Chapter Text
Some friendships predate the mythology of our selves, they are foundational, there is no before and after, no memory or even notion of meeting. There is just them, as present and fundamental to one’s life and one’s sense of self as a culture, a parent, or even a limb.
I —
As kids, Hakoda and Bato were the best of friends. They were inseparable. They coloured each other’s earliest memories, and filled the edges of stories that were retold over fires and meals for decades to come. For most among the Southern Water Tribe there is no one without the other, they were Hakoda-and-Bato and Bato-and-Hakoda for as long as those names were theirs.
A memory — not the earliest — but an early one: winter dusk with the sun low in the sky. A newly bipedal Bato was being led by Hakoda the short distance between their homes, hands clasped together, small mukluks crunching the fresh layer of snow. Bato was brought into the home — memory can be fuzzy — so what Hakoda’s parents said has been lost, but the feeling of fond inevitability, of fetching another bowl and bringing the stolen child in for dinner, to be returned once Hakoda had fallen asleep, remained. It was a worn routine, the boys clambering into the furs together to hear one last story, drifting off, foreheads pressed together. Depending on whether Tonra had had a tiring day or if Korok’s back was aching, they would be gently separated, Bato carried the short distance to his home and deposited in his own bed, but just as often they would be left where they were, furs piled further atop their slumbering forms as Hakoda’s parents made their way to their own bed, unwilling to venture out into the chill for even a moment.
A later memory, less wispy: Hakoda crushed beneath older cousins, chest tight from laughter and something else, something he didn’t yet have the words to describe, something small, fierce and furious. Thrilled but a hairsbreadth from miserable in the way only a seven year old could manage, as the older kids continued teasing and teasing. Hakoda was one playful shove away from a complete tearful meltdown, when Bato slipped his way into the crush. His quiet voice, indecipherable from where Hakoda was pressed against the snow, and yet — The cousins eased off, less rough with Bato, who never courted the same physicality but could meet their joking gently. Bato smiled at them and bent over to haul Hakoda to his feet.
“Come on, there are some koala otters over here,” he said, leading Hakoda away while the cousins turned to even rougher play, hurling each other about the place. Later, at dinner, the cousin closest in age would proudly show Hakoda the deep purpling bruise forming on his shoulder from the games he missed. But at that moment, Bato was his focus. They spent the rest of the day chasing koala otters out past the delineation of the village, past where they were meant to safely go, voices high and laughs endless.
Quickly regaining his battered confidence, Hakoda had made up game after game, rules endlessly complex, but ones that Bato would pause and cock his head over before nodding and taking them on board. They were each other's perfect playmates.
Those years their small village was punctuated by the sounds of their hijinks as they fell over themselves laughing in games lost to their memory, chasing penguin seals, conquering invisible battles visible only in their imaginations. They were young, and close beyond all measure. Hakoda, bright and endlessly curious, picking up his lessons deftly and bringing inventiveness to his tasks. Bato, quieter, with a surer hand, who knew people well, beloved by the parents and elders of the Tribe. They were inseparable.
Then, at age twelve, their duo became a trio — or at least, an occasional trio — when Irruk moved from the Northern Water Tribe, the first and last in a generation.
He was chubby-cheeked with a shock of dark hair and wide blue eyes, swimming in furs too large for him as his family introduced themselves to the village, heads hung, spirits damp. A tension that the Hakoda and Bato registered but didn’t understand hung in the air as the assembled villagers stared at their new kinsmen.
It was not happy circumstances that saw a family leave safety behind the ice walls of the North to join the scattered, harried villages of the South.
Nobody discussed what brought Irruk’s family across the world, or at least, they didn’t in front of the whole village. Hakoda and Bato had snuck into enough council meetings to know how the elders, the warriors and the other leaders of their tribe would discuss certain matters away from the whole.
Normally, they would be whispering plans to sneak away to play or to sneak back to eavesdrop, depending on Hakoda’s mood, but instead they stayed, staring at the new boy, and his quiet, heavy air. He was unlike anyone they had ever met before, something almost dangerous in this fact. They kept a suspicious, captivated distance, silent and pressed close together.
Yet, within an hour their caution had shifted into fascination, orbiting around the new boy like twin stars, wary, but almost ravenous in the attention they paid to him. They stayed like that, hovering nearby, helping the family get settled, being nothing but good helpful sons of the village, while Irruk shrunk increasingly in on himself, unsure of what to do with these unblinking boys and their frank, unwavering attention.
Like this they stayed, until the home was as prepared as it could be and there was a pause in the air, a ‘what now’. Until Bato made the offer of a game. The openness of his face and warm tilt of his smile, shocked the shy Irruk into a yes that he wasn’t really sure of.
From there it took five minutes for Irruk to shock them both with a sly comment that had them laughing until breathless, another hour for Bato to team up with Irruk and actually surprise Hakoda during one of his more complicated strategic games. He looked thrilled at the defeat while they laughed, loud and clear.
Irruk couldn’t supplant the intensity of Hakoda and Bato’s friendship, but he helped mellow it. They had let someone else in and their bond did not fracture, but grew to encompass another. With that, their time became a little bit less their own. They were still Bato-and-Hakoda, Hakoda-and-Bato, but now they were also Hakoda-Bato-and-Irruk. A trio of terrors, of polite young men, of the hopes of their generation, of kids far too smart for their own good.
Bato and Hakoda still had hours on their own, with Irruk spending time with his sister, a confident girl who had little interest in her brother’s new friends, enjoying his own company when she was otherwise occupied. He informed them once, when they asked why he would sometimes prefer to spend time carving alone than with them, that while he loved them, he couldn’t possibly spend every moment of the day with them. They accepted this easily enough, but each were privately confused, Bato and Hakoda had never once tired of each other.
As teenagers, there was the slow dawning of responsibility, it happened to all the young men and young women of their tribe; the heavy losses and looming threat of the war stripped all of them of an adolescence and it seemed to happen earlier with passing each year.
They were already marking themselves out as future leaders of their tribe, going on hunts, raids and trading missions with nearby villages, laughing together but presenting themselves to their peers and elders as the hopeful futures of the community they inevitably represented. They all sobered with the growing weight of the expectations being laid on their shoulders. It was nothing deliberate, the village council members did not sit down one day and decide that it was time to usher them too quickly into adult responsibility. But. Still. The ways that their elders, their parents and the warriors of the tribe praised and trained them, drew them in, and they began to mold themselves too quickly into the men they had to become.
This was true of all of them, but Hakoda especially seemed to be constantly drawn into responsibilities meant for a man five years older, being given missions to lead and being asked to join strategy meetings, a good decade younger than all the others.
And where Hakoda went, Bato and Irruk followed.
II — Bato
In their trio they had their roles, Hakoda was their leader, Irruk their grounding force and Bato… Bato liked people. Irruk was strong and good with his hands, innately brave even as he still thought of himself as that timid young boy staring in from the outside. Hakoda led, of course, strategic, inventive, an excellent fighter, he spoke and everyone listened, but he was prone to more moments of uncertainty than most would not recognise, and had a sense of humour that was as quick as it was goofy. Bato… couldn’t say what he brought, he knew he liked to read, liked to gather stories, found people easy to talk to, something he quietly put down to being endlessly curious rather than particularly nice. Maybe that was what he had to offer.
They did their ice dodging challenge at fourteen.
As they embarked, waving farewell to their families and peers, Hakoda had grinned at Bato’s father as he sat crossed-legged at the bow, before he gathered Bato and Irruk close, “We’ve trained for this and there is nobody else I’d want to do this with. Let’s have some fun!”
It turned out to be a particularly difficult outing as the waves and winds saw fit to test them unlike their peers or forbears. The council always chose the days with calm weather to hold ice dodging challenges, and they had left the village under blue skies and gentle winds, but a squall had blown at nearly the exact moment when turning back became impossible.
Hakoda, naturally, had the helm, shedding his joviality without panic, charting their course through the winds and the violently shifting shards of deadly ice. Keeping his wits about him, his calm stretched out to the others. Bato and Irruk each manned the riggings. They all knew how to sail since they were tall enough to grip the riggings, having been raised by fathers, uncles and cousins on whatever ships were being taken out to water, but knowing the theory or practicing under their kin’s careful eye were completely different beasts to ice dodging through a storm.
Bato’s father was one of the village’s best fishermen, and he had always said — whenever he returned to shore, baskets bulging with catch to be salted — that the trick to surviving the icy waters was to keep calm. His face was impassive as he watched them from his perch, giving nothing away. So Bato put his trust in Hakoda and relaxed into his role, even as they cut close to the jagged corners of the shards of ice that Bato had been taught from birth to respect and fear.
Bato kept darting glances at his friends. How Irruk who had never sailed before leaving the North had gained his sealegs, how he no longer got jerked about the deck by the movement of the waves. And Hakoda, always a sight to behold, became all the more breathtaking in a storm. How he stood at the prowl, preternaturally calm, icy wind whipping the beads in his hair. Hakoda was quiet, assessing until he wasn’t, calling out instructions, voice sure, and eyes alight as he watched the movement of the ice floes ahead of them.
Their trial was nearly complete, for all that the storm had battered them, Bato’s heart had only lodged itself in his throat once. When, despite his faith and their sure footing, it had seemed like they would get clipped, before Hakoda’s trajectories had sailed them through, just missing them. Bato and Irruk exchanged thrilled smiles, knowing that this had been a strong showing of skill and teamwork that would do their families proud.
They were so close to the calmer waters of the east channel, two boat lengths from the end of the ice floe when they spotted a fishing canoe upturned ahead of them, crushed by two colliding bergs. Bato felt sick to his stomach. Who had they lost ? When Hakoda gasped, pointing to two shapes. It was the fishermen floating in the water, waving frantically, still alive , but in extraordinary peril.
“We need to get them out of the water,” Hakoda shouted, before either Irruk or Bato had fully understood the scene, but nevertheless they nodded. Bato’s father made a move to help, but Hakoda had shouted back to him that they were going to do this right, so he’d resumed his seat, watching them still, brow furrowed.
Under Hakoda’s instructions, they threaded their way back through the ice floes, dodging and weaving to get close enough without risking their own ship. Once they drew near, they could see the younger of the fishermen, Konna, Bato recognised with a jolt, go beneath the water, his furs sodden and tangled, as the other – face invisible under his water-heavy hood – tried to keep him up. But it was clearly a losing battle.
Bato felt sick once more watching them bob there, the rope cutting into his palm, and instinctively began moving towards the edge of their ship.
After a shout and a splash, Bato was rooted in place. He realised that Irruk had thrown himself into the water, and was now stroking ferociously to get to them both. He reached them without issue, a strong swimmer despite the currents and Bato watched, as Irruk used his strength to haul the two onto an iceberg so they were at least out of the water. From there Irruk pushed himself out of the water, but kept slipping back into his waist. Tui and La, they didn’t have much time.
Hakoda threw Bato an uncharacteristically desperate look as he gripped the helm and wrenched it to one side, throwing Bato backwards as the ship jerked forward. Nodding in understanding once he regained his footing, Bato moved away from the edge to take Hakoda’s place, doing the difficult work of keeping the ship steady as Hakoda strode to the side of the ship, he was walking slower than the situation seemingly demanded, but Bato knew this was just his way of keeping calm and formulating a plan.
Hakoda looked out, surveying the scene, before he turned and scaled the rigging, doing something that Bato could not see so that one of the beams swung outwards with two lengths of rope dangling down. From one, Hakoda dangled, forearms and thighs gripping tight as he built momentum, the other, knotted with hand holds reached out beyond the ship. Bato felt his heart stop even as he kept his steering straight and watched as Hakoda used the movement of his body in the air to swing the rope out to the three boys, and once Irruk had them secured, used another swing of his body to turn the fulcrum and haul the three of them back onto the ship before completing a circuit back onto the ship himself.
When Hakoda landed, chest heaving, and breath coming out harshly in dense clouds in the frosty air. He slanted Bato an intense look of triumph and pride, and, after basking breathlessly at the sight, Bato steered them out of the danger zone with another nod. Hakoda and Irruk quickly stripped and re-dressed the two fishermen, covering them in whatever dry pelts, tarps and covers they had on board, rubbing warmth into their skin and comforting the two with hushed words Bato couldn’t make out.
They were a pair of brothers — Konno and Kuhuk — several years older than Bato, Hakoda and Irruk, but seemed younger by their close call and the leeching cold of the water.
After a time, when the physical threat to the brothers had passed, Hakoda returned to take the rudder back from Bato, giving him a breathless hug and a whispered “fuck, we did it.” Bato gripped him back just as tight, hardly believing what had happened. Hakoda eventually broke the hug, needing to guide them back out into the calm water for good this time.
Bato checked in with Irruk who was sprawled out on the deck, breathing heavily but grinning wildly. Bato leant down and ruffled his soaking hair, dropping a cover over him and instructing him to keep warm, “I’m not letting you lose a toe after that show of heroics.” Bato teased, before he headed over to the brothers, sitting beside them and distracting them from the emotional comedown with a gentle patter of meaningless conversation, keeping a keen eye on them for signs of frost-shock. At one point he glanced over to his father who had kept still and silent throughout the ordeal, and could see a smile on his face.
They were welcomed back to the village as heroes, once the surprise of six rather than four descending from the ship had passed. The elders took it to be an excellent portent that their ice dodging rite was not only passed handily but resulted in the saving of two of the tribe’s sons.
They are given their marks, made full members of their tribe, before their families and peers. Hakoda took the mark of the wise; Irruk the mark of the brave (to his slight bemusement) and Bato the mark of the trusted.
From then, what had been a habit became practice, as they joined the rest of the men training, routinely going through drills, finding where they fit in battle formations. Of course, at fourteen, they were still young, and there were formations and drills not suited for those who were still not full adults. They found themselves in limbo, training as warriors with time still to mess around and adventure when training turned more serious than their fathers and uncles were prepared for them to participate in.
Hakoda was included in all the strategy meetings, dragging Bato along after the first, muttering something that Bato couldn’t hear over the rush of blood in his ears at being so explicitly included. Some on the war council had raised their eyebrows at Bato’s presence, until Hakoda quietly and firmly reminded them that if point of including him was to prepare him for leadership, that would inevitably include Bato as his second in command, so it would probably be best for him to be included from the get go. Pushing down his blush Bato did everything to rise to the challenge.
They spent time bonding with the other young men in their tribe, those they’d been passingly familiar with, but who had never made a huge dent on the exclusivity of their trio. Men like Irayto, a year their senior who crafted the best weapons of anyone their age; when he presented Hakoda with a club for his heroism, Bato watched amused as Hakoda tried not to choke up in gratitude. Or Tyok, an endlessly affable young man of sixteen who always seemed uninterested in the practices of war but could throw a boomerang with deadly accuracy.
Despite everything, Bato was warmed to his core every time Hakoda sought him out specifically, trying not to read too much into the ways that Hakoda found excuses to sit side-by-side, pressed close, how he found excursions just for the two of them.
During those years, along the stuttering path of adolescence, they got stronger, faster, more able with their weapons. Bato shot up and didn’t stop growing until he was the tallest of their tribe, going through periods of ungainly incoordination until his limbs began to cooperate giving him a loping grace. Beside him, Irruk became thick with muscle, still light and fast on his feet but now able to plant his heels and not move . While Hakoda seemed to split the difference, taking some of Bato’s height and some of Irruk’s sturdiness, a perfect counterbalance.
During the starry nights, after their hunts and training had been done, in the scant hours before everyone retreated to their homes, Bato (and Hakoda, once elbowed enough times to pay attention) watched as Irruk embarked upon a steady, quiet courtship of a young woman a few years older. Having seen her methodically preparing the meat from a hunt one evening he’d fallen wildly in love. Irruk was successful in his courtship, despite his youth and the ways that some even then still kept their distance from the family who had blown in from the North, because Nyah was a wise young woman, and saw the quiet intelligence and warm promise in Irruk’s eyes whenever he listened to her, and let herself be carefully wooed.
Happy and disgustingly in love, Irruk amused himself by looking on with some humour and much exasperation as Hakoda and Bato continued to dance around each other. Bato sympathised with his frustration and let Irruk tease away so long as he also offered an ear to whinge to. Whenever Hakoda was off in a meeting or on a mission that Bato and Irruk both had been blocked from, Irruk would drag Bato off and tease him about his slow, crashing failure to admit how madly insane he was about Hakoda, cackling while Bato cradled his head in blushing defeat.
What finally tipped them over the precipice they had been circling was exasperating, to Irruk, mostly, but also to the many others caught in their dance.
Truth be told, it was exasperating to Bato. Why it took him so long to act or admit, how they spent so much energy and time building up, watching each other, drawing closer, but always finding a reason or interruption to draw away again. Sometimes, Bato hurt for how often he thought about tangling his hand in Hakoda’s hair, pressing his lips to Hakoda’s sharp upper cheekbone, pressing their bodies together — past the maddening close-but-deniable distance they kept.
In the end, they were on the way back from an overnight scouting trip to one of their smaller sister villages, laying out beneath the stars before retiring to the tent. Things were often so hectic back in their own village, times like this felt sacred, time to breathe and just be with each other without interruption. Bato didn’t know whether Hakoda valued these moments as much as he did, but the fiercely unimpressed look Hakoda had levelled at someone who interrupted a conversation a week ago had made him pause, considering.
The night was still and cool, they had spent their evening talking about the village they’d left, how it compared to their own, before shifting on to hushed speculation about the future when Hakoda nearly cracked his jaw with a yawn.
“Go to sleep, my friend,” Bato said, shoving him slightly, “I’ll be in after you.”
Hakoda made to protest, as he so often did, but yawned again, a wide, bodily yawn that left him blinking sleepily once done and before Bato could insist, Hakoda was standing up with an inscrutable smile. They knew each other and their routines, how long it took to prepare for sleep, deeply so Bato mumble-recited a favourite moon song his late aunt had taught him to count down the time. He took a couple more breaths of the icy air, eyes wet from the cold, casting one last scan into the inky night lit by the full moon and made his way into the tent.
When he entered, Hakoda was right by the opening, poised as if he was heading back out again, he had his tunic half open, and one boot off, in a state fit neither for bed nor the outside. Their eyes caught, and then so did Bato’s foot on the fabric of the opening, tripping him and sending them careening onto the sleeping mats and each other. In the past, either he or Hakoda would have rolled off or turned the grapple into a tussle; instead Hakoda seemed to be frozen where he landed under Bato.
Eyes wide and intense in the gloom of the tent, Bato snapped, months (years?) of this dance becoming untenable in an instance.
He took a stuttered breath in and leaned down to kiss his closest friend. Hakoda’s lips were still cool from the night’s air, but they quickly opened and then it was all heat. It took them a moment to figure out how to fit themselves together, but they soon found a rhythm of their lips; hands, and hips moving together, building a delicious friction that climbed and climbed until it peaked, with Hakoda stealing one last kiss and Bato biting gently down on his lip.
The next morning, they woke up tangled together and sticky. Bato had extracted himself at one point to close the tent flap before they drifted off, remembering through the euphoric haze that neither of them would appreciate waking up to a flurry joining them in the tent. He’d hesitated when he returned, but Hakoda had immediately grabbed him back.
With the light of dawn filtering through the membrane of the tent, they looked at each other, faces pink and pleased, each starting to say something, pausing and then before either could speak the yelps of a penguin-seal interrupted them both and they found themselves laughing.
“We should probably head back,” Bato said, voice trailing, meaning or we could say we were delayed by a freak snowstorm and spend the day in the tent, and that was fun, I have some ideas we could try out.
And Hakoda said, “You are probably right, we really ought to tell the chief about the need for more supplies” meaning, Bato would later find out, when Hakoda translates the rueful smile he had given at the time, spirits I just want to push you back into the furs but if we do we might never leave, and we have a duty to do. And also, I really don’t want to be interrupted by a penguin-seal again.
Once they got back to the village they didn’t talk about it, too quickly swept up in the bustle of their growing responsibilities. But they did smile, wide and knowing, at each other. Which felt like enough. It was certainly enough for Irruk to tackle them into the snow informing them that it was about bloody time.
Whenever they had a spare moment alone, one of them would find some way, in the new vocabulary between the two of them, to indicate their interest and they fell into bed again. But they still didn’t talk about it. Even as they were stealing as many hours as they could with each other, even as their families and friends looked on with mild amusement and no small measure of inevitably.
For a time, things were perfect, Bato and Hakoda were rising to the paths their tribe was setting for them, strategising with the other men, building their defences, planning their offences, training, training and training. Their bodies strengthening, their minds sharpening. They studied traded maps, blown-in Fire Nation armour, half-remembered Earth Kingdom geography, whatever could be salvaged from the village archives, from the memories of passing traders, from the ruins of earlier raids.
Bato watched as pressure and expectations piled atop Hakoda, how his broad shoulders shook but never faltered as hopes and demands stacked up. His friend was a moon younger than he, barely eighteen and the focal point of all their hopes. The elders knew better than to say as much, but when Hakoda’s tactical brilliance and leadership shone so bright, it was unavoidable, they didn’t need to say it. Everyone knew.
So Bato did what he could, pulling Hakoda away whenever there was a chance, giving him however many moments he could carve free. Bato made sure that Hakoda could breathe, could take a moment, it became the space they cherished the most. Those pockets of calm that Bato found, where no demands were made or expectations laid, only Bato and Hakoda warming each other in the cold air, slurping stolen stew, watching the stars glisten.
Hakoda in return made sure Bato was at his side whenever he could, pulling him into meetings that neither had any right to be at, but where Hakoda wielded undeniable authority, their leaders deferring to his ideas in a way that seemed right while being wrong.
And so on they went, Hakoda pulling Bato into his side as he leapfrogged into positions of respect in their tribe, while Bato found moments to pull Hakoda away, finding moments of calm and distance for Hakoda to be a person. Of course they continued to tackle each other into bed, or whatever dry-ish alcoves they could manage, but it was there, in those moments where they reached to each other and brought themselves into alignment that they drew closer than they ever had been.
Until it stopped.
At the time, this being an inflection point would have been unthinkable, but with hindsight and the wisdom of age, Bato could say without equivocation when things shifted.
They were at a gathering of the young warriors from across the scattered villages, pressed into a long tent barely big enough to fit the three dozen or so young men who had trekked to attend. Hakoda was, of course, sitting at the very head of the table, holding court as other young men bayed for his attention.
Normally, Bato would be able to catch his eye, and once he had Hakoda’s attention a space would be made for him and he’d be able to sit beside him and guide the conversation. They both had their strengths, Hakoda’s were… too many to count, mostly, but Bato could do people, on their own or in groups, he had a comfort with people and talking to them that he knew Hakoda didn’t have and relied on.
But this time, no matter how hard he tried, Bato couldn’t get Hakoda’s attention. Irruk noticed, came over and knocked his shoulder against Bato’s in solidarity, saying nothing but knowing that this really was not insignificant. Bato realised with a pang that this is what lay in his future, this feeling of being no longer needed. Or worse, no longer missed.
He gave up after a while, abandoning his efforts to catch Hakoda’s eye, letting Irruk back to his circulating and instead turning to the handsome young man who had been standing near to him for most of the meeting clearly overwhelmed.
With a smile that was only mostly fake, Bato said, “It’s a bit mad in here, want to get a breath outside?”
The young man looked so relieved it felt like a jolt of purpose, “Spirits, please, I was not prepared for… this. I’ve never even sat in our village council.”
Bato smiled softer, looking over at the chaos around the table, “It’ll be easier after a break, come on, we can chat outside,” he used his arm to guide the young man, who he’d learn was Yukku, from the village to the far East of Bato’s. As they snuck out, Bato thought he saw Hakoda finally look his way, but by the time he was outside in the blinding sunlight of the summer, snow still crunching afoot he figured he had been wrong, letting wishful thinking and past memories merge.
Bato ached with the feeling that he had suddenly become superfluous, a friend for the confines of their village but not for the wider Tribe. Had this not come at the end of a week of missed opportunities and failed attempts to slip away, Bato probably would have better been able to comfort himself about his role and importance, but he felt battered and unimportant.
It was petty, but he allowed himself to be monopolised by Yukku. He didn’t neglect his fellow-villagers, speaking to Hakoda before his speech, checking in with Kyok before the friendly contest of skills and commending Irayto on his carving, but Bato certainly didn’t put the care and effort into seeking them out that he usually would.
From then, Hakoda and he were still best friends, they still fell into bed with one another more often than not, but something changed that day, their inevitable trust in each other was shaken just enough to make them shy and unsure. And having never been either about each other, they had never developed a vocabulary of reassurance.
III – Hakoda
At age nineteen, Hakoda met Kya.
Well, in a manner of speaking.
The Southern Tribe was a small community, and their village all the smaller. So both Hakoda and Bato had known Kya for most of their lives. Hakoda had liked her in that absent way you like someone who was pretty and seemed kind but wasn’t a solid fixture in your life.
Then one day, Hakoda had come back from a month-long hunting trip, triumphant, at a time when he and Bato had ebbed away from each other —
[Why had this happened? Hakoda, Irruk and even his mother asked in varying tones of despair. The best Hakoda could figure it: they were popular young men, and it was the tradition of the water tribe to be somewhat... fluid in these matters until declarations or promises were made. And none had been. No promises had been made, sought, or even hinted at. Yet Hakoda had turned nearly everyone else away, girls and boys, no one else seemed worth the effort, but found himself still subtly encouraging Bato to enjoy the attention of the other young men pressing their suit. Trusting?Expecting?Hoping? that inevitably Bato would come back to him. Until. Well. Until a few months ago, when Bato didn’t just placidly smile back at the young man flirting artlessly at him, but responded in that quietly devastating way of his and Hakoda had watched feeling like some ice was cracking beneath his feet.]
— nothing stated or explicit, just the new natural tide of their relationship, and saw Kya. She was laughing with some of the younger members of the village, her cheeks flush and hair escaping its elaborate styling, and Hakoda was struck blind, completely shocked into love.
He dropped one of the skins he had been holding, almost tripped as he went nearer and stumbled through an exchange with her that was probably only a few, unnoticeably over-eager sentences, but felt like he was trying to have a casual conversation with his pounding heart on visible display. When she walked off, giving him a small smile, and putting him out of his misery. Hakoda made it ten paces and face-planted in the snow next to Bato, who he realised had seen the entire thing. His friend was too politic to laugh openly at him, but that almost made it worse.
Once his face had stopped burning, Hakoda had looked up at Bato, smiling fondly down at him. He found no jealousy or resentment in his friend’s face, so he waxed poetic, words he could not remember but that Bato regaled him with often, their cliche growing with constant retelling. Bato listened with that air of his, the one that made you feel like he was paying attention to nothing else in the world but whatever was coming out of your mouth before he promptly stuffed snow down Hakoda’s furs, as they dissolved into a play fight.
One that left Hakoda breathless, hard and confused, when Bato got him pinned, knees either side of his rib cage where his heart was beating like the water against a ship in a storm. Bato quickly levered himself up, and pulled Hakoda to his feet soon after, with a smile and a glancing hug, too brief to register “I’ve missed you, Hakoda, a month is too long to be apart.” Hakoda couldn’t agree more so dragged Bato off to fill him in on all that he’d missed.
Hakoda waxed far less poetically to Irruk, a few hours later, having realised many solstices past that descriptions of a woman’s beauty were wasted on Bato. Although Irruk was not much of a better ear, bearing Hakoda’s gushing for scant moments before simply raising an eyebrow in clear, quiet judgment until Hakoda wandered away.
Bato tolerated Hakoda mooning for five days before approaching Kya and begging her to let Hakoda know whether she’d be interested, to her amused delight.
They were betrothed, married and pregnant with Sokka within the season, both of them so young, but seemingly incandescently happy. Bato was obviously standing beside the beaming couple and there immediately to welcome the squirming bright eyed baby when he arrived. A fixture in the happy household.
IV – Bato
Bato was, of course, not pining away.
Hakoda finding a wife was no great tragedy in his life, it was an adjustment to be sure, but didn’t emotionally devastate him — they weren’t there yet with their relationship. Bato allowed himself a few moons to be quietly forlorn, missing the physicality of their relationship. Before he told himself quite firmly that that was enough, he and Hakoda still had — for his priorities as a young twenty-year old — all the parts of their relationship that were most valuable and essential, their friendship was strong as ever.
Bato was dragged into Kya-and-Hakoda’s marital home most evenings, for visits ranging from Kya wanted some grown-up company and Bato was the closest non-parent she spotted, to little Sokka had grabbed onto the tie of his boots and rather than break his grip Bato had been brought home, to the most common of all which was simply that Hakoda wanted his best friend for company. Dinners, baby-sitting, parties, feasts, long-winding conversations and short catch-ups, Bato hardly went a day without being brought across the threshold for one reason or another.
Irruk had convinced Nyah to cohabit with him some years ago when he’d built a beautiful home and shyly invited her to stay, but she was still holding out against marriage. Bato was there having dinner with them when Irruk raised the possibility once more, having decided spontaneity and persistence were his best options in his quest. A dinner table proposal was almost disappointingly tame, Bato’s favourite had been one howled over a ferocious blizzard as they quickly tried to peg down the anchored boats, while Irayto, sap that he was, swore the one under the stars after a village feast was the best. (Nyah’s favourite, of course, was the proposal she said yes to, but that was years away.)
This time, Nyah had leaned over the table and patted her love indulgently on the cheek, and said in an affected tone “But Irruk, darling, you are simply too young for marriage, what if another catches your heart and then I’ll be an old woman, left alone.”
Bato knew this was all in jest, Nyah was only five years their senior and would have no trouble finding a husband or a wife in a heartbeat were she interested in another. They had all heard some variation of this excuse ever since the first proposal, and usually Irruk would play it off, but this time Irruk gently caught her wrist, guiding her so they were fully facing each other.
“My love, have your reasons for delaying my proposals;” Irruk said, “tell me they are unwanted and you’ll never hear me ask again and I will simply take whatever you are happy to give me; but please do not lie to me about why you are saying no, you know there is never going to be another for me.” He pressed a sweet kiss to her wrist as she flushed but said nothing more on the subject, turning to Bato and sweeping him up in conversation.
There were not many moments where Bato found himself feeling alone, this was one of the few.
Either way, Bato was the single holdout in their trio.
He was not, however, lacking for company.
Bato had a number of relationships with other men in the village. He found his home lousy with beautifully carved lion-whalebone figurines and tools whenever he and Irayto found themselves drawn together; learned even more about their cultural stories and traditions when he falls in with a former warrior twelve-years-his senior, Turqon, whose injury during a training exercise had cast him as tribal historian; and spent three months in a neighbouring village, a two-day trek away, as a cultural exchange, spending anytime not in meetings, helping shore up defences or helping his host family, tangled up with an astoundingly pretty man, Koraq, before returning gladly home, once he heard that Kya was pregnant once more.
None of these relationships was particularly serious: Bato watched without resentment as his exes paired up after a time with other men or found wives of their own. Until Bato found himself drawn up with a visiting earth kingdom anthropologist whose one month sojourn studying the village became longer when a huge storm hit and regular merchant routes were halted.
He was a cultured and enthusiastic young man as tall as Bato, whose glasses constantly froze and fogged in the tempestuous climes of the pole, from whom questions and stories fell readily, and whose eyes seemed bright with curiosity at every waking moment. This man, so apart from everything that was familiar and known about his village and life, strangely helped settle Bato.
They were happy, and it was the longest relationship Bato found as a young man, but still nothing that felt permanent.
When his anthropologist left, after two almost three years (many months longer than his initial expedition was planned), with a good long kiss, a standing invitation to visit him at his university, a promise to send his journal article on the customs of the Southern water tribe and at least five questions shouted out of the parting ship, Bato felt adrift, none of his other relationships ever felt quite as final in their partying. Everyone else he had cared for in this way, he could still see with effort or an invitation, but with Zei on that ship it was likely Bato would never see him again.
Kya, who had recently taken over some duties from their healer, and Hakoda, recently elected chief, brought the kids round the night Zei left. Their faces kind and not-overly pitying, and Bato welcomed them to his suddenly emptier home, he fed them well, regaled Kya with a scrounged-up story from their youthful shenanigans, taught Sokka a game from the Earth Kingdom, and gently, lovingly hurled Katara into a snowbank as she shrieked with joy and ran back to him again, and again.
If the snow seemed to move and shift with the young girl, none of them were going to mention it. The first water bender in a generation was far too heavy a topic to pair with a break-up.
Later Irruk and Nyah dragged Bato around to their home, ply him with alcohol and heavy furs, and let him dwell and obsess, poke the bruise until it’s tender and throbbing, without the worry that such a display would create in Kya and Hakoda.
Still they were happy years.
The war, of course, intruded upon their shores.
There had been periodic, brutal fire nation raids, with the benders of the village taken away, violence meted out and trade all but halted. But they had been having a period of relative calm. When raids came every couple of years rather than with the seasons, as bad storms and news from the Earth Kingdom kept the Fire Nation at bay.
This changed when the black snow returned and ships with blood-red raven standards descended.
Bato was as far away as he could be in their small village compound, trying to keep one of the walls from falling, when it happened. He was battling some fire-nation sailors with his uncle and a number of other men, the old and the young. They were badly outnumbered but still on their feet and pushing the soldiers back when a bugle was blown on the ship and the fire navy retreated as one. Disbelieving jubilation was beginning to take hold as they watched the black-armoured soldiers turn and retreat swiftly, when a scream from a familiar young voice split the clouds.
They lost some good members of their village that day: Hokki, a slip of a boy at just sixteen, as well as Okodo, a grandfather twice over. But those were deaths in battle, warriors dying with their weapons in hand. Deaths that helped drive back the raid, with the soldiers leaving nearly as quickly as they came, there was a grim triumph in such losses.
The loss of Kya hit the village hard.
She and her family were beloved, of course, but it was more than that, she was killed in her home, a mother, a healer and not a fighter. They all heard from Hakoda and Kanna, who heard from young Katara about her mother’s bravery and the village drank, wept, and toasted to a brilliant woman snatched from them by an looming evil.
Hakoda shattered, not visibly, not that anyone could see, anyone other than Kanna, Irruk and Bato.
He was still their young, brilliant chief, leading meetings as the fires still mouldered, as funerals were conducted, as the village started to rebuild. Yet, to those who knew him well, who bullied their way past the defences he erected in his grief, Hakoda was a man in inexpressible anguish.
He stayed as strong as possible for the kids: young, young Katara who saw the monster in charge confronting Kya; and brave Sokka who took to joining any of their drills and practices he could.
It became a cherished ritual, swapping out who would lead the men and Sokka through a series of drills and stretches before someone else concocted a special quest to take the boy off, allowing the rest of them to spar and plot without a ten-year old and his wide eyes taking in too much.
Bato quietly ended his latest affair with a sad kiss and a long hug, Irayto again, moving into the spare room reserved for guests in the family’s home. Hakoda spent many nights sleeping with the kids or platonically curled around Bato, eyes wet, shuddering in his sleep.
Kanna and Bato become strange confidantes during that time, tag-teaming each other whenever the kids or Hakoda need something.
After some time, Bato moved out of the spare room — once Hakoda could bear to pass the night on his own — but found a way to move his home closer. He would take Katara on walks so she could practice moving the water, looking pleased at any effusive, if uninstructed praise he had to offer, while he and Sokka would go on ‘training missions’ or camping trips, or the three of them would make huts and slides together, giving Hakoda space for his grief and mourning.
At other times, Bato would spot a fractured tension in Hakoda’s shoulders, a certain glint in his eye, or get a warning look from Kanna and would haul his friend out to a distant ice floe for several nights, to camp beneath the stars like youths again, sleeping bags nearly touching, Hakoda’s breath spiralling up towards the constellations in puffs.
There, he talked, finding Bato an ear to reminisce to without burdening a grieving family member, he shared the good of Kya, her laugh, her smile, her food, her wit, the way she used certain words; but also the frictions that arose in any relationship, how she could go into herself when they argued, how he’d have to ferret out what was wrong, how she could be self-sacrificing in ways admirable and devastating, how she was so gracious and warm except to a select few grudges she tended to and nurtured obsessively.
Sometimes Hakoda would sob, heaving in his furs. Other times he would be silent, with Bato allowing the creak of ice, lap of wave and gentle susurration of snow to fill the night, until Hakoda would let out a deep, almost painful breath in and out, and Bato cleared the frost from his voice and found some childhood memory or borrowed folktale from his anthropologist to tell the cold air and his grieving best friend.
Otherwise, Bato spent much of his time helping the family, not trying to fill Kya’s place, that didn’t even occur to him as a possibility, just trying to be an extra set of hands and another body beside the fire.
One day he was helping Kanna with the needlework, not wanting the burden to fall entirely on either her with her waning eyesight or young Katara, but also knowing that Hakoda – a talented man in all other respects – should not be let anywhere near textiles lest a sleeve become stitched to a belt, or any holes meant for mending mystically found themselves enlarged.
Bato looked up from his project at the sound of a polite cough, and saw Hakoda topless, holding out a torn vest, looking sheepish. “I don’t suppose you could…? It got caught when I was disembarking.”
With an expression carefully mocking in its blankness, Bato took the proffered vest to mend, placing it alongside Sokka’s coat which needed desperately to be lengthened in time for another spurt of growth. Hakoda smiled in thanks, before he stretched and turned to enter the home, his muscles shifting beneath his warm, bare skin, and Bato was caught.
He wanted to sink his teeth into the juncture of Hakoda’s shoulder, wanted to tackle him to the ground, roll around like they were seventeen again, finding fun and new knowledge in each other’s bodies. Hakoda disappeared inside and Bato gave himself a shake, but heard Kanna cough and grin wickedly at him, an eyebrow raised.
“I remember being young like that,” she said and Bato blushed, unable to deny, returning his focus obsessively to the mending at hand, and not looking up until a fully dressed Hakoda returned and the kids came streaking past bellowing about penguin seals.
The raid changed things for everyone.
The fighting men were beginning to realise that they would have to leave soon, that there was no point standing around waiting for another attack to come, instead they would take the fight to the frontline, meet the Fire Nation in the Earth Kingdom where they pushed ever onwards. They upped their training schedules, began stockpiling weapons and tools, and took to maintaining their war boats better than they ever had.
Bato watched as the other warriors clung closer to their families, stayed by the fire longer, pressed in close, the unspoken anticipation growing. Many a child was conceived in that period of time. Irruk’s proposals stopped one day and never restarted, with him confessing grimly to Bato one evening to not wanting to make a widow of Nyah. As they spoke about battle formations, pored over charts and readied the fleet, Bato cast looks over to Hakoda, trying to figure his friend out. He tread around the question a couple of times, but could see the uncertainty weighing down.
Hakoda’s young family had already lost one parent, to leave seemed cruel; yet Hakoda was their leader, their best strategist, and one of their best fighters, for him not to come would be to all but doom their campaign to failure. The tribe couldn’t ask that of him, and neither could Bato, although the idea of fighting apart from Hakoda felt heavy with not only dread but sorrow. He did not push the matter, just tried to glean as much tactical wisdom from his friend as possible.
But, each time Hakoda said something particularly brilliant, or managed to disarm three of their fastest warriors, all in the prime of their first flush of youth, he would catch Bato looking somewhere between amazed, impressed and sad and Hakoda seemed to resign himself. They never spoke of it, but it clearly was a decision plaguing his friend.
Hakoda, inevitably, decided to join the fight. Because he was an excellent soldier and a better man. Because they needed him. Because it meant something to be the chief.
The cost of the decision was clear when Sokka tried to join as well, the twelve-year-old insisting he was old enough to fight when they were all packed and saying their long, heavy goodbyes. Bato watched as Hakoda hugged his son tight, whispering into his ear, before he stood and told Sokka to return to Kanna and his sister, that he would need to be the defender of the village now.
They made it onto the ship, Hakoda joking, gently teasing his men as they sailed off, every picture of a valiant chief.
It was only later, in his quarters, when the watch had been taken, the lights of their village long gone that he collapsed in on himself, sobbing once, twice. In the end he only allowed himself ten moments before straightening and moving on to discuss bearings and plans with Bato who he had dragged into his quarters — as a witness? a confessor?
As Bato prepared to leave to find his own bunk, he took Hakoda and crushed him into a hug, “You’re an amazing father,”
“How can I be?” Hakoda asked, sounding smaller, younger and wearier than he ever had before.
“There were no right choices, at least this way you can try and give them a better future.” Bato said, gripping tighter before letting go and making to leave.
“I hope you are right.”