” Sokka says. For the first time, he looks nervous. After waiting a moment for Sokka to push open the doors, Yue finally steps forward to do it herself, but Sokka flings out a hand. “It’s fine; I’ll do it.”
He does. He pushes open the doors slowly, and they creeeeak open to reveal a grand, arching library, dimly lit by light filtering through the stacks, dust motes dancing in the light. The place exudes knowledge. The very air feels powerful.
Sokka gingerly steps inside. “Wan Shi Tong!”
With a powerful gust of air that almost has Yue tumbling right back out of the library, the owl-spirit lands in front of them, wings spread threateningly wide. “WAR BOY.”
“Now hold on, that's not fair! I was trying to stop—"
“HOW DARE YOU RETURN TO MY LIBRARY AFTER STEALING MY KNOWLEDGE FOR WAR," Wan Shi Tong says, lifting his clawed foot threateningly.
“I have an offering!” Sokka squeaks, and holds aloft his notebook. “It’s got all my designs for the Fire-Nation tools of war repurposed for peacetime!”
“YOUR OFFERING IS THIS BOOK?”
“It’s new. No one else has this book, because I wrote it myself.”
“I WILL NOT KILL YOU JUST YET.”
“Thanks,” Sokka mutters. Yue and Suki have backed toward the doorway, leaving Sokka standing helplessly in front of Wan Shi Tong as he pages through Sokka’s notebook delicately.
“THERE IS MUCH KNOWLEDGE IN HERE.”
“Right. And it’s all just for you!”
“WELL, WAR BOY. WHY HAVE YOU RETURNED?”
“My friend has a spirit-disease and we wanted to research it,” Sokka explains meekly. “Yue.”
Yue steps forward.
“THAT IS AN ACCEPTABLE PURSUIT OF KNOWLEDGE.”
“Thanks.”
“YOU OF COURSE DO NOT MIND IF THE FOXES ACCOMPANY YOU.”
“No, not at all,” Sokka says, his voice pitching higher as one of the foxes slinks forward to circle his legs.
“THEN ENTER.”
Sokka scurries in and Yue and Suki follow, plunging into the stacks as fast as possible. The organization in the library is strange, but by following a series of categories that seem far too specific, Yue finds herself browsing through a selection of books regarding magical coughs.
“Suki, do you think this is—”
Suki is not beside her. Sokka is not paces in front of her. Yue is alone.
“Suki?”
No answer.
“Suki!” she tries again, louder, and finally gets a call in return. Yue turns to look— at the floral illnesses section. Suki must be in there. “I lost—"
The fox shushes her, and Yue shuts up. “I’m sorry for yelling in the library,” she whispers solemnly.
The fox nods.
Satisfied knowing where Suki is, and too nervous to call out for Sokka, Yue turns her attention to the books. In front of her, Guidebook to Spirit Sicknesses.
She opens it. It’s like an encyclopedia, with paragraph-entries for hundreds of spirit-given sicknesses. There’s an index in the back, and entries for flower and cough cross-reference to only a few pages; she checks them all.
Hanahaki: the unrequited lover’s doom.
At the heading, Yue’s heart sinks.
Hanahaki occurs in those who suffer unrequited love. They will cough up petals, then eventually full flowers, of a bloom that reminds them of their love. The blooms will eventually choke them.
That’s it?
Is Yue doomed, then? The journey all for naught? A thirty-two word paragraph is her death sentence?
There’s a book called Hanahaki on the shelf and Yue drops her encyclopedia to snatch at it frantically. It’s long and the text is dense, the script old and barely legible, but Yue opens it with a fierce determination and starts to read.
She’s engrossed enough that she doesn’t notice Wan Shi Tong’s approach until his shadow cuts over her book.
“Oh! Hello, sir,” she says on instinct, trembling.
“Your friend, the war boy, provided me with an offering, but you did not do the same,” he says. “I require an offering of knowledge from you.”
“I—” Yue casts around. She picks up a flower she coughed up sometime in the reading and puts it on her open pages. “I’m in love with a girl,” she admits.
“ I knew that,” Wan Shi Tong says crossly. Yue gapes. He seems not to notice and continues. “You have a flower and a book about Hanahaki. Your friend said you were spirit cursed. The girl is the same color as the flower. It was not a difficult puzzle.”
“Oh,” Yue says. “Well—”
She’s still fixated on herself, and her relationships, and her fears and insecurities exacerbated by her new knowledge. Unable to think of anything else, she admits, "I'm asexual."
“Explain that term to me.”
Awkwardly, she does.
Wan Shi Tong ruffles his wing. “Well, you have taught me a new word, though I knew the concept. That will have to do.”
He bustles away, and Yue hears his fading voice say, “I should have known I’d get much of the same... humans too focused on each other, no focus for knowledge. Shameful...”
...
Yue closes the final page.
It feels as though her whole body is seized up. She’s starving, and thirsty, and tired, and her eyes ache from her reading.
She feels slightly more stable now, though, and she needs to find Suki. The only thing she can think of doing is walking towards the front of the library, so she does.
To her shock, as she’s coming in sight of the front desks, she sees Suki and Sokka as well, each coming down a different branch of the library toward her. Resisting the urge to run, Yue walks faster until they all unite at the front desk.
“Suki! Sokka!” she hisses at them. “I think I found what I needed.”
“I did, too,” Suki says, but something’s— cagey. She doesn’t meet Yue’s eyes.
“Sokka?”
“I did,” he says, nodding vigorously, “But— you know. Your own journey, and all that. I’m glad you found what you needed, Yue, because I only found information for myself.”
“Oh,” Yue says. “Well, a spirit library is a big journey so it’s good you were looking for things for yourself as well.”
Sokka grabs her hands. “Yue, I don’t think I could have found your knowledge if I tried forever. The library does what it wants!”
Yue remembers the strange path; the ultraspecific categories. How she found the answers in the first two books she picked up.
“That makes sense, Sokka. It’s okay.”
“Good,” he says. “Now let’s get out of here, before I overstay my welc—”
...
“—ome.”
They are in the oasis. Tui and La swim serenely in the pond.
“Did you find it?” Hahn says, turning from the doorway.
“Yes. How long were we out?”
“It’s a few hours past dinner. Are you hungry?”
“Very,” they chorus.
At dinner, eaten away in Hahn’s room, they trade answers. Yue shares what she learned. The disease, its cause, and its cure. Two methods. One, the love is proved requited. Two, the more dangerous method: the flowers are removed from Yue’s body, and her memories go with them.
“So,” Sokka says, almost teasingly, “who is it?”
Yue almost answers then and there but, training her eyes on Suki, she sees not only recognition in her face but open fear.
“Stop,” she says instead, to Sokka. “You’ve meddled enough. Suki and I are going back to her room; don’t follow.”
Soberly, Sokka nods and waves. Yue stands and Suki follows her out the door; as they leave, Sokka begins whispering to Hahn. Yue doesn’t mind. It’s only her secrets he knows, after all.
At Suki's room, they sit across from each other.
“What did you learn at the library?” Yue asks.
Suki looks down. “I read an essay on the correlation between flower-related magical diseases and the cure of true love’s kiss.”
“Why would that make you scared?”
“That’s not all I read. I went to a section on true love and— Yue, you know why Sokka and I broke up?”
“You said he wanted something serious, and you weren’t ready for that yet and didn’t want to hold him back.”
“It’s not like I thought, Yue. I like him the same now as I did then... which is to say, I was never in love with him. And I was never in love with anyone. I’m aromantic. That’s what I learned.”
“Why do you say that like it’s a bad thing?” Yue asks, even as she feels her heart shatter. For herself, yes, but for Suki too. “You are exactly who you’re supposed to be.”
“Don’t pretend we don’t both know who the flowers are for,” Suki says.
As if on cue, Yue hurls up a flower. It feels thorny. It tears her up. But there’s still no blood. Suki plucks a petal from the poppy center and holds it close to her face— to her hair, twirling it between her fingers with some of the strands.
“I love you,” Yue says. It doesn’t seem very grand after all the love confessions she’s coughed up over the weeks.
“I love you,” Suki responds without hesitation. “I love you as much as you love me. I know it. I love you more than I love any person in this world.”
“Even though—?”
“It might not be romantic but I love you,” Suki stresses. “Are your lungs—?”
Yue coughs.
The book had provided firsthand accounts of overcoming Hanahaki. Each one said the weight lifted from their lungs. Their symptoms vanished.
Yue coughs again. Again, again, a fit of coughing, and another flower pulls its way up her windpipe.
“I love you,” Suki insists, to her, to the Hanahaki, to the spirits, “I love you I love you I love you I love—”
She squeezes Yue in a hug while Yue gasps and coughs and focuses on believing Suki with the bottom of her heart and the air in her lungs.
It doesn’t work.
Suki takes Yue’s face and says, desperately, “What if I kissed you?”
Yue can feel her face crumple. She’d never felt the draw of making out, and knows deep down that she’ll just be disappointed.
“I won’t,” Suki says hurriedly. She drops Yue’s face. “It’s— it’s kind of ironic.”
“What’s ironic?”
“It’s just—" Suki laughs. “I’m attracted to you, okay? But you’re asexual. And you’re in love with me, and I’m aromantic. And the spirits want us together, but they won’t even believe me when I say I love you.”
“I’d like a little kiss,” Yue says, and thinks, it won't work, but I would like this one thing.
“Okay,” Suki says, and grabs one of Yue’s hands with each of her own and leans forward carefully to press a feather-light kiss to Yue’s lips. “I love you.”
Yue coughs.
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s not your fault,” Yue says. “If anything, it’s mine."
"For falling in love? I don't think you can help that."
"I know," Yue tries to say, but a coughing fit begins and she has to expel two flowers before she can once again breathe.