Chapter Text
“Suiren?” Kuvira calls, pausing in the doorway to the living room. A part of her still can’t get over just how… casual the two of them are around each other now, after quite a few months of cohabitation, but she can’t say she dislikes this more peaceful direction their relationship has taken.
She waits until Suiren looks up from the newspaper – she doesn’t have much interest in news or celebrity gossip, but always fervently checks the paper for any mention of the Red Lotus, her only way of checking whether her family is safe.
“You can heal, right?”
Suiren stares at her with a deadpan expression. “I’ve only been single-handedly taking care of all our needs with the money I make healing the damage your spirit cannon did to half the people in this area for the entire time we’ve been living together, but thank you for noticing.”
Apparently ‘peaceful’ didn’t necessarily mean ‘Suiren will stop infusing every word with sarcasm’. A pity.
Kuvira can’t help but roll her eyes.
“You know, now that we’re officially dating, you don’t have to pretend to hate me anymore.”
The blush barely shows up on Suiren’s dark skin, but Kuvira knows it’s there anyway. It always is whenever Suiren is reminded of them both finally confessing that what they feel towards each other is far from limited to simple, animalistic desire. They both crave affection, tenderness, the chance to bare their souls to one other fully and be accepted for who they are. They want to spend their lives together. ‘Dating’ is hardly the fitting word.
Suiren’s constantly annoyed persona fades away, immediately replaced with a half-smile.
“But it’s so fun!” she says, and Kuvira yearns to kiss that playful grin off her stupid face. Instead, it’s her turn to measure Suiren with a glare. Suiren finally lets up.
“Okay, yes, I can heal, is everything alright?”
Kuvira almost melts when she spots the concern in Suiren’s eyes.
“There’s this dull pain that keeps appearing above my left shoulder blade, I was wondering if you could take a look at it?”
Suiren shrugs and stands up. “Sure. Sit, I’ll go get my water.”
She does as she’s told, sitting on the couch with her back to the armrest. Over her shoulder, she watches Suiren leave and return with a big blob of water floating in front of her. She pulls it closer to herself, letting it envelop her hands like mittens.
“Left side, you said?”
Kuvira nods.
When she lays her hands on her skin, Kuvira can’t help but tense a little – the water is cooler than she expected it to be, though she supposes she really shouldn’t be this surprised. Knowing Suiren, she best be grateful that it’s not completely freezing.
The water starts glowing a bright teal.
Quite a few waterbender healers were enlisted in her army, but she still hadn’t managed to get used to the sensation of water slipping through the pores in her skin and poking around her various tissues. When the cold liquid flows into one particular spot, it hits some sort of obstruction. Kuvira bites back a hiss of pain.
“You’ve got a knot here,” Suiren explains, guiding the water to the obstruction again, but this time slower, gentler, trying to ease the muscle tension bit by bit instead of bruteforcing her way in. It’s almost like a massage, and Kuvira sighs in relief and relaxes as she feels it working.
“This isn’t the kind of muscle pain caused by overexertion, you must have slept funny or something.” Amusement slips into Suiren’s voice. “Only you could get injured in your sleep.”
Kuvira huffs. “I would be sleeping in much more comfortable positions if someone wasn’t so insistent on placing their entire body weight on me every night and making me lose all feeling in my arm.
“Yeah right,” Suiren laughs. “Keep telling yourself that, I know full well that you can’t get enough of feeling me pressed against you.”
Heat rushes to Kuvira’s face, but she chooses to ignore Suiren’s, unfortunately, completely correct comment for the sake of keeping her composure. Instead, she decides to switch topic entirely, lest Suiren continue her teasing.
“By the way, who taught you to heal? I heard it’s not something that’s too easy to learn on your own, with how delicate and sensitive human bodies are and all.”
Alright, not quite entirely.
If Suiren catches the innuendo, she pays it no mind. Her hands slow their movement.
“My Aunt Meifeng did.”
Now that’s a name she hasn’t heard before.
Kuvira turns her head, looking at Suiren out of the corner of her eye.
“I thought Haya was your only relative? Apart from your parents, that is.”
Suiren noticeably tenses.
“Only relative always present in my life, as much as I wish she wasn’t, yeah. Aunt Meifeng is my mom’s cousin. She taught me waterbending for a few years starting when I was eleven, including healing, but since she lives in the Swamp I could only go see her when Haya was at work and all my chores were done.”
There is… a strange edge to Suiren’s tone, her voice gradually getting heavier. She halts her healing completely. Kuvira doesn’t dare turn around – there’s little Suiren hates more than being looked at when she’s vulnerable.
“So if you had another aunt… why didn’t you and Midori go live with her?” Kuvira finds herself asking before she can stop the words from escaping her mouth.
Suiren inhales sharply. Kuvira realises she must have hit the nail on the head.
“Because Aunt Meifeng wouldn’t let us,” Suiren forces out through gritted teeth. “No matter how much I begged. She said we weren’t suited for the Swamp, that Gaoling was better for us. Even after I showed her my bruises.”
Kuvira feels a familiar rage brewing somewhere inside her, like it does every time when Suiren shares a part of her childhood with her. Maybe she’s biased because of how enamoured she is with Suiren, but it seems impossible to imagine anyone looking at her, or a younger version of her, with that beautiful grin and shining golden eyes and not feeling a single shred of sympathy. Or worse, actively wanting to hurt her, or finding out she was hurt and not doing anything to help.
Meanwhile, Suiren continues.
“There must have been something wrong with me. Why else would she turn away from me when I needed her? Why else did everyone turn away?”
Her voice breaks on the sentence. Kuvira yelps involuntarily as something freezing cold presses into her back.
The chunk of ice that Suiren’s water turned into falls to the floor and shatters as Suiren loses control of it. She stares at it with wide, unfocused eyes.
Kuvira can’t stand allowing her to return There, to that house, to those people who refused to show the smallest shred of sympathy to that tiny, scared, bruised girl.
“Suiren,” Kuvira says, reaching over to take one of her hands, not minding how cold her skin is. “Suiren, listen to me.”
Suiren’s gaze flickers to her for a moment. So she’s still present, that’s good.
“Come here,” she tugs lightly at her hand. Suiren obeys, circling the couch and lowering herself into Kuvira’s lap. Kuvira holds her as tightly as she dares.
“There is nothing wrong with you. Nothing at all. Absolutely no reason as to why everyone who should have cared decided to abandon you instead has anything to do you, you hear me?”
She keeps her voice steady and gentle and makes an effort to make her breathing audible in hopes that Suiren will copy the steady rhythm. She does. Her hands find their way to Kuvira’s tank top and she clings to it as if it were a lifeline.
“Those people are cruel. They’re selfish and cold and uncaring. No half decent person would look an abused child begging for help in the eyes and not do anything. I may not exactly be the poster woman for morality, but I know that much for sure,” she whispers into Suiren’s ear, rubbing small, comforting circles onto her back, carefully avoiding her hair.
“Then why?” Suiren asks, voice so thin and brittle it sounds almost child-like.
“I wish I could tell you, I really do,” Kuvira pulls back so she can look at Suiren properly. Her eyes are glossy with unshed tears. “I have no way of knowing for sure. My best guess is that they cared more about their own comfort than about your safety. Helping you would take effort they couldn’t be bothered to put in. There was nothing you could have done to change the mind of someone so ultimately self serving.”
To her relief, Suiren quietly chuckles. “Bold words for the Great Uniter.”
“Hey now, my goal was to help people. I just got… a bit carried away,” she averts her eyes.
“And the award for understatement of the century goes to…”
“Okay, look, I just said I wasn’t the best person to talk morals with, no need to make fun of me,” Kuvira crosses her arms, no matter how childish the gesture is.
Suiren briefly laughs and then presses into her again, nuzzling into the crook of her neck. Left side, as if such positions weren’t the main reason Kuvira’s shoulder was hurting in the first place.
If it meant providing Suiren comfort, she wouldn’t care if every muscle in her body was constantly inflamed.
“Alright, I’m sorry, carry on.”
Kuvira wraps her arms around Suiren’s waist. “You’re worthy of love, now and back then just the same. You deserved to have been cared for and I’m sorry that it wasn’t the case. You deserve the world, my Suiren.”
Suiren gasps, a little watery, and doesn’t say anything. Kuvira takes it as a cue to continue.
“You know… things like this were part of why I became the Great Uniter in the first place. I wanted to bring stability to the Earth Kingdom, refine everything and make it better, and that included making sure no child went through what you did.”
She feels another laugh reverberate through Suiren’s chest.
“If you stuck to such noble goals, I may not have had to try and assassinate you in the first place.” Kuvira can practically hear that wide grin on her face. This time, as she pulls back from the embrace, she does kiss it off her.
Their kiss isn’t long or deep, neither of them being too in the mood, but it’s as if it breathes some life back into both of them. Suiren smiles again and Kuvira can’t help but return it.
Suiren returns to her spot against Kuvira’s chest, sighing contently. “Thank you. I think I really needed to hear that.”
“Of course, any time,” Kuvira responds and then gasps a little when she feels a hand encased in freezing water press against her shoulder again. Suiren must have gathered up and remelted the shattered ice from earlier.
“I wasn’t done with that knot,” she clarifies, getting right back to work without changing positions. “And you should know I never leave things half-finished.”
“Apart from my assassination, right?”
She can’t bring herself to even pretend to be offended at the hard swat Suiren brings down on her arm. Instead, she leans further into her healing touch and hugs her tighter as they settle into a comfortable silence.