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I was the sun, he was the moon, and you were the tide.
His hands were coarse and sure the way he carved himself into my life. Gentle even with calloused fingertips from sword work. Rough, risen skin that used to catch on my own. Leaving behind little imprints of him on my body.
The bed is cold now where he used to lay and all I can think
All
I can think
Is of the times he would shove his frozen feet against my calves after another late night
Curling his body around mine, mumbling apologies and indignant remarks when I tried to recoil or reprimand
I always gave in to him
Love is a funny thing, Katara.
All the stupid, ignorant things it makes us do.
My love for my nation and its people blinded me to your brother's worth.
Not as an advisor, of his worth there I was always certain. He never let me or any of the others get away with anything. Intelligent. Resourceful. Cunning. Brutal when he had to be, but never cruel.
His worth there was unshakable, but his worth
as the man I loved?
The one thing I allowed myself to love outside of duty
That was where we wavered.
The first time he kissed me, it was in the gardens next to the turtle duck pond. Under the tree where my mother and I used to sit.
Did he tell you this? How he found me there that night. Basking in the glow of the full moon. A moment of respite before I returned to my work by firelight.
We shared a moon peach. He broke it in half with his bare hands. Juice running down his fingers as he offered it to me.
Wordless.
Silent.
All of the things I didn't think him capable of. He had only ever been loud to me. Occasionally foolish. I knew by then of his intelligence, his fortitude. But there was still this part of me that only saw him as a comedy and not as someone serious, unflappable.
Someone that could swallow down my own darkness and accept it.
Not until he sat with me there in the quiet. The pond burbling, the night washing over us as we ate.
Our mouths and chins were still wet with juice when he pressed his lips to mine.
Like it was nothing.
Like we were simply two men falling in love.
Not the arbiters of a new era. The companions of the avatar.
The victors of a hundred-year war instead of its inheritors.
My crown and his pen abandoned for the moment. A soft place to land in the chaos of the becoming of a new nation. One still healing from the war my family waged on the planet.
He felt like peace.
Tranquility.
I never loved him the way he deserved. I'm sorry for that.
He was the one thing I had outside of being the ruler of a nation. The one person that was mine and I never—
I never—
He's gone now and
The other side of the bed is cold. Like the permafrost in the North Pole.
Untouchable by any flame.
I could warm it for years and still feel the chill of his loss with my palm.
It was an accident how we started sharing a bed. I wonder if you ever knew. If he told you before I started asking him not to. It was before he even kissed me that night in the garden.
That night he'd been looking for me to join me in my chambers the way we'd been doing for months. We'd still both been having nightmares in those days. The aftermath of the war was brutal, as I'm sure you know.
We all dealt with it differently and we were there for each other through it.
So, at first I thought that's all it was. At the time we were the only two still left in the fire nation. You and Aang had returned North. Toph and Suki were in Ba Sing Se.
He and I were in Caldera.
It was winter then. The nights were getting colder. I didn't think much of how close he would sleep. It reminded me of how everyone used to seek me out back at the air temple. My body naturally runs hot. It's pleasant or so that was his excuse.
I think, in a way, it was mine too.
He told me once that you never truly know the beauty of someone until you've loved them beneath the stars. With the sky painted bright like the sun, galaxies shining overhead.
And they're still the only thing you see.
All the beauty in the world above you
And they're the only place you want to look.
He brought me home to you and Hakoda and Kanna that summer.
It was easy to pretend that visit was about diplomacy. About rebuilding the Southern Water Tribe. Being there to see it thrive.
But I think you knew then
I begged him not to tell
Plausible deniability.
You of all people know how complicated the politics of inter-national relationships are. The logistics of it. The timing. My advisors breathing down my neck to marry. To create heirs. To father the next generation of my legacy.
And him?
He didn't play into the vision.
He couldn't offer me heirs. Couldn't bear the fruit to build what they saw for me. The future I inhabited. That I was trapped in.
I did not carry my grandfather's war, but I did carry the demands of royalty.
But I couldn't run from him.
He was something inescapable.
I never knew he could be quiet. I always thought that eventually, one day, he would break.
He would force me out of the shell I'd built around us. Expose us to the world and dare them to condemn it.
He was always so much louder and braver than me.
And maybe he would have.
If we'd been given more time.
But now the bed is cold.
And I don't remember it ever having been so cold before.
Not even on those nights we slept apart. Or all the times he was gone. Diplomacy, advisory, visiting home.
It wasn't cold then because he was still here.
His body still took up space. He existed. He was loved.
He was there, somewhere in the world. And wherever that was, I started to know. To understand that he would always come back to me.
The first time we slept apart I was so sure that would be it. He would realise he no longer needed me and he wouldn't return.
I got so used to accepting that people always left that I had become resigned to it.
And who was he but just a man? Another person to leave. To move on. To do greater things.
I was so consumed by my work, by my destiny.
He deserved so much more than silence.
But the very night he returned he was back in my bed. He'd been provided his own quarters. Had even been offered his own residence near the other advisors.
Except there he was.
Laying in the downy white of the sheets. Blue eyes sharp and infinite like the surface of the ocean.
Waiting for me.
I always thought of this as the moment I knew. The catalyst that drew me deeper into the depths of him. Of allowing myself those moments of unconscionable, unfathomable love.
But the truth is, I think I've always known.
From the first time we ever met when he put me on my ass with his boomerang.
His fighting skills were laughable then. But he was still brave.
Always, always brave.
Even if it was terrifying.
Even if it was stupid.
His bravery was
a constant thing.
Wasn't it?
He was always so brave and capable and funny and smart. I don't think it could've ever been anyone else for me.
Yet
If anyone were to ask, I was so quick to deny it.
There were so many remarks on our closeness. Accusations from the other advisors. From my council. From our friends.
And still, he never spoke
He denied it too.
Following my lead,
Doing what was best for a nation he didn't even belong to, but not what was best for him.
We got eight years and even if we'd gotten eight hundred I don't think it would've been enough.
How now am I supposed to go on without him?
Laying on the wrong side of a bed I can no longer sleep in and writing letters while I can feel the phantom coldness of his feet against my calves, but none of the warmth of the rest of him.
How can I live knowing I never told him the ways of my heart?
And now all that's left of him is us.
Hakoda has had to bury a son.
You have had to bury a brother.
And we have once more lost the moon.