GODS, this chapter was AMAZING. I LOVE Korra's genuine devotion to the PEOPLE, and hang the interests of the monied classes! I enjoyed Tenzin grappling with the dissonant feeling of finding himself on the wrong side of history. I ADORED the characterization with and around Jinora.
I'm sorry Pepper, you were a good girl, but the needs of plot can be merciless.
If you don't terribly mind, I'm going to write you a little recursive fanfiction that takes place in the week and a half between the Events at Ba Sing Se and Air Temple Island.
Lin didn't even look up from her paperwork as she broke the silence of work that had defined the last hour.
Tenzin raised an eyebrow, but Lin cut him off before he could ask what she meant, "You've got something you're aching to get off your chest, and its bad news. I can feel it in your heart-beat," she looked up and made eye-contact, "I hate being the optimist in the room. Tell me what I've missed."
*Tengri*, Tenzin knew exactly what she was talking about.
"My father told me stories, about quarrels he had with his own past lives. He always framed it as the inevitable consequence of their different experiences in different times," Tenzin sat back hard, letting the report he'd been studying thud onto his current desk in the Police Headquarters.
"When he sought advice on how to defeat Fire Lord Ozai without killing him, he told me that every past life of his he'd asked had advised him that killing Ozai was the only way. Avatar Roku sited his leniency on Fire Lord Sozin leading to his own death and everything that came after. Avatar Kyoshi sited her execution of Chin the Conqueror as a threat to the World well handled. Avatars Kuruk and Yangchen agreed. My father found another way, listed this and a few other instances of guidance from past lives as evidence that a Fully Realized Avatar must be prepared to strike their own path. I've had the awful thought these past days of Korra having sought advice of a similar sort."
There was a sharp pause, silent but for Lin's stylus suffering a sudden demise.
"Oh fuck," Lin ran her fingers through her hair, and then snarled, before twisting her voice into a grimly facetious tone, "'As an Anarchist, I feel the need to do something about the tyranny of ordinary society, *whatever* should I do?' - 'Oh, well in my time I abstained from assassinating a world leader and I've regretted it ever since!' 'My successor is right! *I* killed *several* world leaders in my time, and I recommend it as a relaxing *fucking hobby*!'"
Tenzin nodded in half acknowledgement of Lin's outburst. The world was in crisis, none of them were keeping perfect decorum under the pressure. "I worry that if Korra is receiving more enthusiastic guidance than my father enjoyed, she may be learning potent bending techniques lost to history. Or advanced synergistic styles invented by one of her past-lives and never passed down."
Lin snarled, "That's the *half* of it. What happens when she *dies*?"
Tenzin blinked, suddenly finding himself jolting to the man he was a decade before when Korra a sweet, if energetic and impulsive, young girl who just couldn't wait until he would teach her airbending. And now he was discussing her death. Implicitly, he was discussing killing that little girl. *Where did it all turn so sour?*
"I- I suppose you're referring to the difficulty in locating her successor for guidance with the Earth Kingdom in chaos? I suppose the nightmare scenario would be the next Avatar being born into and raised in a region where order has been difficult to restore-"
"You're thinking too small, lightweight. Good to see I'm not the optimist anymore," she smiled, but there was no humor. Like she'd been told that if she smiled darkly enough all of her problems would be struck dead where they stood, and she was giving it her honest best shot. "What about the advice *they* get from their past lives?"
It was cold in his stomach, but he'd already been aware of this difficulty, "Korra may well be a negative influence, but tempered with temporal guidance and that of earlier lives-"
"That's just *it* Tenzin," Lin's voice was level and cold, "What if Korra's won the bulk of them over to her way of thinking?"
If Tenzin's chair hadn't had armrests, he might've fallen out of it, "Oh fuck."
"If we're not far more lucky than we actually *are*, the Avatar may have been warped from the perpetual agent of order to an eternal menace to *society.*"
The morbid silence wasn't broken until what felt to Tenzin like several thousand years later when Lin barked out what might generously be called a laugh, "And here I was, spending my whole life thinking I'd never sympathize with my grandfather's problems!"
Comment on The Dynamite Club
Jamie_Roberts on Chapter 11 Mon 13 Apr 2020 03:28AM UTC
Last Edited Mon 13 Apr 2020 03:28AM UTC
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Nooby1332c on Chapter 11 Wed 24 Jan 2024 09:02AM UTC
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