Suki sat up, groaning in pain she knew she must be feeling. She looked around at her surroundings, expecting to see the forest where she'd been fighting Azula, or worse: a prison. Instead, she saw an odd, almost swampy landscape. It looked nothing like any place she'd ever seen. A sick feeling began to swirl in her stomach.
"I see you figured it out," came a clear, sweet voice. Suki turned to face the speaker and saw an incredibly beautiful girl, about her own age, with flowing white drapery, the incandescent shade of moonlight as it hits the water, white hair and beautiful blue eyes.
Water Tribe Eyes.
A story she'd heard while escorting refugees to Full Moon Bay came back to her. The tale of a Water Tribe Princess who sacrificed her own life to become the Moon Spirit - and Suki suddenly knew who Sokka had been speaking of that night on the Serpent's Pass.
The spirit wasn't speaking, but she smiled and nodded, almost as though she could read Suki's thoughts and agreed with them. The suspicion was confirmed a moment later when the spirit simply bowed her head and spoke a single word.
"Yue."
Suki nodded. "He loved you. I think he still does."
She tried to keep the bitterness out of her voice as she said it, but it was difficult. If not for his story about the girl-turned-spirit standing in front of her, Suki knew she would have joined Sokka in Ba Sing Se.
"He cared for you as well," Yue reminded her gently. "Your passing will keep him from acknowledging that he loves the blind one until she is to marry another. Then he will fear he was too late until she walks out of her own wedding to be with him."
"How do you know that?" Suki asked.
"Look inside your heart, and you will know it, too."
Suki realized she did know what the other spirit was telling her, just as she knew the answer to the questions she was about to ask. She felt she had to do it anyway.
"But if one of us were to go back - if we could return to him..."
"You wish to return? To be reborn in an attempt to find him before he finds happiness with her?" Yue asked mildly, and Suki knew that the Moon Spirit knew that was not what she was saying.
"No, Great Moon Spirit," Suki said with a sad smile. "You sacrificed the kind of love that the great bards will write epic poems about. I would take your place in the sky to allow you to take your place by his side."
"I know you would," Yue said softly, tears lingering in the corners of her eyes. "But such things are not allowed. We are to remain here together, his Spirit Watchers, and keep watch over his life until the day he can join us."
"I guess I can spend the rest of eternity looking over him." Suki laughed. "It definitely will never be boring."
