Author's Note: I recently discovered that there's a whole genre of shipping-fanfiction devoted to the characters in question being destined soulmates as determined by dialogue that magically shows up somewhere on their body. This was ridiculous enough that I had to do my own take on the concept with my preferring pairing.

Warning for weirdness and parody.

Now Kiss

The courtyard, and the solitary willow tree that stood in its center, had been undisturbed for days. The whole city had been emptied of its proper denizens, and the Fire Nation military forces occupying it had yet to schedule a proper ransacking. Today, though, the courtyard found its peacefulness interrupted by Warriors. The willow might have given an exasperated sigh at the arrival of the humans, but then again, that might have just been the wind blowing through its branches.

The warriors in question numbered just two: one a young man of the Southern Water Tribe, the other an heiress to Fire Nation nobility. Their fight had meandered through the city of Omashu- or, as it was recently renamed, New Ozai- with the heiress chasing the young man and the young man in turn refusing to stand still and allow himself to be punctured by sharp metal things. These actions were fairly common to the warriors, despite this being their first meeting, for the young man was Sokka, underpowered companion to the Avatar and victim of cosmic bullying, and the heiress was Mai, 'Flying Daggers' Master and companion to Fire Princess Azula.

They had most recently been doing their throwing'n'dodging routine on the roof of the nearby mansion when the tiles beneath Sokka's feet had come loose, as was wont to happen to him, and he slid down the sloped surface into the open air. He finally made a near-fatal-but-somehow-merely-bruising landing in the courtyard.

Mai soon followed, landing with much more grace and throwing a trio of razor discs as her feet touched the ground.

Sokka didn't even stand up again before whipping out a club the length of his forearm and smacking the discs out of the air with a single stroke. It was a fairly smooth move, and his own eyes went wide with surprise over it actually working and him not wiffing it like city-boy at a seal-clubbing convention. He quickly regained his composure and grinned. "Your delivery," he said, and here he chose to scramble back to his feet and brandish his club, "has been denied. Maybe bring any gifts in person, next time."

And that's when Mai froze, a set of needles ready in her hands for a follow-up toss. "You did not just say that."

"What's the matter?" Sokka waved his club through the air in a vaguely threatening way. "Can't come up with a good comeback? Tell you what: you stay here and think of one, and I promise I'll come back and listen to it after I rescue my friends."

But Mai was ignoring him, instead rolling the right sleeve of her flowing crimson attire up to reveal a mechanical bolt-launcher clamped around her wrist and a series of pouches for small throwing blades strapped all up and down her arm. She loosened them with the shaking fingers of her left hand, tossing them aside with little care for where they landed. The skin that was revealed was pale and unblemished- except for the tattoo-like letters etched all along the underside of her forearm. They were of the Ancient Characters, enough of them to form a complete (almost overlong) thought, and they were glowing.

"Ash," the heiress hissed. "Ash, ash, ash, ash, ash. Monkey-feathering ashcakes!"

Sokka kept his club up, but his posture became unsure. "You okay? Sprain something? Were those words as dirty as they sounded?"

Mai sighed, let her limbs fall to hang limply at her sides, and looked back up at her opponent with tired eyes. "I've been reading that stupid bragging every day for as long as I could read, wondering just who would be stupid enough to finally say it to me." She gave a heavy sigh. "Apparently, you're the love of my life."

Sokka blinked.

He blinked again.

He used the sharp backside of his club to scratch his hair.

He blinked once more.

Then he finally got it. "Those were your Words?!"

Mai nodded.

Sokka finally lowered his club. "Okay, wait. What did I say? I don't even remember now. Something about a delivery? 'Next time have a more trusted servant make the delivery?' Slush, I don't know. Wait, what did you say to that?"

Mai scrunched her eyes closed. "You said, 'Your delivery has been denied. Maybe bring any gifts in person, next time.' And I said, 'You did not just say that.' Futilely, it seems. I expect your Words are glowing, too, right now."

The young man blinked once last time. "Oh, uh, well." His cheeks colored slightly. "Hold on, I have to check something." He ran over to the courtyard's lone tree and ducked behind it. A few seconds later, the sound of clothing hitting the ground sounded from behind the trunk.

Mai raised the hand with the needles again, just in case. "What are you doing back there?"

"Oh, uh. See, it's kind of a funny story. My Words aren't- well, they're not on my arm. See, I was a squirmy baby, and, well, took a little tumble during my Ceremony, so my Words wound up somewhere- somewhere inconvenient. And rear-facing, so to speak. Give me a second to check, would you?"

Mai lowered her needles. "You're saying your Words on your butt." She leaned a little to the left to try to see around the tree, but when that failed to produce a satisfactory view, she straightened again and pretended that peeping was beneath her. "That's the second most ridiculous place for Words I've ever heard of. But on the other hand, out of sight, out of mind."

Sokka's voice rang out loudly from behind the tree: "Oh, slush." A flurry of hasty noises later, he emerged fully dressed again, adjusting his belt. "Well, okay, I learned something new today. Apparently, one of the characters has been misread all this time thanks to a mole on my left cheek, and my Words aren't actually, 'You did not just eat that.' That would have made just as much sense for me, though. Anyway, yeah, I'm glowing, too. So, uh, I'm Sokka?"

Mai discretely returned her needles to their holsters. "Are you asking or telling?"

"Telling. Unless you think we can get away with somehow ruling this as a case of mistaken identity and resetting the whole thing?"

"Probably not without a helpful Spirit."

He nodded heavily. "Then I'm Sokka. Your destined partner, or- well, whatever."

The two stood staring at each other from across the courtyard. The tree might have sighed again, but then, it was a fairly breezy day.

Sokka scratched his rear. "So, uh, that was your baby brother we were trying to return to you? My- ugh- my future brother-in-law?"

"Thanks for not hurting him." Mai turned her gaze to the decidedly uninteresting willow tree. "Wherever you stashed him, could you make sure he gets home? My friend Azula kind of wrecked that little exchange we were going to do."

"Oh, yeah, sure. No problem. I think Aang wanted to do that anyway." Sokka turned to look at the willow as well. "I'm, uh- well, I'm sorry about how awkward this is, but I really wasn't expecting my destined wife to be Fire Nation. Until my butt just started glowing now, I didn't even really think 'destiny' was real, you know? And to have it happen in the middle of a fight!"

Mai nodded. "Setting a wedding date is going to be difficult, I expect. Hard to tell me what days you're free without cluing the Fire Nation in on your secret plans."

"Oh, good point! Er, I mean, yeah, that's going to take some thought. Unless, we- nah, that's silly."

"What?"

"Well, I was thinking that we don't have to get married. You know, just because of some glowing letters on our skin that we didn't ask to have put there." He peeked back over at Mai. "I won't tell anyone ever if you don't?"

Mai turned to face him, her eyes narrowed to knife-like slits. "Not follow our Words? Just- just ignore these things written on our bodies? I- Huh. I've never been crazy about doing what I'm told, but to deny something this- this big. To just ignore the forces that control the whole world? To throw our lives away in an obscene gesture of defiance? Scratch these letters off our skin and write dirty insults to the universe in our blood?" Her face almost took on an expression, her tongue flicked out briefly to wet her lips. "I kind of like that."

Sokka, back on his side of the courtyard, had gone a little pale as she spoke. "Well, when you put it like that. We would be throwing away everything that comes from a true love. Someone who actually understands us. Someone who likes us even for our most annoying, most silly, most smelly characteristics. Someone who will support us and who we know we can always relay on and who won't ever belittle our totally right most of the time instincts."

"What?" Mai snorted. "Are you some kind of romantic?"

"Shut up." Sokka pointed his club at her. "Besides, you're one to throw snowballs. Talking about wrecking your own life just to tick off an anthropomorphized conception of destiny. Isn't that romantic, in its own weird, painted-black kind of way?"

Mai glared at him, but wilted after only a moment. "So we're both romantics at heart. See, we're made for each other."

Sokka wilted, too. "I don't even want to think about this. I want to go save my friends from Princess Pyro and your weird compatriot with all the tattoos."

"Oh, those aren't tattoos," Mai said absently, as she looked back at the willow tree. "Ty Lee just has a 'special' personality and wound up with enough sets of Words to run a harem the size of a platoon."

Sokka blinked at that. "Er, right. So, maybe we can just put this off? Go our separate ways, and later we can decide whether to do the whole forbidden romance thing or just give up completely on true love?"

"Yeah, sure." Mai sighed. "No rush, I guess."

Sokka smiled. "Great. See you later, then." He turned and began running off across the courtyard.

Mai spun and threw a knife that he never saw before it struck him in the back of the head blade-first and killed him instantly.

The courtyard was silent once again.

Mai stood, frozen, for a long moment. Eventually, she worked up the nerve to approach Sokka's body. She stopped well short of the pooled blood beneath the corpse and nudged it with the toe of her boot, but of course there was no reaction. She backed away hurriedly and hugged herself, her gazing never leaving Sokka.

"I won't tell anyone," she whispered, "if you don't."

"But no one is ever as alone as they think they are."

Mai whirled at the sound of the oily voice, but she found the courtyard empty. She was the only living thing left here.

Except, of course, for the willow tree.

As Mai looked around, her back to the lone bit of decorative vegetation, the willow's bark darkened and its branches shed their leaves. Bare as they were, they almost looked like the limbs of some giant, armored insect.

Then, a moment later, they didn't almost look that way.

The giant insect that rose from the ground where the willow had stood was covered in dark chitin except for one spot- its face. Instead of the compound eyes and sharpened pincers of other bugs, this creature had a human face.

In this case, Sokka's face.

Mai spun at the sound of the insect's clicking movement as it extended its segmented body towards her, and for one brief second her face was overtaken with an expression of utter horror at the sight of her destined lover's visage. Then her own face disappeared from her head, leaving blank flesh and a soundless scream. The insect sprang forward to grab her and drag her through the ground of the courtyard as though it was liquid.

The courtyard was at last truly silent and empty. No life, no love, was left there.

Back in the Spirit World, Koh the Face-Stealer settled back into the depths of his dark home. He chuckled as he dropped Mai's body to the ground and let it wander through the gloom mindlessly. Like the remains of all his victims, this body would eventually stumble its way out of the cave, where it could haunt the lands along with all the other mortals who foolishly thought they could thwart the will of the universe.

Koh took no pleasure in this duty, but he did enjoy the positive benefits it would have for other humans. They would remain ignorant of the fact that choosing their own loves and lives was an option, and so the Spirits' preferred couples would be guided unerringly according to the Words on their bodies.

"No one messes," Koh rumbled, taking on a face painted white like death, "with my OTPs."

His laughter echoed throughout the dark cave, throughout the Spirit World, and throughout that empty courtyard, where the corpse of a would-be lover with Words on his butt was still cooling.

END