Waterbending was all about the flow. It was reactionary, it changed shape according to what it encountered. It was also hard, and forceful, like a waterfall or a flood, changing the shape of everything it flowed over. It could leave nothing untouched. This was what Katara liked about waterbending; with it, she could be anything, like water could be anything, change anything. A single flaw in stone was all she needed to bring the mountain down. Life and death, destruction and resurrection. Balance rested in the curve of her arm as she formed a dagger of ice and held it suspended above the man who had killed her mother. It swam in her veins as she placed her hands on Zuko's face and said, It's water from the Spirit Oasis. She was water, and water was her.

She'd thought firebending was different; firebending, in the words of master Jeong Jeong, could only destroy. Firebenders had invaded her tribe, kidnapped their population of waterbenders, killed her mother. They'd plunged the world into a hundred years of war. Force and danger and hatred, that's what firebending was.

But firebending was life, too. One night, as they moved together, Zuko told her about the Warriors of the Sun, and what he'd understood in the vortex of fire underneath the dragons.

Fire is life. It's food, it's a warm home, it's hot food and forests reaching up to the sky. It's passion. It's drive. It's will. Fire lights the world. Without it, we'd be in the dark.

She laughed at that comment, and lifted her fingers, raising a cloud of mist around them. Moonbeams pierced the thick fog in small bursts, which cast her breasts into silvery shadow. He bent forward, took one in his hand, licked the dew off her body. She gasped.

In the dark, we'd still have the moon.

She gripped his shoulders and arched her back, and her name escaped through his clenched teeth. This was unfair; when he said her name, she would bite her lip and moan his, and then he could throw her to the earth and spend the rest of the night making her say it again. The water in the air made earth stick her knees, and she left long trails on his skin where her fingers raked across his back. Around them, the mist began to glow.

Fire and water made the world.

The sun, the moon, and the sky, bound together over the sea. The sun heated the earth, water shaped it, and from it, life sprung. Air and earth. Water and fire.

Together, in the firelight, balance was something she could taste. It was on their skin as they pressed together, as they whispered to each other things they hoped no one else could hear. It was in the heat of his body on the coolness of hers, on her tongue as she nipped at his neck and he growled and moved in for more and she shushed him and he responded by saying her name.

He complimented her. He was her right hand, her answering voice, the thoughts in the back of her mind. It was through him that she discovered just how terrible she could be. How much she could hate. He handed her the knife, and said he would help. When she directed her rage at him, he agreed, and asked her to forgive him. When she found out that she couldn't go through with her plan to rid the world of the monster who'd killed her mother, he was there to help her through her grief, without judgment, without pity. It was through him she discovered the depths of her own heart. How much she could forgive. How much she wanted to forgive. How strong she could be, and how weak. When she sank her teeth into his neck, when she drew red trails across his skin in her passion, he never once flinched.

In the face of fire, he'd said, one couldn't flinch. She was no different.