A/N: I originally planned to write this for ATLA Month, but I didn't get around to finishing it until now. Features SokkaxSuki.

Among the Constellations

It's not home, that's for sure.

It's a different sort of lonely up here, a different sort of cold, the silence so suffocating that it steals the whisper off her breath—a sort of sickness in the air that leaves her yearning for days past.

And if she tries hard enough, the white rock of the moon becomes a fresh coat of snow, the stars shine off in the distance like they're supposed to, and home isn't so far away.

Up here, she realizes that she should've played in the snow more often, She should've gone ice skating, and fought snowball fights, and gone sledding, and snow angel making more often. She should've licked the ice that gathered on the palace columns even though her mother told her her not to, because princesses are little girls too, and because you can't make forts out of lunar rock.

Once, she tried to touch the land, to feel solid earth beneath her feet, and cold, biting snow in the palms of her hands.

She longs to make her own footprints in the great blanket of white that cascades over the palace steps, because she's forgotten the way white crunches under seal-penguin boots.

But she can't.

She's tethered to her place in the sky.

The land remains out of reach, the white snow that smothers the ground just beyond her fingertips. Even the great mountains, capped in familiar white, seem miles and miles away. They stand, tall and strong, so eager to pierce the pitch-black night, beckoning to her. The sorrow settles when she cannot meet them halfway.

And sometimes, when the waves reach up the shores, it's like she can feel the earth beneath her fingertips once more.

. . . . .

The other spirits don't say much.

The stars gleam and shimmer—their own twinkling whisper. Lithe creatures with pointed features, they dance and sparkle among one another, congregating in masses; they are unbelievably social and paradoxically silent. It's impossible to eavesdrop.

Among them dance a tortoise crane, arcing across the sky with brilliant streaks of white, a great azure dragon, whose ebony wings become the pitch black night, and a little, golden bear. He leaps, he bounds, bowling through the others as he spins round and round. For a brief moment he looks her way, with illuminated eyes that make her shy away. But then he's gone, chasing after one of the other stars.

Yue can only watch from her crescent throne as they leap and twirl, more light that's just too far away.

. . . . .

Her father doesn't sleep anymore.

She wishes he would. After all, what good can tired eyes, gazing up at the night sky do? She can't go home. She has to stay here.

And sometimes he sings. A lullaby whose words meet her ears with the sound of home, and out of habit she's tempted to close her eyes and drift off to sleep. But now it's with empty arms, and those tired eyes, and a voice so proud and yet so heartbroken that it makes her ache all the way from here.

If only he could hear her singing back.

. . . . .

She's watching their silent, eternal waltz, just as she always is, when the little bear with fur that shines nudges her hand.

"Oh, no, that's all right," she says, and she smiles to make a point that she's quite fine.

The little bear doesn't heed her protests, tugging her towards the others as they twirl in their celestial ballroom.

"I couldn't possibly," she persists, "I don't know how!"

The little bear stops, and they stare at one another. He doesn't say a word, yet his gaze still pleads, still persists as well as any whining could.

Yue sighs. She breathes. She clears her mind. And, brow furrowed, courage inspired, she takes an outstretched golden paw in her hand. Light glimmers off the little bear's fur coat, enthusiastically radiating off into the already glittering black. His tail flutters frantically as he rises to his hind legs, taking her hands in his paws.

She tries to emulate the steps of the other spirits at first, but it's of no use. There's no driving beat to coordinate their movements, no semblance of order in the way they twirl and spin. Yue looks to her partner, patiently waiting.

He blinks at her with starlit eyes, telling her to trust him, so she does. He relaxes his grizzly shoulders, she relaxes hers. He closes his eyes, she closes hers, too. And then they're off.

She let's herself get whisked away, allowing liberation to seep into her movements and joviality soon follows.

When she hears it, she finally understands the melody that resides in the silence; she feels the rhythm that fills its emptiness. When she laughs, it does not shatter, the quiet simply sweeping up the twinkling bells of her voice, making it into a blissful harmony. And when she opens her eyes, she and the bear are waltzing among the stars, disappearing into the glittering backdrop of black.

. . . . .

She does her best to soothe a wailing cry with the soft rise and fall of her own voice. It's the same melody that soothed her in her own days of infancy, her father's voice now becoming her own as she sings the lullaby of home.

It's the magic of children, she supposes—the purity of their souls leave their ears and eyes open to that which weathered souls are deaf and blind to. To those who've outgrown the innocence of youth she can only speak in riddles and symbols.

Yue waits until the mother finds sleep—the father already snoring on the other side of the bed. The baby lays nestled between the two of them, and their sleeping bodies arch around their child.

The wife is beautiful, with her auburn hair and fair skin, the husband with contrasting dark features—he snores like he eats seal jerky. And though his hair has gotten longer, though he's grown a beard on his chin, and his face carved with age, she can still see the fifteen-year-old boy she had met all those years ago with the offbeat sense of humor and disproportionately large stomach.

Looking back at it all, she feels as if she could laugh: moonlit rendezvous, forbidden love, a tragic end as they were pulled apart by something bigger than the both of them—though it was only a few days, she sure managed to pull a more than adequate rebellious spree. And she's eternally indebted to him for that, for showing her the beautiful spontaneity of life before she was called away to duty once more.

Protecting this family, with the mother like summer and the baby like spring, is the very least she can do. She'll sing long after this child can hear her voice.

. . . . .

Little Bear thinks it's vain of her to attend her own festival, but she assures him that it's only right of her to do so, and that he doesn't have to come if the idea is so unappealing to him. He, of course, ends up accompanying her anyways.

This is her first year attending—she always thought it too painful to go before—but now that she's here, surrounded by all the sights and smells, she's deeply sorry that she ever missed the event.

She finds herself laughing and clapping along with the music, and feeling envious of the mooncakes being passed around. Little Bear, though he refuses to admit it, takes a liking to the storytellers, who tell the tales and legends of the stars.

"Being the moon is a twenty-four seven job," she tells Little Bear. "What's one day of celebration?" she says with a smile.

. . . . .

Over the year's she's found that the vast blackness of the night sky is not, as she once presumed, a cavernous void; in fact she's found that it's very much like the sea. There's an ebb and flow to the cosmic energy that surrounds her, much like the waves back home, and, like the sea, the night sky has healed her in more ways than one.

Scattered among the stars she's found peace with herself, regrets fading with time like footprints in the snow. And though this place used to be where she watched with longing for home, it has become home, the loneliness which once consumed her entirely, though it does visit on occasion, no longer hangs over her like a shadow.

There is light in the dark, and Yue has finally stopped chasing the sun.

—FIN—

I'm not too keen on the ending, but if I had to name something I liked about this particular one-shot, I'd have to say the symmetrical structure of the sections. Thank you so much for reading.