I do not own Avatar: the Last Airbender or any its characters.

Flight

Their early childhood was encased in ice and dreams, a world in which only they existed. They would walk to the highest peak of the icy hills surrounding their village each night, hands intertwined, and gaze at the moon, imagining stories about the surrounding stars.

She titled her head to the side and pointed to a cluster of stars. "I think that looks like a bird, there."

He squinted to find it, and finally the picture appeared. She always did have a knack for seeing things that didn't exist. She smiled when he understood and it filled him with an ache - light, sad, and hopeful, ringing like a bell in his young heart.

"Is it far from home? It's so far from the other stars."

She thought on it for a moment, contemplating the nature of birds and the tone of her brother's voice. "I guess it is. If you could fly, wouldn't you go?"

A slight breeze stirred the loose snow around their feet and they drew themselves further into their coats. He opened his mouth to speak, but only his breath escaped, frozen in the atmosphere and counting the seconds of silence between them. When he spoke, it was with a child's conviction.

"I would leave - and you would go with me."

.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.

They were first separated when he had to attend school, leaving her behind. The day filled her with the acute awareness that he was older, and the years between them stretched like a chasm. But, she grew in his absence, and as she grew older, she grew more observant. She took to observing him so that she would remember all of him when he was away. His eyes, she realized, were a different blue than most. They were brighter, filled with summer skies and warmth. She watched them closely and found that she could live in their color when he smiled.

After he left each morning, she looked to the sky and found that it paled in comparison.

.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.

It was in their early adolescence that she started to waterbend, in secret at first. She snuck out when the moon was full and the water's call was its most beckoning - a madness creeping into her skull, an itch to move. He was aware that she left their room and it made him lonely, knowing that she had secrets when he hid nothing from her. Unable to suppress the swelling in his chest and the curiosity tingling in his mind, he followed her, hid behind a pillar of ice, and watched as she did what he could only describe as magic. She pushed, pulled, stretched her limbs and circled them around, her silhouette moving under the moonlight, veiled slightly by the spray of water.

And like magic, something lit in the back of his mind, shifted his vision, coursed through him to the tips of his toes. He returned to their shared room, mystified and short of breath, and couldn't take his eyes from her empty bed.

It was four months later that she revealed her skill to him and the others. He expressed his disapproval and tried to ignore the tightening in his chest at the tone of her voice when she spoke.

"Why?"

He turned away from her and spoke in a voice so guarded it made her want to cry.

"It's... unsettling. Senseless magic."

He would never sleep when the moon was full.

.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.

One year later, the wind stirred the world under their feet, and they took flight.

.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.

The fights were always more difficult for him - he had to get close enough to smell their sweat, feel them break under his hands, his weapons. It was a cold night and sleep had abandoned him to his own bad company, memories of crunching bones and bloodied hands slicing into his mind like white-hot blades across his consciousness. He walked outside of their camp and climbed further up the mountain.

He found her, legs crossed and back straight, sitting atop a thin blanket of snow on the rocky ground. The sight seemed familiar yet incongruous. He sat next to her, wondering how he had missed it when the world shifted out of place. She turned to him, eyes flat, and spoke with her usual tone, a voice he now found strangely hollow.

"More dreams?"

The wind howled, bitter and cold, shifting the snow and dirt around them. He shook his head. They were too old for dreams.

"No," he said. "Memories."

She nodded and leaned to rest against him, lifting her weary eyes to the sky. She remembered a forgotten ritual and burrowed further into him.

"We've flown so far away," she whispered into his skin.

In that moment, he felt that he would break - under the weight of the world, under the weight of their task. Sensing his distress, she took his hand in hers, cracked the last fragment of the man, dragged him across the floors of memory. She looked up into him, remembering summer skies, and he brushed his lips against her own.

And it filled her with an ache - light, sad, and hopeful, ringing like a bell in her heart.

They sat under the moon, two children atop the snow, fluttering in and out of the world where only they existed.