Work Text:
You are with him, still. You are with him, now. You have always been with him (and, sometimes, her—when she was Kyoshi, and Yangchen, and others), even if after so many lifetimes, he’s forgotten.
And you recognize this: there is a moment, there is always a moment, when he loses hope, when he is ready to submit or surrender to his own failure. (He is beautifully human; he will always fail. But he is also beautifully himself, that troublemaker exiled from the Fire City to the Spirit Wilds determined to do the right thing, and he will always overcome.)
Now, he bobs there in the stormy waves, his arrow tattoos visible as he clings to the driftwood. “I’m not gonna make it,” he says to himself. (Or maybe to you, even if he cannot remember.) “I failed.”
So you do what you always do in these moments: remind him that there is Light inside him, that he is never alone.
You help him find his previous incarnation.
“They think I’ve abandoned them,” he says. “I’m losing this war,” he says. “I’m letting the whole world down…”
You inherited my problems and my mistakes, says his past self. But I believe that you are destined to redeem me and save the world…
“I don’t know.”
You are with him. You are always with him. So you speak to him now, take the shape of someone he recognizes, remind him of who he is, who he has always been.
You already saved the world, you say. (Because he has, in a thousand different lifetimes, he has, your boy, he has…)
And you’ll save the world again, you say. But you can’t give up.
(Don’t worry, you told him once, thousands of lifetimes ago. We will be together for all of your lifetimes. And we will never give up.)
“You’re right,” he says. “I won’t give up!”
You share your strength with him, as always. And you swear that he feels it as he calls forth the waves to bring him through the storm.
You will be with him through it, and through the night. You will always be with him.