An Ice Cold Heart
Part III
He wasn't coming.
There was no more denying it, no excuses left to make for him. The sun had set long ago, and it was as clear as the ice that surrounded the frozen landscape that Bolin had abandoned her on their wedding day.
The dawning horror that he had done this to her was so much more painful than all the other gawking stares and whispered mutterings anyone ever made behind her back combined, more than every other rejection or let down she had ever encountered.
Eska vaguely remembered walking the streets alone in search of him, her hands shaking as she sent passersby running with her burning glare. She didn't know who said it, but somehow she caught word of the news that Korra and her friends had taken over the prison ship headed to the North, and now there were whispers of war. She wouldn't have cared if war had broken out right there in the city, she just wanted Bolin back with answers, and only then would she worry about anything else.
She landed on the waves and took off across the ocean, her wrath fueling her bending in an explosive force of power. She saw Varrick's boat and made a beeline for it, recalling how he was the one leading the rebels and that Bolin liked to hang around him. But even at her top speed she couldn't catch up with them, and she had to watch as her betrothed disappeared into the darkening night.
Eska barely had enough energy to bend herself back to the South Pole shore, and she scrambled up to the first dock she could reach before sitting down to stare hollowly towards the northern horizon, not even noticing that the water in her clothes was beginning to freeze or that her whole body was trembling.
"Is he really worth dying over?" Desna's voice permeated the stillness.
He didn't seem to be troubled by her lack of response as he bent all the water off of her and draped his cloak around her shoulders, then settled himself down to sit beside her.
They remained like that for some time, neither speaking nor looking at each other. Eska didn't want her brother to see her face while she was in this state – humiliated, broken, and utterly disgraced. But his steady, familiar presence may have slowly helped to ease the hollowness resonating inside her so that she could begin to separate the emotions that were pressing in and choking her.
Bolin was supposed to be hers. She had never wanted anything more than she wanted him. From the moment they had met, he had been warm, open, unassuming and accepting of her – a first in her life. During the times she had spent with him, he somehow managed to bring her softer side out into the open, something she had previously been unaware that she owned. And also for the first time in her life, she had abandoned logic and careful reasoning in favor of acting on nothing but the whim of her usually shuttered emotions. All because of him.
And now Bolin had betrayed her. She had already known that he was beginning to fade away from her, so what else could she have done except force him to stay? She had learned from an early age that she lacked the ability to charm and win people over, so she simply had to take what she wanted or accept constant dejection. But she had failed, and he was gone.
Desna broke the silence once again. "Don't bother yourself with that earthbender, Eska. You deserve better. Someone who will actually want to marry you."
"I will bother myself with him if I wish, and I don't want anyone else – I want my Bolin. Besides, if I wait until I find someone who wants to marry me, I'll never stop waiting. And then when you wed, I will be alone, sinking further into despondency as I wait for someone who doesn't exist."
Desna finally turned to look at her profile, and she knew he could see the tears making tracks on her cheeks even in the low light of the moon. "Were you prepared to abandon me so readily this night after your wedding was supposed to have taken place?"
Eska's whirling thoughts came to a grinding halt as his words struck her. She shifted her head in his direction just slightly enough to peer at his outline from the corner of her eye, then she sighed and let her shoulders fall in observance to the point he was making.
"See?" he said quietly. "I could not leave you any sooner than you could leave me. It doesn't matter what happens in our lives or who enters them. You will never have to be alone."
He was succeeding in comforting her, but it also brought a wave of guilt. Everything was so confusing. She wasn't accustomed to this. Weeks ago when they had left the North Pole for yet another visit to the South, Eska had been prepared for the usual boring, uneventful trip, but not at all for what had taken place instead. She had not been prepared for the complete and total explosion of her inner world and mental constructs, so that she was left holding the broken pieces in her hands and not knowing how to put them back together.
