Sequel to The Things She Left Behind. Enjoy!

The first time Baatar kissed me, he asked for permission and I laughed.

That's not entirely true, actually. The first time we kissed, I was thoroughly inebriated and had no recollection of what had transpired the next day. The second time we kissed we were several months into my time as captain of the Zaofu security force, and Su and her sister were fighting in the courtyard. I had surprised him in his lab, since the avatar's stay meant tighter security and zero occasions to see him that week. I don't remember quite how it happened, but at some point in our conversation I decided I wanted to kiss him, that he'd waited long enough, and that I was comfortable with giving him more than a quick peck on the cheek. And so I surprised him mid-sentence, and practically detailed just how much he could reciprocate through increasingly shared breath. Baatar seemed more anxious that I wouldn't feel ill at ease than he did about getting to kiss me, something I appreciated. The few others that I had briefly dated were wholly insensitive to my comfort, or my hesitance towards any form of intimacy.

They were brief little courtships for a reason. I don't suffer fools lightly.

But the first time Baatar kissed me, rather than wait for me to take the initiative, was the night we won Ba Sing Se. "I need you to join the third battalion," I had told him, still more a lanky boy than the well-built man he'd later become. "I need the new prototype mecha-tank heading that group, the Dai Li have figured out how to disable the rest and the Royal Guard is cutting our men down by the ten. You said you can wipe out a squadron in one shot?"

"I can," he had told me, flustered. "It can, at least... Kuvira, can't someone else do it?"

"Can someone else drive it?"

"...no."

"Then you have to," I had insisted, impulsively seizing his hand. "I'll compensate you for any losses-"

"You don't need to do that," he said suddenly. "Just... if we take the city, let me take you out for a night."

I had been thinking of the greater good when I promised, and once the capital was ours, I had to make good on it. And naturally, Baatar brought up where we had left things before we turned our attention to matters of greater consequence. We were walking back to the encampment, and he asked me if I ever thought back to our foray out of the platonic before engineering and political ambitions brought us to where we were now.

"Oh, that?" I had laughed, squeezing his hand when he flushed again. "It was nice. It could have been better, though."

He looked mildly hurt. "Ah."

"I didn't mean it in a bad way," I said, swinging our arms as the night sky twinkled overhead. "It was nice; we needed more time and practice."

"Ah," he said again, this time with a chuckle. "I forgot, the Great Uniter doesn't like anything to be mediocre."

"You're not mediocre," I said firmly, letting go of his hand as the campsite came into view. "It was nice, Baatar. I miss it, sometimes."

"Do you really?" Acting on a sudden impulse, he tugged me forward by the waist, hesitating with a hand on its way to my cheek. "Do you... would you like to try again, then? If you don't, I completely understand-"

"Someone could see us," I whispered, but I stood on my tiptoes her tiptoes all the same. "So make it quick."

The stars matched the twinkle in his eyes and I pulled his face down to meet mine, my arms around his neck. Baatar had always been too gentle for my liking, his hands still a bit too tense, but neither of those factors did anything to quell the girlish excitement rising in my chest. The giddy rush was only ever amplified when he was touching me, and kissing him magnified it a hundredfold. "Maybe you should use the west entrance," he said, and I felt my heart stutter for the first time. I didn't think on what it meant. I was probably already in love with him at that point, but I didn't even realize that for another few months.

"I just want an excuse to kiss you again. As often as possible."

I don't think I said goodbye that night, either. Instead, I returned to the camp without a trace of the dazed smile and the rosy flush that had colored my face moments ago, walking to my tent with long, purposeful strides befitting a military commander and newly sworn-in president of a nation. But once I was inside and in bed I stared up at the ceiling, an embarrassed grin on my face as I replayed the moment under the stars. "Goodnight," I said at last, though there was no way he could have heard me.

o0o

The first time Baatar stayed the night, it didn't exactly go as we'd intended.

A clandestine seven-month courtship had culminated in a rather reckless invitation from me. We had taken to spending the free nights on the balcony between our quarters, the stars overhead and the ground racing along beneath us. We were sheltered from prying eyes, our only companions cool steel and the record player and whatever alcohol Baatar had chosen to accompany our little adventures with one another. I became familiar with his scent and his breath and his hands and his mouth, on those nights. Sometimes we would stand and survey our nation as the landscape stretched before us, an unparalleled panoramic view of our accomplishments. Other times, we would dance by the light of the moon, under the pretense of my teaching him something new. I'm not sure which I enjoyed more: the president and her second-in-command regarding their hard-won handiwork, or the lady accepting that she was sinking deeper and deeper into love with her partner, despite his abysmal footwork.

But one night, it started to rain. So I pulled him into my room, laughing and out of breath and intoxicated by the wine and his presence, and I invited him to stay. We were out of our wet things in short time, and I remember registering how hot his skin was, how restrained he seemed the whole while, and how cautiously eager his kisses became. I did little to deter him, tugging at his lower lip and snaking my fingers through his hair, my eyes falling shut when we ended up on my bed and his attention turned to my jaw and neck. The last time I had kissed him like this, he later told me, was the night I celebrated my promotion back in Zaofu. And that thought suddenly resurfaced while I was atop him, legs on either side of his waist, mouth to his, and his arousal embarrassingly apparent.

His free hand was at the hem of my undershirt, and he broke away with a question in his eyes. "May I- I mean, can we...? Only if you want to-"

"No," I said immediately. "Absolutely not," I added, letting go and sitting beside him instead.

"I... I see." There was confusion in his face and worry too, as if he had pushed me too far and was replaying everything in his mind to figure out what he needed to apologize for. "I'm sorry, I just thought, because you suggested I stay... and then we -or really, you-"

"We're not ready for this just yet," I said tersely.

"Is there something I need to do differently?" Baatar asked, a sweet, perplexed earnestness in his voice.

"It's not that," I said, my face flushing. "No, it's just that..you..."

"I told you already that you'd be my first," he said, his hand still tangled in my hair. "Is that what's bothering you?"

"No," I said harshly, squeezing his fingers. "No, not at all. But the trouble with first, Baatar… I don't want to. I have no guarantee that I'll be anyone's last and always, so it's difficult for me to allow firsts to happen."

He was very close, so close that I could feel his breath on my face. A part of me wanted to tell him I was still comfortable with him staying the night. I think a part of me wanted to make him mine in every way that moment itself. But it had taken me years to become comfortable with the feel of foreign hands on mine, much less arms holding me tight or lips on my own. Dancing and sparring had helped, some. I think Su saw that early on and knew it would help me get over my claustrophobia. Even Baatar had to content himself with the smallest of intimacies, both when we tried a relationship in Zaofu and when we began anew after leaving, and I saw it cross through his eyes before he spoke. "I can go," he said quietly, pressing a kiss to the side of my head, and I felt our fingers interlace as if by their own volition.

"You can stay the night," I said after mulling it over a brief moment. "But don't get too excited. You're sleeping with me in the most literal sense, nothing more."

He laughed, and I scrutinized his face as I tried to squash an inexplicable sense of unease and suspicion. If there was anyone I could trust unequivocally, it was Baatar. "I'm happy to sleep with you in the most literal sense if you're comfortable with it," he said, straightening up and leaning to drop his glasses on my nightstand. "Actually, Kuvira... I consider myself lucky that you let me into your room like this at all. If at any point you want me to leave-"

"Don't go," I said easily, untucking the covers and slipping underneath, gesturing for him to join me. "If I wanted you to leave, I would have dismissed you."

"'Dismissed,'" he echoed, a twist to his mouth. "How professional of you..."

"I didn't mean it like that," I said, wincing. "I meant-"

"I know what you meant," he said. His hands were unsure as they pulled my back to his chest, and I felt his entire body tense in his hesitance. "Is this... I mean, may I-?"

"This is fine. Perfect, even." My hands covered his, moving them to a more secure place around my waist, and with the coarse tickle of his beard at my cheek and the reassuring beat of his heart at my back, I fell asleep.

o0o

The first time I allowed Baatar in, in the most metaphorical and literal of senses, he gave me the most reassurance I have ever received in my life.

I had known about the ring the day he bought it, having sensed the fractal-cut diamond in his pocket when he joined me for dinner in my office. "Did you stop by the boutiques?" I asked him innocently, my eyes on the paperwork. I saw him choke, and head him set down his chopsticks. "If you did, I wish you had told me. I think it's time for different formal wear, we're making more and more public appearances lately."

"We are," he said, voice strained. "I... well, actually..."

And then he was standing, his plate practically untouched, and telling me that he needed to oversee an experiment in the lab. I couldn't help but chuckle as the door slid shut behind him. He had always been comically transparent with his intentions.

But then I became unsure if he actually wanted to marry me, when I suggested a wedding date and he pointedly told me that the reunification would have long since been completed. We were too comfortable with each other by that point, and little sleepovers were no longer a huge occasion for stress. I would bring tea, he would decant whatever spirits he insisted helped him with his unit ops calculations, and we would fall asleep at the desk before blearily stumbling to bed. Sometimes we used his room, and sometimes mine, but it was really just an excuse to spend time together. As we added more states to the empire, our responsibilities grew exponentially. Still, I was very much in love with him -though I had yet to say it- and officially being a part of his family had seemed so close to my reach that it was a disappointment to hear him dismiss what I said.

And then he surprised me, hovering behind after a meeting with the members of my cabinet, detaining me from overseeing the infantry drill. "May I ask you something?" he had said while my back was still to him, and I had waved for him to continue in a dismissive gesture. "Kuvira, you might want to turn around for this," he said, and I knew I hadn't misheard the sudden difference in the altitude of his voice.

"No," I said, a smile already in place before I had fully turned. "Now?"

"I didn't even get to ask you yet!" he protested, already on one knee and already taking my hand in his, pulling off the left glove. "I never thought I'd be lucky enough to ask you-"

"Yes," I said, pulling him to standing. "Yes," I repeated, kissing him, "yes, I will gladly marry you. You know, I felt the ring in your pocket the day you bought it. That's why I suggested a date for the wedding."

"That's what you meant?" he said in disbelief. "But we were working.. you never bring up anything personal during the work day." His words made me grimace, but the ring on my finger quickly dissipated my embarrassment. And that evening I invited him to my room again, my intention in my eyes.

Baatar had brought flowers, and I found myself more annoyed than touched. Flowers meant finding a vase. Flowers meant a delay. Flowers meant more time for me to pick over whether or not I was comfortable, whether or not I was ready, whether or not-

"We don't have to if you don't want to," he said while I busied myself with the small bouquet, but I barely registered what he was saying, my eyes on the new addition to my left hand.

"What?"

He cleared his throat. "Kuvira, I love you. But if you don't want to- if you're unsure-"

"I'm sure," I said suddenly, surprising us both. "I want to. I'm sure of everything."

"Everything?"

"How I feel... how you feel. All of it," I repeated, "everything. I can't wait to be married to you, Baatar. And I want this very much."

It sounds funny to me, in retrospect. I was so stilted and professional, but once he was kissing me all of that was gone and I only knew the feel of his hands and the taste of his mouth and scrape of his stubble against my skin. My body was hypersensitive to his touch, my senses elevated; the moment we were properly united would have been unpleasant if not for the waves of realization that kept breaking over me. We were going to be married. I was going to marry someone that I loved unequivocally, someone who loved me as much as I loved him. I would be spending my life with someone who understood me as no one else did, who made good on his promises to never betray me, who never lied to me with false assurances that all would be well when we both knew it to be untrue. I would be spending my life with Baatar, and as his hold on my hips tightened and his frame tensed, I knew this would only be the beginning.

After, our legs entangled and my skin lightly bruised from his ministrations, I teased him. "It wasn't the worst thirty seconds of my life."

"It took longer than that!"

"Fine. Ten minutes? I'm being generous."

He scowled before he realized I was joking, and then pulled me against him for another kiss, relieved. "You're all right?" he asked for the thousandth time. "I didn't hurt you?"

"A bit sore. You could have warned me, you know."

"About what?"

I nudged his leg with mine, my tone significant. "You know what I mean." For all his cleverness, Baatar could be frustratingly dense, and I regarded him with disbelief as I spelled it out when no amount of hinting proved sufficient. "You're not exactly small, Baatar." And then I laughed, because even after a year together it was still so easy to make him blush.

"And you have a means of comparison how?"

"In the security force, the boys had measuring contests.. in the crudest sense." I had laughed again at his embarrassment, and after a very ill-timed discussion about our campaign for the state of Omashu, I fell asleep with my face in his neck. "Promise me you'll be the first and last," I murmured before drifting off. "Promise me you won't be like everyone else..."

"Yes, of course I promise, " he had said, arms tightening around me and his voice gentle. "I can't wait to be your husband."

o0o

I can't tell if there's any warmth in his eyes for me, now. He doesn't look at me anymore, and a part of me is grateful. If I were to lock my gaze on his and see hatred instead of the love and affection I had grown so accustomed to, I don't know what I would do.

"Tell me how to move on," he says at last, and I feel my breath catch in my chest.

"Baatar-"

"Tell me how to stop seeing you everywhere I look," he is saying, his words sounding jumbled and his voice cracking. "Tell me how to go back to living normally, and before you do any of that, tell me why you did it. Did I mean nothing to you?"

"I never questioned your loyalty," I begin, but as soon as the words leave me I know they're all wrong.

"Loyalty?" he says, finally looking at me with unmistakable hurt in his eyes. "Loyalty, Kuvira? Is that what you were thinking of, this entire time? That when I asked you to turn back, I had become disloyal?"

"No," I say, trying again. "I know I never said it enough, but I loved you then, and I love you still. I don't know what I can say besides I'm sorry, and that I didn't want it to end this way, and that firing was the worst sacrifice I had to make-"

"What a sacrifice," he says, derision in his tone. "The helmsman said you barely reacted. Just a sigh, and then you pressed on with the mission. Did you really ever care for me? If you did, why did you-"

"Do you honestly think I'd go to pieces in front of the troops?" I hear myself saying, my voice cold and quiet. "I was never just your fiancee. I was a leader, and I was a commander-"

"But you were still-" He stops. "You have something of mine, and I want to know how I can get it back. I have something to return to you, if you'll only take it."

I am suddenly conscious of the ache in my chest, and I wonder if the hollowness I feel is purely from a prolonged stay in prison. They let me keep the ring, but I know that isn't what he was referring to. Suddenly, I know just what it means, to give someone your heart and trust them not to squeeze. Baatar knows it too, but he wasn't so fortunate. "I can't take it back," I say at last. "Any of it. Firing, the military campaign... loving you..." Something comes over him at those words, and he turns to the door, his hand poised and trembling on the handle.

Promise me you'll be the first and the last, I had half-ordered, half-entreated him. And when he told me yes, without a trace of hesitance in his voice, I knew I could let things continue. And so I did.

"Don't go." I had spoken without thinking, and instantly wished I could snatch the words back. He doesn't look at me, but he's stopped walking, frozen in his spot. He didn't bring Su with him, I realize, an eternity later than I should have. He didn't bring Su, and that can only mean that he didn't want her presence to restrict what we had to say to each other. "I'm sorry," I say again, my voice soft.

"It won't be for long," he says, turning back to face me. "I'll be back. Until you give back what you've taken or until.. until... I don't know. Whatever comes first."

I choose to fixate on those first words, 'it won't be for long.' A few months are not enough for him to cloak his features in new expressions, and I can still see the longing in his eyes just as well as I see disappointment and heartache. And that longing gives me hope I came so close to forfeiting. "Do you promise?"

He snorts, and I feel my hands tighten in my lap. But then he speaks, and my words aren't thrown back in my face, and I feel a pull radiating from his chest as if I'm meant to align with his body and feel his mouth against my own again. "I promise," he says, and long after the door closes behind him I find myself able to smile.

For terra-7. Thank you for all the wonderful correspondence. :)