Silence.
The resonating, flat repetitions of flesh against flesh were muted, engulfed by the silence that was the tanned waterbender underneath him.
"Say my name," he tried. And still, she said, did, and was nothing.
He remembered why he had been drawn to her - a prince of the Fire Nation, attracted to a Water Tribe peasant? For shame - because though she controlled the cooling combination of oxygen and hydrogen, the element of liquid life, he saw her as fire. She was passionate, dangerous, feisty, gorgeous, and so many other things that he, even with the eloquence of royalty, could not put words to. She was his visual compliment, and yet their personalities seemed identical; so when they clashed, they were beautiful.
But this woman pinned in the cage of his limbs, this lackluster girl with a broken deadpan expression and limp chocolate waves and washed-out blue eyes, was not the one who had caused these stirrings inside him.
"Say my name," repeated the firebender insistently, desperate undertones lacing their way into the hems of his words. A name, a whimper, a moan, a brush of his scar, a kiss of his lips, anything to show she was even still of the living. Her breathing seemed to be the only indication of that - her breathing and the thrum of her heart…but that wasn't enough. That wasn't nearly enough. That wasn't what had captivated him, drew him in like a moth to a flame (even though, he registered ironically, he was supposed to be the flame).
She shifted, and he let a glimmer of hope into his amber eyes, one that was dismissed as quickly as it came because he knew she would let him down. Her days of meeting his expectations had ended a long time ago.
Caramel lips parted, so slightly, and his rhythmic motions ceased, breath hitched in his throat as he awaited a response. When words were finally pushed past her soft, dark skin, he almost wished for the silence back.
"I'm done."
And he knew, everything he had desired about her - everything he had fallen in love with - had fallen. It had crashed and burned like so many towns under the rage of the Fire Nation. It had crumbed in the wake of the blistering waves of heat. She was broken.
And he was the fire that had broken her.