Day 5 Solitude
"Is this her, Daddy?"
"Shh," Baatar said, quieting the little girl. "It's rude to point, honey."
Kuvira mustered up a smile for the child, her dark curly hair held off her face with an ivory bow. Her jumper was green -the same green as the old Earth Empire uniforms, she reflected- and her skirts stood out around her, freshly starched. "Hello," she said, squatting to the girl's eye level. "You know who I am?"
"You're the lady Daddy never stops talking about," she said decisively.
Kuvira looked at him sharply. "Am I?"
"What did I tell you about being rude?"
"I'm not pointing," the little girl said, tossing her head.
Baatar sighed. "Fair enough."
"Why are we only visiting now?" his daughter demanded. "Daddy told me all of the stories. He said you helped him start his own projects, and you stopped the bad guys in Ba Sing Se, and you saved the avatar's dad, and-" she stopped, her brow crinkled as she tried to remember her question. "Why didn't you visit?"
"I couldn't," Kuvira said, the whole moment surreal and devastating at once. "I was... stuck in the United Republic for a few years." It should have been me, a voice in her head bitterly insisted over and over as the little girl flounced ahead of them, easily distracted by the spirits that floated around the park. Baatar had written her many letters during her incarceration, but every time she tried to reply, the words sounded wrong. The tone of his letters gradually changed from angry to heartbroken to desperate for a reply, and finally they stopped altogether. At the time, she told herself it was better this way. She had ten years of her life locked away, and to keep Baatar from moving forward with his seemed like the epitome of selfish behavior. He wrote her five years after the correspondence had stopped, saying that he'd forgiven her and that he'd like to speak with her. Her reply had been terse, and the next letter came after another year, informing her of his wedding.
"Well, I wanted to meet you," the child said. "You look different from your picture."
Baatar clapped a hand over his face. "Next time, I'm leaving you with your mother."
Kuvira looked at him, eyes huge, before turning her attention to his daughter. "You saw my picture?"
"In Daddy's desk," the little girl said merrily. "I needed square paper-"
"Graph paper," they both corrected automatically.
"Yes, and there was a drawing of you," the little girl said. "My daddy is the best drawer in the world, it looked just like you."
"I thought you said I look different," Kuvira said, smiling weakly.
"Well, your hair was all black," she said, "and you looked less sad. And younger."
"Sweetie, that's rude," Baatar reproved her. "Apologize."
"Sorry," the child said thoughtlessly. "It's not a bad thing, Daddy. You're pretty," she told Kuvira. "Why is there dirt under your eye?"
"It's a birthmark," Kuvira said, taking the little girl's hand in her own. "See? You have one too," she said, pointing out a little mole on the back of her hand.
"Can you give us a second?" Baatar asked, scooping the child up to look her in the eyes. "Daddy hasn't had a chance to talk with her properly for a long, long time."
"Okay," she said, wriggling away and running off to play with the spirits. Kuvira and Baatar sat next to one another on the bench, watching her bounce along and disrupt the spirits hiding underfoot.
"How old is she?" Kuvira asked quietly, conscious of the space between them.
"She'll be four soon," Baatar said. "I'm not looking forward to her growing up and asking the uncomfortable questions... as you saw, she only knows about the happy times we shared."
"I'm happy for you," Kuvira said, even as her eyes felt full. "I'm sorry I didn't write you back for those first few years.. I wanted you to move on. And I'm so glad you did, she's beautiful."
"Yes," Baatar agreed. "She is. She takes after her grandmother, too. She already likes to earthbend in the garden. It drove her mother crazy."
"I was the same way," Kuvira said, suddenly snapping alert. "Drove her crazy?"
Baatar looked at her. "Yes, drove. We're not together anymore."
"But you... you said-"
"Kuvira, my daughter means everything to me, but her mother and I simply couldn't make things work," he said. "I did love her. It just wasn't enough for her."
"Why wasn't it enough? You would've been a wonderful husband-"
"You effectively ruined me," he said, his voice at once gentle and accusatory. "I tried dating again once I'd managed to stop feeling miserable about you, but it never got very far. I could only think 'not Kuvira' after getting to know each woman a little bit more. My ex-wife was different; she's very unlike you in every way, but a good woman and a good mother."
"Even when I'm not a part of your life, I still manage to ruin it," Kuvira said drily. "Fantastic."
"It's not your fault," Baatar said softly. "I knew I was doomed when we were sixteen years old and you told me how you came to Zaofu. I really knew I was doomed when you danced under the pavillion in the meteor garden. Don't blame yourself for a failed marriage, not when there are a lot of valid things you can blame yourself for," he teased.
Kuvira wrapped her arms around herself, the solitude weighing upon her even more heavily now that she knew he too was alone, save for his daughter. "Keeping your ex-fiancée's portrait in your desk that you drew from memory isn't a good way to preserve a marriage," she said at last.
"I know. I told you, I can't help it. There could've been anyone in the world for me, but we've been through too much together. I could've tried harder, but I think a part of me never wanted to believe it was truly over."
"Look what I found!" his daughter squealed, running over with a spirit flower in her hand. "Look, it opens and closes on its own!"
"It looks wonderful," Kuvira said approvingly, feigning animated interest. "Maybe there's a spirit hiding inside?"
"Maybe," the girl said seriously. "Daddy, what's her name? You never said her name."
Baatar suddenly looked uncomfortable, and she remembered the first time she had had to introduce herself to him, twenty-six years ago. She did it again, squatting down to his daughter's height and proffering her hand. "You can call me Kuvira," she said. "What's your name? Your dad always was bad with introductions."
"Kuvira," the little girl repeated.
"Yes," she said. "What's yours?"
"No, that's my name!" the child said. "But Daddy calls me Mei. That's my middle name."
"Oh." Kuvira had always been good at hiding her emotions, and she did it now with redoubled efforts. "Well, I'm glad to share a name with you, Kuvira."
"Me too," Mei said happily, taking Baatar's hand and swinging it as they walked. "Daddy, why didn't you marry Kuvira?"
"Because then I wouldn't have had you," he said, scooping her up. "That's why."
"Well, now you can have both," the little girl announced, as if it were the simplest thing in the world.
"Maybe I can," Baatar said softly, looking from Kuvira to her namesake, his eyes betraying ten years of love and longing gone to waste. "But she has to say yes, you know. Do you like her that much? I have some not-so-nice stories about her I haven't told you."
"Baatar, she's too young for that," Kuvira reproached. "Wait a few years."
"Yes!" Mei said. "Yes, yes, yes!"
"Well, maybe I'll ask her one day," Baatar said, bouncing his daughter up and down. "Okay?"
"Okay." The older Kuvira looked at the younger; they both had spoken at the same time, and in that moment Kuvira suddenly felt much less alone.
A/N: brb sobbing. my submission for day 5, theme solitude aka heartbreak.