"What is it about you," Suki whispered. She stood over the dark lake, only vaguely aware of the chill of the night air on her face and the way that her hair, lengthened from the years that had passed, fell into her eyes. She didn't see anything but the moon. "What is it about you?" she repeated.

Suddenly, Suki felt cold. Her gaze turned to the lake in front of her, its dark ripples moving slowly across from the wind. There in the reflection she could still see the moon in the cloudless sky, full and bright and looming over her as it always did.

Her eyes narrowed dangerously, as they often did when her warrior skills were put to much more frequent use. She quickly scraped the ground with her fingers, picking up a rock and hurling it out into the lake at the reflection, crying out as the stone collided with the small waves. She could not determine the actual reasoning for her tears, just as she could not accurately understand her animosity for the moon.

Perhaps it was because the moon, like herself, held a place deep in her husband's heart.

Suki had been with him long enough and loved him enough to notice that her husband changed at night, when the moon returned to the sky. His laughing and sarcastic demeanor fell to a distant stranger that she no longer recognized, save for a few occasional remarks, and a small smile that never seemed to reach his eyes. And always, his eyes turned to the moon.

She had asked him once, when the sun was high in the sky, what it was about the moon that he seemed to be so fascinated with. She had asked it playfully, in the midst of one of their silly banters that seemed to appear so often, and with a smile, despite her anxious curiosity. It was obvious that it had been the wrong thing to say, she realized, as his smile faded and his expression grew grim. Her smile fell too as he turned away. She couldn't see his face, but his voice was pained and she could hear the tiniest trace of a sad smile. "Old friends, is all." Suki didn't understand and was about to ask him what he meant when he stood up and walked away, leaving her confused and hurt.

She glared up at the moon angrily from her spot on the edge of the water, her fists clenching in frustration. Suki released a small cry of anguish and dropped to her knees and stared longingly at the lake, refusing to see the moon's light on the water. She wondered how much longer her heart would be able to take their way of life.

It was always the same. As long as the sun was up, Sokka was his old self, joking and caring as ever, and showering her endlessly with reminders of his love, whether it was a challenge to spar or a simple statement. At times, Suki could almost forget what would happen when the sun would set.

Almost, but never completely.

His indifference made her angry and confused. She didn't understand how someone who seemed to love her so much during the day could possibly be so distant and withdrawn whenever the moon graced the sky with its presence.

It had happened so many times over the years that she'd lost count of the times she'd yelled, made accusations, and even gone so far as to throw things at him in a fit of anger, but he'd always brushed them off easily. The only evidence of them having any sort of effect on him at all in the small alteration in his brow and the way that his frown only seemed to deepen.

Suki found always found it unbearable to be with him then, and would make another pitiful attempt at sleep, tossing and turning for hours as thoughts of Sokka sitting out alone under the moon with that infuriating gaze of his filtered her mind. At last, she would finally fall asleep, miserable and alone and deeply wounded. Every morning when she awoke, she would only see that at some point in the night, Sokka had finally joined her. With a deep sigh and a sense of hopelessness settling in over her for the briefest of moments, Suki would quietly stand and leave, moving to dress in another part of the house and going off to start her day. She could never remember the way a hand lightly brushed a strand of hair out of her eyes as she whimpered in her sleep or the way his lips met her forehead in a silent apology.

Every day, Sokka would return to his old ways, coming back to her with such a fiery passion that shocked Suki to no end. Every time she tried to resist, she tried to remind herself of what would happen when the sun set and to be strong, to not let her hopes get too high. But no matter what, she always failed and was left like the previous night, the vicious cycle repeating itself over and over again.

Suki was smart enough to notice that the only time he ever showed some semblance of his true self (or were his actions during day the true façade? She had to wonder if his way with the moon was the real him all along) at night was when the moon was new and gone and didn't bother to show itself. Sokka touched her and kissed her then, but even still, it wasn't him.

Ridiculous as it was, Suki decided, her hatred for the moon was not uncalled for. She glared up at it, digging her cold fingers into the ground. It'd stolen her husband from her, if only for a while every day and Suki, by her very nature, was not fond of sharing. The moon, Suki determined with a scoffing laugh, in all of its shining glory, was either enjoying this problem of hers or simply did not care. "Why don't you just leave us alone?" Suki asked it fiercely, the words barely making it out through gritted teeth, before shutting her eyes tightly against the wind.

But she knew with ultimate clarity that it could never happen. The very idea was ludicrous and her hope for its possibility was enough to make Suki feel ashamed of herself. And what's worse, Suki thought with a sad smile. Is that even if that was the slightest bit plausible, Sokka would never abandon the moon the way that he abandoned me.

She stared up at it blankly. The warrior in her did not accept defeat, but the woman in love told her that she had already lost a long time ago.