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The fever takes hold faster than Kyoshi expected, as though her fretful warning had invited it into being. Worse before better. Even considering the countless mistakes she’s made—back to when she was a rattleboned, unwanted child clutching a little clay turtle tight in her fist—it doesn’t feel good to be right.
Rangi had faded out again while they wept for Yun, sheer battered exhaustion prevailing over her grief. Kyoshi wanted to stay by her Firebender’s side. Cling close. Feel her chest rise and fall, listen to the steady-slow throb of her heartbeat, let everything drown in the soothing familiarity of her scent. Still helpless and stomach-sick at the limit of her healing abilities, Kyoshi’s only comfort was the thought of being right there the next time Rangi woke.
But there was a thread of selfishness in that. What Rangi needs is full, uninterrupted rest, not rest clawmarked by Kyoshi’s own fear and fuss. A looming shadow of frantic, guilty energy won’t help to mend her now. And Kyoshi can’t—won’t—risk doing more harm in a day already fraught with it.
Especially not to Rangi. Not after—
(The fragile limp weight of her everything cradled in her arms. A hand reaching for her face, falling—)
So even though it made her feel spun out and lost and weak at the seams, Kyoshi pulled herself away from Rangi. The effort of moving from her side was like forcing the world off its stubborn center.
In the time since, she’s kept herself distracted and at least somewhat useful by attending to Wong and Kirima.
Head down. Deep breath after deep breath. Fix what she can fix until Atuat and Hei-Ran arrive. Through it all she maintains a constant awareness of Rangi’s sleeping presence across the infirmary, out of sight—a splinter, a tether, distant cadent glimmers of her girl.
The bright-glowing water shaped around Kyoshi’s hands hides the way they won’t stop trembling.
For all the shakiness, she…manages. Decently, at least. Atuat’s voice pierces to the front of her racing thoughts: stabilize and mitigate first, then repair. The chi pathway maps hanging on the walls give her enough immediate guidance to dull her friends’ pain—
“And not a single moment too soon,” Kirima adds, very helpfully, in a snarking hiss.
Kyoshi’s lips press into a thin line, but she doesn’t look up from her work. Precision like this takes painstaking concentration, and her fans are still lying somewhere among the wreckage of the courtyard, abandoned in necessary haste. She could—she should—go search for them. But her mind chokes on the idea of leaving this room. Makes her turn nauseous with bone-deep dread. “You know, they call people sitting in an infirmary patients for a reason.”
A flat, coarse laugh. Kirima tilts her head at Wong and raises an eyebrow in feigned offense. “Can you believe this, Wong? Our sworn sister, the Avatar herself, has an absolutely deplorable bedside manner.”
“Always been rough around the edges,” Wong says with a shrug. The chair creaks under the bulk of his body, left unsupported by his splinted leg. “Hasn’t even bothered to reach out to her masters in over a year. Could’ve used some extra lessons.”
There’s a playful grin in his voice, one he means for her to hear. Knowing that makes it impossible for Kyoshi to keep the corners of her own mouth from turning up as well. In this grim aftermath even the tiniest smile is a surreal relief. How can that sudden glint of normalcy exist in the same space as all this grief and guilt? Seems too dissonant. Seems—undeserved.
Still, like peering over the edge of a towering cliff, Kyoshi is tempted to test its integrity. She latches onto the unexpected wave of lightness and lets it carry her forward. “Be careful what you say about someone who’s about to try to put your bones back together.”
“You’re proving our point,” says Kirima, blunt and unbothered, sweeping her upturned palm in indication.
It’s the sort of casual, teasing condolence only true family can provide. A moment of welcome distraction from the distress. Most things will never be the same, but some remain unchanged. The sense of familiar camaraderie amidst this mess is a balm for her frayed nerves. Helps her focus more diligently as she begins the tougher task of healing the Earthbender’s fractures.
For a while she’s almost proud of how well it’s going. But before the first break is fully knitted, a groan from the other side of the room sunders her attention.
“Kyoshi…?”
The faint murmur of her name seizes Kyoshi’s heartstrings and tugs. Her head whips around to follow the pull’s momentum—the water slips from her hands, thoroughly soaking Wong’s lap.
Heaving a sigh, Kirima bends the moisture back out of his clothes. “Sure, I’ll hold this for you.”
But Kyoshi has already crossed the infirmary in two bounding steps, rushing like a storm-fed gale to meet Rangi as she stirs awake.
Feverish now. It’s blatant from the first glance, a tangible thing limned over her delicate features. Beneath the residue from the earthbending disks, most of her face is ashen-pale—but the arches of her cheekbones are flushed with bold scarlet, and the spaces below her eyes are sallow, bruisedark. Loose, messy strands of hair stick to her forehead, matted with perspiration. Pinched with discomfort, her eyes struggle against her attempts to force them open.
She’s weary vulnerability given form. So incongruent with the flashburned memory of brutal, brilliant white flame. Kyoshi’s throat goes strangle-tight as she kneels beside the bed and gathers one of Rangi’s hands between her own. The heat radiating from her body is much harsher than the natural warmth that’s become Kyoshi’s solace, her lodestar, her home. Leaning nearer, she tries to keep her voice even and soft through the grip of worry. “I’m here.”
Rangi’s bleary eyes finally blink open, squinting into the light, trying futilely to focus on Kyoshi’s face. She forces her head to tilt upward, but the motion makes her wince hard and sag back against the pillow.
“What do you need?” Kyoshi smooths the disheveled clumps of hair back from Rangi’s forehead. Her brow wrinkles at the gentle touch, all clammy, burning up. Distraught helplessness makes a hammer of Kyoshi’s heart—each strike is an inward assertion of blame, threatening to crack her ribs. Scrabbling for some overlooked solution, she asks more of herself than of Rangi, “What can I do?”
Rangi cuts in with a half-formed, slurred croak. Headstrong as ever, even in illness, she glares at nothing and bares her teeth in determination—fights to pull coherence of the ache, to speak past the dryness in her throat.
That’s it. Kyoshi should have made tea. Or found a water gourd. Should have had something right there, in her hands, ready for Rangi to drink.
Words come slow and thick, syllables heavy with effort. “My mother,” Rangi rasps. Her glassy gaze hinges on Kyoshi’s through intermittent shudders. Something close to shame flickers in her expression before vanishing in the waxy fever-flush. “When will she be here?”
The question—the way she asks it with all the slightness of an uncertain admission—tightens the knot of remorse tangled behind Kyoshi’s sternum.
Of course she wants her mother. Kyoshi remembers writhing sick and delirious on the loose-dirt floor of some stranger’s toolshed, burning and freezing from the inside out. Through the fits of painful shivers she cried out over and over for her own mother to come back, to come cradle her close and rock her to sleep just one more time, even though she hated her.
“Soon,” Kyoshi says, hoping conviction can make up for the answer’s lack of specificity. She strokes her thumb across Rangi’s knuckles and musters calm from some hidden place more composed than her overwrought mind. Rangi has been so brave, so strong, and to reflect that back when she needs it most is the absolute least Kyoshi can do. “You have to rest. Please. I’ll wake you up when she’s here. I promise.”
Rangi shakes her head in protest, causing herself another wince. “Not what I meant,” she grits out. “I’m—fine. Just needed a minute.”
The lopsided grimace is not exactly convincing. “Rangi…”
“I said I’m fine,” Rangi repeats, schooling her mouth into an obstinate frown. When she shuffles up onto her elbows, then upright on her palms, Kyoshi has to stifle the reflexive impulse to flatten her back down into the cushion. “Help me bathe before she gets here.”
Kyoshi blinks through a bewildered pause. “You mean right now?” The incredulous doubt that slips into her tone makes Rangi’s upper lip flinch. Suddenly she’s aware that the likelihood of maintaining control of this conversation is dwindling fast. “If you honestly think I’m letting you get up—”
“Letting me?” In spite of her fevered state, Rangi’s countenance hardens, adamant as steel. The command she holds over her body is always impressive. In this moment, it’s also more than a little bit infuriating. “No. I know my limits, Kyoshi. I can handle a bath.”
But beneath the usual stubbornness there’s something raw, something sensitive. A breach in the armor of her imperious bearing—a subtle quake of fragility Kyoshi has trained herself to notice. Tentatively, she reaches out to unravel it, praying that she won’t come away singed. “It’s still not a good idea. Just—talk to me? Tell me why?”
Weakened by fault lines of fatigue, pretense crumbles without further persuasion.
“Because I don’t want her to see me like this!” Rangi admits. It’s plaintive, jagged with desperation. The straining volume makes her cringe and fall abruptly silent. Lower lip, bitten. Eyes squeezed shut. Pain in her body and deeper still.
If this is all stemming from some unspoken Fire National filial honor nonsense, Kyoshi would gladly challenge the former headmistress to a no-holds-barred Agni Kai on Rangi’s behalf. Nobody—especially not her mother—could look at her right now and see anything less than a bright-shining hero.
No. Kyoshi knows she can place every bit of trust she’s never given her own parents in Hei-Ran. Her profound, fierce, unconditional love for her daughter isn’t in question. There’s a piece missing. A reason left in the shadows of Rangi’s agitation.
Softly, Kyoshi says, “Your mother will be proud of you. And glad you’re alive. You survived a battle—she won’t mind that you look like it.”
Rangi’s eyes snap open, bloodshot. Tense frustration flares in dark bronze like a crack of lightning cleaving the sky. The sudden outburst leaves heat in its wake, shimmering the air, rendering Kyoshi stunned.
“I mind!” Rangi’s voice rises in pitch, breaking between harsh defiance and a desolate plea for understanding. If she was feeling less sick, she’d probably reach up and shake Kyoshi by the shoulders. Instead she clutches at Kyoshi’s hand—a grip so firm Kyoshi can picture her crushing permanent grooves across her burn scars. New marks, fixed in the shape of Rangi’s fingers. Kyoshi would wear them like her paint. Like a vow.
Rangi uses the heel of her other palm to rub away welling tears before they can spill over. “You know what she’s been through, Kyoshi! Every awful thing she’s endured over the last year. And now how Yun is—how we—I can’t add to that. I won’t. She doesn’t deserve any more pain.”
If the lash of Rangi’s tongue causes any sting, it subsides almost immediately, swallowed up by the overwhelming urge to soothe her girl’s despair—an instinct that’s only grown steeper and stronger since that long, sleepless night on an iceberg near the South Pole. Softening, aching for her—for both of them—Kyoshi glances down at Rangi’s white knuckles, then back up to meet her imploring gaze.
“I need things to be better for her,” Rangi says. “With her. Between us. I need that chance. So—please. Help me clean up so this doesn’t destroy her.”
Then Rangi averts her eyes, sniffling feebly, and Kyoshi’s brittle apprehension finally relents. With a sigh of resignation, she presses her face to the crown of Rangi’s head, nuzzling against her bedraggled topknot.
Clearly Rangi isn’t about to back down from this. Her mind is made up—and less time spent arguing is more time spent healing. There’s nothing left for another battle today. If she claims to know her own limits, Kyoshi shouldn’t start doubting her now.
Fear makes for an unfair judge. Maybe her request really isn’t so unreasonable. A bath might even take the edge off her fever until Atuat can work on healing her.
Shoving aside the rest of her misgivings, Kyoshi nods into Rangi’s silk-soft hair. Fills her lungs. Iron, salt, smoke, dust, all clung from the fight. But running underneath—the intangible, warm essence that is so distinctively hers. It’s a scent Kyoshi could bury herself in. One she’d recognize blind and cleave to without pause in the longest, darkest night.
“Okay,” she murmurs. Pure attrition. “Okay. But we’re going to take it slow and easy. And if there’s pain, we stop. You have to tell me if anything hurts. I mean it, Rangi.”
Burrowing closer into their embrace, the Firebender hitches out a hiccuping sob. The tiny noise might as well be a fist driven straight into Kyoshi’s chest. When she speaks her voice is rough, muffled, wavering barely above a whisper. “Thank you.”
It’s not an explicit statement of assent to the conditions, Kyoshi notices as she presses a parting kiss to Rangi’s sweltering brow—but at this point, she’ll take what she can get.
Then, drawing away with no lack of reluctance, she pins Kirima and Wong under a grave stare.
“Watch her until I get back,” she tells them. No nonsense. Don’t let her try anything foolish. Now is her turn to be the minder, and it’s time to act the part. By all the spirits, she’s going to do it with the same resolute ferocity Rangi has always beset upon her.
Tremendously unmoved by the Avatar’s stern command, Kirima flashes her a casual rendition of the daofei salute. “All eyes on the ailing Hotwoman.”
“Yeah, and on him, too,” Wong adds, thumbing towards the other bed—where Jinpa is sprawled open-mouthed and drooling, snoring irreverently, finally knocked out cold at the mercy of the herbal draughts he’d been given hours ago. “Don’t think he’ll be any trouble, though. He’s probably having a nice lunch with Yangchen right now.”
In all the time Kyoshi was a servant, or the unwilling master of this estate, she never had reason to visit the private bathing chamber adjoining the infirmary.
Now she sees that she wasn’t missing much. It’s not so much a room as a nook with a folding door for discretion. The space is small—sized just to fit a standing washbasin and a stool-bench, a wooden cabinet stocked with liniments, bandages, and clean towels, and a hearth to maintain a cozy temperature. Compared to the rest of the estate’s design, its adornment is plain to match its straightforward purpose. An unexpected, mismatched bow to the economy of form matching function.
Using the bending she can manage without her fans to speed things up where she can, Kyoshi sets to work.
Feels good to do something methodical, something effective. A distant lifetime ago these tasks were her entire routine. Arrange things. Make preparations. Settling back into the simplicity of these motions sweeps her up in a sense of calm, dulls the queasy hollowness in her gut. She places some firewood in the hearth and lights it with a gentle burst of flame—fills the porcelain basin with fresh water, heats it to steaming.
But soon the crisis of reality intrudes once more.
Kyoshi the servant girl is, has been, forever will be gone. She didn’t know enough to savor her last moments of peace before they were wrenched away forever.
Avatar Kyoshi stands here now. And her friend’s blood is all over her naked hands.
She stops to scrub them until her scars sting.
All at once it’s hard to get air. Her vision goes ragged, and everything dislocates into a dizzy ricochet. Clenching her fists hard enough that her nails bite into her palms, Kyoshi stares at the old burns mottled across her knuckles until the blur ceases—until she manages to swallow the briny sourness at the back of her tongue.
Keep it together, she tells herself, jaw held rigid. That’s not all your hands have wrought. You’re not finished yet. Even if what she’s done today will be another mark in a long litany of mistakes, forward is the only way to move.
Forward, where Rangi’s need beckons her to follow.
A few long breaths, to gather herself. The sound of wind sweeping over the sea. Steady earth below her, rooting her where she belongs. An afterimage of her own flame in the hearth burns behind her eyelids.
After padding and draping the stool’s seat with towels, Kyoshi opens the door and steps back into the main room.
The main room, where Rangi is sitting—sitting, nearly upright, her legs swung over and her bare feet on the floor—at the edge of her bed.
Kyoshi balks, taken by a surge of dismay and disbelief.
Wong nudges Kirima with his elbow, mouth crooked. “Oh, she’s not happy.”
“You were supposed to watch her!” she snaps, thrusting her hands in Rangi’s direction.
“And we did,” Kirima says, deadpan under the Avatar’s ire. “We watched her the whole time. What did you want us to do? Leap over there and wrestle her into submission? Drag her to Laogai ourselves? Our legs are broken, Kyoshi.”
“That’s not—I meant—you should have called for me!”
“Thunderbolts and many knives,” Rangi reminds her in a low gravel, gaze down. The daofei code’s promised retribution for plenty of transgressions—including snitching. The fact that the Firebender hadn’t taken the oaths herself doesn’t stop Kirima and Wong from nodding in affirmative solidarity. Kyoshi could march over there and knock their heads together. But before she can really entertain the thought, Rangi raises her head, eyes flashing like a blade brandished under scorching sunlight. “Stop talking about me like I’m not here.”
Her frustration is palpable but directionless—lashing out and then dissipating into the air around her for lack of an actual target. It’s not her usual display of decisive anger, and the clear difference takes Kyoshi’s heart and squeezes it. Face sobering into an apologetic frown, she approaches the bedside and crouches to her level.
“I wish you had waited for me to help you move,” she says, finding it impossible to keep her own irritation kindled. Her palms rest on Rangi’s thighs and knead them—a light touch, an instinctive attempt to unwind the sick-stress. “Slow and easy, remember?”
Rangi scrapes a brittle, wan smile out of her discomfort. “You were taking too long.”
Teasing is a good sign even if it’s at her expense. Without rebuttal, Kyoshi straightens to full height. Her hands feel empty as soon as they slip from Rangi’s body. She extends her arm. “Here. Hold on to me.”
Rangi looks at the offering for no more than half a second before waving it away. “Let me try on my own.”
“What?” This is also categorically not slow and easy. “Rangi, please, you can’t just—”
Ragged anger erupts again, too sharp-edged for her exhaustion to contain. “Let me try!”
The words are flint ready to be struck into sparks. As they ring into seething silence, Rangi turns her chin away, lips trembling. The piercing intensity of her sidelong glare wilts the rest of Kyoshi’s protest before it can hit the air.
But Kyoshi doesn’t recoil from it. True to the personal vow she made in North Chung-Ling, she stands firm and peers down into the narrow, gloomy depths of her girl’s turmoil—not to gain any advantage. Only to understand the enormity of her emotion when it wells to the surface.
And in those tired bronze eyes, behind the faulty cordon of her temper, Kyoshi sees remorse. Dread. With her shoulders drawn towards her ears, stiff as stone, Rangi holds onto her composure like a sailor might cling to a stormborne ship. Each crumbling piece of her resolve gives fuel to the frustration. It doesn’t take long to see the blunt crux of the matter: an earlier caution left to fester and cut its fangs.
Permanent damage.
She claimed not to care, before. Maybe for Kyoshi’s sake alone. But in the glow of her marrow she’s afraid of what that could mean for the self-ascribed purpose she wears bold and burnished as her armor. And she has to know. Has to find out for herself, by herself.
Another merciless pang of grief roars in—a living thing burrowed into her center, writhing and pulsating.
(An earthen spike gouged into the shallow curve where her hands have learned to roam, learned to love. Dark crimson blooming slick in the spaces between her fingers. What else are you sorry for, Kyoshi?)
(Everything. She’s sorry for everything.)
Arguments pale in the face of guilt. Scatter into shreds, wither out. She’s already taken so much from Rangi—she can’t take this, too.
Letting her arm fall to her side, she inches aside to give Rangi space.
Be careful, she wills into the wrenching silence of their impasse. No hollow platitudes to be spoken. Staying still is like tearing herself open with nails and teeth. Like scouring her own bones bare.
A bracing sigh sends Rangi’s hunched shoulders rising, falling. Her gaze lowers once more. But then—either to herself, or as though she heard the plea—she nods, almost imperceptibly.
Then tenacity ripples across her features, all furrowed brow and downturned mouth and bronze-gold gleam. Visible conviction condenses in her core and then emanates through the rest of her frame. It’s a glimpse of the fierce girl Kyoshi cherishes beyond fathom—her unshakeable heart, shining through the frailty and the bruises and the fever.
She pushes slowly off of the mattress, face pinching with exertion. The graceful line of her jaw hardens and the thews in her neck strain taut, the bearing of a warrior about to take on her enemy. A half-stifled grunt of effort rends from her throat as she rises onto unsteady legs. The sore-searing extent of her injury shows in every inch of motion, and Kyoshi finds herself wringing her hands, breath held against the sight.
Mouth coiling, Rangi steels herself. Draws grueling poise from the training etched into her very identity—and takes one tentative, limping step.
“That’s it, Rangi,” Kyoshi hears Kirima murmur. Quiet and serious encouragement. No teasing, no nicknames.
Two steps. Another. Each is an endeavor in reclamation but each also grows surer. Kyoshi watches every small victory, practically leaning forward with anticipation.
After a few more cautious paces, Rangi turns to hold Kyoshi’s wide eyes. She doesn’t smile, but something much softer than before touches the corners of her mouth. The tension drags out of her posture, relieved exhaustion rolling from every pore.
She is battered but unbroken, unbowed. The muscles knotted between Kyoshi’s shoulders loosen.
Words aren’t needed as Rangi reaches for her. Kyoshi closes the arm’s-length distance like a reflex, drawn by the inexorable gravity of her center. They connect gently, meeting stable as one—Rangi slips into her natural place between Kyoshi’s open arms, letting her own wrap around her waist. The restless, gnawing ache in her chest recedes when Rangi’s forehead rests against her shoulder. Kyoshi’s heedful hands move of their own accord: the first cradles the back of Rangi’s head while the other twines into the sweat-clagged hair at her nape.
They stay like that for a long moment, drifting weightless in lovesick reliance, touching hearts through the embrace. For the first time since she watched Rangi fall, the sense of reassurance doesn’t waver. In this instant there’s no need to brace for impact. Only rightness, dawning spirit-deep.
Kyoshi tucks her chin and smiles against the shell of Rangi’s ear. “You are such a show-off,” she whispers.
Rangi sniffs out a scoffing laugh. Her fingers tighten in Kyoshi’s tunic. As she leans in heavier still, her weight is a welcome commitment.
Together they walk on.
With the door to the bathing chamber closed, the world narrows. In this space it’s just Kyoshi and Rangi, the resonant proximity of their tired bodies, the ghosts they carry.
There are times when Kyoshi is prowling through outlaw strongholds in the Lower Ring, or moving with the rhythmic flow of her war fans, and it’s as though nothing else exists. Nothing outside of her and her hands and the elements and her task. She wonders when that started. If the world gave her that single-minded manner without her noticing, or if it’s some new part of the spirit inside her taking shape.
She wonders if she taught it to herself—if it’s been there all along.
Here in the sputtering hearthlight, she feels the same. There’s just Rangi. Only Rangi, only ever Rangi. Nothing else. Imbalance be damned. Sometimes she thinks that the depth of the bond that runs between them could consume her.
That should be frightening.
(It isn’t.)
“This might hurt a little,” she warns as she kneels in front of the low bench, holding a warm wet cloth in her hand. “I was too focused on your back to think about healing the rest of you.”
Rangi looks past the rag, brow arched. The fever-aches have her restless, a little fidgety, her self-discipline waning. “I can handle it,” she says. “Won’t be the first time you’ve dealt with my face all busted up like this.”
An upwelling of memory, back to the start: moonlight glittering the surface of a shallow lake. Rangi tucked tight in her arms—both of them scared and shaken and flayed open with honesty and completely, utterly lost for one another.
“I’ll be gentler this time,” Kyoshi promises around the knot in her throat. “Less—enthusiastic.”
Rangi remains stoic, tolerating it as Kyoshi wipes away the caked-on dust and dried blood. Her skin comes clean easily enough. But the gingerly strokes reveal further damage—a fat lip here, a split eyebrow there, her right cheek swollen and purpling.
“Don’t give me that look.” Rangi reaches out to trail her fingertips along the angle of Kyoshi’s chin and jaw. “Yours is pretty beaten up too.”
Is it? Kyoshi hasn’t noticed. So far her body’s been too immersed in commotion to register any injuries of its own. Nuzzling into the contact, she says, “I’ll worry about myself later.”
With a flex of her hand, water swishes to her from the basin and forms into a glove. It glows against the flickering hearthfire as she brings it to Rangi’s face. Restorative energy pools where she guides it, healing the harm at a touch.
Hazy eyes fluttering, Rangi lets out an appreciative little hum. “See? You’ve gotten better at that.”
Not enough, Kyoshi can’t help but think before she can bite down on the bitterness, smothering it beneath a muted smile. “Well, don’t go getting careless just because I can fix up a bruise or two.”
“Careless.” A sharp huff through flared nostrils. It’s almost surprising not to see steam. “Come on, Kyoshi. And give yourself the dignity of credit.”
Ignoring the vague or else threat lurking behind the command, Kyoshi returns the water and gives the whole basin another wave of heat.
“Still want to do this?” she asks, already knowing the answer.
With a nod, Rangi takes Kyoshi’s offered hand and slowly draws herself to her feet. But when she lifts her arms to pull her sleeveless undertunic over her head, her entire frame locks up in an abrupt spasm. Not pain itself, not yet—the apprehension of it. A warning sign.
Dread prompts blind haste. Kyoshi catches her elbow and steadies her before she can attempt to push through it. A frightened, scolding word sits poised on her tongue. She chases it away. Quietly, in its place: “Here. Let me…”
Firewood crackles in silence as her voice whittles down to nothing. Her thumb and forefinger find the hem of Rangi’s shirt. Deferent, stalling, unsure as her hands have ever been, they await permission at the fringe of this new territory.
Rangi stiffens. Glances sidelong, eyes darkening, engulfed by the dense shadow angled across her face. Lower lip gone tense, she tips her chin in wordless assent.
Removing someone else’s clothing is an unpracticed motion. Kyoshi does it with as much delicacy as she can muster, trying not to hinder herself with overthought. The soft-knit cotton, sweat-soaked and tacky with blood, peels away from Rangi’s skin as she maneuvers it up over her head, free of her arms.
It meets the floor featherlight.
With her gaze still firmly averted, Rangi unties the lacing by at the front of her pants—and then they’re lying by her feet as well, nudged aside, Kyoshi her balance point.
Standing there in her fine-woven chest binding and smallclothes, she finally looks up, fixing Kyoshi with a stare.
Breath stills. Kyoshi’s hands hang at her sides, useless. She’s seen Rangi’s skin in throes and glimpses—felt it smooth as satin and searing like embers under her palms and fingertips—but never this much. Never like this, all at once. Their moments of intimacy have been stolen in darkness and temporary hidden-away places, too furtive or eager or both to undress fully.
Here, though. Now. Heaviness builds in Kyoshi’s lungs—the awareness of standing before an uncrossed threshold. A storm seeding dark and fearsome on the horizon. A huge hungry wave swelling behind them, ready to sweep them out to sea.
But it’s not the threshold or the storm or the wave or the near-nakedness that brings pause. It’s Rangi. Her bearing. There is something strangely somber in the way Rangi is watching her, pupils a widened plea to the soft shadows. Something different in her rigid stance. The brittleness of iron tempered too hard, waiting to shatter.
It’s a change Kyoshi can’t put words to, one felt more than seen. Rangi is the strength of fire embodied, even with fresh bruises scattered over her ribcage. The line of her shoulders is set firm and straight; her limbs are hewn solid and her belly is cut lean. And while there is familiarity in the held-tall sternness of her spine, it’s also strung with a sense of reticent, desperate dismay. As though she’s holding up the ceiling with the crown of her skull: make a move and everything will give way. Control slipping through her fingers. Resignation—exhausted surrender—to an unavoidable, winless choice.
The uncertainty sends Kyoshi spinning off-kilter. Her throat works as she swallows around the lump lodged there.
The silence between them rings. Thrums. Bleeds, holds its breath.
With restrained slowness, Rangi crosses her arms over her chest and finds the tucked end of her breastband. Tugs it loose. Lets the fabric unwind. As it falls away she hugs herself tighter, keeping covered with hands and wrists and elbows.
Then the brewing storm rushes in. The wave crashes over them.
Rangi’s face crumples like a flower in a closed fist.
Right away she breaks into those sharp, helpless little snips of breath that lance right through Kyoshi’s mooring. Sudden fitful whimpers wrack her to the brink of spilling tears. Can’t hold them back, can’t use her palms to smother them without moving her hands—just curls inward at the shoulders, a futile attempt at concealment.
The profound sadness twisting Rangi’s expression snares Kyoshi’s heart, cracks it right open. Hurt reflects along the fulcrum between them—she feels it with a force that could splinter bone. Instinct alone compels her to lurch forward and fold the Firebender into her arms, securing her like a full-body swathe. As Kyoshi’s hands stroke and splay over the stooped bareness of Rangi’s shoulder blades, gathering her in, Rangi presses her forehead against her collarbone and sobs. The stuttery noise that rends from her chest makes Kyoshi want to level what’s left of the mansion.
Instead she murmurs Rangi’s name—the only place her mind can land—low and hoarse and begging.
Rangi is still clutching herself as she huddles closer. “Everything’s ruined,” she manages to cough out, hiccup-breaths catching and curving the vowels.
(How long did it take? For those abyssal ruptures she tore in the Spirit World to mend?)
Kyoshi’s mouth goes dry. “I’ll fix it.” She will. “Please—”
“No, Kyoshi!” Rangi bristles with frustration at the guilt-laden declaration before collapsing into another rough, half-swallowed sob. “I meant—this.” Her shoulders tense and bob, elbows held tight to her ribs. “I know I asked for this. That still stands. But we’ll never get this moment back. And this isn’t how it should have…” Trails off. Every syllable she utters is the mark of a broken root. When she scrubs her face against Kyoshi’s lapel, tears soak through silk. “This isn’t how I wanted you to see—all of me—for the first time.”
It’s not an explanation Kyoshi expected.
Not what she’d been preparing to hear.
For a stuttering moment it sends her reeling—the words and their raw, intimate implications settle like a heavy stone dropped into placid water, like stars falling. The depth of her own careless oblivion staggers her. Words, lost, useless.
But then Rangi draws back just far enough to look up at her. Fire and fever ruddy her salt-tracked cheeks, and the light glitters along her wet lashes. Sometimes holding Rangi’s gaze is like staring into the sun itself—blister-bright, persuasive, scorching—and welcoming the blindness that follows. Right now her eyes are wide and glistening, rimmed with red. They’re the tired eyes of a girl who is used to scrutiny and unused to her well-laid plans falling awry. The eyes of her girl, who needs her to say something.
A simple and perfect urge rooted deep in Kyoshi’s soul sparks to the surface. Her hands slide up, skimming along the elegant curve of Rangi’s neck to frame her jaw. Bronze watches, unwavering—a silent tear rolls free. Kyoshi brushes it away with her thumb. When she speaks, compelled from way down within, it’s only with her own voice.
“Nothing is ruined.” Rangi is in her arms, solid and warm and alive. How could it be any other way? “Nothing.”
Then—to prove it—Kyoshi slants in and kisses her.
Rangi’s lips part around a needy little whine in the instant before their mouths touch. Kyoshi swallows it whole. The contact is light, chaste. But its slow gentleness renders the promise no less resounding or solemn. An ember more than a blaze—a piece that keeps glowing after everything else has burned away.
It’s the first time they’ve kissed since parting ways on the shore early this afternoon. Their first kiss past the cusp of before turning to after. The first kiss they’ve shared here in the place where they met—the place where Kyoshi fell in love with Rangi’s strength and her honor and her dauntless fire, long before she realized it.
Should’ve kissed her sooner, so much sooner, back before everything changed. How many opportunities did they miss while life was still so uncomplicated? Too many. Kisses stolen rounding quiet corridor corners, kisses in twilit shadows behind the barracks, kisses inside empty libraries with only crumbling scrolls and sunbeam dust to witness them. Kyoshi should have kissed her that last day the village kids decided to torment her. Fixed her mussed collar, pulled her in, learned the taste of her mouth.
Retrospect is a bittersweet danger. Wasted bygones ripple through Kyoshi’s mind like a wistful tide, crest and fall. But the future extends far ahead of them, she reminds herself. There are so many other kisses yet to be shared in the time they’ve earned.
Kyoshi sends a tender throb of warmth into the mapping of their embrace. Rangi sighs softly against her lips. Finally, tentatively, she lets her barred arms unfold and drift lax. Her hands take Kyoshi by the hips, drawing their bodies closer. Pressing.
It’s all skin and Kyoshi can feel every contour, every soft swell and sinewy angle through her blouse and sash.
“You’re beautiful,” she murmurs, headspun, hardly realizing she’s speaking until the words have taken flight. Has she said that to Rangi before? She’s known it since she’s known her. Thought it a thousand thousand times in the grips of hopeless awe, but can’t remember ever telling her out loud. Truly foolish of her—time to start making up for it. She repeats, with purpose, “You’re beautiful.”
Any remaining doubt fades like fog meeting daylight. Rangi’s mouth quirks into a tiny smile. If she blushes, it hides well beneath the fever-flush. With their foreheads tilted together, they breathe in seamless tandem. Safe harbor. Tethered balance, a lantern lit. This is what keeps her here. Kyoshi feels her pulse skip and swoop as she traces her thumbs along the peaks of Rangi’s cheekbones again, for the sake of it alone.
Harmonized, they part. Shivers of heat linger in the broadening space—the storm’s passing leaves them hollowed out with the relief of a sky left to soften.
Rangi eases down onto the seat and nods, ready—a gesture of rare lowly openness, clarity and trust.
Despite all of the monumental newness, despite the sweet-shy wonder prickling at her face, how could Kyoshi refuse? Rangi needs her.
So she bends to the task. Not the hallowed duty of the Avatar, but the one ordained to Kyoshi. The only one that matters between them in this stolen-away calm.
Rangi relaxes with a sigh at the first touch of the warm damp cloth. Her eyes droop closed as Kyoshi drags it across her clavicle, down the line of her sternum and along the flare of her ribs, over and under each arm from bicep to fingers in turn. She doesn’t need to be scrubbed here, where her armor had kept her covered—just rinsed, refreshed—so wispy-light contact is enough. Each gentle stroke leaves the Firebender’s skin looking glossed in gold, reflecting the flameglow. A hum of content rasps from her throat. Kyoshi’s heart twists deep and tight in her chest, and it catches her breathless.
When she’s finished with the front of her body, Kyoshi hands Rangi a towel to dab off and then circles behind her, lowering to one knee. Her back needs more attention. It’s all bloody from her wound, grimed with sweat and earth, everything streaked messily together by Kyoshi’s hurried healing. The sight of it roils her stomach, but she stays focused on the motion of her hand and washrag—follows the well-muscled grooves of Rangi’s shoulders, wipes carefully across the sculpted contour of her spine until the blood and grit spill down and sluice away.
Lower, and—
Kyoshi braces herself. Tries to toss up a mental bulwark of stone the same way she would bend bedrock through the ground’s surface.
But it’s not enough. A flood of guilty dread erodes her efforts like sand when her gaze tightens on the raw-mottled mark at the small of Rangi’s back. It looks as harsh and calculated and violent as the strike that put it there—a starburst-shaped puncture in livid purple-red, imperfectly closed by Kyoshi’s imperfect technique.
Eventually the blemish will fade to jagged white, but its shape will withstand as a constant haunting reminder.
Rangi’s very first scar. Kyoshi’s failure. Yun, the terror who was once their friend, far beyond gone.
His body is still out in the courtyard. They’ll have to bury him.
The washcloth trembles in her hand. Feels like dislocating. Fracturing. Centuries spiraling out before her and Kyoshi left trapped, reaching, pinned down by all of the awfulness, all of the ugly work that’s led her here.
“Kyoshi.”
The sound of her name draws her back. Rangi’s voice is scratchy and uncertain, a barely-audible undertone. Forcing her jaw to unclench, Kyoshi whispers, “What do you need?”
For a long moment Rangi says nothing. Through the pause she stays stock-still, gaze trained somewhere near her feet. But in the silence Kyoshi can almost hear the churn of her mind, thoughts wrestling through a deadlocked grapple. It’s unlike her to be so halting, indecisive. Rangi always says what she means and means what she says. Usually she’s a detonation. Now she fizzles.
“Are we going to—talk about…” The question is bitten-off. She shakes her head, fists gripping the edges of the bench until her knuckles turn white. Kyoshi can tell she wants to get up and pace circles until everything in her mind comes unsnarled. When she finally speaks again—voice like rust over the hissing, hungry fire—her tone renders her meaning clear. “Do you regret it?”
Rangi didn’t see how it all ended. She had gone under before effect balanced cause.
Kyoshi could fill in the gaps for her. She could describe the cruel apathy of Yun’s expression as he drove that spike into her flesh and discarded her from a height. Tell her how it felt to watch her fall and fade away—how it was to look into Yun’s eyes, the dire wrongness of them, and freeze his heart mid-beat—how she had killed him with one hand while cradling her with the other.
But there are no easy words to embody the dimensions of it. Nothing she can say without breaking, nothing immense and ferocious enough to convey the truth of her answer.
Before Kyoshi can scrape up a response, Rangi speaks again.
“I don’t.” A white inferno—lethal grace and furor not spent lightly. “He tried to kill my mother. And he would have…he…”
While her conviction is plain-laid and doubtless, it’s also enmeshed with the slow shock of reality setting in. Just as she had sobered from senseless rage before she could bash Koulin’s face in, the gravity of everything bears down—comprehension of what they’ve done and can’t undo. Grim necessity wars against the grim sorrow that persists in spite of it, pulling at her seams.
If she could, Kyoshi would wash that stain off of Rangi too. Absolve her of that dichotomy, take it all on herself. For Rangi she’d go to lengths—she’d become the monster half the world claims her to be, if that would guard her beautiful, innate goodness from all the darkness that would try to foul it. Anything within her power. She’d heave up great slabs of the deepest earth, summoning walls to surround just the two of them, to shield her flame from the wind and the rain.
These oaths drive the air out of her. She drops the rag and sways forward to encircle Rangi—one arm wraps around her collarbone, hands meeting at her opposite shoulder. As she melds against the shape of her back, a shudder runs through Rangi’s body and resonates between their bones.
“I should have protected you better,” Kyoshi murmurs into the shiver-damp skin at the crook of her neck. “I’m sorry.”
Rangi huffs out a quiet, halfhearted laugh. “Protecting you is my entire job.”
“We protect each other, Rangi.” The spaces of purpose they’ve carved in one another are not so circumscribed. “We need each other.”
No counterclaim. Just heavy, devouring silence. Rangi lifts her hand and lays it over Kyoshi’s wrist, grasping at the spot where her pulse gathers. Softly, so softly it leaves Kyoshi’s throat searing, she says, “I don’t want to be without one another. Not again.”
“We won’t.” It’s a simple answer, one Kyoshi means beyond measure. She’s never looked away and she never will. “Where you go, I go.”
With those words—a reflection of promises kept and to keep—she nestles closer, giving Rangi’s shoulders a firm, snug squeeze. Rangi tilts her head, resting it against Kyoshi's, cheek to temple. They stay clung and settled and stormless like that until Rangi’s chill-fits return with a vengeance.
“Come on,” Kyoshi says, lips featherlight against the slope of the Firebender’s shoulder, lingering a little longer than necessary. “Let’s finish this and get you back to bed.”
Her fingertips wait on the ornamented end of Rangi’s hairpin until she receives a nod of permission. As the polished metal and fastener slide out, ink-black locks fall free in wisps along the delicate line of Rangi’s chin.
To see her hair worn loose always makes Kyoshi feel more chosen, more enviable than any nobility, element, or spirit ever could.
Kyoshi sets the pin aside and carefully coaxes Rangi to lean back closer to the washbasin—hushed and pliant, Rangi lets herself be led.
After she wets Rangi’s hair with cupped palmfuls of water, Kyoshi uses her fingers to comb through any tangles she finds, being cautious not to snag or tug. It earns her a weak moan as Rangi gentles helplessly into the contact. The noise cloys thick in Kyoshi’s ribs, swelling and stirring and fluttering.
Touching Rangi like this no longer feels like a transgression. Kyoshi must be the first person allowed to perform this intimate act since the last time her parents washed it for her, probably years and years ago.
So she gives the moment the attentive weight it deserves—makes it a ritual, one of beholden reverence. She pours a splash from a small bottle into her hand and massages it into Rangi’s scalp. The lather smells like rosewater and jasmine as she works it through from roots to ends. Every so often Rangi whimpers, blissed-out and lost in sensation, lulled into oblivion—her eyes fall shut, brow crinkled and breath slow, lips parted in noiseless rapture.
Then Kyoshi rinses it all away. Her fingers—tender, but also intent—card through Rangi’s hair again, and again, and again, until the water runs clear.
Once Rangi is dry, dressed, and back in the infirmary bed, she finally stops resisting inevitability. All of the fatigue she’s been fighting knuckles and teeth rolls in like distant, quiet thunder. Weariness pulls her along in its overwhelming wake as soon as she lies back against the propped pillows.
Covering her with the blankets, Kyoshi watches her fade in and out. She seems smaller like this. Softer—edges rounded, tame and yielding. Her slackened body swims in the pale-green cotton slip Kyoshi found with the linens and she can’t keep her drowsy eyes open for anything. Looks peaceful enough that Kyoshi can almost imagine the day’s ordeal as some terrible nightmare, and she’s just waking up to Rangi’s sleeping face at first light.
“Mmm.” Rangi’s nose scrunches as she tries to gather enough presence to make words. “Getting in?”
The half-delirious earnestness is disarming. Kyoshi finds it in herself to laugh. There’s a clipped snort from across the room, too—Kirima and Wong, pretending (badly) not to overhear as they distract themselves from time and pain with some daofei dice game.
“I’ll take up too much room,” Kyoshi says. It’s funny to picture how they might look crammed together on that tiny bed. Limbs everywhere, sprawling out at odd angles. “You need the space.”
Rangi must summon the strength of some particularly petulant spirit—she forces her eyes open long enough to seize Kyoshi’s gaze, and then pouts.
“Wanted you to hold me,” she sighs. Then, more breath-rasp than volume: “I like that you can hold me.”
The transparent, longing affection in that remark breaks something loose inside Kyoshi’s chest. Despite the circumstances—a sudden surge of fierce joy at Rangi’s trust, her admission, her desire. Makes Kyoshi feel like she could bolster the whole world in the palm of her hand.
She leans down and presses a firm kiss to Rangi’s forehead. Still feverish, but no longer burning up. “Soon.”
“Will you…” The request dips beneath a heavy yawn that pulls Rangi’s eyes closed again. “...stay anyway?”
(Stay here with me. A frail smile, its light and luster thinning away faster than Kyoshi can commit it to memory.
Leave it behind. Someday they’ll learn how.)
In wordless affirmation, Kyoshi scrapes the chair closer to the edge of the bed. It’s the first time she’s sat down in far too many hours. Denied for so long, exhaustion sets in with haste—her sore muscles throb with relief as she rests forward against Rangi’s body atop the covers, head in her lap. Through her lashes, she watches a soulful, sleep-stung smile curve Rangi’s lips. Safe, alive, content. The sight is like honey down Kyoshi’s spine—like the caress of moonlight slipping across her face.
The thread between them is a straight line guiding Kyoshi home.
Just Rangi. Only Rangi. Only ever Rangi, always. Her shoreline, her bedrock, her own careen of wind. A thousand bright lights bursting into existence. The gift of daybreak.
Rangi is peace and happiness and good things.
Kyoshi will keep trying to deserve her and trying to be what she deserves.
Slumber steals in like a gentle thief, all grace and persuasion. Kyoshi drifts.
The last thing she feels before it pulls her under is the precious warmth of Rangi’s hand weaving into her hair.