Hopefully you guys are still with me! I'm sorry I'm always on hiatus—been tryna get my life together lately. That's not a terrible great excuse, I know. Still, enjoy! Take this as a New Year's present from me to you!

The moon never looked so distant.

Katara clutched her pendant, running her fingers over the smooth facets of the aquamarine gemstone in the middle. Whenever she was stressed, her hands would return to the necklace. The generation-old stone must have been smoothed out by Katara's constant fingering, a habit that worsened after her mother's death.

"I don't know what the hell I'm doing right now, Mom," she admitted, looking up to the pale white moon.

The moon was bright but it wasn't shining on her. The moon was supposed to be the waterbender's source of energy, but at the moment it was draining, reminding her of the dedication and the loyalty that she had pledged to the nation ever since she was born on Water Nation soil.

She raised her hand in the direction of the small pool of ocean water that had formed a few feet in front of her. On command, a small sphere of water glided over to her fingertips. She raised her other hand and started to mold the water into abstract shapes.

The globe of water broke when Katara lost her concentration after some water sprayed into the cavern from a larger than usual wave. The salty water dropped onto her pants and she sighed as she watched the wetness spread out and grow over the cloth. She looked up and saw a little notch in the cavern wall—a mark she had made when she was angrier three years ago after an argument with her father.

Her ears perked up when she heard heavy breathing and rapid footsteps coming her way. She readied herself, a slice of water forming at her side.

"Katara?"

"Sokka." She wasn't happy that her brother approached her here. "What are you doing here?"

"I just wanted to talk—"

"You know that I don't come here in order to listen to what people have to say."

The solemn expression on her brother's face was genuine, and his face dropped even more when he saw her distressed face. "Hey, is everything okay?"

She shook her head and raised a hand to her furrowed brows. "I need to sort things out—Sokka, you know that I come here because I need time for myself."

"I'm sorry," he said. "I just…I just figured you were here."

Katara didn't respond, looking past her brother's silhouette and down to the dark ocean water that lay hundreds of feet below the cavern.

"Dad wanted to see you before he leaves," Sokka finally said.

She looked up. "He's leaving? Why?"

later

"You're going on another expedition, aren't you?" she accused.

Her father's shifted gaze was sufficient as an answer.

"Okay," she said, pretending to accept the fact like it was any standard day. Her father had gone on many of these military trips before—what makes her need to worry that he wouldn't come back this time around? Right?

"How long?" she asked.

"It's going to be a stealth mission—I don't know how long it's going to be," her father answered.

Something switched in Katara. "What do you mean you don't know? Aren't you the one leading the mission? You should lead it on your own terms. No one is commanding you, Dad. I don't understand why—"

"I don't know how long it's going to be, Katara," her father interrupted sternly. "We going to play it by ear and do what is right for the mission."

"We? Who are you going with?"

Katara heard Sokka sigh heavily in the back. There was a long moment of silence.

She stepped back, eyes widening. "Sokka?"

Her brother nodded slowly, confirming her worst fears.

"Sokka! Dad! What—?" She was speechless.

Before another word, her father's ocean eyes met with her cerulean ones. "I can't give you any details. I'm sorry."

"That's all you can say?" she asked, bewildered.

Sokka stepped in. "Katara, don't make this harder than it has to be."

Katara took a breath, unclenched her teeth. She couldn't believe that they were just throwing their lives away for the nation. It was patriotic. It would bring justice for all the other lives that were taken away. It would bring them closer to another night when their future children could look up at the sky and breathe the fresh moonlit air without fear of danger.

So, was it selfish for her to want them to stay?

Was it selfish for her to not want to lose them both?

thenextday

She hadn't slept at all that night. She had watched their ship rocking off the coast toward a fighting hell. She had watched that ship carry the last two people that she cared about away.

She was still afraid to say goodbye. She was afraid the goodbye would make it official.

His voice brought her back to the present. "Hey."

Katara said nothing to the firebender lying on the bed before her. She couldn't bear to make eye contact—the amber brown irises only reminded her of the day that she'd wake up and hear the news that her beloved father and brother were dead. Or worse—the news that no one really knew what happened to them.

Sometimes the sliver of hope was the one that got under a nail. Irritating and painful. Hard to get rid of but always there. And whenever someone pressed, the wound it created would just open and bleed all over again.

"You okay?"

She was immediately irritated, and the globe of water that she held between her hands darkened.

"Shut up," she said, with a black tone.

She held the water over the firebender's torso, quickly noting how his injuries were half healed due to her nurturing for the past few days. He was one of them. He was one of them who would eventually be the ones that would claim her father's and brother's lives. Why was she healing him? Why was she doing any of this at all?

How could she have been so naïve in the first place?

"That's wicked, you know?" the firebender said in a raspy voice.

She didn't respond.

"You can torture your prisoners," he continued. "And then you can heal them. And then you can put them through the same agony again."

It's also what we do to our solders, a voice suddenly reminded in Katara's head.

She paused and looked at him. Her eyes were glaciers but there was still water underneath the ice. The firebender knew that he was going to be tortured. He knew that the only reason why she was keeping him was so that the Water Nation could get intel from him later.

He knew. And she wasn't sure if that made her feel at least a little bit of sympathy for the firebender, even in the midst of her father's and brother's self-sacrifice.

"Well I must deserve it," he said, almost under his breath.

"It was all your fault from the beginning," Katara suddenly blurted.

The firebender was taken aback. "I don't understand."

"You know, ever since the Fire Nation got greedy and tried to take what wasn't theirs."

"What are you talking about?"

She leered at him. "You guys don't learn history? Does the Fire Nation not even give you guys an education?"

"Yes," he said. "But the Water Nation started the fighting because you guys were looking for more resources to feed your people."

"No, no, no," she argued. "The Fire Nation formed on an island and then after growing so large and populated, you wanted to expand more to make more cities. You sailed the seas and claimed all the islands surrounding the original island. But that wasn't enough. Your nation was growing faster than you could handle and you had to quickly find a more permanent land to settle on.

"You landed on the edge of the Water Nation and immediately liked the different climate. It was too cold though and the Fire Nation didn't have any clothing that suited the snowy weather here so your people were going to perish.

"Fortunately Water Nation citizens found your first explorers when they were about to perish of frostbite. The Water Nation took you in, healed you, fed you, and clothed you.

"The Fire Nation explorers ungratefully took the help and then left the next day, returning to their homeland to tell their superiors that there as a large vast land for the taking, a land that even came with people that would be easy to subjugate.

"The explorers returned and the Water Nation gave the explorers a welcome back into their home. But then over the icy horizon and blocking the way of the setting sun came the enormous army of Fire Nation soldiers. And so the fight began."

The firebender shook his head. "That's not how it was," he said, after a moment. "Yes, we were looking for new places to settle, but when we met the Water Nation citizens, our explorers traded our fruits and tropical goods to the Water Nation.

"The Water Nation leaders particularly liked the sweet fruit that we traded and decided to send Water Nation people to the Fire Nation on what was pitched as an ambassador mission. In reality those Water Nation ambassadors were informants that were going to collect intellect on the Fire Nation.

"The Fire Nation didn't suspect anything and showed their new Water Nation friends the entire country. Ruby Island caught the attention of the Water Nation spies. It was one of the peripheral islands of the Fire Nation and was the furthest from the Fire Nation. It was the least developed and least guarded, but it still had all the goods that the Fire Nation uniquely had because of its geographical location.

"The spies returned and encouraged the Water Nation leadership to capture the island. The Water Nation did just that, but the brave soldiers in Ruby Island didn't give up fighting even though they were severely outnumbered. Even the villagers joined the fight to keep the Fire Nation in control. The fight held out until the Fire Nation could send in more support and by then, the Water Nation was on its way to retreat.

"But the war had already begun," he concluded.

Katara shook her head, about to retort that the Fire Nation was just giving its citizens propaganda, but she realized that she and the firebender were never going to agree on what actually happened.

It had been so long that the Nations didn't even know why they were fighting.

She returned her thoughts to the healing work. She stared at a scar on his forearm.

Permanent damage. Bestowed upon him because of a history he was born into.

"It's okay," he reassured her when he noticed that her healing work stopped. "I've had worse scars."

She looked at his face inadvertently, and then found she couldn't look away. Her eyes began to trace the firebender's jawline to the disfigured half of his face. She realized he would have been handsome if it wasn't for that half, given his dark brooding eyes and chiseled features.

She must have been staring at the scar for too long, because he smiled gently and averted his gaze.

"I didn't have a healer like you to get me through it," he said softly.

My heart sings for you, she remembered him saying.

She didn't linger on the memory for long. "That's not a scar from a waterbender," she said.

"No, it's not."

There was a painful silence before the firebender opened his mouth again.

"I'm going to be tortured tomorrow, aren't I?"

And like how she was speechless when she saw her brother and father sail away, she was again at lost for words under the firebender's eyes.

afterthreedays

For the fourth time, Katara rehealed the firebender's wounds.

There was something that made her pity him, and she wasn't sure where her feelings were coming from. Was it his loyalty to his country to never give up any information about it? Was it because she identified with his courage to stay alive day after day? Was it the resilience she saw in him to see his bones healed and rebroken without any idea of when his cyclic hell would be over?

Or was it all because she was reminded of all of those traits in her brother? All of that loyalty, courage, and resilience in her father?

She heard him hiss when she moved healing water over a bleeding gash on his torso and saw the muscles around the wound contract in discomfort.

Somewhere, her brother and father looked exactly like this. Lying on the ground, waiting to die in enemy hands.

"You should tell them something," she said suddenly.

He looked like he wasn't sure if she was talking to him. But when it registered that no one else was around, he furrowed his eyebrows, not understanding.

"No," he said definitely. "Absolutely not. I'm loyal to my country."

"So says the person that is receiving medical aid from someone that is going against her country's wishes to do so," she muttered under her breath.

"…they didn't make you do this?"

"No."

"So," he reasoned, "you're telling me to betray my country because you did for me?"

She wasn't sure what she was trying to say herself.

"It's different," he continued. "I'd put my entire nation in danger. You're just healing one useless man."

"Well, you're alive," she argued. "You could easily run out of here and just go back to inform the Fire Nation of everything."

"But you're not going to let me do that under your watch, and I'll be dead before I know it."

Tomorrow, she thought, if she had overheard the Council accurately. Tomorrow, he dies.

She didn't reveal this information to him.

"I've already accepted the fact that I'm not going to see my home again," he said. "And if even by some grace of Agni, I was able to go home, no one would believe me that the Water Nation just let me go. I'm already a dead man as it is."

He looked up at her with solemn eyes.

"Katara," he said.

The sound of her name on his tongue hurt her. Why did he know her name?

"I know you hate me. And I know I represent everything that has ever caused you grief.

"But would you do me a final favor?"

Happy New Year, all! I wish the best for everyone this year! Make this year to be another to be proud of. And even if you're not proud of this past year, remember you're not a failure and you don't have to make things right. Just do the best you can!

(And maybe you can start by leaving me a review? Teehee.)

Best,

thir13enth