I know it's been five months. Sorry! And sorry if this one isn't up to standard. I'm getting back in the groove. As always, comments welcome. BTW, this song rocks so hard. Also... I can't remember what rating this fic is, but as of this chapter it's a definite T for Teen.

Sarah Slean - “Sweet Ones”

Dream

He hovered and swayed: her lover of water. The walls of the training igloo were draped with leathers, like Katara remembered they had been that night, and as he glided with her she reached out one hand to clutch the seal skin in her fist.

“I can stay,” he spoke into hot, slick corners of her skin. She could feel the brush of his soft bangs and the pebbled wetness of his tongue as he kissed away her pain. “I waited for you, didn’t I? I waited. I can tell them I’m staying.”

She pulled him closer, kissed his cheekbones, and sighed into his breath. “No. They need you as a liaison. You have a duty to the other tribes.”

“There’s no duty that can’t—”

“Please,” she murmured, eyes shut against the tide. “Just…” and he did as she asked. He always did what she asked, what she needed, but even like this, wrapped up in her furs, he couldn't stop reminding her with words what his body said with rhythm.

“I love you,” he whispered, pushing her to the edge of feeling. "I've always loved you," came the words, but when Katara opened her eyes, it wasn’t Kinto’s face she saw.

“I love you,” he repeated, as Katara—reeling at the vision—was swept over her edge and into the glow.

Lightness spread, the white blindness and the bliss, and the waterbender rose again to the world with shallow, quick breaths. She shuddered at the cold.

“Hey, are you okay?” Paja’s voice wove through the winter wind, and Katara turned from the sky to face her friend. “You dropped off for a while.”

The Southern native brought up gloved hands to shield her eyes. “I had a dream. It started out just like that night two months ago, before Kinto left—”

“Ha!” Paja smirked like a canary-stoat.

“—but then, he changed.”

“Into who?”

“Just…someone I haven’t seen in a long time.”