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Chapter Text

The world changed with a spike of ice and a polar bear dog’s yelp.

Far away, eight-year-old Korra woke up screaming.

“Naga!”

“Congratulations on mastering earthbending,” Katara said.

Korra didn’t smile. “Thanks.” She wondered if her voice sounded as hollow as she felt.

“Aang would be proud of you, you know.”

He’s standing behind you. He’s smiling. He thinks that my bending is strong but lacks finesse. “I guess.”

Katara sighed, put a hand on her shoulder. Korra could imagine Naga resting her head there. “It isn't doing you any good, holding onto your anger like this. I know it was painful, but it’s been five years.” Five years to the day. “They didn’t know she was yours. You need to let go. For your own sake.”

“I know. But I can’t.”

“Fire is the element of power,” the White Lotus teacher said.

In the icy mirror behind her, the reflection of Roku said, Fire is life.

She slid into a form that she knew as easily as breathing, half-remembering a humid weed-choked temple and a dragon’s teaching fire. Flames danced around her, swirling, beautiful.

Roku smiled. Ah, the Dancing Dragon. Excellent form.

The White Lotus teacher looked at her, disapproval etched deep into her face. “You lack restraint. Fire will consume everything that surrounds it if left unchecked.”

Korra scowled, and killed the sparks that drifted through the air with brutal efficiency. The teacher nodded approvingly.

Korra resisted the urge to drive her fist into the wall. That would accomplish nothing.

“I’ve been able to firebend since I was five! I was earthbending when I was three! I could waterbend before I could walk!” Crunch. Okay, so the wall wasn’t entirely spared her wrath.

Kyoshi observed her, unamused.

It is normal, she said, for an Avatar to have difficulty with one element.

Kyoshi rippled into Aang, who said, Besides. Air is the element of freedom. He looked around, grimacing. And this place… isn’t exactly ideal.

The gap between the tallest building and the outer sentry-wall was six feet. It was shorter than she remembered.

Shifts change an hour before dawn, Aang whispered. There is a thirty-second window during which there is no guard watching this wall.

Thirty seconds. That would require planning. Preparation. But she had lived for twelve years behind these walls. She could wait a few days more.

Korra’s birthday fell near the summer solstice, when the sun hung in the sky, circling lazily like a vulture-hawk looking for carrion. Katara woke her earlier than usual, but the midnight sun made it hard to sleep, so she didn’t protest.

The trip to her parents’ village took a little over an hour by sled. Her parents greeted her at the door of their small hut, just as rustic as it was the day the White Lotus found her.

“Happy birthday, Korra.” Her mom’s smile looked wearier every time Korra saw it.

“Thanks, mom,” Korra said. She hoped she didn’t sound hollow. She really meant it. She thought.

“I made your favorite,” Senna continued, leading her through the house. “Arctic goose-hen with sea prunes.”

“Thanks, mom.”

Korra sat at the kitchen table. The wood was gouged and scarred from countless too-strong knife strokes. The towels hanging near the oven were singed in places, and the appliances were battered. Dinner was delicious, and afterwards her father sparred with her just outside the town, the flying shards of ice glittering in the midnight sun.

Katara returned too soon. “Come on, Korra,” she said. “It’s time to return to the compound.” She followed sullenly.

The sled ride was made in silence. They drifted past huge ice formations, beautiful in their craggy isolation. What does the world look like from up there? Korra thought. So high up that nothing can touch you, nothing can hold you down. Just you and the wind and the sky and the stars.

Katara stopped her at the outer gate. “I convinced the White Lotus to let you have some time outside, if you’re interested.” The sled reindeer-yak, the only animal outside the compound, looked at her dolefully. Katara held out the reins.

Korra blinked. “No guards?”

“None,” Katara said, smiling. “We think you’re old enough to be outside without supervision for a little while, at least. You’ll just have to be back within the hour, and don’t go over the far northern ridge. The sentries won’t be able to see you that far out. Consider it a birthday gift.”

Does she know what she’s doing? Regardless, Korra nodded eagerly and grabbed the reins. Katara hugged her, wished her a happy birthday, and went inside.

The reindeer yak was never an animal renowned for its speed, but she had enough of a head start that by the time she reached the northern ridge the sentries would only have just noticed. She pressed on, ignoring the wind and snow.

The Avatars stood in ranks, their faces solemn. Some of them approving, some not. Aang’s eyes were sad as she passed him, but he nodded in understanding.

The sun was at her back. She had Agni’s approval, if nothing else.

Chapter Text

Zolt’s day started auspiciously. He’d never really been one to believe in omens or any of the other spiritual ostrich-horseshit that some of his enforcers swore by, but good newspaper headlines couldn’t be faked.

Police Lose Key Witness in Trial of Triple Threat Boss.

Always a welcome sight to see the pigs’ plans fall through. He knew this was coming, of course, and even if Taan’s case had gone to trial he would’ve stacked the jury, but it was still nice to be proven right. He’d been waiting for Luang to flip for weeks, waiting for the isolation and paranoia of “protective custody” to set in, and his insistence to his men that they be patient, rather than having the potential ally offed when he was already in the spotlight, had finally paid off.

Zolt rewarded himself with poached salmon-trout and quail-duck eggs with asparagus and chilies, almost hot enough to make his eyes water. Salmon-trout wasn’t easy to come by this time of year, so he had been saving it for a special occasion— but what occasion could be better than news that his top enforcer was all but free and clear?

On the ride to work, in the back of his luxury satomobile, he hashed out the rough outline of a press release for United Sanitation (who were Taan’s official employers) and a note to Luang, who he would graciously thank for not spreading libel.

“Oh, and Shixin says that…” his assistant squinted at the note, which Zolt could see was written in his interrogator’s messy picken-scratch hand, “the eggs are starting to crack?”

“Good,” Zolt said, smirking to himself. Eggs were code for the captured equalists, which meant that he was one step closer to tracking down this Amon bastard and putting a stop to all of this nonsense once and for all. He had to hand it to them: three weeks was longer than most people held out, especially with Shixin. But, as he was always telling his boys, it paid to be patient.

More good news followed throughout the morning: the cactus juice and poppy tears harvests were finally starting, and it looked to be a bumper crop; his man in the Rockslides, Quon, had sent a message that the higher-ups were ready to negotiate a deal about the Monsoons; what’s-her-name with the dyed hair wasn’t pregnant; and Meixing had finally agreed to drop her most recent campaign against the Triads.

He tucked into lunch— lentil soup with grilled picken, because Shixin, who doubled as his doctor, was adamant that he needed to take care of his heart— in good spirits, pleased that his patience was being rewarded.

That afternoon his schedule was free, so he took a car down to the docklands, where his less savory activities took place.

The heart of the Triple Threat Triad was, to the outside observer, little more than an abandoned warehouse, with grimy smashed-in windows and chained-shut entrances. But inside the rooms were well-appointed, if not exactly to his usual standards. More importantly the precinct that patrolled it was firmly in his pocket, meaning that any reports of suspicious activity could be headed off before they reached the prying eyes of the Chief Pig.

(Beifong had had a bug up her ass about the Triads since her predecessor’s death. Zolt had told the Terra morons that they needed to be subtler, but apparently rockheads like them couldn’t be bothered. On the bright side, they had been wonderfully easy to deal with when they started pushing in on his turf. One or two (or seven or eight) people shot full of lightning in broad daylight and the entire organization fell into line behind him.)

Zolt made his way through the warehouse, past rooms stacked high with unlabeled brown packages and bottles of viscous liquid, and nodded at the underlings counting yuans or talking strategy or playing cards as he passed.

It was mid-afternoon, which would mean that Shixin would most likely be in his office. Which was exactly where Zolt found him: filling out paperwork of some kind that Zolt certainly hadn’t asked him to do. Probably something about his side gig at the hospital, then. So he felt absolutely no guilt striding into the man’s office and interrupting.

“Xolotl,” Shixin said politely. He was the only person Zolt knew besides his mother who still bothered with his birth name; everyone else found it too hard to pronounce. “How can I help you?”

“I got your message this morning,” Zolt said with a shrug. “Figured I’d come get your report in person.”

Shixin nodded. “Well,” he said, “I’m afraid there’s not much to report. Little we didn’t already know. He keeps his mask on even during private meetings. None of them have seen him without it, and they all agree that probably the only person who would have would be that lieutenant of his, with the kali sticks. Now, one of them did say that she’d grown up in the region of the archipelago he claims to hail from, and that his dialect is all wrong. And another says that he was an equalist in early days, and Amon used to claim Earth Kingdom heritage.”

Zolt scoffed. “So we know he’s lying about his background. We’d suspected that already. Why did you waste my time with this?”

“You came here, Xolotl,” Shixin said patiently. Zolt was always surprised at how unflappable the man was, especially considering Zolt had fifty pounds and nearly a foot on him. “I told you that they were starting to crack. I don’t expect to get much useful information out of them for another week or two, especially with the limited hours I have.”

Zolt scowled. “You want more money, is that it?”

Shixin huffed a quiet laugh, and took off his spectacles. “I wouldn’t say no,” he said, cleaning them on his shirt. He squinted up at Zolt as he did. “But I can’t just leave my job at the hospital. Appearances and all that. Plausible deniability. Your idea, as I recall.”

“Tell them your mother is dying, then!” Zolt snapped.

“I used that earlier this year to deal with those Red Monsoon thugs.”

“Your father?”

“Last year, for the dirty cops. And the year before that, for the snitches.”

“Your brother.”

Shixin gave an exaggerated sigh, and put his glasses back on. “If this is really that important to you, then I will,” he said. “But I need you to think carefully before you say yes, because there’s a limited number of times I can cry wolfbat before my superiors get suspicious. Especially in one year.”

Zolt nodded firmly. “We need this dealt with. I need this dealt with. The sooner we know who we’re working with, the sooner I can take care of things.”

“All right, then,” Shixin said, making a few notes on the paperwork in front of him. “I’ll call the hospital tonight and let them know I’ll need a few weeks off.” He squinted at Zolt again. “You know, one of them claimed to have met the Avatar?”

“Tch. If I had a yuan for all the phony Avatar claims I’ve heard, I’d be even richer than Sato.”

“Oh, one of them mentioned Sato, too,” Shixin said, flipping through the black notebook he kept for interrogation records. “Hardly new information, but I’ll send the details over to you, if you want. Might be helpful in future negotiations.” He tapped his pen against the paper. “I do think there’s a limit to how much blood I can squeeze from these stones, Xolotl,” he said. Zolt was sure the expression wasn’t just proverbial. “You’ll need to find me more than just grunts.”

“Sure,” Zolt said. “I’ll see if we can’t catch some bigger fish, have them sent down here. And don’t contact me until you’ve got solid intel, all right?”

“Of course,” Shixin said absently, waving a hand as if to shoo away a midge-fly. “I’ll let you know.”

It was almost a full week before he heard anything from Shixin, and Zolt was starting to worry. Viper had managed to scare a chi-blocker into talking, and the miserable little shit (Viper’s words) had ratted out a few higher-ups in the organization, who had in turn been scooped up as unobtrusively as possible and delivered to Shixin’s tender care.

(There had been an uptick in Avatar sightings. But the number-runners and dumb muscle some of his lieutenants employed thought just about every dark-skinned harbor trash was the Avatar these days.)

Eventually, though, Shixin sent him a message saying that the higher-ups they’d caught were cracking much faster than the underlings, and to expect a packet of information in no more than two days.

And that night, Zolt was woken by a phone call, at home, where the only people who knew his number were Shixin and his mother.

“You need to get down here,” Shixin said without preamble.

The man’s tone was uncharacteristically grave. The last time Zolt had heard that tone was after he woke up from a Monsoon attack to find that Shixin had had to perform emergency heart surgery.

Zolt looked at the clock. Half past two, which meant traffic would be light… “I can get there in thirty,” he said, already pulling on a shirt. He nudged the girl in his bed, who rubbed her eyes and pushed herself up on one elbow. “Hey, sweetheart, time to go,” he said, before she could ask. “Money’s on the table. You can show yourself out. Don’t steal anything; my housekeeper does a daily inventory.” He swept out of the room without waiting for a reply.

Twenty minutes later (he’d driven like a sandbender) he stepped into Shixin’s office. The man was pacing against the far wall, but he stopped and turned when Zolt entered.

“Finally,” he said. The man was drenched in blood. It was on his arms up to his elbows, soaked into the front of his shirt and his trousers, splattered across his face and flecking his glasses. He was leaving faint bloody boot-prints where he walked.

“Hell, have you never heard of an apron?” Zolt said, too off-kilter to stop the jibe. He’d seen worse, of course, but compared to Shixin’s normally meticulous grooming it was certainly odd.

Shixin waved a hand. “He’s planning something. Something big,” he said. “You’re in danger, Xolotl, you’re a target.”

Zolt fought the urge to roll his eyes. “I already knew that,” he said. You didn’t run the city’s largest Triad without becoming more than a few people’s enemy.

“No, no, he’s— he’s coming for you,” Shixin said. There was something manic in the doctor’s eyes. “He’s planning something with the triad leaders, some sort of— of example, or show of force, and they—” he waved a hand again “—think—they thought, that it has something to do with a revolution. Sato’s making armor, we already knew, but there’s weapons, too, electric gloves and something called a, a mecha-tank and airplanes and—”

“Now, now,” said a deep, blood-chilling voice. “No need to spill all of our secrets.” Shixin froze, his eyes wide, staring at something behind Zolt. Someone.

Zolt started to split chi and spun—

Fists struck his arms and his spine just as he brought his fingers up to point at the bone-white and blood-red mask. The lightning hissed and crackled into the ground as he collapsed.

“Lightning Bolt Zolt,” Amon said. “I thought you’d be more of a challenge to acquire.”

“Amon,” he croaked. “Thought you’d be taller.”

The mask made no response. And then electricity bloomed in the air above him, stabbed down into his chest, and he knew no more.

Chapter Text

The Avatar is an eighteen-year-old. It was still hard for him to wrap his head around sometimes. I am older than the most powerful person in the world. Amon shook his head. Just because the Avatar was younger than him, he reminded himself, did not make her any less dangerous. And he’d known that she was younger than him— but knowing this and seeing the dark-skinned girl with fury in her eyes and fire in her hands were two different things.

Perhaps the Avatar could be persuaded to our side, a part of him whispered, the very, very small part that didn’t mind being a waterbender, that revelled in the power given by bloodbending, that thought maybe I have the right to put people under my heel. But no. The Avatar was a bender, and benders were dangerous and reckless and thoughtless to the one, or at the very least misguided.

He had recognized her immediately. His spirit-bending might have been a sham but his spiritual knowledge wasn’t, and one of the many things he’d picked up during his travels was a sort of spirit-sight— nothing so strong as the late General Iroh, who could see spirits in the physical world, but something close. A sort of glow, a brightness around people of great spiritual power.

The Avatar walked into Sato’s warehouse and Amon had to fight to not look away. Even to his self-taught eyes, she burned brighter than any flame. But she didn’t realize it. She moved like a shadow, silent, deliberately concealing her presence.

Well. If he'd had any doubts about who she was, they were gone now. It would be easy to capture her. She was standing in a warehouse full of people loyal to him, she didn't have much room to maneuver, and she was in range of his bloodbending.

But no. They didn't have the popular support necessary to kill the Avatar, and if someone was going to carry his message, the Avatar would be perfect. (And he wasn’t sure that he’d be able to hold her. She was the sun contained in a person, stronger than he could’ve imagined.)

It was still strange to see her standing in the crowd, as if she were hidden, as if she were an ordinary Equalist nonbender. And to everyone else, he thought, she was. It was only his spirit-sight that was making her visible. He shook his head and slipped back under the stage, fixed the mask in place.

“Please welcome your hero, your savior: Amon!”

He stepped off of the elevator, smiled behind his mask. Give them a show.

His story was a sham, but a well-constructed, long-considered one. Memories of skull-faced firebenders drowning the coast in flames still haunted the Earth Kingdom, and would for a very long time. Better a peasant, an innocent farmer, than a child of wealth, of power. Scarred and orphaned by the benders they all so despised, and chosen by the spirits they revered. I know your pain, I have lived it, his story said, and the spirits have heard your prayers. He was rather proud of it. But what good would a story be without evidence?

Lu Ten and the others led the benders onto the stage. The criminals were smirking, still thinking they had a chance— but they only saw a helpless nonbender, a weakling to be trod upon. Fools. Even Lightning Bolt Zolt, “the most dangerous man in Republic City,” who if he’d earned the title should really have known better, was carrying himself with a self-assured swagger that almost made Amon roll his eyes. Yakone would’ve eaten Zolt alive. Lu Ten shoved Zolt forward. The crowd booed and hissed and called for blood.

“Ah, boo yourself,” Zolt sneered at the crowd. Amon gave the other three prisoners a once-over. Two Finger Tao, Shady Shin, and Mako the Nose, the three lieutenants of the Triple Threats.

Amon smiled. “My esteemed guests have amassed themselves a fortune through the extortion and abuse of nonbenders. But tonight this ends.” He gestured to Lu Ten, who unlocked the metal cuffs on Zolt’s wrists. Zolt’s eyes narrowed. “In the interest of fairness, of course, the benders will be allowed to defend themselves.”

Zolt shook himself off and glared at Amon. “You’re gonna regret doin’ that, pal,” he snarled.

Firebenders were so laughably ignorant of the water all around them, even inside of them, that he could’ve moved the man’s fire blast without even a thought. But Zolt was so uncoordinated that he didn’t need to— he just sidestepped easily, and slid around to put one hand on Zolt’s neck and the other on his forehead even as lightning arced and cracked around them—

Bending flowed from the center of the soul, but chakras were just pools, easy to bend, easy to block, easy to destroy.

Zolt’s lightning died, and his fire dimmed and faded, leaving the stage silent and dark. Purple-white lines danced across Amon’s vision. Zolt stumbled away from him, threw a punch that should’ve spat a handful of weak flames at him.

“What— what did you do to me?” he whispered, but in the deafening silence of the warehouse it carried like a shout.

Drive it home. “Your firebending is gone. Forever.”

The crowd went wild.

The Equalists were many and varied, and so it wasn’t hard to learn the Avatar’s daily schedule. He held off on Equalist activities for the time being, preferring to let the terror and uncertainty build among the benders.

The Avatar was staying in a small apartment in Jiangsu Square, one of the poorer parts of the city, which she seemed to share with three or four other people. Not what he’d expect for a bender of her stature. She left every day by nine in the morning, stopped at a small noodle shop on the corner of Morishita and Keiko for an hour or so. She would wander the streets, talking with a firebender boy and a nonbender girl, occasionally performing odd jobs. And she always ended the day at the docks, where his eyes and ears said she just stood and stared out at the bay, watching the sun fall below the water. She would return to her apartment after that.

Three days after he took Zolt’s bending, he cancelled his appointment with Hiroshi and went to follow the Avatar.

“Oh, excuse me, ma’am,” he said, bending to retrieve his papers, playing the perfect, docile nonbender. The Avatar stooped to help him gather them. This close, her spirit light was less intense. Manageable. She was a perfectly ordinary-looking girl. A little prettier than average, but no knockout like Hiroshi’s daughter. Brown hair cut short, a small, delicate nose, dark skin, and eyes the color of the sky near the sun. He took a step back, trying to reorganize the water-logged papers in his arms.

“I’m so sorry,” she said. “Here, let me—” she gestured and the water drew away from the forms, leaving them more or less intact, even if the writing was a little blurry. A move that took more control than he’d expect of the Avatar, by all accounts a bend first, ask questions later type.

“Thank you,” he said, tucking the papers into his coat.

“Oh, no, it was the least I could do. My fault in the first place, crossing the street without looking where I was going. Still not used to Republic City traffic laws, you know. Cars go the other way in the Caldera.” She tilted her head just a little, and an odd look flashed across her face. Apprehension, he thought, and something he couldn’t identify. “Listen, it’s five o’clock, right? Let me buy you a drink. As an apology.”

“Thank you,” Amon said, “but I do not drink.” Not with the Avatar, at any rate.

She frowned. “Oh. Coffee, then? Tea? I feel bad,” the Avatar said.

Amon checked his watch, a reflex buying him time to think. He should refuse, but this would provide a unique opportunity to study the Avatar in a non-combat situation. “I suppose I have time for tea, if it’s quick,” he said. The more known about your enemy, the less they can surprise you.

“Great,” the Avatar said. “There’s a Jasmine Dragon just up the street.” He wrinkled his nose automatically; their teas were either far too weak or drastically over-brewed for his taste. “Yeah, yeah, I know,” the Avatar said, apparently laughing at his expression. “But it’s cheaper than most places around this spirits-forsaken rich place.”

Amon almost mentioned that they were in Roku Square, hardly what he would consider wealthy, but let the comment pass. Instead, he followed the Avatar down the street and into the tea shop.

She bought two Yunnan Golds and poured a generous amount of cream and sugar in her own. They sat at a table near the front of the shop, away from the majority of customers. A large plate-glass window looked out onto the street.

There was an awkward pause once they’d sat. The Avatar removed the lid from her tea and wrapped her fingers around the cup, breathing in and out steadily. Firebending, probably, to cool it. Amon watched, his eyes narrowed. He adjusted the temperature of his own tea to his liking and prodded the tea bag a little, though he wouldn’t drink anything bought by the Avatar in a thousand years.

The Avatar looked out the window, watching passersby with the sort of detached interest that spoke of long stretches of time spent alone, absently drumming her fingers on the table. Amon studied her face. She was younger looking than he had expected. Chronic insomnia, by the bags under her eyes. The lines on her face suggested field work— which, why was the Avatar doing field work, like a common day laborer? Her face was emotionless, but he could feel her heart beating faster than it would have if she were really that calm.

“So,” she said finally, turning back to face him. Her heartbeat sped up. “You do a pretty good Fire Nation impersonation, but you’ve got some accent issues.”

He blinked. That was honestly not what he was expecting.

“I’m sorry, I don’t understand,” he said carefully. “I’m from the Northern Water Tribe.” Which was true.

“Uh-huh,” the Avatar said, stirring her tea with a twirl of her finger. “I’m sure you really are. But your accent needs work, Amon.”

His tea froze solid. The Avatar smiled.

He forced himself to breathe out, and the tea returned to a gently-steaming temperature. He paused, letting his heartbeat settle.

“I think there’s been some mistake,” he said. “I’m— my name is Kesuk. I’m from the Northern Water Tribe. Agliluk Tribe.”

“Sure, that makes sense,” the Avatar said, her eyes narrowed. Her heartbeat was evening out. “But when you’re pretending to be Amon, you’re pretending to be from the Fire Nation. The Eastern Islands, you say. I’ve spent a lot of time in the area, so I’m telling you that your accent needs work. It’s passable— not great, but alright.”

Amon considered this for a minute. The Avatar sipped her tea and looked out the window. Politely giving him space, even if she was sitting only a foot away from him. How she knew was less important than why she was admitting that she knew. Why give away such an advantage, when she could expose his secret to the world? She wouldn’t now, would she? Finally, he sighed. “How did you know?”

“I recognized your stance,” she said. “It’s solid. More than a north pole waterbender’s would normally be. And your voice. It’s deep, you know. Distinctive.” She squinted at him. “Have you thought about having a stand-in give your speeches so you’re more anonymous? Obviously not the ones that involve you fake energybending, but if it’s just talking someone else could pull it off.” Perceptive, and a manipulator. He revised his opinion of her, ever so slightly. More dangerous than he’d assumed.

“I did, in the early days,” he said stiffly. “I find my charisma hard to match, however, so I no longer employ body doubles.” And one or two of them were getting too big for their boots, trying to take the movement in directions he didn’t want.

“Shame,” she said, taking a gulp of her tea. Still nervous, but getting calmer. “Would’ve been an interesting twist. It would make it hard to stop the movement, you know. If the police, or the Avatar, catch you— how do they know it’s the real you?” Again, she was more perceptive than he’d’ve thought. He had underestimated her, and badly.

“Why are you talking to me about this, Avatar?” he said impatiently. Why are you trying to help me? Why are you treating me like an ally? A confidante?

“So we both know who we are,” she sighed. “Thought I was doing a better job of hiding it.”

He shook his head. “Your spiritual power is— unmistakable. I knew from the minute you walked into the rally.”

The Avatar sighed again. “Well. Everyone expects us to be enemies, but we don’t have to be. And since we know who we are, we could… coordinate.” Amon blinked. She was full of surprises. “I’ve heard your pitch before,” she continued. “And you’re not wrong. There’s a power imbalance that needs to be fixed. But it’s not a matter of bending.”

His eyes narrowed. “Easy words, from the Avatar,” he said.

“Says the waterbender,” she snapped, and immediately seemed to regret it. “I— It’s not only bending, then. You’re right that bending does give people certain… advantages. But it’s not the be all end all cause of inequality.”

“What makes you think this?”

“I spent a lot of time on the road, in the Earth Kingdom and the Fire Nation. About half the lords there aren’t benders. Neither are a big chunk of the business owners, the really wealthy ones, the robber barons, here. It’s a fifty-fifty split in the higher-ups of society. And I think it’s the higher-ups that have to go. The corrupt politicians, the greedy business people, the ones using their power, bending or not, to keep everyone else down.”

“You’re an anarchist, then?” he said, unable to keep the skepticism out of his voice. The spirit of the earth incarnate, practically a living, physical god, was against traditional power structures. It was almost comical. And the idea that bending wasn’t, at one point or another, the root of all inequalities— that the ability to shape the world around you didn’t give one person an inherent advantage over the other— that was laughable as well.

“I am,” the Avatar said, raising her chin defiantly. “And don’t give me that bullshit about how I can’t be an anarchist because I’m a political figure. The Avatar isn’t anything remotely connected to this world. I’m the bridge between humans and spirits, a mediator, nothing else. Anything about me solving disputes, everyone else could do that in the right world. I’ve only got the authority that everyone gives me. Which isn’t much, right now. That’s not important. I can get behind this equalism thing, from a certain angle. Triads? They shouldn’t have bending, you’re right. Criminals in general shouldn’t, people who use it to exploit others. But everyone else— they’re just trying to live their lives. Ordinary people don’t deserve to have their bending taken.” And now, he thought, she tries to dictate terms. Just as arrogant as every other bender activist I’ve met with.

Amon sat back in his chair. “So what do you want me to do, Avatar? Say that a man who can firebend deserves an office job more than a nonbender? Say that a woman who can waterbend should be prioritized for medical treatment? A child of nonbenders should be placed into inadequate schooling because of his parents’ disability? That a man who cannot bend should be denied the job he needs to feed and house his family, leaving them on the streets? And that when he turns to crime, because that is the only road open to him, he should be beholden to the bending triads?” The Avatar winced. Her heartbeat was picking up— anxious. “The problems in this city run deeper than you realize, Avatar, and you have no authority in this matter. How long have you spent in this city? What gives you the right to sit and dictate your terms to me, as if I should bow and scrape for your approval?”

She cringed and drew back. “No no no no, I’m not saying— okay, it’s, it’s— the— society is messed up, yeah, but the way to fix it isn’t by getting rid of all benders!” The tea in front of her was starting to simmer. He could feel the heat radiating off of her. “And it wouldn’t even work! Removing a person’s bending doesn’t take it away for good! You just— this won’t—”

“What would you have me do, then, Avatar? Sit in endless council meetings, wait my turn and say ‘please’ to the bigots who rule this city? Ask politely for the chance to make things just, rather than bring about the change we need?”

“No! But—”

“I will not be tangled in endless bender-imposed red tape, waiting for change while nonbenders suffer under the heels of their oppressors,” he snarled. “If benders will not change their society— and they will not, Avatar, no matter what your naive ideology says— then I will make them change.”

“But you can’t just make people think differently,” the Avatar said desperately. She pushed her tea, half-drunk, to the side, leaned over the table. He shifted back in his chair. “All I’m saying is, is— making everyone a nonbender won’t help as much as you think!”

“So it is better to do nothing and wait for a full solution than to take steps, to provide aid where one can?”

Desperate, anxious sorrow shone in the Avatar’s eyes. “I’m not— I don’t— no, but—”

“I do not believe that we can come to terms, Avatar,” he said firmly.

“Wait,” the Avatar said, looking genuinely pained. “I— I agree with most of what you’re saying,” she said desperately. “And we— we don’t have to be enemies.” She sighed. “I won’t go after Equalists, if you don’t go after peaceful benders. Take out all the Triads you want, even the police— hell, I’ll help with those— but please don’t attack benders just trying to live their lives.”

Amon blinked. “You would help me attack the police,” he said.

“Yeah,” the Avatar said. Still nervous, but calming down. A half-smirk flickered across her face. “What, did you think I was joking about being an anarchist?”

Honestly, yes. He thought for a moment. If the Avatar could be turned to his cause, perhaps… perhaps other benders would listen as well. And he could take their bending later, when the most dangerous criminals were accounted for.

Plotting sedition in a Jasmine Dragon. Not something he had expected to do this morning.

“You are in contact with the police?” he said, a plan crystallizing in his mind.

The Avatar nodded. “Well, kind of. Jinora's teaching me airbending, and I can get information from her if I ask. She knows I'm the Avatar, before you ask. And an anarchist.”

“Very well, Avatar. Here are my terms: I give you my word that we will not attack nonviolent benders. Triads and police only. In exchange, you will provide me with information on police movements and operations, and you will feed the police false information about my plans and whereabouts, and you will, when I ask, accompany me on Equalist raids.”

She hesitated. “I’ll work with you, but I’m not going to be your lackey. If I don’t want to do something, I won’t do it.” He inclined his head. “Alright. I just have one, um, condition. Don’t go after Beifong.”

He raised one eyebrow. “Leave the leader of the police alone?”

“She’s predictable,” the Avatar said. “We know— I know— what she wants and what she’s planning. And she’s not corrupt. We can’t say the same about any of the other police, who might be in Tarrlok’s pocket. Or working for the Triads, spirits only know. Plus— cut off the head of a scorpion-snake and it flails wildly, and you don’t know where the stinger’s going to go. If you leave it there, you can avoid it.”

Amon nodded. He had not, in truth, meant to attack the police chief, but the Avatar’s logic made sense. And, he suspected, it had something to do with not angering her airbending teacher. “I believe these terms are agreeable, Avatar,” he said coolly. “You live in Jiangsu Square, yes? I’ll have someone contact you to finalize the details.” He drained his mug of tea in one gulp. “Thank you for the tea. It was… enlightening.”

As he left, he caught the Avatar’s small smile through the window.

Chapter Text

“Are you now, or have you ever been, a member of the Equalists?” Tarrlok leaned forward. He could feel the man’s terrified pulse from here. Full moon coming.

“No, councilman,” the man said, blood quivering. Telling the truth.

“Thank you. You may go.”

A squirrely-looking man in tattered green, a round flat cap seen better days held tight in his hands. He tottered to the witness stand. Eyes wide, hands shaking, pulse calm.

“Are you now, or have you ever been, a member of the Equalists?”

“No, councilman.” Just the slightest muscle quiver showing his tension.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, councilman.”

He shifted the papers on his desk. Reports of a shabby man in green with a battered round cap shuffling away from Equalist-affiliated warehouses.

“Do you know a Huong? 54, carpenter, Earth Kingdom?”

“I’m sorry?” No he wasn’t.

“Huong. She was recently convicted on charges of hosting Equalists in her home.”

“I— yes, I know her.” The man frowned, twisted his cap in his hands. “She was married to a friend of mine at the factory, Geming. He passed away last year. I— I used to go to her house for tea. We all would, around the factory, to keep her company.”

All lies. Impressive, really, all that made up on the spot. He made a note next to the man’s name.

“Thank you. You may go.”

Are you now, or have you ever been—

The same fucking questions, again and again. Getting nowhere, terrifying the nonbenders, giving Amon and his cronies fodder for their propaganda, frustrating the Parliament, making things harder all around.

But it’s the only option, the only solution. Cast a wide enough net, and you’re bound to catch a tiger-shark.

The clock tower outside tolled five o’clock, and something in the room, some invisible tension, snapped. Suddenly, friendly banter filled the room. Do you have plans and how’s the kid and hear there’s snow coming. Early, eh? He could feel a headache building behind his eyes.

Quietly, he slipped out of the stream of parliament members and returned to his office. He locked the door behind him.

Behind his desk, water rushed over Tui-and-La. He pulled just a little of that into his hands and settled it in a cool press over his forehead.

If things were different, he could be on the other side of this.

Are you now, or have you ever been, a bloodbender?

Doesn’t have the same ring. But they would ask, and he would lean forward. Look into the camera. Laugh, flash his perfect white teeth, fold his hands on the desk, tilt his head. “Do I seem like a bloodbender to you?” he would say, a sardonic twist to his words, upwards tilt in his eyebrows. Councilman Tarrlok, the model upright citizen, twice voted the most handsome politician in the Republic by the Gazette, volunteer at nonbender soup kitchens on the weekends, a bloodbender? Why, the sheer audacity of such a claim. The courtroom would laugh. They would apologize, move on.

Or—

Are you now, or have you ever been, a bloodbender?

“I thought you’d never ask,” he would say, and stand, crack his knuckles, then twistpull, just like Dad taught. Screams would echo through the courtroom. The radio would catch all of it, crunch of bone and rip of muscles and squit of popping eyeballs.

Or—

Are you now, or have you ever been, a bloodbender?

“I am,” he would say. Murmurs would explode around the courtroom. They would hammer on the desk and bellow for silence. Twistpress and a hush would fall unnaturally quick. “My father was Yakone,” he would say, his hands curled into fists to preserve the the ringing silence. “I was born in the Northern Water Tribe. I had a brother named Noatak, and my father trained both of us in bloodbending. Even not at the full moon.” Release and a collective, enormous intake of breath. “As you can see.” Smile for the camera.

But that’s not how it is.

The Equalists had been operating for years before Tarrlok found them, tucked away in a little Lotus Square apartment, packed in like spider-rats, eyes wide like saucers to hear a man spout empty platitudes about bender oppression.

They’d dug in like ticks, too, when he went back to arrest them for fire code violations. He’d been a junior councilor then. He hadn’t had the authority to issue executive measures, hadn’t been able to say They’re Equalists, arrest them and have people listen. He lost five of his men on that raid, but he’d finally woken the city up to the roach-rats in the walls, and it wasn’t long before the rest of the council finally, finally listened to him.

Contrary to what Tenzin liked to whine to the press, the task force wasn’t some sort of power grab on his part. The police were having trouble dealing with the mobile, technologically-advanced Equalists; what better way to respond than with equally mobile forces, equally advanced technology? Their success rate spoke for itself, even if it had been dropping in recent weeks.

Beifong certainly wasn’t going to change, so if he pulled a few strings and perhaps engineered her early retirement, then it was all the better— there was no place for her, the woman who still insisted on unpadded armor because it “improved mobility” even though it was a walking weak point for the Equalists’ shock gloves and stun grenades. Who thought that the war against these terrorists would be won not by wiping out their ideology, but by taking out their leaders. Who thought that if they simply arrested enough people, the terror would end.

The Emergency Powers bill had passed quickly, with a two-thirds vote of Parliament and all of the councilors but Tenzin’s approval. In situations where the Republic is declared to be under a state of emergency, the Chancellor (Tarrlok) is granted special powers, including control over the police and the ability to review and veto certain newspapers’ contents. Not the most subtle way to accomplish his goals, but it worked, and if it made Tenzin hate him, well, what else was new?

He’d met with Saikhan the night before the bill passed. “I’m trying to re-stabilize this city,” he’d said, as Saikhan sipped his beer. “We need everyone to work together, and we can’t do that when the police refuse to cooperate.”

“I agree, Councilman,” Saikhan had said, expression dour, “but Lin won’t listen to me. She thinks the laws are too restrictive against nonbenders. I’ve tried to enforce those new curfew laws you’ve passed, but she stops me every time.”

Tarrlok had hummed. “I’ll see what I can do,” he’d said. “And if our esteemed chief of police does happen to leave her post, you would be first in line for her job, of course.” Saikhan, ever grim-faced, had merely nodded.

The morning after the bill passed, he called Lin to the Capitol building.

“You have two options, Lin,” he said, his hands folded in front of him on his desk. “You can step down quietly, citing age and the stress of the job. You will receive a full pension and health benefits, and a commendation from the city for your work against the triads.”

Her eyes narrowed. “Or?”

“Or I will have you removed. You have been disrupting my efforts to neutralize the Equalists at every turn. I can’t have the head of my law enforcement actively opposing me.”

“This isn’t your law enforcement,” Lin said, her blood singing with fury. “It’s the Republic City police, and you aren’t Republic City. I answer to the city, not to you. And what you’re doing is hurting the city. Nonbenders are terrified, and you’re just making Amon’s arguments stronger.”

Tarrlok sighed. “Lin,” he said, “I’m trying to be reasonable. We need to stop the Equalist menace, and we need to be willing to do anything and everything we can. All of the laws supposedly targeting nonbenders have been freely and fairly passed by the elected legislature. You would be perfectly within your rights to uphold them. Obligated, even.”

“I’m not going to sit and let you persecute more than half the city’s population for the actions of one lunatic,” Lin snapped. “That’s not the city I swore to protect. And I won’t stand aside and watch you twist the police— my police— into some sort of Dai Li secret police.”

“I’m afraid you no longer have a choice,” he said. “When Parliament approves the state of emergency, the police department will come directly under my control. I will have you removed.”

Rage boiling her blood, Lin ripped the badge off of her uniform. “Fuck you, and fuck your task force,” she had snarled. She threw the dented badge onto his desk. “I’m not going to be a part of your power trip.”

In two days, Parliament had declared a state of emergency, the police had come under Council control, and Saikhan had taken the helm. Equalist attacks had declined, the streets were quiet, and the whole city seemed to be holding its breath, waiting for the calm to break.

And then, like the first crack of thunder signaling an oncoming storm, the police headquarters were attacked.

Retaliation for the Dragon Flats raid, the Equalists claimed, and an plot to free the “oppressed civilians unjustly arrested.” In any case, he went into the police station expecting a routine chi-blocker fight, but he found Amon himself and the spirits-damned Avatar, who hit him with three solid fire-blasts and what had to be half of a wall before Amon called her off, and they disappeared into a waiting airship. Again.

Finding the Avatar in support of the Equalists was the match that lit the already-precarious powder-keg that was Republic City.

Overnight, reported Equalist numbers had swelled, and riots broke out in almost every poor or nonbender section of the city. Equalist graffiti and propaganda appeared on every street corner. Crowds of nonbenders stalked his task force wherever they went, watching with vulture-hawk-like intensity as they executed operations, occasionally booing and pelting the officers with rocks and garbage. He could only hold them back for so long before they retaliated against the mobs. And state of emergency or no, Parliament didn’t like the police attacking “innocent civilians.” Things were getting out of hand, and he needed to do something.

Shattering glass and wood jerked him from his thoughts.

Shards of broken glass and splinters of wood littered the office floor. The Avatar stood in the window, snow drifting in behind her. Heat shimmered around her hands.

“Tarrlok,” she snarled.

He sat up and let the water drop away from his forehead.

“Avatar Korra,” he said, smiling icily. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

She stalked forward, glass crunching under her boots. She didn’t seem to notice. “We need to talk,” she said, her voice like iron.

“Ah. What’s on your mind?” Tarrlok said. He glanced at the door. The other councilors would have left by now, and the Parliament members would be either gone or in the hearing rooms, far away from his office.

“My friends,” she growled. “You took them. I want them back.”

“I’m afraid I don’t know what you’re talking about, Avatar,” he said.

“Don’t play dumb, Tarrlok, I know you know your task force arrested my friends. Again. Do you need me to remind you how bad it went last time for all of you?”

We were unprepared for fighting the Avatar, he wanted to say, a mistake we will not make again. Instead, he said, “I assure you, Avatar, your friends were arrested for entirely valid reasons. Breaking curfew, inciting violence against the state, trespassing on government property. There are numerous charges against them.”

“An unjust law is no law at all,” the Avatar said. “And your laws are more than unjust.”

“And yet,” Tarrlok said, narrowing his eyes, “they are what we have. If there were no laws, and no police to enforce them, there would be chaos. A yawning chasm devouring the entire world. Is that what you want, Avatar? Violence in the streets? Lawlessness? Barbarism, where the strongest has power?”

“That’s a false dichotomy, and you know it, Tarrlok,” she said. She took a step towards him, radiating menace. “But I’m not here to discuss philosophy. I’m here to get my friends back.”

This was the plan, he reminded himself as the Avatar stalked closer to him, heat wavering around her fists. This is what you wanted. “Well, Avatar,” he said. “I could certainly secure your friends’ release, provided you prove more… agreeable, in the future.”

The Avatar’s eyes narrowed. “I’m not your pawn, Tarrlok,” she said, voice dangerously low. “Yours or anyone else’s. You can’t control me.”

“What do you call that ‘alliance’ you have with Amon? A partnership of equals? Who, precisely, gives the orders, when you attack my men?” Doubt flickered across the Avatar’s face. “I don’t want to control you, Avatar. In fact, if you agree to renounce the Equalists publically, I give you my word that you won’t have to fight for me. I will release your friends. You can leave this city as easily as you came. That will be the last you hear of me.”

“Fuck you,” the Avatar spat. “You’re worse than Amon. At least he cares about these people. What do you care about besides your own power?”

“I care about this city, Avatar,” Tarrlok said. He was edging dangerously close to anger. “Which is more, I think, than you can say. You’ve been here, what, three months? Four? Where were you when the Equalists first appeared? Off traipsing across the globe?” Her eyes narrowed further. “I want what’s best for this city, which means stopping these criminals in any way I can, as quickly as I can.”

“You’re abusing your power to take advantage of defenseless civilians. You’re what’s tearing this city apart.”

He was on his feet before he realized what had happened. “I’m doing what’s best for this city, Avatar,” he said. “I offered you the chance to work with me.” She was favoring her left side, the relic of an old wound. No need to pull out the bloodbending unless things got desperate. “But I can see that it’s pointless. So now you’re in my way.”

He shot a water whip at her from the flood behind him; she dodged, lightning-quick, and he felt the water ripped from his grasp as it looped around her, returning towards him in a spear of ice aimed at his chest that he narrowly evaded. It embedded itself in the wall behind him, cracking the carved Tui-and-La.

“You wanna fight me again? Fine by me,” the Avatar said, her posture loose and ready. “Just remember how bad it went for you last time. Amon’s not here to stop me.”

She punched both hands forward and he had a split-second thought of fire, dodge before he rolled out of the way and encased himself in a sphere of water boiling to steam under the Avatar’s fire, clouding the room. He couldn’t keep this up for long, even with the water behind him. Blue flickered within the Avatar’s fire, an inch from his nose. Run, something in him said, and he pressed out and steam filled the room and he bolted for the door. He crashed through the door, followed by a dozen striking water-tentacles, one of which caught him in the back, another around his ankle, tripping him. He slammed into the wooden balustrade. It creaked under his weight. He looked down. Twelve foot drop onto marble flagstones— not pleasant, but survivable.

“I should’ve told people I was the Avatar a long time ago,” the Avatar said, walking through the steam. “I’ve wanted to do something like this for years.” She stomped one heel into the floor and the balcony crumbled.

He hit the floor with a jarring thud that knocked the wind out of him. He lay flat on his back for a half-second, blinking stars out of his vision.

Crash.

He rolled to his feet, his shoulder burning, pain stabbing his side every time he took a breath. “What now, weasel-rat?” the Avatar sneered, standing in the crater she’d just made. “You’re all out of water.”

Not quite.

Fire flared in the Avatar’s hands, and she charged at him.

Catch pull twist

The Avatar lurched to a stop. Fire flickered out an inch from his nose, close enough for him to feel a wave of heat wash over him. “Y-you’re a bloodbender,” she stuttered, eyes widening in real fear for the first time this evening. Her hands contorted unnaturally, curling towards her torso.

“Observant,” he muttered, gritting his teeth. He was out of practice. She could still talk. He redoubled his efforts, pressing her down onto her knees.

“How,” she gasped.

“There’s a lot that you don’t know about me, Avatar,” he said. “But as I said. You’re in my way and you need to be removed.”

She scowled. “I’m—gonna—kill—you,” she gritted out.

“Perhaps,” he murmured, and squeezed.

Chapter Text

Hiding the purchase of an entire mountain was surprisingly easy when you handled the Council’s expense reports and could write it off as part of the Public Land Use and Development Act. The fact that only a three-room shack, a barbed-wire fence, and a fuel depot had ever been built there escaped the council’s notice, and gave Tarrlok a convenient bolt-hole, should he ever need one.

The seer’s sage and poppy’s tears were bought in a seedy part of the docklands. The dealer gave the truck a long, pensive look as she weighed the leaves. Tarrlok growled at her to mind her own damn business. The woman just smiled and handed him a sealed bottle. “Three drops an hour for dreamless sleep,” she said. “And don’t over-use the sage. It’s strong stuff.”

He took it, and handed her double the agreed-upon amount. “For your silence.” Her eyes narrowed suspiciously, but she nodded, tucking the yuans into a pocket. He bid her good-night, and drove away.

He pulled over five miles outside of the city, onto a scenic overlook stop whose view he ignored. At this point, all that the glittering skyline reminded him of was how monumentally, royally fucked he was. Kidnapping the Avatar? What had he been thinking? There was no way he would be able to hold her for long, and when she got out, he knew, she would kill him. If he was lucky. He rested his forehead against the cold metal of the truck’s wall. He could feel her inside, unconscious but on the verge of waking up.

No time like the present.

He crushed the seer’s sage in his hand and squeezed the juice into the vial of poppy’s tears, and shook the mixture gently. He paused, feeling for the Avatar’s heartbeat. Sluggish, but conscious. If she spat fire at him, he could probably catch her before she did too much damage. He filled a syringe and opened the back of the truck.

The Avatar stirred, opened her eyes, and looked at him.

“Tarrlok?” she said, brow furrowed. “What did you do to me?” The metal walls of the truck creaked as she curled her hands. “Where am I? What did you do to me?”

“Nothing yet, Avatar,” he said. He curled his fingers and her arm snapped forward and out. He slipped the needle into her vein and pressed the plunger. “Go to sleep.” He could almost see the drug sweep through her blood. Her eyes fluttered shut.

That would keep her out for… oh, six hours, he guessed, if his contacts in the triads were telling the truth. If he was lucky, considering firebenders’ well-documented resistance to poisons, plus an Avatar’s immune system. And the shack was an hour’s drive away.

The drive was silent, the only sounds the low growl of the engine and the wind howling outside of the cab. Snow swirled in front of the windscreen.

The Avatar was still out when he pulled up to the shack. He lifted her with bloodbending and moved her into the basement. He had some old rope but not much else that would be of any help in containing her, not if she was a metalbender. Sighing, he tied her hands behind her back and her feet together, then tied her to the radiator for good measure. If she woke up with her bending it wouldn’t do much to stop her, he figured, but it would at least buy him some time to run. Maybe he could lose her in the woods outside.

He gave her another dose of sedative, locked her in the basement, and departed.

It was still before dawn when he returned to Republic City. The streets were quiet and empty. He dropped a note, reading Avatar kidnapped by Equalists— alliance went sour into the mail slots of the Republic Daily Gazette, and the Chronicle and Sun as well— the competent newspapers wouldn’t touch the story without verification, but the trash ones would gobble it up.

He staged an Equalist attack. Threw bolas, taken from the task force confiscation room, across the council chambers. Electrocuted himself in the chest, blinking away unconsciousness long enough to smash the shock glove on the floor of his office. Oh, officers, it was horrible— the Avatar arrived to discuss my policies, late at night— she said she felt guilty for acting so rashly the other day. As we were talking, the Equalists burst through the window and attacked us; the two of us fought against them until they knocked me out and captured her. When I woke up, they were all gone. I didn’t see where they took her.

Tenzin, insipid fool that he was, swallowed the story without reservation, muttering about the treachery of the Equalists and how glad he was that his daughter had managed to stay free of them. His daughter, meanwhile, looked unconvinced. He spent most of the day fielding questions from the press and seeing a healer. (The Avatar’s attack had done more damage than the shock glove, and he passed off the cracked ribs and minor internal bleeding as chi-blocking gone wrong.)

At four o’clock, he sent the reporters away and retired to his ruined office, intending to plan an escape from the city. If the Avatar hadn’t already escaped, at least. If she had, then there weren’t many places he could run. The North Pole, perhaps, but he had little like for that backwater even if the Avatar wouldn’t find him.

At eight o’clock, his office phone rang.

“Tarrlok?” Tenzin sounded… troubled. Then again, he always sounded like he had a stick up his ass. “Are you available for an emergency council meeting?”

“Of course,” he said. “Does this have something to do with the hunt for the Avatar?”

“In a sense,” Tenzin said. “I take it you’re still in the Capitol, then,” he continued. “The other councillors and I will meet in the debate chamber in twenty minutes. Please be there.”

“Of course,” he said again, and hung up the phone. He felt a headache coming on.

He made his way down to the council chambers fifteen minutes later. Tenzin was already there, as were Otoha and Iluq. Jianyu was late as usual. And— Tarrlok bit back a curse— lurking in the back of the room were Lin and the Avatar’s friends. The hijra had an unpleasant smirk on her face, and the firebender looked entirely too smug for his liking. A duffel bag sat on the bench next to them.

“Councilman,” Tenzin said, nodding in greeting.

He sat opposite Tenzin at the council table. “What’s going on? Do you have news of the Avatar?”

“We do,” Tenzin said gravely, “but I feel that it would be better to wait until all of our members have arrived.”

“Of course.”

Jianyu took another twenty minutes to get there, and reeked of wine. Tarrlok’s lip curled involuntarily. No matter. If he was drunk, perhaps he would be easier to persuade to his side.

“Thank you for joining us on short notice,” Tenzin said, rising from his seat. “I recently took it upon myself to aid in the search for Avatar Korra, along with Lin and the Avatar’s… friends. We found a series of tunnels under the city acting as an Equalist prison, holding captured police officers and triad members. We did not, however, find Avatar Korra. Kamal—” he gestured to the firebender, who nodded— “interrogated several Equalists, all of whom stated that their… alliance… with the Avatar still held, and that they had not captured her. That you were lying, Tarrlok.”

He raised one eyebrow, careful to keep his breathing even. “You would take the word of criminals over my own? Why would I lie about the Equalists capturing the Avatar?”

“Because you have her, you weasel-rat!” the hijra shouted, standing. “You kidnapped her to get her out of your way!”

Tarrlok looked at his fellow councillors. “Again, are you going to take the word of a convicted criminal over my own?” He tugged down his shirt, displaying the half-healed electrical burn on his chest. “Would I really have done this to myself in the pursuit of such a ridiculous story?”

“Of course,” Tenzin said. “There was no Equalist attack last night. You planted the evidence.”

The firebender stood and approached, bringing the duffel bag with him. “And the smashed shock glove on the floor— that was one of the early models. They’ve completely switched over since Korra joined up.” He tipped the contents of the bag, two shock gloves, onto the council table. “The only people who still have the old models are the police. In the evidence locker.”

Damn.

“That’s hardly damning evidence,” he said, ignoring the salamander completely. “I assure you, the Equalists attacked us. We were standing in my office, discussing my policies, and they came in through the window. We tried to fight them, but they chi-blocked both of us. Apparently they only wanted the Avatar, because they electrocuted me and when I awoke, she was gone.”

“So you’ve said,” Tenzin growled, “and yet when we checked the Equalists’ prison, there was no sign of her.”

A quiet cough broke the tension in the room. They all turned to the antechamber door, where a young cleaning maid stood, a broom held in front of her like a shield. Her pulse was racing. “You’re right, Councilman Tenzin,” she said, voice quavering. “I saw Tarrlok and the Avatar fight, and I saw him— b-bloodbend her.”

Tarrlok scoffed, but even he could tell it was halfhearted— he was reeling with shock. The building had been deserted, he was sure, but… perhaps he had overlooked the cleaning staff? They were ever-present, practically interchangeable, and he had stopped noticing them after his first year in the building…

“She’s telling the truth,” Lin said from the back of the room. She approached the maid, who shrank back into the doorway, eyes wide. More gently, she said, “Why’d you wait so long to tell anyone?”

“I— I was afraid that— that Tarrlok would find out,” she said, “or that nobody would believe me— I’m just a cleaner, after all, and he’s a councilman, and—and I can't afford to lose this job, I’m sorry ma’am, but—”

“That’s quite alright,” Tenzin said, cutting her off. “Thank you for your testimony. I think that’s enough evidence.” He turned to Tarrlok, suddenly filled with steely resolve. “Tarrlok. By the authority of the United Republic Council and my position as deputy Chancellor of the Republic, I strip you of your rank on the council and the powers that come with it, and place you under arrest.”

Damn. He glanced at the other councillors. Iluq and Otoha were nodding in agreement. Jianyu looked perplexed, but it was a majority even without him.

Tenzin raised his hands in the closest thing airbending had to an offensive stance. “Don’t make this any harder than it needs to be. Tell us where you’re keeping the Avatar.”

His lip curled in a sneer, and he sensed Lin tense for a half-second before she struck, and he dodged the metal cable aimed at his head and seized the water in her veins, hers and all of the other peoples’ in the room, Tenzin and the councillors and the damned maid and the Avatar’s worthless friends, filled with a sudden, all-consuming rage, and squeezed until they collapsed, unconscious, their pulses sluggish.

I should kill them now, while I’ve got the chance, he thought. It’s not like I’m going to survive this, not once the Avatar breaks free. He took hold of Lin’s heart, feeling the pulse weakly protesting his grip. Nausea rushed over him, but he ignored it. He started to close his hand, snuff out that final spark of life— and hesitated. They were unconscious. If he ran fast enough, they wouldn’t know where he went. There was no reason to kill them.

He let his hand drop to his side, and exited the council chamber as swiftly as possible.

He drove in fuming silence, only barely paying attention to the road.

Damn her. Damn them. Damn this whole city, Equalists and benders alike. His thoughts spun in angry currents, all circling around: this is the Avatar’s fault. She was the one to disrupt the fragile peace he’d worked so hard to achieve. She gave the Equalists the nerve to attack them, attack the very foundations of the city. She was the reason he was on the run, forced out of his hard-won life in Republic City, his job and his friends and his home, nearly two decades of carefully-planned alliances and networks of influence gone up in smoke in the space of two days.

He couldn’t afford to take her with him, wherever he went. But he couldn’t just leave her in the council-bought shack— then everyone would know that he’d kidnapped her, and he’d never find peace. He had to… to move her. While she was still drugged, while he could still control her. He’d given her enough of that drug to knock her out for perhaps a day. She would be regaining consciousness soon, but if he was lucky she would still be asleep, or at least dazed.

He parked, filled another syringe from the mixture in the glove compartment, and stepped out of the truck. The shack was still standing, which was a good sign. And when he entered the basement, the Avatar was still there, still asleep, still tied to the radiator. Even better. He slipped the needle into her arm once again, and pushed the plunger down. She shifted in her sleep, protesting faintly, and he returned to the upper floor to plan his flight.

He was bent over a map of the Earth Kingdom, tracing possible routes, when he heard an engine idling outside. He checked his watch and frowned; it was nearly midnight, and this was a rarely-travelled stretch of road. Who would possibly be outside?

He gathered water from the tap into a sharp wedge of ice around his hand, enough to take out a single assailant.

The door crashed open.

Amon entered, his hands folded behind his back. His lieutenant, the man with the ridiculous mustache and the goggles, and three chi-blockers followed, effectively blocking the only exit, unless he wanted to go out a window.

“Councilman,” Amon said. “It has come to our attention that you have an ally of ours.”

“What do you care?” He spat, eyes darting between them and the exit. He could take them, probably, but he didn’t want to risk getting to close to Amon, even if he was bloodbent. Amon was calm, but his pulse was… oddly hard to read. Barely there, he would say, but it was more like it was hidden, obscured behind panes of glass. “She’s the Avatar, she’s a bender. You should be thanking me.”

“The Avatar is our ally, for the time being,” Amon said. “You have been spreading lies about our actions." The chi-blockers dropped into defensive stances, and the lieutenant drew his weapons. "It is time for you to be equalised.”

Idiot. “You’ve never seen bending like mine,” Tarrlok sneered, and reached out and grabbed.

He twisted and pressed the Equalists to the ground. The lieutenant and the chi-blockers crumpled, and Amon staggered to his knees.

But he was slippery, hard to hold, and he recovered and advanced towards Tarrlok. Icy dread washed through him. He pushed down his shock and redoubled his efforts, seizing on the water in Amon’s veins, pushing back and down.

Amon kept walking.

“What— what are you?” Tarrlok whispered hoarsely, abandoning his efforts.

“I am the solution,” Amon said, and knocked him to his knees. He pressed his thumb to Tarrlok’s forehead.

Ice washed through his veins, and he remembered—

The moon hung, pale yellow and fat, over the mountains on the horizon. The wind carried the scent of ice and salt and seaweed from the sea to the east. Snow swirled around them.

“Now,” Yakone said, and he was compressed, squeezed by some enormous hand, lifted like a puppet— he tried to scream, but his mouth wouldn’t open— his breathing was ragged and his pulse was roaring in his ears— he couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe—

“Good,” his father said, as he gasped for breath and fought down nausea. Sweat drenched his undershirt and snow soaked into his gloves and coat and pants, ice-cold, the wind cutting through the damp fabric. “Your turn, Tarrlok.”

He raised his head, fixed his wavering gaze on his brother. Noatak. His pale blue eyes were impassive, his face an expressionless mask.

“No,” he whispered, bile rising in his throat at the thought. “I— I can’t.”

Tarrlok collapsed on the floor.

Noatak.

Dimly, as if underwater, he saw: Amon lift him bodily and point at the door to the stairs. Amon drop him in the back of a truck. The Avatar explode out of the door, the air smoking and snow turning to steam around her. The Avatar’s eyes glowing, like stars, like the sun. He saw Amon turn. He saw the Avatar freeze, and turn, and run.

Amon turned back to him. The four Equalists staggered out of the shack.

“What do you want us to do?” one asked. Static was filling his ears, threatening to overwhelm him.

“Leave her be,” Amon said. “We need to return to Republic City…”

And everything vanished into darkness.

He awoke in a small study. He was slumped on a futon. A messy, leaflet-covered desk sat below a window. A small oil lamp burned on the desk, and an iron brazier radiated heat from the corner. The wood-paneled walls were covered in Equalist propaganda. The window shade was half-drawn, but he could see the deep blue of twilight coloring the western mountains. He could smell the distinct odor of petrol, water-weed, and rotting fish that hung over the southern harbor, mixed with the sharp tang of coal fire. So: he was in an Equalist building, in the Docklands, probably close to the Bay.

A pair of lightweight steel manacles clinked as he moved. They were attached to a thin chain that was bolted to the wall.

His waterbending was gone.

He closed his eyes and drifted to sleep.

He awoke to the sound of a pen scratching. He blinked several times to bring the world into focus.

Amon was sitting at the desk.

Stifling a yelp, Tarrlok scrambled backwards and hit the wall.

Amon finished what he was writing, and turned. “You’re awake,” he said. His voice was deeper, much deeper, than the boy-Noatak he had known, the boy whose voice had just begun to crack, who blushed deep red when Anyu, the tanner’s daughter from three houses over, smiled at him, who made a point to catch soft-shell crab-shrimp because he knew they were Tarrlok’s favorite.

They looked at each other for a few minutes. Amon was wearing his mask, but Tarrlok could still see his eyes. The pale blue eyes of his brother.

“Noatak,” Tarrlok said quietly. “I thought you died in that storm.”

Amon blinked. And then he laughed. “Noatak,” he said, his voice rich with amusement, and something else. “Noatak did die in that storm, Tarrlok. But I survived.” Tarrlok had no response. Amon shook his head and turned back to his work.

“Why are you keeping me here?” Tarrlok asked eventually.

Amon sighed and turned around. “You, Councilman Tarrlok, are dangerous. You’re a symbol of the bender corruption that plagues this city. I’ve already taken your bending—” Obviously, Tarrlok thought— “but if I were to simply leave you in one of our prisons there’s no telling the havoc you would raise.”

“So I get the fancy treatment? Real bed, hot meals, my own room?”

Amon shrugged. “I need you somewhere I can keep an eye on you. That happens to be my study. For now.”

Tarrlok was quiet for a minute, thinking. “You are my brother,” he said at last. “And you’re using bloodbending to take others’ bending away.”

“Both are true,” Amon said, tilting his head.

“Why?”

“I mean what I say, Tarrlok,” he said. “Bending is a scourge on society. It needs to be eradicated.”

“By a waterbender.”

“If needs must.” Amon sighed. “I know that Yakone hurt you, hurt both of us. Can’t you see that he was only able to do so because of his bending?”

“The Avatar took his bending,” Tarrlok countered irritably.

“But he was a bender once, and he passed on the corruption to us. Had we been free of its stain, we would have lived a happy life.”

“And now you’re working with the Avatar?” Tarrlok said, eyeing the chart labeled Avatar’s Schedule pinned above the desk.

Amon shrugged again. “She is amenable to the cause. Perhaps she thinks that she will be spared because of her cooperation. In any case, I need allies and the Avatar has been cooperative in helping me deal with the police and the triads. And others. When the world is equal, as it must be, I will take her bending as well.”

“And it doesn’t strike you as odd that you’re a bender, working with the Avatar, to bring down bending.”

Amon sighed. “I did hope you would understand,” he said, and turned back to his work.

“So if I’m dangerous,” Tarrlok said one day, “why am I still alive? Put my head on a spike and have done with it.”

Amon hummed a prevarication, not looking up from his work.

“Why bother keeping me alive? I’m not any good to you. I’m never joining your lunatics’ club.”

“You’re a symbol, Tarrlok,” Amon said. “Symbols have power. And the longer you’re gone, the longer it looks like you’ve abandoned the city, the worse it is for you. For benders.” He spat the last word like a curse, and Tarrlok winced.

“So, what, I’m just going to be here forever?”

Amon hummed again. “Not forever,” he said finally. “When the city is equal, perhaps, I will let you go.”

Time passed. Amon would be there when Tarrlok woke up. He would “work” (no specifics were ever given), or he would read, or answer correspondence. He did all of this in silence, leaving Tarrlok to his thoughts.

Mostly, Tarrlok thought about his past. How his father had died so soon after Noatak’s disappearance. How his mother had grown distant and sad when Yakone died, forgetting to eat for days on end. How the other children of the village had stared and whispered— that’s the kid whose brother died in the snow, they would say. Some waterbender, huh? Or, I hear his dad killed himself out of disappointment, or, That’s the weird kid whose whole family is nuts. Just goes to show— don’t marry outside the Tribe, huh?

When he woke up, there would be bread and cheese or congee or dried fruit, and at night a guard brought him dinner. Some kind of meat, usually, and bread and water, and maybe soup. Wine, too, if they were feeling charitable.

Tarrlok watched the sun rise and set, wondering what was happening outside. Were they searching for him? Had he been replaced on the Council? Had Tenzin taken over his Chancellorship? (Honestly, he hoped that Tenzin had; as much as they fought, Tenzin cared about the city just as much as he did, and that’s what the city needed at this point. Someone who cared. Spirits knew Amon and the Avatar didn’t.) Was the task force still fighting the Equalists? Where did the Avatar stand in all of this?

A guard would come in once a day to change his chamberpot, and sometimes he could get a little information out of them. I heard bombs go off yesterday, was that you? I saw a fleet of battleships in the harbor; what happened to them? What was that droning overhead last night? The guard would usually smirk or roll their eyes, but occasionally he would get a snippet of information. We bombed Parliament. The United Forces arrived, but we took care of them. Hiroshi Sato built new, high-speed aircraft for us.

One day, he woke and Amon was not sitting at his desk. When the guard came in to change his chamberpot, he asked what happened. There was a rally at the Arena, and Amon had gathered the strongest benders of the city, the pro-benders and the teachers and leaders of bending schools, to take their bending. A show of force, to prove that the old hierarchy was well and truly dead. The guard left, leaving him to his thoughts. Most of which centered on: the Avatar won’t like that.

A muted explosion shook the room, rattling the furniture and scattering papers to the floor. What? For the first time in his imprisonment, Tarrlok attempted to stand. His chain was long enough that he could move off of the bed, and even look out the window if he craned his neck. In the distance, he could see smoke rising from the pro-bending arena. A person flew backwards out of a high window, closely followed by a second person, smaller. The Avatar. Both people crashed into the water.

Suddenly, two waterspouts rose from the bay. On top of one, his mask gone, stood Amon. (Noatak.) Amon. Atop the other, her eyes burning like stars, stood the Avatar.

“This won’t end well,” he murmured to himself.

From this distance, all he could see was occasional flashes of fire, and the two waterspouts waving like the tentacles of some enormous sea creature as the two benders dodged each other’s attacks.

The Avatar’s eyes flared brighter for a half-second and with a sound like a tsunami coming on a wave of water wrapped around her and engulfed Amon. When the water cleared, he was a half-step behind in their fight: his strikes were slower, his parries clumsier, his dodging barely moving him out of the way of the Avatar’s strikes.

And then.

With a sound like the earth splitting in two, a narrow spire of ice erupted from the water. It caught Amon in the throat, and he was jerked up and away from the Avatar, falling unnaturally still, like a marionette with its strings cut. His waterspout fell into the waves.

The Avatar stood on her waterspout, level with his brother.

Slowly, the waterspout descended. The Avatar moved herself to dry land. The Avatar State winked out.

Amon hung from the ice, a dark smear of brains visible on the ice above his head.

Amon was dead, and a bloodbender, and the Equalists were lost. An hour after Amon’s death, an Equalist entered the room. She looked almost surprised to see him.

“You’re still here,” she said, pausing in the doorway.

“Not by choice, I assure you,” Tarrlok said, raising his manacled hands.

“Right,” she sighed. “Hold tight.”

Not like I can go anywhere.

She returned a few minutes later and tossed something towards his futon. Tarrlok caught it: a small key. He unlocked his handcuffs and stood. She, meanwhile, was gathering papers and folders from Amon’s desk.

The Equalist tucked the documents she’d gathered in a briefcase and nodded to him, turning to go.

“Wait,” he said. She turned back to him, surprised. “What’s— what’s going on?”

“We’re clearing out,” she said. “Won’t be long before the police get their shit together and start looking for us.”

“What happens to me?”

She shrugged. “You’re not our concern. If any of us had our way you’d’ve been in prison with the others, but Amon insisted…” She shook her head. “You’re free to go, I suppose. You’re as wanted as the rest of us, now.”

Oh, right. Kidnapping the Avatar. Bloodbending the Council. Flagrant abuse of authority. Embezzlement. Corruption.

Fifteen minutes later, the warehouse where he’d been held was burning, smoke streaming from the windows, the acrid smell of burning electronics filling the air. The full moon was rising over Yue Bay.

Chapter Text

Jinora could have made the trip from Air Temple Island to Police HQ in her sleep, she thought. If only she didn’t have to watch out for those pesky airplanes, moving almost as fast as she did on her glider. She touched down lightly in the plaza next to Grandma Toph’s statue, and went inside. The day guards, Lo and Huang, nodded to her as she passed. The elevator ride was quiet; they had only recently gotten rid of the operators, and she still wasn’t used to the silence. She wondered what had happened to Lao. He had always been nice to her.

Her mom’s office was at the end of the hall, a bright and airy room with a gorgeous view that (supposedly) Grandma Toph had claimed to spite the head of the forensics department, who she had always hated. Her mom rolled her eyes every time that rumour came up, but she’d heard it from Uncle Sokka, so it was impossible to say who was right.

“Hey, mom,” Jinora said, knocking on the half-open door. “I brought lunch.” She held up the paper bag.

“Spirits, is it already one?” her mom checked the clock above Jinora’s head. “Well, come in. I’ll just move these.” She shifted the massive stack of papers across her desk, clearing a small space for both of them to eat. Jinora squinted at the paperwork as she sat. Insurance claims and disorderly conduct complaints, it looked like. “Don’t worry about those right now,” her mom said. “You’re here for lunch; let’s eat.”

“Right.” Jinora sat, and produced two sandwiches. “We’ve got a pulled smoked turtleduck on sesame for you,” she said, passing one foil-wrapped sandwich to her mom, “and a veggie-lovers on potato for me.”

She’d gotten the sandwiches from her mom’s favorite place, Le’s. Korra might have called it a last-ditch attempt to salvage the relationship, and honestly she wasn’t too far off. She hadn’t really spent time with her mom in ages, and their weekly lunches had fallen by the wayside around the time that she got her mastery tattoos.

They ate in silence. Her sandwich was good: daikon, bean sprouts, carrot, and cucumber tossed in a light, tart sauce, with fried seitan to make it a little more filling. Her mom finished her sandwich first, balling up the wrapping paper and the crumbs and tossing them into the trash can behind her desk.

“So,” she said when Jinora had done the same. “How’s the Avatar doing these days?”

Jinora huffed a quiet laugh. “Jumping right into the politics, huh?” Her mom shrugged. “Korra’s alright. She’s been working down by the docks for the past few weeks. Trying to convince the workers to unionize. Good luck, I keep telling her. If Tao Shan couldn’t make it work, there’s no one who can. But Kamal always glares at me when I criticize her. He’s like a damn guard armadillo-dog sometimes.”

“Kamal?” Her mom scratched the side of her nose. “That stringy kid, right? Greasy hair, pale, gold eyes? Scar on his arm?” Her mom indicated roughly on her own arm where Kamal’s jagged lightning scar was. Jinora nodded. “Oh, I remember him. He’s trouble, you know that?” Jinora wasn’t sure exactly what her expression suggested, but her mom leaned forward, something very intense in her eyes. “I picked that boy up four times on bomb threats and at least a dozen on drug charges. Jinora, you shouldn’t be spending time with people like that—”

“People like what, mom? I mean, Kamal’s…a lot, but he’s really not that bad.” Bomb threats were a little extreme, but she knew he hadn’t been arrested in ages. Well, discounting the situation with Tarrlok. “He hands out food to the homeless people in Feng Square Park.”

Just last week she’d stopped by Korra’s apartment— really Kamal and Ling’s, though she couldn’t help but think of it as Korra’s— and the three of them had been cooking an enormous pot of dal makhni, with a ten-pound bag of rice sitting on the table. She’d stuck around and helped with the cooking (nothing beat airbending for fluffing rice) and then helped hand out the food, too, portioned into paper containers, to the people who lived in the park and people wandering by. Afterward she’d felt better than she had in months. Like she’d made a tangible difference in someone’s life, even if it was just to give them some lentils and rice.

“Jinora, those people need psychiatric help,” her mom said, a tired, pinched expression on her face. “Handing out food is just encouraging them.”

Jinora blinked. Encouraging them to what, survive another day? she wanted to say, but held it back. She wanted to frown. Had her mother always been like this? Her discomfort must have been obvious, because her mother sighed and said, “Look, I just worry about you. I don’t want you falling in with a bad crowd.”

“Korra’s not a bad crowd, mom,” Jinora said. “I mean, sure, she’s passionate about what she believes, but isn’t that a good thing? I mean, she’s following through on what she said after—” After killing Amon, she didn’t have to say. Her mom grimaced.

“Don’t forget how she helped the Equalists up until they turned on her,” her mom said darkly. Jinora almost wanted to object— it hadn’t been like that!— but her mom pushed on, scrubbing a hand over her face. “Jinora, I know you feel obligated to teach her airbending. And I am so proud of you for taking responsibility like that. But that girl isn’t— she’s not normal. She’s not right. Her beliefs are dangerous. They’re a threat to law and order, to everything I have spent my entire life safeguarding.”

Korra might say that if law and order meant innocent people living in fear of triads, meant hundreds living on the streets in the dead of winter, meant children going hungry so fat-cats like Sato could line their pockets, then law and order might deserve to be threatened.

“Right, mom,” Jinora said, too tired to argue the point.

“Just— take care of yourself, Jinora. I worry about you.”

“I know, mom.”

“By the way,” her mother said, “your Aunt Izumi is going to be here next month for a state visit. She said something about checking on the progress of the United Fleet, and making sure that Iroh is alright. There’s going to be a full state dinner. Formal attire and all.”

Jinora grimaced. “I hate those.”

“I know,” her mom said, “but you’re her niece. It would look bad if you didn’t make an appearance. And you should give Korra some forewarning. I get the feeling the girl’s never worn high heels in her life, much less attended a formal banquet.”

Jinora resisted the urge to roll her eyes. A month wasn’t nearly enough time to give Korra the social graces of Asami Sato or Ginger Kon, and honestly Jinora couldn’t care less if there was a diplomatic incident. She had a feeling Korra felt the same.

“I’ll see what I can do.” She made a show of looking at the clock. It hadn’t even been half an hour, but she was past ready to leave.

Thankfully, her mom took the cue and said, “Well, I have a meeting to get ready for. But it was nice to see you, Jinora— should we do this again next week?”

Jinora bit her lip. “Yeah,” she said after a long moment. “I’ll— I’ll call you.”

Her mom’s office had huge floor-to-ceiling with generous sills. Designed for Aang to have easy access when he needed to drop in on Toph, her mother had told her, and Jinora had thought more than once about just dropping in through the window like her grandfather. But it had always seemed too informal, inviting herself into her mother’s space as if it was certain she’d be welcome. Leaving that way wasn’t nearly as intimidating.

Jinora had a feeling, though she wasn’t certain, that Korra would be at the Island. She’d been spending more time there than usual, more driven than ever to master airbending. To master airbending and leave, Jinora suspected, though neither of them had said as much.

She didn’t want Korra to go.

The girl in question was pacing the bagua circle overlooking Yue Bay, her eyes shut and her feet bare, when Jinora touched down.

“Hey,” Korra said, without breaking her stride or opening her eyes.

“Hey,” Jinora said. “I think you got the hang of that a while back, you know.”

“Clears my head,” Korra said, still pacing.

“A lot going on in there, then?”

Korra laughed. It sounded bleak. “Oh, you have no idea.” She finished the set, palms down in front of her, and stepped away from the circle.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Jinora was probably the least qualified of their little team to deal with emotional issues— no, scratch that, Kamal was. That boy was a damn mess. But Jinora was a close second.

Korra shrugged. “Don’t know what good it would do at this point. What’s done is done.”

Jinora frowned. “That’s not really the point—”

“Plus I talked to Kamal and he told me I did everything right and had nothing to feel bad about.”

Spirits, that boy, Jinora thought. “Do you want someone to actually listen? I’m happy to.” A thought occurred to her. “Wait, what are you doing on the island anyway?

Korra’s expression crumpled into a frown. “I— it’s stupid. Sorry. But I thought you’d be here.”

“Korra, you’re always welcome, obviously, I just thought you didn’t really like it here very much.” Korra shrugged again, miserably, but said nothing.

Jinora sighed. “All right, start from the beginning, and tell me about it. I want to know.” Which was, in fact, true: all she’d managed to get out of Korra was that she had killed Amon in the Avatar state after exposing him for a bloodbender.

“How far back in the beginning?”

“As far back as you want,” Jinora said, floating down into an easy half-lotus pose. Korra copied her, sitting next to her to stare out at the bay.

“Well,” Korra said hesitantly, “I got to Republic City last year, and the first thing I saw when I was wandering around the city was this protester standing on a milk crate, hollering about benders being the true oppressors. So I stood and listened, and he wasn’t— well, he wasn’t wrong. I thought he was taking the wrong angle, of course, but I wasn’t going to say that. I mean, I’m the Avatar, so if there’s oppression by benders then it’s probably going to slip under my nose.” She smiled distantly. “That was actually where I met Kamal, you know? He looked like he was about to throw a rock at the guy, and I stopped him before he could do anything…”

“Kamal-like?” Jinora said wryly, and Korra laughed.

“Yeah. Kamal-like. I must have looked pretty, eh, fresh off the boat, I think he called me. Because he asked if I had a place to stay and invited me to stay at his, when I said I didn’t.” She was quiet for a minute. “Anyway, he explained the whole political situation, and I kind of moved in with him and Ling by accident, but I was keeping an eye on the triads more than the Equalists because they seemed like the bigger threat. But then Zolt and the others went missing— right before the big rally—” the Revelation, Amon had called it, but Jinora thought that made it sound like a cult meeting “—and then when I went poking around for where he went, to make sure it wasn’t just Triad infighting, I stumbled onto the Equalists.”

“And that’s when you met Amon?” Of all the details in Korra’s story, her short-lived alliance with the Equalist leader was the thing Jinora understood the least. He was charismatic, she could give him that, and she knew why nonbenders would be tricked, but Korra—

“Eh, sort of,” Korra said. She picked a stone out of the ground and started rolling it between her palms, shaping it like it was wet clay. Jinora watched. Fine control like that wasn’t something most earthbenders were capable of. “I knew there was something up with his story, because I lived on the islands he said he’d grown up on for almost a year and I never met anybody with an accent like that. And his—” she waved a hand generally at her body— “his posture was all wrong. He was too tall, for one, the nutrition on those islands is really poor so they’re all short, and most people who can find work at all have the sorts of jobs that just physically wreck you after a few years. So I thought he was lying, but I was far away and he was wearing a mask, obviously, so I couldn’t be sure.

“But then I bumped into him on the street, and I recognized his voice, and his stance, and his— he had this really menacing aura— and I thought, oh, this is the spirits telling me something. So we got tea and talked for a little bit, and— well, I thought, this city is fucked, but at least he’s trying to do something. More than I’m doing right now, you know, just sitting around a friend’s apartment with my thumb up my ass.”

“I don’t think that’s fair to you,” Jinora said, but Korra waved a hand.

“I mean, maybe. Maybe not. I wasn’t really doing much of anything those days, just reading a whole lot, mostly. Wandering around the city. Making friends with the homeless people in the park across the street. But that’s not the point.” She molded the rock into a pointed cylinder and started scratching patterns into the dirt. “I talked to him, and he seemed to really care. Which is. It’s more than most people, you know?”

“Korra, people care,” Jinora said. “They just don’t know what to do about it.”

Korra shrugged again. “Maybe,” she said again. She stared out at the bay. “Or maybe they do know what to do but it’s too much to ask of them.” Jinora frowned. “Doesn’t matter in the end, I guess,” Korra said, before Jinora could come up with a suitable reply. “You know the rest. Worked with him to take down the triads, worked with him to trip up the cops.” She waved a hand. “Anyway, it all went to shit after Tarrlok kidnapped me; I was hallucinating from all of the drugs and when I saw him outside that shack all I could think was— was— he’s here for me. He’s going to take my bending away.”

She was quiet for a long time.

“Is it bad that I don’t want to lose it? That losing it sounds as bad as losing— fuck, I don’t know, my eyes? A limb? It’s— I mean, nonbenders get by just fine. Better than fine, some of them. Ling—”

“No,” Jinora said, cutting Korra off before she could start on another over-long tangent about Ling’s many virtues. “No, it’s not bad, Korra, it’s a part of who you are.”

Korra frowned. “But. Nonbenders—”

“Amon probably would have tried to take my bending, if I got close enough,” Jinora said. “Is that a morally neutral act?”

“No, that’s wrong,” Korra said immediately. “But—”

“No buts. Take your own advice. You have bending, you want bending, you should keep your bending. Simple as that.” Korra still looked conflicted. Jinora decided to approach from a different angle. “Think about it like this. Why is the solution taking away bending, rather than giving it?”

“Giving…” Korra said, sounding astonished at the concept. “I mean, I could…” She frowned, staring into the middle-distance.

“Why did he turn on you, do you think?” Jinora said, to break her out of the thought.

Korra blinked. “He—? Oh. Right. Amon.” She shrugged. “He had power, I guess. Once I cleared out the triads and the cops, his goons were the biggest game in town, muscle-wise. I should’ve known he’d do that. I should have guessed.”

“Korra, you couldn’t have known—”

“He didn’t talk about liberation, not really,” Korra said, shaking her head. “He was talking about— about bringing down tyrants. Cutting benders down to size. Not helping everyone stand on the same level. The Equalists only taught chi-blocking if you joined them, Ling says. I should have known… I should have guessed he was just another tyrant, another person looking to rule.” She looked down at the ground, despondent. “I just— I don’t know what to do. To help people. I’m just one person.”

“You’re the Avatar,” Jinora said gently, but Korra just made another despairing noise.

“You know what they taught me growing up, the White Lotus? They said, the Avatar is a force for balance. For order. Justice. Peace. What the fuck does that even mean? How can they say there’s peace in the world when people starve to death, when the whole system grinds people into the dirt for a few people to profit? When people are working fifty, sixty hour weeks just to scrape by? How am I supposed to sit by and watch that happen? To just stop people who want to make things better?”

“I think,” Jinora said slowly, thinking of the few times the White Lotus had met at the Temple, the old men and women, smug and self-satisfied, retreating to the conference room in the Temple to discuss official business, and never mind all that, little girl, one of them had said, when she asked if the Avatar was happy where she was. She had eavesdropped on a meeting, just after her Mastery ceremony, and heard them discussing how she could be deployed to best effect. Riots in the Lower Ring of Ba Sing Se meant that Hou-Ting’s rule needed shoring up, so maybe the Avatar’s granddaughter could be spared to be a spiritual adviser. Treating the entire world like a massive game of pai sho. “I think you weren’t supposed to know about those things.”

“Yeah, well,” Korra said bleakly. “Cat-owl’s out of the bag, I guess.” She stared out at the bay. “He was the first person I killed, you know.”

Jinora realized, suddenly, that Amon had died— that Korra had killed him— not too far from the Island. Somewhere near here she had stood on a waterspout and, with a single decisive flick of her wrist, sent a spear of ice up through his throat. She hadn’t seen it happen, but Amon had hung there, like a marionette with its strings cut, for a full day before Korra’s ice had melted in the winter sun.

“I think maybe I shouldn’t have,” Korra said, and tucked her knees up against her chest. “I mean. I don’t… I don’t regret it, exactly? I just.” She sighed. “I have this feeling that everyone thinks, well, the Avatar did it, she stopped the crazy person, now we can all go back to our lives. That’s the Equalists done, and we’re off the hook for the situation that caused them.”

“Yeah, but you had to stop him,” Jinora said. She couldn’t imagine a world where Amon would try to negotiate with anyone.

“Did I?” Korra looked pensive. But she must have seen Jinora’s alarmed look, because she quickly added, “Not— he needed to be stopped, yeah. But did I have to be the one to do it?”

Jinora blinked at her. “Korra, he was a bloodbender. How was anybody else supposed to kill him?” The Avatar State, Grampa Aang had always told her, was the only reason Yakone hadn’t killed him on the day of his trial.

“Did anyone try shooting him?” Korra said dryly, and Jinora thought for a moment— and stopped. They hadn’t, she guessed, because who would try to use a bow and arrow against a bloodbender? But Kaz had always talked about the Yu Yan’s incredible abilities… “He was powerful but he wasn’t unstoppable,” Korra continued. “But everyone thinks, well, I couldn’t have possibly done anything, so it’s fine that I didn’t try.” She sighed. She picked up the stone again and flattened it, and then twisted it into a helix. She flicked it away, called it back with a curl of her fingers, repeated. “I just… I don’t know. I don’t like it here. This city.” She picked up the stone helix, twisted it into a tighter spiral. “It’s just not…”

“You don’t have to stay, you know,” Jinora said, as gently as she could manage when it felt like she was saying go ahead and push me away.

Korra hummed. “I’d feel better if there was some sort of organization here to keep things going while I’m gone. You know? Make sure all my effort doesn’t get undone by the capitalist hog-monkeys.”

Jinora frowned. “Should I be insulted by that? I’m technically a princess, you know.” Even if she could never inherit, even if she never really visited, she was still a Princess of the Fire Nation. And, as she thought about it, wasn’t that odd?

Korra snorted. “Don’t remind me,” she muttered. “If I’d met you two years ago I probably would’ve picked a fight with you on principle.” Jinora’s face must have revealed something, because she rolled her eyes. “Oh, don’t be dramatic— I said on principle. Look, I lived in the Fire Nation for two years and I never met a person who liked the royal family. Respected the office, maybe, accepted their rule, sure, but liked? Nah.” She shook her head. “Anyway, you’re not really— you’re not part of it. The inherited wealth. The nauseating power displays.”

Jinora bit her lip, her conversation with her mother coming back to her. “I guess now would be a bad time to tell you that there’s a formal dinner happening next month and you’re expected to attend?”

Korra looked at her, face blank, and then burst out laughing.

“Oh, fuck!” she crowed. “I’m going to one of those, aren’t I!”

“Um.” Jinora felt like she was missing something.

After a few minutes Korra’s laughter subsided into dark chuckles. “Oh, they’re going to love me,” she said, smirking.

“Uh.” Jinora hesitated. This might be opening a can of worm-shrimp she didn’t need to, but. “Is there… have you been to one before?”

Korra gave her a dark, sardonic grin. “I lived in the Fire Nation for two years doing odd jobs to support myself. I worked staff at…” she paused to count on her fingers. “Hmm, seven, I think. Eight, depending on your definition. Three in the capitol.” She smirked. “Maybe the Fire Lord will recognize me. Wouldn’t that be funny.”

“Um,” Jinora said again. She considered telling her mom that Korra just couldn’t make it. Avatar business, very formal. Very conflicting with that exact time slot. “Don’t you think you’d get more done if you, um, worked within the system?”

Korra looked at her as if she’d grown a second head. “Jinora. Master Jinora. My airbending teacher who I respect immensely. Shut up.” She rolled her eyes at the face Jinora must have been making. “Nobody’s ever said that to you, huh? Well— here’s an old proverb I picked up from some people in Zhuhai. The unity of the picken and the beetle happens in the belly of the picken. You try to change stuff from the inside and you’ll just get digested.”

“I— I mean, that’s not really— I— Korra, you’re the Avatar!”

Korra raised an eyebrow. “So?”

“So—” Jinora threw her hands up, at a loss for how to be clearer. “You’re the picken! You’re part of this, too!”

“Am I?” She frowned, and then held out her right hand. “See this?” She flexed her fingers back, making the long, jagged scar that cut across her palm stand out in sharp relief. “Got it in Zhuhai. Sato factory. Part of a door I was handling hadn’t been machined right, cut straight through to the bone. Through the tendons, too. Here, here, here, and here.” She pointed to the spots where the scarring was the thickest. “Couldn’t move my fingers for a week. Damn good thing I can heal, otherwise I’d’ve lost the hand completely.” She curled her fingers into a fist. “Still gets a little numb when I do this. And I can’t close my fist all the way; there’s some bending forms I can’t do anymore because of it.”

She cocked her head and gave Jinora an appraising look. “Being the Avatar didn’t stop that from happening. Being a Princess wouldn’t stop you from being pushed around the world like a pai sho piece.” Jinora flinched. How had Korra known—? “Neither of us are the picken. Nobody’s the picken, except maybe the Fire Lord and the Earth Queen and my Aunt and Uncle. The picken is the system.”

“Yeah, but—” The system. The White Lotus, sitting in that room. Sipping tea and laughing and playing pai sho on a global scale. Aunt Izumi nodding and saying I’ll think about it when she brought up systemic inequality in the Fire Nation. “But. Overthrowing the system— that would— will— hurt people.”

Korra gave her a look, rubbed her thumb over her scar. “People are getting hurt now. The system hurts people. The system runs on hurting people.”

Jinora flinched. “I—”

Korra sighed. “Look. Let’s go get— I don’t know. Lunch. Dinner?”

Jinora recognized the offer for the compromise it was: neither of them was going to change the other’s views. Not now, at any rate.

They’d been talking for a while. The solstice had come and gone, but the sunsets were still early, even if the days were growing longer. Jinora squinted out at the bay. The setting sun was turning the bay gold. By the time they got to the mainland she’d probably be hungry enough to eat something light, at least.

“Dinner, sure. There’s a bao place I’ve been meaning to try. We can take Pepper.”

Korra bent herself to her feet with a swirl of wind, a move that had taken Jinora a year to get right but that she’d learned in two weeks. Jinora had a feeling the lack of a resolution on the state dinner would come back to bite her, but at this point she didn’t care. Korra’s words were bouncing around her head like Rohan on a sugar high.

You’re not the picken. You’re not in control, that meant. Nobody is. The system controls itself.

Chapter Text

“Hey, can I ask you something?”

Ling looked up from her cross-referencing, and squinted at the golden afternoon sunlight streaming over Korra’s shoulder. How long had she…? She rubbed the sting out of her eyes, and said, “What’s going on?”

“I was thinking,” Korra started, and stopped, frowning. “Well, I was talking to Jinora.”

Ling braced herself for some truly awful liberal nonsense.

“If you could be a bender, would you want to?”

Oh. Hmm. Well, Ling wasn’t sure what that had to do with the Councillor’s daughter, but it was an easy enough answer. “No,” she said. She looked back to her notes, but now that she had stopped looking at them they were starting to give her a headache.

“Really?” Korra said, and she had such a shocked expression on her face that Ling had to laugh.

“Sorry,” Ling said, when Korra looked indignant. “I’m sure it’s fun. But it just always seemed like so much work. I’m happy being a nice non-magical girl, thanks.”

Korra made a contemplative noise. “Jinora said,” and Ling braced herself again, “that the solution to the bending problem might be giving people who want it bending, instead of taking it away from everyone.”

Not as bad as some of the airbender’s earlier statements, Ling figured. Maybe she was improving. Still— “What about the nonbenders who don’t want bending? Like me?”

Korra shrugged. “Carry on, I guess?” She frowned as she said it. “I know that’s not— I mean, keep working like we’ve been, you know?” Ling’s expression must have said something, because Korra pulled a face and said, “Well, what do you think I should do?”

And wasn’t that the million yuan question. “Honestly?” Ling said, dropping onto the sofa next to Korra, “I think the Equalists were full of shit. If I’m oppressed as a nonbender, it’s incidental to all the other ways.”

Korra’s whole face briefly twisted into a miserable combination of I’m sorry and oh spirits why did I say that and I’m the worst. Ling was always surprised by how readily Korra let her emotions show. Why hadn’t she ever learned to hide them?

“Which is to say,” Ling continued, before Korra could trip over herself to apologize, “that I think ‘nonbender oppression’ is just… it’s a symptom, not the cause. If nonbenders seem oppressed it’s because they’re worse off when they’re vulnerable.” Korra gave her a dubious look. “People aren’t oppressed because they’re nonbenders, they’re oppressed because they’re poor.” She still wasn’t getting it, Ling thought. “Look, there’s no laws discriminating against nonbenders. There’s not even significant cultural stigma against being a nonbender in the Republic, much less the Earth Kingdom.” One of the very few things Ling appreciated about her home country. It made assassinations so much easier when the monarchs couldn’t launch a rock at your head at lethal speed. “There’s no pay disparity, no difference in medical care, no legal distinction— not now that Tarrlok’s laws have been repealed, at least—”

“If that’s true then why were the Equalists so—” Korra cut herself off, frowning. “But I guess they weren’t popular, were they?”

It had been a strange three weeks between Tarrlok’s disappearance and Amon’s death. While Amon claimed to have taken over the city, and had put a massive replica mask on Aang’s statue to prove it (she still couldn’t believe what a waste of resources that had been) there really wasn’t much backing up his claim.

The police had been firmly under Saikhan’s control, but he had been under Tarrlok’s thumb and without his puppetmaster he had folded like wet cardboard. Uniformed metalbending police had vanished from the streets, but masked chi-blockers quickly replaced them, in the exact same capacity. The rest of the Council was placed under house arrest, nominally for their protection, and Amon and his goons had strolled into the Parliament building and smugly informed the House that their legislative body was dissolved. The representatives had left without a fight, probably grateful for the unexpected recess, and (for reasons she couldn’t fathom) Amon had let them go. For Ling in her day-to-day life, nothing had really changed: people would shrug at each other and say, I mean, what are we going to do about it? and best to just keep our heads down until this all settles.

For a week things were more or less the same, but then Amon had started arresting benders for unspecified crimes against the city. Unsurprisingly, Korra had not responded kindly. She publicly disowned Amon and the Equalists by beating his Lieutenant into a coma, vanished into the under-city for a week as she waged a one-person war against them, and then killed Amon very publicly and brutally.

And then things had gone back to normal. Because at the end of the day… “The Equalists never really held power,” Ling murmured. She flipped over the page in her notebook and started scribbling frantically in her shorthand all of the little details about the situation that hadn’t added up.

“It was a stitch-up,” Korra said to herself. “Sato was the big backer, obviously, but maybe other people— wealthy families? Industrialists?”

Three years ago Ling had stood in the middle of a rally for workers’ rights, between two firebenders and an Earth Kingdom nonbender. The organizers had been friends of hers, an even mix of benders and nonbenders. Not six months later the Equalists had popped up like mushrooms after a rainstorm, her nonbender friends had split and joined them, her bender friends (including Kamal) were confused and trying to be supportive, and they were back to square one in organizing.

“I think,” Ling said, pausing in her note-taking, “it wasn’t completely fabricated. There were die-hard Equalists. And it is harder to be a nonbender…in some ways.” She scrubbed her hand over her face. “Fuck me, this is gonna be a nightmare until I figure it out.”

Korra had that look in her eye. Like she wanted to go set a building on fire. Fair enough, except they were trying to be discreet at the moment. “I’ll handle it,” Ling said. “For now. I’ll let you know if I need backup.” Korra looked pained. “You’re a bit noticeable, you know.”

“Right,” Korra sighed. Now that they had even the roughest sketch of a plan, her restless energy seemed to have vanished, and she dropped like a rock onto the armchair next to Ling’s desk. “I used to be sneaky, you know. Before everybody knew what Avatar Korra looked like.”

Ling raised one eyebrow. “Yeah, I’ve been wondering about that. Everybody knew the Avatar was a Water Tribe girl named Korra, that didn’t turn any heads?”

“A few.” Korra shrugged. “But, see, everyone in the Water Tribes was tripping over themselves to name their daughters after me, once they knew who I was, and I was named the Avatar when I was three. So I told everyone I was younger than I looked. I didn’t seem like the Avatar, so they never asked any questions. Even if they might’ve suspected something.” She seemed to hesitate for a moment. “Anyway. I used to be sneaky.”

“I’m sure you did,” Ling said, unable to imagine boisterous, emphatic Korra sneaking anywhere.

Korra gave a disgruntled hmph and threw one arm over her eyes. She was sitting directly in the sun, after all. “OK, I wasn’t sneaky but I was subtle, how about that?”

Ling smiled to herself. Korra’s one-woman rampage against the Equalists was hardly subtle. But if she thought about it, it did seem like the actions of someone who’d been holding back for years and whose patience had finally cracked.

“I could be persuaded to agree to that,” she said, “if I had some evidence. Maybe some stories…?” Fishing, and pretty obviously, too; but it made Korra smile, and that was what Ling had been aiming for.

Whoever had been funding the Equalists was good at covering their tracks. Very good. But Ling was better.

Which led to shocking discovery number one: Amon’s Lieutenant (whose name was Lu Ten, in a coincidence that seemed almost comical) had escaped arrest, and he wanted to talk.

“He tricked me as much as— more than— anyone,” Lu Ten grumbled. They were meeting in a busy, anonymous noodle shop downtown. He slurped up a noodle, and then scowled at the bowl as if it had personally offended him. Maybe it had; the ramen another table had ordered looked dubious. Ling herself had ordered yakisoba, which was pretty hard to screw up. Lu Ten continued, “I thought— I really believed in the cause. You know?”

Ling looked at him. He’d clearly seen better days. Specifically, the ones before Korra had put him in a coma.

“Do you really think that bending is a corruption?” She conspicuously focused on stacking a few snap-peas into a pyramid, to give him space to think.

He sighed. “Look, if you’re asking if I believe what Amon was pushing at the end, the answer is no. Of course I didn’t. Don’t. Bending is— weird, and messy, and frankly kind of disturbing— but it happens. It’s not… unnatural. Obviously. And we all knew… look, everyone knows that if you take away someone’s bending their kids might still be benders.” Aang had taken a few top Fire Nation leaders’ firebending, and some of the Dai Li brass, to preserve the fiction of his neutrality. It was major news when one of those general’s daughters, born three years after the war, had been a firebender. “But we were thinking, if we could get things equal for a generation, take away what was causing the problems long enough to fix them, maybe when bending popped up again it wouldn’t be such a problem.”

Ling raised one eyebrow. “We?”

He gave her a look like she was profoundly stupid. “What do you think? Higher ups. Inner circle. And before you ask, most of ‘em are gone. Just me and Kenji left.” Kenji— that would be the only person sent to jail for the Equalist insurrection. Beyond her reach at this point. And unlikely to talk, considering he could’ve cut his sentence at least in half and chose not to. “And Sato’s kid, maybe.”

“Maybe?”

He shrugged again. “She was always around. Usually doing schoolwork or tinkering with something. I thought she was a space-case scientist, but then she started putting stuff in the papers after—everything, and it was true, so she must have been paying attention.”

She decided to let it drop for the time being. Pushing wouldn’t get her anywhere. They slipped into small talk for a while. Traded commiserating stories about being fucked over by the world. Lu Ten was gay, as it turned out, and his first and second jobs hadn’t taken kindly to that. Ling gently prodded him on the workers’ movement that the Equalists had split, but he scoffed and waved it away. Ineffective, marginalizing nonbenders, reformist instead of revolutionary. That wasn’t how Ling remembered it, but she let it slide.

“So—you were with the Equalists from the beginning?” she said. He was down to the dregs of his ramen, and her soba was long gone. Their complimentary barley tea was cold. Ling sipped it anyway, to give her something to do.

“I know what you’re poking around about, you know,” he said, ignoring her question. “You want to prove that the Equalists were a joke from the start.”

She set her cup down. “I want to understand why the Equalists popped up as fast as they did, and why you accepted Sato’s support when you know he treats—er, treated—his workers like shit, and why after Korra killed Amon—” Lu Ten flinched at that, in spite of the betrayal “—the Equalists vanished just as fast as they appeared.”

He frowned. “I won’t pretend I was happy about working with Sato at the beginning. But he was a good man. Proud of being a nonbender. And he was proof that we aren’t inferior, no matter what benders might say.”

Ling sighed and put aside the argument that his wealth was built on other people’s inventions. “But everything else? How fast you rose and fell? How little impact you had on the city’s politics?”

“Yes, I know that the movement I dedicated my life to was a futile and wasted effort,” he sneered. “You don’t have to remind me.” He fished in his pocket and pulled out a pack of cigarettes and a battered lighter. “You mind?” She shrugged. He flipped one out of the pack and lit it with the ease of a lifetime of practice. After a moment, he held out the pack to her. She took one with a muttered “thanks.” She didn’t normally smoke—that was more Kamal’s vice—but it was good for building trust. And it did settle her nerves.

“Fuck me,” he mumbled, exhaling a cloud of smoke. “I…look, I don’t know. I want to say that the Avatar knew what she was doing when she was taking us down, but you’re right, we should’ve been more established than that. We had people all over— sanitation, communication, the press, all the trades; you name it, we had someone on the inside. And then when Amon died, it all just—” he gestured vaguely, smoke trailing his hand. “Collapsed.” He took another drag, closed his eyes, sighed. “I don’t know too much. Avatar, you know.” He mimed getting hit in the head. “By the time I woke up our headquarters was gone, Amon was dead, and the city was back to normal.”

They smoked in silence. As his cigarette burned down to the filter Lu Ten’s posture relaxed. Ling watched, and considered her angle.

“Don’t you want to know why things turned out the way they did?”

He sighed heavily and squinted at her. “What do you want?”

Ling frowned to herself. What did she want out of all this? Well— she wanted to know who had undermined the worker’s movement, and why, and how. She wanted other peoples’ opinions— maybe nonbenders were oppressed, and she just couldn’t see it around the other half-dozen ways she was fucked by the system. But most of all…

“I want to build something that lasts. A movement that won’t get knocked down the second the United Forces rolls in.”

He gave her a long, measured look. She sipped the dregs of her tea and tried not to fidget.

“Fine,” he said. “What do you need to know?”

Ling reached into her bag and pulled out her notebook, trying very hard not to smile.

Armed with the names of all of the original founders of the Nonbender Rights Movement— as it turned out, the name change was Amon’s idea— Ling returned to her apartment. Korra was sitting on the step outside with Tikivik and two of the people who hung out in the park across the street: Takeshi, a middle-aged man nicknamed Ten-fingers (a relic of his meatpacking days), and Li, a boy a year or two younger than Ling, who told anyone who would listen that he was a reincarnation of Kyoshi’s brother.

Korra shushed them when Ling approached, with that look of hers that said I’m not hiding anything, no ma’am, not me. Tikivik rolled her eyes. “Afternoon, Ling,” she said pointedly. Korra blushed. “Productive meeting, then?”

Ling didn’t bother to ask how Tikivik had figured out her lunch plans. The waterbender had a habit of knowing things. “Very,” she said. “I actually was hoping to get your opinion on some stuff since you said you lived in the Narrows for a while.” An early site of nonbender rights agitation, and if Lu Ten’s information was correct, still home to some of the members who had bowed out after Amon’s appearance.

“Sure,” Tikivik said easily, “I’d be happy to help.”

Ling excused herself to her office, really just a corner of the living room that had a corkboard and too many notebooks to count, and got to work cross-referencing and fact-checking. Korra and Tikivik and Li came in at some point, but Ling had more than enough practice drowning out Kamal that she only pulled herself out of her work when her stomach grumbled loud enough to break her concentration. The noodles hadn’t been very filling, apparently.

There was rice leftover from the day before, so Ling stir-fried it with their last four eggs, their perpetually-sprouting green onions, and the mushrooms that were starting to get spotty in the icebox. “I really need to go for groceries tomorrow,” she said as Korra inhaled her portion. “Don’t let me forget.”

“Mhm,” Korra said, still chewing, and added, “We need more kombu.” Probably.

Li helped clean up, and then he started shuffling cards for a game of poker. Ling already owed the kid an unspecified favor, so declined his offer to spot her buy-in in favor of going over her notes again. She ended up watching the game from the corner of the room, trying (and failing) to communicate to Korra via eyebrow what cards Li had, but the kid was too good. Or Korra was bad at reading signals. Or both.

Li wandered off eventually, back to his friend-of-the-month’s place, and Tikivik ducked out shortly after; she claimed she had an early start the next morning, though doing what Ling couldn’t guess. That left Korra and Ling sitting alone in the living room, Ling absent-mindedly shuffling and flourishing the deck of cards Li had left behind.

“Neat trick,” Korra said, nodding to the cards.

“Mm,” Ling said. She cut the deck one-handed, fanned it out in a circle, pulled the deck back together. “Kamal makes interesting friends. I picked up a thing or two. Good for parties, you know.”

“You’re pretty good with your hands,” Korra said.

Ling smirked to herself, but didn’t reply. Korra had to be tired if she could say something like that without laughing. She cut the deck again, shuffled the cards back together, let them fall in a cascade from one hand to the next. She’d properly shuffled them ages ago; this was just showing off. She tapped the cards back into a neat pile, and Korra handed her the box.

Korra stood up from the sofa, headed towards her and Kamal’s room. She paused with the door half-open, looked at her for a long moment, chewing her lip. And then she shook her head, like she was dislodging something, and said, “Well— good night, I guess.”

Ling nodded. Korra hesitated another moment, and then shut the door with a decisive click.

She was hiding something, Ling thought, turning a page in her notebook. And she was going to find out what.

Her leads in the Narrows resulted in slammed doors, slurs and then slammed doors (always an exciting change of pace), and one goldmine of a witness.

The Nonbender Rights Movement, as it had been uncreatively titled before Amon got ahold of it, was the work of a coalition of nonbenders who Ling was vaguely aware of from her days in the worker’s movement. Twelve of them had died in the Equalist mess, five had disappeared under mysterious circumstances, three had left the city under normal circumstances, four had slammed the door in her face, one (Kenji) was in jail, and one was willing to talk to her. A quiet man in his late thirties named Akira, who gave her the same story that Lu Ten had—Amon was charismatic. Amon seemed to care. Amon helped grow their movement. But he had stepped out with the name change, and didn’t seem interested in what the Equalists had become.

“I’m done,” he said, when she asked about re-starting the Nonbender Rights Movement. “I can’t. Not again. Not a third time.”

“What if we could make it stick, this time? We’ve got the Avatar on our side.” As much as she hated reducing Korra to her title, it had to count for something.

Akira looked tired. “I spent my twenties unionizing the lightningbenders, and we all know how that ended.” Ling winced. “And then I thought I’d joined a movement that would make it stick. And it turned into a cult run by a madman. Forgive me if I’m suspicious of your—or anyone’s—ability to organize for any sort of meaningful change. Avatar or no.”

Thursday night, and Ling was alone chopping vegetables to the staticky music from the radio wedged in their small kitchen window. The only place they could get even halfway decent reception. She paused to wipe her eyes—she would need to get Korra to sharpen the knives again, judging by how much the onions were making her cry—and scraped the neatly diced onions into the bowl next to her. Long peppers next, sliced into strips.

The doorknob rattled, and she greeted Kamal without turning to look.

“How do you do that?” he said, flopping onto their sofa.

“Korra doesn’t bother with the key,” she said. Just metalbent the bolt out of and into place. Korra would make a fantastic thief if she put her mind to it. “And nobody else comes in alone.”

“I’ll have you know I turned down three dates to join you for Thursday stir-fry,” Kamal said, faux-haughty.

“Dates?” Ling paused. “I thought—you and Korra—you’re not—?”

“Me and Korra? That was over weeks ago. Alas, no, I am now but a lonely wanderer in this lonely world of ours.”

Ling risked a glance at her best friend, sprawled on their sofa with one arm thrown melodramatically over his face.

“Boots off on the sofa, you cretin,” she said, flicking a chunk of onion at him. He scooped it up off the floor and ate it, the gremlin, but dutifully sat up to unlace his boots. “And the sad line sounds better if you don’t say lonely twice in the same sentence.”

“Noted,” he said with a grin.

The apartment was soon full of the smells of hot oil and sizzling vegetables and frying meat, but as she worked her mind was caught on the thought: me and Korra, over weeks ago. She turned it over like a stone in her mind. Korra, unattached.

The Equalists hadn’t been fabricated, not completely. Akira and the others in the Nonbender Rights Movement had legitimate issues. Exaggerated, maybe, but legitimate. But once they became the Equalists, things became…hazy.

The movement pivoted. From addressing real issues, to railing against the imagined tyranny of benders. From how waterbenders could purify their own water when tap water wasn’t safe to drink, to how waterbenders were linked to droughts. From how earthbending construction was difficult to maintain without bending, to how earthbenders were thick-headed brutes. From how poorly-enforced fire codes mixed disastrously with firebending children, to how firebenders caused destruction wherever they went. (They hadn’t managed to dredge up any stereotypes against airbenders, but not for lack of trying. That there were only six in the world certainly hadn’t helped.) Bending could mitigate the ravages of poverty, and nonbenders didn’t get those luxuries.

Sato was a major donor, obviously. The Star had broken that story a week after Korra skewered Amon in the harbor. But Gan-Lan and Takahashi and Leiko and Varrick—they were shadow partners. The ones Korra hadn’t found during her rampage. (Ling was careful never to call it that in Korra’s earshot. It was a very effective rampage, if more public than Ling thought necessary.)

She was missing something. She could see the outlines of it, in the gaps in her notes, the voids where information should be, where people should talk, except they wouldn’t. Because of—something.

She named it the Shadow, because she was allowed to be dramatic in her own head.

“There’s no logic to who donated to the Equalists,” Ling said, pacing back and forth in front of the wall, where she’d tacked photos of the donors and members and back-room supporters, connected with different colors of yarn. “It’s driving me nuts.”

Korra, eating a steamed bun, tilted her head and looked at the growing wall of doom. She said something, but Ling couldn’t make it out around the bao. She swallowed, grinned sheepishly, said, “What do they have in common?”

“Nothing!” Ling threw her hands up in frustration. “They’re all wealthy, but aside from that, nothing!” Korra gave her a look, as if to say wealthy isn’t nothing. “It’s a list of Equalist backers,” she said, pinching the bridge of her nose. “They had plenty of small-time support, this is just the wealthiest ones.”

“But what if it’s just about wealth?”

“But not everyone rich donated. And if it was about money, then why were they Equalists?”

“Because that’s what they had to work with?” Korra shrugged. “I think you’re overcomplicating things. It doesn’t have to be a grand conspiracy. It can just be—opportunism.”

Ling rubbed her forehead again. “Hey. Can you—you’re a waterbender. Can you do the healing thing on me?” She wiggled her fingers around her head to demonstrate.

Korra choked on her bao.

“What? I have a headache.”

“Oh,” Korra said. It was hard to tell, but it looked like she was blushing. “Oh, um, sure.” She scarfed down the last of her bao, wiped her hands on the kitchen towel, and uncorked the waterskin at her side to let the water flow around her hands. “Here, sit—sit down.”

Ling sat on the sofa next to her, and Korra put her hand on Ling’s forehead. That alone felt good, the water cool and soothing. The water started to glow, and Ling closed her eyes with a pleased sigh.

“You’re tense,” Korra said. “Here, let me—” She prodded her into moving so Ling’s back was to her, and held the water over her shoulder. The muscle relaxed, like thread unspooling. Ling felt like she was melting into the sofa. “You shouldn’t work so hard.”

“Tell that to my editor,” Ling tried to say, but it came out as more of a slurred mumble.

“What was that?” Korra said, gentle amusement in her voice.

“Mmm. You could charge money for this.”

“Could do,” Korra said. She moved to Ling’s other shoulder, less painful but still tense.

Korra finished, and Ling sat back against the sofa, feeling bonelessly relaxed and happy. She opened her eyes, saw Korra looking at her with an odd, apprehensive expression. She smiled, opened her mouth to say something—

Korra was kissing her. It took her a moment to register, because she’d never so much as considered it. (That was a dirty, dirty lie, she’d considered it a thousand times.)

Oma and Shu, but kissing Korra could get addictive. It should be illegal. Korra tilted her head, deepened the kiss. She tasted like ginger and soy sauce, her lips softer than she'd imagined. This must be what flying feels like, Ling thought, and it was dizzying, addictive. Like electricity and sunlight, like touching a live wire. Korra pulled away, kissing a line down her jaw, and Ling tilted her head to allow Korra better access—

The pieces slid together in her mind. She could practically hear the soft click.

“You’re right,” she gasped, breaking away from Korra. Korra, who looked pleasantly stunned, her lips kiss-swollen and red. Ling pinched herself. Focus. “Opportunism,” Ling said again, to keep herself on track. “Unionization—that’s the link. And now the council is—bribes. There’s only one executive now. Instead of five. They can—they picked him. Compromise candidate. Raiko.”

The words weren’t coming out in the right order, but as she continued to ramble like that Korra’s gaze sharpened.

“Oh,” Korra said. “The elections—do you think they were rigged?”

“Not—no. It’s—not that. The council, the presidency, unions, it’s—” She dragged a hand over her face, tried to focus. Fuck, why couldn’t Korra have picked a different time to kiss her—Korra had kissed her—she needed to focus. “I need to look at the Charter.”

Amon was a true believer. Probably. They would never get more out of him than what he’d published in the city’s papers, what he’d snarled on the radio, what he’d written in the handful of journals they recovered from the burnt-out ruins of the Equalists’ base. Nothing he had written or said suggested he was lying about hating benders.

But the Equalists weren’t run by Amon. He was just a figurehead.

Sato was the front man, the charismatic businessman with a chip on his shoulder, a vendetta against benders after his wife’s tragic death. (She wondered if he felt guilty about that. Weaponizing such a personal tragedy.) There were a half-dozen or so major donors, but almost every important business in Republic City—nonbender-owned or not—had someone in the group.

The Equalists both were and weren’t legitimate. It started with Sato and Takahashi during the lightningbenders’ campaign. There had been one or two activists on the fringe of the movement calling for nonbender rights, and the two agreed that they would break up the unions work but quietly ignore the nonbenders. Divide and conquer, that was always the strategy. Amon rolled into town, gave the movement some pizazz, and it had spread from there, until the Equalists were the only movement not being actively suppressed in workplaces. They weren’t being promoted—no easier way to spot a plant, and Sato wasn’t stupid—but it was enough. She didn’t have evidence that it was intentional, but it didn’t have to be. Results spoke for themselves.

And then, when it was over, there was an opportunity. Sato was arrested, Amon was dead, the city was in chaos, and half of the docklands were on fire thanks to a combination of Korra’s scorched-earth rampage and the Equalists cleaning house. The legislature pushed through an emergency bill declaring martial law and mandating a new charter for the Republic, and the authors could be circumstantially linked to fifteen of the twenty largest corporations in the Republic. The new government’s structure was, in theory, more egalitarian—but it would be so easy to buy an election. And the new Presidency consolidated powers that had previously belonged to six or seven committees into one position. The candidates almost didn’t matter at that point, except that they could be paid off.

Honestly, the most surprising thing was that Tarrlok had nothing to do with it. Just a fellow bloodbender with a preternatural ability to capitalize on political instability for his own gain. The odds of two bloodbenders turning up at the same time in the same place were vanishingly small, but there was nothing to suggest they’d been in contact. Tarrlok’s history, at least, was easy enough to track.

Goro Shinobi, editor-in-chief of the Republic Gazette, raised an eyebrow as she finished her speech. Ling refused to fidget. She was aware that her argument could sound a little far-fetched. But it made sense.

He gestured for her to sit. She did, and he leaned back in his seat with a sigh. “Do you really think,” he said, rubbing his chin, “that this is the best time to print this?”

Ling blinked. “What?” she said, and then the question caught up with her, and she said flatly, “You’re asking me to postpone my publication.”

Shinobi adjusted his glasses, spread his hands on his desk. “I’m asking you to look at the political climate,” he said, “and be—pragmatic.”

“Pragmatic,” she said. She tapped her pen against her notebook. “Raiko’s going to win.”

“Let me guess,” Shinobi said, wry all-knowing smile firmly in place. “Kaneda supporter?”

She resisted the urge to roll her eyes. Kaneda was better than the others, but not by much. “Same shit, different asshole,” she said. “It doesn’t matter who we elect.”

Annoyance flickered across his face for a half-second, quickly plastered over by that smug smile. “What’s important,” he said, “is that we can’t let Toshiro get elected. And if you publish this now, you’ll only stir up dissent. Make this a partisan thing.”

“It’s voting,” Ling said. A headache was building behind her eyes. She pressed her thumb hard into the bridge of her nose, between her eyes. “It’s partisan by default.”

“You know what I mean,” Shinobi insisted. “You’ll split the voting base between Raiko and Kaneda and it’ll only help Toshiro.”

I don’t care, Ling wanted to say. Let Toshiro get elected, it’ll only mean the city burns to the ground faster. But she didn’t want that firebug in power any more than Shinobi did. And at the end of the day he was the editor, and he had final say about when stories were published. This was a professional courtesy, nothing more. Pushing would only make him feel bad.

“Fine,” she said. She scooped the sheaf of papers into the folder she’d brought. “Fine.”

She didn’t storm out of the office. She was better than that. But she yanked the door shut behind her and didn’t flinch at the bang.

A week later they sat in the living room, listening to the results come in on the radio; she and Kamal and Korra squeezed onto the couch, Li and Ten-fingers and Tikivik and Puyi from next door sitting in a loose circle on the floor around them. Raiko won by a comfortable margin; Toshiro came in second, Kaneda a distant third.

“Cheers,” Korra said glumly, raising her bottle. “To democracy.”

“Cheers,” they all chorused, the necks clinking together, before gulping down the cheap beer inside.

“And may we always get what we ask for,” Ling added, darkly.

Chapter Text

In the winter the wind echoes like star-song from the mouth of his cave, cuts like a knife and digs itself into his carapace. The roots of his tree shift and clatter, and ice falls from the ceiling and pools in the dips in the floor. In the spring the ice melts, filling his home with lamentation, water falling like tears. The wind is bright and green and the cave smells of rot. In the summer the wind sings like a raven-hawk through the roots of his cave, and sunlight leaks through the cracks in the ceiling, pooling where the ice melted away, burning away the rot and the bright green of spring. In the fall the light turns gold, and the wind roars and wails above him and around him as storms rage and die, and the cycle repeats.

Koh does not notice these things, not anymore.

They’ve forgotten him, his face and his voice and his purpose— but his name is still whispered in the shadows. That old lie: be good, little one, or the Face Stealer will find you. He would not leave his home if he could. Not for mortals, who flicker like light-bugs and fall like mayflies.

No. He is found. When he needs to be, when he is wanted. No sooner, no later. And they all find him, in the end.

He turns from the stairs, the blue-white wind of winter that wails like a lover’s loss. The floor of the cave is worn with ruts from his endless circling.

Sister-host. The Avatar smells of wind and fire and moonlight. The blue-nose smiles as he turns. “Hello, Avatar. I told you we would meet again.”

The little water-spark is careful. Her face twitches but betrays no emotion. Eyes like the ocean and a voice like the night. Harmonic Convergence, she says, is why she has found him. She seeks the Oldest Ones, Order and Chaos, who burn like fire and ice, who crush like wind and stone, who lurk in the darkness Beyond. They will return, and bring the world down around them.

“I cannot give the answers you seek. But there are others, strong in ways that I am not. The Bear, the Owl, the Fox. The window to all things. Seek and do not return, little spark.”

The cave seems darker in her absence.

The Avatar. Come again to his library, come to steal knowledge and spread chaos and destruction. Thief, oath-breaker, liar. Everything in him screams for her death.

“Most noble Wan Shi Tong,” the Avatar begins, bowing formally. “I humbly request your permission to use your library. I was sent here by Koh. I need to find information about…” she hesitates. “Well. Avatar Hajime called them Order and Chaos. Koh called them the Oldest Ones. I was hoping that you would have information.”

He blinks. The Oldest Ones. Almost time for their return. How the years pass when surrounded by books. He cannot turn her out, then. Their return would mean the destruction of his library, his scrolls and books, carvings and paintings, as surely as it would the mortal world she seeks to protect.

Still. The Avatar. Traitor, liar, oathbreaker, thief. Come to bring war to his kingdom of peace.

“You bring no books, no scrolls, no information I do not already have,” he says. Impudent mortal. Just as presumptuous as the last Avatar. His feathers still ruffle to think of that water tribe human getting the better of him— but he is not related to this one. “You seek knowledge of the Oldest Ones. What would you give me, for the knowledge you will gain? Everything has a price, Avatar.”

“I'm the Avatar,” she says. “Isn't that enough?”

He gives her a thorny glare. “Your predecessor broke his word, given as the Avatar. Try again.”

The Avatar looks lost, and he frowns. And then a thought occurs to him. “Perhaps… you could help me puzzle out a riddle. Given to me long ago by another mortal, as payment for my scrolls.” The Avatar looks worried, and Wan Shi Tong smiles. Pettiness. So human, and yet so enticing. He waves a wing, clearing the air around them to facilitate their thought.

“Here: four men stand in a room. A king, a merchant, a shaman, and a soldier with a sword. The king says to the soldier, ‘Kill the other two, and I will give you lands and titles.’ The merchant says, ‘Kill the other two, and you will have wealth beyond measure.’ The sage says, ‘Kill the other two, and you will have the favor of the spirits for all your days.’ Who lives and who dies?”

The Avatar considers this, and Wan Shi Tong watches her. She has been with the Face Stealer recently. He can smell the rot and death on her, the endless circling, the sickly green-gray of his smile. She knows the answer— he can see it in the set of her shoulders, the tilt of her eyebrows. She is simply looking for the words.

“It… I suppose it depends on the soldier,” she says eventually.

Wan Shi Tong clicks his beak. “But why? All he has is a sword. He cannot command armies, speak with spirits, or trade with far-off lands.”

“But he has a sword. He is the one to decide who lives and who dies.”

“Then where, in this room, does power lie?”

“With—” the Avatar hesitates. “With the soldier, I would suppose.”

“So soldiers are your rulers.” Untrue, by all his library’s knowledge, but sometimes questions are the best teachers. Wan Shi Tong turns fully and approaches her, unblinking. She leans away from him unconsciously. Frightened, as she should be.

“Kings are our rulers, stupid as it is,” she says, eyes almost crossed to maintain eye contact. “Or the local equivalent. Fire Lord, chief, elder council. Lords in smaller areas.”

“Why?”

“Because— because they are. Because they always have been. Like I said, it’s stupid.”

“And why have they always been so? Brother-Agni fathered all firebenders, but only one family thinks themselves above the rest. Sister-Jizhu put the earthbenders in the heart of the mountains, but the mortals rule from the impenetrable city.”

The Avatar frowns, scratches the back of her neck. “It goes back a long way— the people who were strong, the families that could impose their will— they were the ones who had power, and now they still do, and whether or not they can do anything anymore no-one questions it because it’s how things have always been.”

“By those rights, the benders should be your leaders.”

“In some places they are, but… well, people are trying to change it. I mean, look at the Equalists. Amon nearly brought down the whole damned government with a few well-placed words to the right people.” The Avatar is silent for another minute, doing her best not to fidget under Wan Shi Tong’s inscrutable gaze. “The answer to your riddle,” she says finally, “is that who the soldier kills depends on who he is. Because we mortals all give our loyalty to different people. Power isn’t a constant.”

Wan Shi Tong considers this. “Your power is not a constant,” he says slowly. Somehow it had never occurred to him— why should it? That power is not something you hold in your hands and your mind and move through the world with— and he can feel the library shifting to accommodate this new information, books reorganizing and new wings opening. “It is a trick of the light. A ghost, a shadow. It lies where humans believe, and you mortals have such brief lives, such short memories…”

“So your library—” the Avatar begins, but stops abruptly when Wan Shi Tong bends to level his head with her own. She blinks at the sudden proximity.

“I have been puzzling over this for a long time. It was like looking through clouded glass, a warped mirror. I could see, but not clearly. You humans are so strange. Thank you for your knowledge.” He straightens. “That being said, I do not have the information you seek. I deal in mortal secrets, mortal knowledge. Sometimes paths converge, or run parallel, but the Oldest Ones are unknowable, least of all to mortals. So you have two options. Seek my likeness, Ka’eo the Seer, who holds the knowledge of the spirits. Or find your own knowledge, and sit before the Mirror of Souls.”

“The… what?”

He gestures with a wing, twists and pulls just so on the reality of his home, and a map materialises on the floor in front of them. Small lines connect the kingdoms, which glitter like gems set into the floor. He points with a feather to the realm of the Watcher. “The Mirror of Souls, Avatar, is a nexus of the ten thousand worlds, at the center of the First World. Named by one of your previous lives, many Convergences ago. It is the gateway, and the window, to every world that exists.”

“And it’ll help me defeat the— the Oldest Ones?”

“It will give you the knowledge of every version of you,” Wan Shi Tong says. The Avatar fidgets. Uncomfortable, he thinks, with the idea of other versions of herself. “There is a reason we call your realm the ten thousand worlds, Avatar,” he says. “There are more realities than can be counted, than there are stars in the sky. You are but one version, one aspect, of yourself. As every version of yourself, you would be wise beyond mortal knowledge. However,” he adds, clicking his beak, “such knowledge cannot exist outside of the spirit world. You will return to your mortal state, one mind in one body, when the Convergence is finished. Unfortunate for you.”

“And what you’re saying is, one version of me will know what to do?”

Wah Shi Tong ruffles his feathers, the avian equivalent of a frown. “Mortals do not take kindly to the concept of the infinite. Everything that is possible will happen. You will know everything." She crosses her arms and looks down: discomforted by the thought of such knowledge. "I should mention, Avatar, that your predecessors have chosen that path rarely. Most have sought Ka’eo, whose knowledge is kinder than the all-knowledge given by the Mirror.” Resolve settles in the set of the Avatar’s shoulders, the line of her mouth. Stubborn mortal. He should’ve guessed. “You will seek the Mirror, then?” One eyebrow raises. “Oh Avatar, you should really stop underestimating me,” he says. “I am an all-knowing spirit, at least when it comes to humans.”

“I guess,” she says. “Thank you, Wan Shi Tong.” She bows.

He inclines his head, just so. “For your knowledge, you— and only you, Korra of the Southern Water Tribe, no other Avatars before or after— will be welcome here.”

She thanks him again and exits the library. Wan Shi Tong shakes his head and calls for a knowledge-seeker.

“Alert Rendel. The Avatar will be on her way soon.” I hope you know what you’re doing, Face Stealer, he thinks. If any harm comes to my home, you will lose more than a face.

Rendel the Watcher has stood guard over the Mirror of Souls for more years than can be counted, for more years than there are many-worlds, for longer than even He Who Knows Ten Thousand Things could say.

The Face Stealer would have her believe that there is an order to these things, that there is a way that the worlds will be. She knows better. The present, and all life, is chaos, pure and simple. There is nothing to give structure to it. Anything can happen at any time, and if the Face Stealer claims to know the future, that is because he is old enough to think himself all-knowing. And who is Rendel to contradict him? Only the Watcher of the Mirror, She Who Sees Ten Thousand Things. Powerful enough to rival Koh himself, if she so desired.

A knowledge-seeker appears in her field of view. The little fox bows, opens her mouth. Wan Shi Tong’s voice spills forth: “The Avatar will arrive shortly. She will want to see herself in the mirror. Be prepared. Koh’s plan must not fail.” The fox cocks her head and looks at her expectantly.

Rendel shakes her head. “Feh. Koh’s thrice-damned plan. Tell your master that I will be ready, and that I will act according to the plan, but that I do not believe for an instant any word that centipede-eel says, and neither should he.” The fox dips her head and disappears in a wink of light.

The Avatar arrives soon enough, just as predicted, and Rendel makes a show of being welcoming and excited. She’s met the Avatar once or twice; most choose to look for Ka’eo, the lumbering old bear, afraid of what they’ll find if they become every version of themselves. This one, Korra, is braver than most; she winces when she looks in the mirror first, but wastes no time in sitting and falling into an easy routine of meditation.

Rendel can see the worlds coalescing behind the mirror, as slowly other versions of Korra merge. Minute differences first: an extra mole here, a chipped tooth there, a stray freckle or pockmark scar; then the larger differences: missing eyes, arms useless for bending, unable to hear; finally, the truly other Korras: the ones whose animal guides never died, the ones who were kidnapped, the ones whose mother died in childbirth, the ones whose Uncle was killed as a child and grew up a princess of the North. An infinity, all contained within one person.

The Avatar stands. Rendel can see a hairline crack running across the center of the Mirror. She smiles, sharp-toothed and dangerous. “You’d best run, Avatar,” she says. Her reflection fragments into five, ten, twenty, a hundred. “They’re on their way.”

The Avatar whips around, just in time to see the Mirror buckle and shatter, shatter into a thousand pieces that glimmer like stars.

It never gets any easier. But Rendel knows this dance, knows it like breathing. She takes the largest shard of the mirror, long and tapered and deceptively flat-edged like shattered ice, and presses it into the Avatar’s hands. “Go,” she says, more forcefully. “Find Koh. The spirit world needs him free.”

She turns to look at the wound in the world, the emptiness and the gaping darkness, yawning and cavernous and eternal.

Madness spins through the void, Order and Chaos twisting together until it is impossible to tell which is which, and she snarls at the emptiness, the teeth and fire and constricting nauseating smoke and stars and vertigo, and Order and Chaos laugh.

HELLO, WATCHER, they say. IT’S BEEN A LONG TIME.

The wind wails like the ice of winter. Sunlight drips through the gloom, not due until springtime. The blue oni slips into place, frowning.

“Do not return, I said, Avatar.”

He pauses. She is different.

She is Korra, but she is more than she was before, stronger and louder and brighter, a thousand eyes blinking in time in one face, a thousand mouths smiling— oh, he could tear that smile away from her and devour her whole, and the ten thousand faces would be more satisfying than anything, and yet—

A shard of sunlight, like lightning in the dark cave. Thin and sharp, so sharp, sharp enough to cut the worlds—

The noh mask grins. “A sword to cut all things. Very good, Avatar.”

The shard flashes and searing pain rips open his back.

At the end, there are no great lights or explosions, no enormous battles between giants. Order and Chaos approach, and Tamashi and Koh and Korra stand at the center of the worlds, where north and south are the same, where the first world touches the many. Order and Chaos are— are impossible, and Korra can feel herself burning, can feel the lives she’s absorbed going mad, mad from the impossible stillness and motion, all at once, vertigo and constriction and fire and deep-down caves. Korra turns away from them, looks to Koh and Tamashi instead.

It is as it always has been, as it will always be: Koh and Tamashi become something more, and Korra watches, waiting. There is a moment, terrible and eternal, where the sunlight hums with rage and pain, where the air tastes like liquid iron and death and the call of the void, where everything crystallizes into a glittering point—

And then it shatters, and Korra feels herself breathe again, and Tamashi and Koh settle in front of her, separate once again. Tamashi bows her head and touches her snout to Korra’s forehead. “Host-Korra,” she says, her voice deep and rich and joyful, “I have missed you.” She dissolves into an inferno around Korra, and her eyes glow like the sun as she grins.

Koh looks at the Avatar. Little fire-spark with eyes like lightning over the sea. Sister-host, owed a debt.

She bows to him, preparing to leave, and he bows in return. “A moment, Avatar,” he says. “I would teach you a lesson before you depart.”

She prickles in something that might be worry, or might be anger, though she remains expressionless. “A lesson,” she says, carefully neutral.

“Be calm. You are not Kuruk. No. Who are you?”

“Who— I’m Korra,” she says, uncertainty in her voice.

He almost rolls his eyes. He switches to the swordsman. “Who do you host, little spark, if you insist on being pedantic.”

“Tamashi,” she says, wary now, “the spirit of life.”

The swordsman smirks. “Spirit of life, yes, but there is more, you understand. There is Order and Chaos. As above, so below. I am Death, and so I am Order. All things die. There is but one First World. For spirits, our power is in our bodies, in our blood. It is unchanging. And so you are…”

“I’m Chaos?” Korra says, openly confused, her brow furrowed. The void in him itches to steal the gentle slope of her nose, the fire in her eyes, the arch of her eyebrow. He pushes away the hunger.

“You are Life. And between birth and death, between the beginning and the end, anything can happen. Remember that, little spark, when you have gone. Mortals, you are fickle, flighty. There is but one constant in the ten thousand worlds, and that is change. But before you depart—” He presses a claw to her third eye. “For clarity, in the future.” Her eye opens, weak and unused, but there all the same. It will strengthen in time. “Mortals lost the way of things, long long ago. Perhaps you will return them to it.”

She bows to him again, and departs.

The world ripples next to him like a curtain of water. “Hello, Rendel,” he says.

“Are you sure that was wise?” the Fox says softly, watching him with her mirror-eyes. Reflected in them Koh sees the old general slide into place, frowning. “I’ve seen what she will do.”

“Some of her will, Watcher,” Koh says. “But many will not. I know better than you the difference between what-might-be and what-will-be.”

“And that was the right path to set her on?”

“She has no path save her own. She will be who she will be.” The old general is replaced by the young scholar, solemn-faced. “I did what I must.”

“Hmph.”

“All will be well, and all will be well, and all manner of thing will be well. The mortals have said that, in more than one world. Listen to them.”

Rendel shakes her head. “When your plan comes crashing down on your head, Face Stealer, don’t look to me for help. I’ll give you no quarter.”

Koh doesn’t respond, but turns back to his tree-home-throne, no longer his prison. He can change things now, re-carve the steps and smooth the ruts from the floor, patch the leaks in the ceiling and open it to sunlight…

He lets his thoughts drift away from him. Rendel leaves in a swirl of wind, theatrical as ever.

Be bloody, bold, and resolute, little spark, for your destiny is greater than you know. You and I— together, we’ll change both our worlds.

Inside, behind his endless faces, Koh smiles.

Chapter Text

It was good, Tikivik thought, to finally be out of Republic City.

She wasn’t one to question the spirits, not when they had so clearly told her that Republic City was where she must live, but she missed the stars and the clean, sharp air and the singing of insects in the trees. The city streets had hummed with life, but it was empty, mechanical, and the air carried the acid tang of pollution rather than the cold snap of snow coming. And, she couldn’t forget, Republic City was empty of spirits. There were no crosswalk-spirits, no bridge-guards or ferry-watchers as there had been in Nunavik. There were no spirit-lights at night to light the way for those who sought knowledge; no spiritual energy swirled around the buildings like the eddies of a stream.

No, Republic City was far too modern for the “antiquated” and “backwards” spirits of fire and ice, wind and stone. Even Air Temple Island, where spiritual energy should have been thick enough to taste, had little more than a whisper of spirit-light around the High Temple. It was almost nauseating at first, like losing a limb or an eye, but she had adapted. Change was her element, after all, and she had believed that the Avatar would have need of her. The Earth Kingdom was hot and dry and dusty, but it was better than the spiritual wasteland she had been trapped in for the past five years.

“You look happier, you know?” Jinora said one day as Pepper cut through the clouds.

“Mmm,” Tikivik said, half under her breath. Of course, Jinora could hear that. “I’m not a city person.”

“I get that,” Jinora said. She patted Pepper’s head and tied the reins to her right horn, then jumped back into the saddle, settling next to Tikivik with only the faintest of breezes.

“You want me to fly?” Korra said, moving her hat off of her face, where it had been shielding her from the sun.

“Pepper should be good for a bit. I just needed a break for a minute.”

“Okay, well, let me know.” Korra shifted her hat back into place.

“I know what you mean,” Jinora continued. “I mean… well, Ikki was always the spiritual one. Mom wasn’t always encouraging when it came to things she couldn’t see, and Dad… well, he’s got his own problems with spirits. But I used to go up on the top of the temple at sunset and just sit there, because it felt like the place with the fewest walls. Dad never understood.” She looked down at the saddle between them. “Korra was the first person I ever met who agreed, who thought that staying in one place for too long felt like suffocating.”

Tikivik thought about this for a while. “We were both stuck in a place we didn’t like, away from what we needed to thrive,” she said finally. “But… what kept you in the city after you got your tattoos? Surely Tenzin couldn’t make you stay.”

“Well. He is my dad. And I love him, and growing up around him and mom, I kind of got the impression that… serving was my duty. It didn’t matter if I liked it or not, I was obligated to be a councilwoman because I’m one of the last airbenders. And even if I didn’t always agree with the law, it was my job to uphold it, because law is the only thing keeping society together.”

Under her hat, Korra snorted derisively. Jinora gave her a long-suffering look, and Tikivik fought the urge to smile.

“So how’d you end up here?”

Jinora shrugged. “How did any of us end up here?”

Right, silly question. She looked at the woman lying a few feet away.

She remembered so clearly the day she had met Korra. She had been lurking by the docks, surrounded by other waterbenders, all of them hoping that someone would be looking to hire a waterbender quietly. She was harbor trash, tattooed and darker-skinned and more obviously Tribe-born than the others, so she spent most of her days slouched against a wall, staring out at the harbor, surrounded by people whose accents were almost thicker than their skulls. But then Korra came— and Tikivik would have recognized her anywhere. Her spirit glowed like the sun, lighting her like a beacon in the dreary, empty landscape of Republic City. And she had walked right up to her, held out her hand, and said, Hi, I’m Korra. I think we were meant to know each other.

“Yeah,” Jinora said quietly.

“I’m surprised your sister was able to make any sort of spiritual connection in that city,” Tikivik said after a pause. Jinora shrugged. “It was like a desert,” she continued. “I had headaches when I first arrived. There was just… nothing there.”

Jinora frowned thoughtfully. “Grampa Aang always said that the City was too new for spirits. That it had been built too fast for the spirits to follow.”

“But—that’s not how spirits work,” Tikivik said. “They should’ve been there already. And they would’ve changed, yeah, but—” She cut herself off, gesturing uncertainly.

Jinora looked troubled, but shook her head. “I’ve got to get back to flying. Throw something if you need me.”

She nodded, and Jinora jumped forward with a considerably larger breeze— going against the prevailing winds, Tikivik supposed, would do that— and resumed her place on Pepper’s head.

Tikivik turned her mind to Republic City’s mysterious spirit problem to occupy herself on what would undoubtedly be a long, dull flight.

Long and dull, however, was not what she got. Not more than five minutes after Jinora returned to Pepper’s head, a sense of unease crept over her, and as she leaned over the saddle it spiked into full-blown distress. “Korra,” she said, still squinting over the side of the saddle. “Do you feel that?”

Korra had sat up and was rubbing her head, looking vaguely nauseous. “Ugh. Feels like there’s a flutter-hornet stuck in my head.”

“I think there’s another new airbender down there.” She pointed to the ground far below, where a smudge of red-brown and green stood out against the dull brown of the rolling plains in high summer. “Whoever it is, they’re scared.”

“I’ll take us down,” Jinora said, Pepper already angling into a descent path. The town was typical of the southern Earth Kingdom: a few dozen buildings, low-slung adobe houses tiled with red clay, grouped around a small central market. Tikivik could place a few buildings: blacksmith, general store, stable, inn. The roads were hard-packed dirt, no satomobile tracks in sight.

Less typical was the crowd of people gathering at one end of the market.

The crowd had clearly been working themselves up into a furious mob, but they stilled in unison as Pepper’s shadow passed over them. Airbenders and flying bison were so rare that just seeing one was supposed to be good luck, at least in the areas Tikivik had visited. Having one stop in your town—accompanied by the Avatar, no less—was unheard of. The crowd’s faces were slack in astonishment as Pepper landed at the other end of the square.

Korra jumped down first, followed by Jinora, and then Ling and Kamal’s less graceful drops to the pavement. Tikivik held back; she wasn’t much good in any sort of confrontation, physical or otherwise. Better to stay behind and be ready to make a quick exit. She clambered over the saddle edge and onto Pepper’s head, just in case.

A handful of people broke away from the crowd to approach, a woman in dark green robes leading them.

“Master Airbender,” she said, bowing to Jinora. “We are honored by your visit—how can we help you?”

Tikivik saw Jinora look at Korra, and then shake her head. “We, er, I— heard about an airbender in the area.” The woman frowned. “We wanted to speak with them, if it’s possible.”

It was well-known that Tenzin was running around the Earth Kingdom, gathering new airbenders to revive the Monks. Jinora’s intentions weren’t quite the same, but nobody had to know that.

A portly man next to the woman cleared his throat. “If there were an airbender here,” he said, his voice high and nasal, “what would you do with it?”

Korra bristled, but Ling put a hand on her shoulder. Jinora’s tone was even as she said, “We just want to talk to them, for now; see how they’re holding up.”

“Of course, Master Airbender,” the woman said, dipping her head. “We will take you to them.”

Korra looked back at Tikivik and gestured—come on. She slid down awkwardly from Pepper’s head, gave the bison a pat on the nose, and followed after them.

The woman, who introduced herself as the mayor of the town, led them to a building that looked like a granary. Tikivik saw Korra’s shoulders stiffen as they approached. The ladder that would normally provide free access was flat on the ground; the door was closed and locked with a heavy padlock.

“Be careful,” the mayor warned them. One of her followers propped the ladder against the wall, rapped sharply on the door, and unlocked it.

“Jinora, Tikivik, you’re with me,” Korra said. Her voice was tight, and Tikivik could feel the rage simmering underneath the innocuous words. “Ling, get Pepper ready. Kamal, keep watch.” As she was climbing the ladder, Tikivik caught a glimpse of the mayor’s baffled expression. It was really impressive how often people overlooked Korra.

Inside, the granary was cool and dark. The only light came from the gaps in the thatched roof, and the stone floor was cold underfoot. The space was small, maybe ten feet by ten, bare except for two small mats.

And empty except for two small children.

One of them was curled into a ball on the mat, facing away from them; the other was glaring at them, crouching in front of the smaller child as if to protect them. Neither of them could be older than ten, and they both looked alarmingly thin. Jinora swore under her breath.

“Who are you? What do you want?” the girl finally said, locking eyes with Tikivik.

“Um,” Tikivik said. “We. Er.”

“We’re here to talk to you,” Jinora said gently. “We’ve been traveling the world looking for airbenders like you.” The girl’s face twitched and she darted a look at her sibling. “What happened to the two of you?”

The older one grabbed the younger’s hand and scowled at the three of them. “We didn’t do anything!” she snapped. “Whatever they told you out there, they’re lying—we didn’t hurt anybody.”

Korra sat down next to the pair, holding her hands up. “They didn’t tell us anything. We asked to see the airbender and they showed us to you. That’s it.”

“We want to help,” Jinora added, kneeling next to Korra. “I’m a master Airbender, see?” She gestured to her tattoos. “And Tikivik is a healer.”

The girl stiffened. “You’re a healer?” She squinted suspiciously. “Prove it.”

Tikivik blinked. Prove it? “Um.” She hesitated for a moment, and then pulled some water out of her waterskin, froze it into a knife, and sliced her palm, flexing until a small trickle of blood welled up. Then she melted the knife and wrapped the water, cool and healing, around her hand. She held her hand out to the girl to inspect. “See? Good as new.”

The girl looked conflicted as she prodded Tikivik’s hand. “If… if you’re here to help, then, my brother… he’s sick.”

Up close, Tikivik could see that the smaller child was pale and sweating. “Right,” she said. She edged closer to the boy, drawing more water from her waterskin. “How long has he been like this?”

“A day or two,” the girl said. “It’s hard to tell in here.”

“Mhm.” Tikivik closed her eyes, reached out through the water into the boy’s spirit. He was an airbender, no doubt about that, and surprisingly healthy, for having been in a grain silo for multiple days, but there was something wrong in his abdomen, his chi tangled and blocked. She set to work repairing the damage. Not sick, she thought; his liver was hurt. A bad fall, maybe? Or something more intentional?

She shook her head and set to work untangling the chi, delicately, slowly. Like unpicking a net, her teacher had once told her. When the lines had smoothed, when the chi was flowing as it should, she turned her attention to the damage the blockage had caused. In her mind’s eye she could see the rivers of the boy’s chi, sluggish and weak, but as her healing water washed over them they grew stronger, surer. The boy stirred under her hands, and she pulled back with a sigh. “There. I’ll need to look at him again in a bit, but I think I’ve handled the worst of it.”

The boy sat up, and the girl gasped and tackled him in a hug. “Kala? What happened?”

The girl—Kala—pulled away, and turned to Tikivik. “Thanks,” she said stiffly.

“Why don’t we all re-introduce ourselves?” Jinora said gently. “I’ll start—my name is Jinora. I’m an airbender. See?” She demonstrated by spinning up a small whirlwind, scattering stray grains of millet.

“I’m Korra,” Korra said, and stopped there. She and Jinora both looked at Tikivik.

“Um. Tikivik,” she said. “From—the Aklavik of the Northern Water Tribes.”

“Is that why your face is like that?” the boy asked, looking at her with wide, curious eyes.

Tikivik blinked. It had been so long since anybody actually asked about her tattoos, it took her a minute to figure out what he was referring to. “Um. No? Well—sort of?” She rubbed the bridge of her nose, where horizontal lines marked her mother’s family.

The girl elbowed her brother. “Be polite!” she hissed. “I’m Kala.” She gestured to the boy. “And this is Feng. Thank you for helping us.”

“Of course,” Tikivik said. “And the—the tattoos are part of my tribe. We’re close to the Pole. Spirits slip through, and these are—protection. Sort of.” Protection, and record-keeping, and a connection to her past all in one. She held out her hand, and the boy—Feng—cautiously traced the lines.

“Now that we all know each other,” Korra said, “why don’t we get you out of here?”

Kala flinched. “We—we didn’t do anything,” she said again, fear flashing across her face.

“We believe you,” Jinora said. “Korra’s going to talk to the people while Tikivik and I get you to my bison, how about that?”

The children shared an uncertain look. “We’re not in trouble?” Feng said hesitantly, and Jinora shook her head.

“You’re not in trouble. When Korra’s done talking to the people outside, we can help you get back to your family—” Kala flinched again, and Jinora quickly added, “or wherever else you want to go.”

They shared another look, and then Kala nodded firmly.

Korra bent the granary floor into a set of steps, and squeezed through the small entrance. “Don’t come out until I give the signal,” she said.

“What’s the—?” Tikivik asked, but Korra had already dropped to the ground outside.

Jinora caught her eye. “You know talking is a euphemism, right?” she said, her voice low. Tikivik nodded, chewing on her lip. Korra wasn’t particularly diplomatic, not when it came to kids. Or prisons. Kids in prisons was a new one, and it wasn’t hard to imagine what her reaction would be. “You’ll know the signal when you hear it. We have to get them to Pepper as fast as possible.”

“Right,” Tikivik said, anxiety churning in her gut. Was this technically kidnapping? What was Korra going to do? “How… I mean, is Korra…”

“I don’t really care,” Jinora said.

Tikivik felt a tug on her pants leg and looked down to see the boy, watery-eyed and solemn looking. “Miss, um, Water Tribe?” he said hesitantly. Tikivik almost smiled despite the circumstances. “What’s gonna happen?” Tikivik hesitated. What was going to happen? She looked to Jinora, who sighed and knelt next to the boy.

“Feng, right?” He nodded. “Korra is going to go…sort out the people outside. I’ve got a flying bison, so when she lets us know we’re gonna carry you two to her. If that’s alright with you?”

The boy hesitated, looked at his sister. She gave him a minute nod, and he turned back to Jinora. “What’s a flying bison?”

Jinora had just begun to explain when a thunderclap exploded with a flash of light, and her face went grim. “That’s the signal,” she said to Tikivik, and scooped Feng into her arms. “Come on.”

Once they were all back on Pepper, in more or less one piece (Kamal’s ego bruised after being tossed like a sack of rice into the saddle) Ling took over flying (she insisted that she was terrible with kids) while the rest of them sat in the saddle, uncertain of where to start.

Tikivik tried to look at the kids with a healer’s eye. They were worryingly skinny, no matter how old they were. Kala was clearly exhausted, and Feng was just starting to regain his color after her healing. She would need to look at him again in a few hours. They both had a handful of scrapes and bruises that could’ve been from sitting in a stone box for spirits-knew how many days

Korra must have thought they were underfed too, because she rummaged in Pepper’s saddlebags and produced a bag of trail mix. They passed it around, and Tikivik watched the kids carefully as she munched her handful. Kala took exactly as much as Korra, and frowned at her brother when he tried to grab more. Tikivik nudged Korra, who took another handful and passed the bag around again.

Jinora, who was the only one of them with actual sibling experience, gently coaxed a more complete version of their story from them. It was depressingly mundane: their dad died in a mining accident, their mom struggled to cope and turned to alcohol; she wasn’t violent so much as neglectful, and when they both turned up airbenders she responded by crawling further into the bottle. But two untrained, unsupervised airbenders was a recipe for disaster. Feng proved this by accidentally taking the roof off of their house, and when this snapped the last thread of their mother’s patience and she started screaming at him (armed with a knife), Kala sent her through three walls. Needless to say she didn’t survive. They had tried to run, but neither of them knew how to survive in the woods, and a search party had quickly found them and deposited them in the granary for safe-keeping until they could figure out a more permanent solution.

Enter the five of them.

The easiest thing would be to ask where they wanted to go, and take them there. But Kala was nine and Feng was six, and did anyone know what they wanted at that age? They were orphans, and they both blamed themselves for that fact despite their mother threatening them with a knife. If they had relatives they didn’t know them—their only uncle had disappeared to the Republic long before they were born—and they clearly weren’t welcome in town anymore.

“How about,” Jinora said slowly, “how about you stay with us for a while? We’re looking for other airbenders, or other people who need help. We’re going to double back to Republic City eventually, and we can take you along to meet my dad. He’s the leader of the Air Nomads and he’ll take you both in, I’m sure of it.”

Kala sniffled. “Even if we—if I—airbenders are nonviolent,” she said miserably. Jinora gently put an arm around her shoulder, and squeezed when the girl didn’t shake it off.

“The monks are pacifist,” she said, “but you don’t look like much of a monk to me. Your hair is too pretty, for one.” Kala smiled tremulously. “But dad will understand,” Jinora continued. “And even if you don’t want to join the monks, you can still learn to control your airbending, and stay on the Island for as long as you want. Airbenders never turn away those in need.”

Kala looked to Feng, who looked back at her uncertainly. “We’ll stay with you,” the girl said. And that was that.

Three days later, Tikivik felt something—odd. They were at the edge of a mountain range, towering spires of stone as far as the eye could see.

“Do you feel that?” she asked Korra, who had turned toward where the feeling was densest. She looked queasy.

“Jinora,” Tikivik said. “Change of plans—head that way.” She pointed, and Jinora nodded. The look on her face said she could feel it too, though not as clearly.

“I heard once,” Korra said slowly, “I overheard, when I was in the White Lotus’s prison.” She pulled the liquid metal band from her arm, started shaping it between her hands. A nervous habit. “They put me there after a kidnapping attempt. They said the people who did it—a waterbender, an earthbender, a firebender, and a nonbender. But he moved like an airbender, almost.” There was a sound, a low buzz building at the top of her spine, making her teeth rattle. Pain and rage and fear and hatred and despair and longing, so thick she could almost taste it.

In the distance, a glint of metal at the top of one of the spires. On the spire across from it, a retractable metal bridge.

“Take us down lower,” Korra said to Jinora. “We’re in White Lotus territory.” She had the same expression on her face Tikivik had seen before she went to fight the Lieutenant. “That’s Zaheer in there,” she said, pointing to the distant mountain. “I’m gonna go get him.”

Chapter Text

“The Avatar’s bison— or the Avatar’s companion’s bison, I suppose— has been spotted in the Agrarian Zone, your majesty,” Gun said.

Hou-Ting considered this. I wonder what bison meat tastes like, she thought idly. Probably too stringy for my taste. But babies, who don’t have the same muscles… The Avatar is probably here to look for airbenders. As if I wouldn’t be aware of my own subjects’ new abilities. “Keep track of their movements,” she said. “When they enter the city, have the Dai Li follow them. If they start to look for airbenders, have them brought to me. Peaceably, if you can, but I want them in my throne room one way or another. I will speak with the Avatar.”

“Very good, your majesty,” Gun said.

“Do I have anything else to see to?” she asked, inspecting one lacquered nail.

“No, your majesty,” Gun said.

“Excellent.” She stood. “I believe I’ll take a walk through the southern gardens now. Have a servant fetch me when dinner is prepared.”

“Of course, your majesty.”

The southern gardens were lovely in the afternoon— or they would be, if only the idiot head gardener would discipline his workers properly and have the topiaries properly maintained. As it was, there were gardeners everywhere. One even nodded to her and bid her a good afternoon. She shook her head. She would need to have Gun speak to the groundskeeper.

Dinner was disappointing. The chef had evidently tried to be creative. Grilled, marinated scallop-shrimp with sesame and ginger, and a seared chicken-duck salad, with egg custard tarts for dessert. The tarts weren’t bad, but he, and the rest of the kitchen staff, knew that she hated aquatic food. She made a mental note to have Gun replace the man at the end of his pay cycle. She retired to the library after her meal, intending to finish the book she’d been reading for the past three days.

Meiying’s heart thundered in her chest as she stood as straight and tall as she possibly could. Nootau still towered over her, his well-muscled arms crossed over his broad chest. “If you were a real man,” she said, her voice not wavering despite the fear coursing through her, “you would treat me with the respect I deserve! I am a princess of the Earth Kingdom!”

Nootau smirked down at her, his dark green eyes flashing. “Perhaps in your city you are royalty, Umi,” he said. She bristled at the name she’d been given. “But here, you are my property, and you would do well to remember that.”

She slapped him. Or meant to, because he caught her arm roughly before she finished the motion. “Perhaps you need a more… thorough reminder,” he said, and threw her roughly onto the cot that he called his bed.

Gun cleared his throat. The Queen looked up, scowling. “Yes, Gun? What is it? What’s so important that it couldn’t wait until morning?”

“Ah— my apologies, your majesty,” he said, bowing until his back was parallel to the floor. She let him stay in that position. “The Avatar’s bison— the Avatar’s companion’s bison, rather— it was seen in the Lower Ring, and the Dai Li have informed us that the Avatar and her friends are currently in a known anarchist gathering place.”

It took a moment for the last of Gun’s words to sink in. Anarchist. “Why in the name of Oma and Shu is such a place still standing? The instant you learned that there were anarchists within my walls, you should have had them arrested and executed for high treason!”

“Well, your majesty,” Gun said haltingly, still bowing, “the, well, the anarchists have broken no laws— they do not actively demonstrate against you, your majesty, and are aside from their political leanings law-abiding, peaceful citizens—”

“They are anarchists!” She said. “They wish nothing less than the destruction of my office!” She mentally sighed. If you want something done properly, she supposed, you had to do it yourself. “Effective immediately, if a person is suspected of anarchist leanings, I want the Dai Li to arrest them and question them until they admit their treason, and then I want them executed. In public.” She thought for a moment. “If they have only interacted with anarchists, and not reported it, they will be arrested. One— no, two years of hard labor. Have a law drafted and ready for my seal and signature tomorrow morning, but I want this to be carried out now. Inform the Dai Li so they can begin to correct this oversight tonight.”

“Very good, your majesty,” Gun said. “But, your majesty, the Avatar? How would you like the Dai Li to proceed?”

She rubbed her temples. The incompetence she had to put up with. “I can’t very well arrest the Avatar or her friends,” she said. “Thanks to my witless father none of them are Earth Kingdom citizens. Raiko would throw a fit if the Dai Li started seizing Republic citizens in the night.” She shook her head. “Have them monitored. The instant they appear to be on the trail of airbenders, have them brought to me.”

“I beg your pardon, your majesty,” Gun said, raising his head slightly, “but there are three who are Earth Kingdom citizens. A firebender, an earthbender, and a non-bender. A fourth is from the Northern Tribe.”

“Well, then, have them arrested!” she snapped. Honestly, how could he be so slow. He quickly looked down again. “Have them arrested and put into… mmm, Mǎjiù Prison. No, Yǒngù. For that matter, take the Northern Tribe one, too. I can risk a bit of a squabble with Unalaq. If the Avatar protests, tell her that she can speak with me about it directly.”

“Very good, your majesty.”

“And aside from that, keep an eagle-hawk’s eye on the Avatar. I want to know where she is at every minute of the day.”

“Of course, your majesty.” Gun looked up again. “May I be excused, your majesty?”

“Yes, yes, of course,” she said. He scurried away. She turned back to the novel, but Nootau and Meiying’s passionate romance had entirely lost its shine. She set the book aside, vowing to finish it the next night.

She was awoken the next morning not by her handmaid, Liling, but by Gun. His robes were rumpled and his hat, normally properly affixed to his head, was askew. She thought that a corner of his tunic might have been singed slightly.

“Gun!” she shrieked. “Remove yourself from my chambers at once!”

“I beg your pardon, your majesty,” he said, bowing so low that the tassel of his hat touched the floor, “but the Avatar is in your throne room. She says that she will not leave until you speak with her.”

“How is this urgent enough that— that—” grasping for words, she pointed a quivering finger at him. “Let the bitch wait, you imbecile! Now get out! I’ll not see anyone until I’ve finished my morning routine!”

“Of course, your majesty,” Gun said. He hesitated.

“Out!” Still bowing, Gun nearly ran from the room. Liling entered as he left.

“A thousand pardons, your majesty,” she said, eyes downcast. “I tried to keep him out, to tell him that you were still asleep. He was… quite insistent.”

“It’s alright, Liling,” she sighed. “I know that Gun can be hard to stop once an idea is lodged in his thick head.” Liling smiled faintly. “I suppose I’ll start the day. Draw a bath for me.”

Liling nodded. “Very good, your majesty. Shall I have the kitchens send breakfast for you, or will you eat in the main dining room?”

It was already shaping up to be a truly bizarre day. What was one more change to her routine? “Have them send something. Sweet buns, and congee with dried fruit and honey, and moo-sow bacon. None of that picken garbage.” She paused. “And something for yourself, if you like.”

Liling smiled slightly, the most Hou-Ting ever saw her emote. “Thank you, your majesty. I’ll have the sitting room prepared.”

As she ate, Liling explained the Avatar situation.

“The Avatar has been traveling with four to eight people,” she said, picking at her own congee. “Reports vary. The four confirmed to be traveling with her are Master Tenzin’s daughter, Jinora, who is instructing her in airbending, as well as three low-born city dwellers. Their backgrounds are unimportant, and their significance to the Avatar is not clear. It is possible that the Avatar has romantic ties with one or more of them.” Her lip curled. Hou-Ting raised an eyebrow.

Liling explained. “Reports have her showing open affection for the firebender, but there is speculation about her feelings for the nonbender girl, who she has also been observed to be rather protective of. She’s also been reported to be very fond of the water tribe peasant, though less than the other two.” She shook her head. “But that is irrelevant, I suppose. I beg your pardon, your majesty.”

Hou-Ting waved her hand. “It could be useful, if we need to control her. Continue.”

Liling nodded. “The other four are only present in more recent reports. They are suspected to be criminals recently escaped from prison, judging by their dress and appearance. One, a waterbender, is clearly from the Northern Water Tribe. The other three are Earth Kingdom citizens, or so we suspect.”

“These are the three I had arrested last night?”

“The same,” Liling said. “The nonbender and the earthbender are certainly Earth Kingdom; the firebender may be Fire Nation. The waterbender had to be arrested as well, unfortunately.”

“I can risk a squabble with Unalaq, and I’m sure Izumi will understand,” Hou-Ting said.

“Regardless of who her companions are,” Liling continued, “the Avatar is the most dangerous of her group by far. I’ve spoken to Gun, and he has had a full troop of Dai Li stationed in the rafters, with another ready to enter from the side chambers. The ministry does not believe that she means you harm, but reports say that the Avatar is… volatile around figures of authority. She seems on good terms with Master Tenzin, but her relationship with Lin Beifong is troubled at best.” She shifted another paper to the top of her sheaf. “The Avatar’s purpose in Ba Sing Se is not known, but the ministry suspects that she is here to find airbenders and recruit them into some sort of… revived air nation. There are reports that Master Tenzin is doing so, and it follows that his daughter would do the same. Given the Avatar’s noted political leanings, though, the ministry thinks that there may be other factors in play here, including potentially inciting rebellion against the Crown.”

“Thank you for the information, Liling,” Hou-Ting said. “I think that it’s high time I spoke with her.”

Hou-Ting took her seat on the throne and prepared herself for the day. First an audience with the Avatar, of course, but that would take no more than an hour, at the very most; after that, she would have words with Gun about intruding into her private living space. He was getting quite old, come to think of it; he had been old when her father passed and she took the throne. Perhaps it was time to begin a search for a new Grand Secretariat. Someone more competent, more understanding of the boundaries that should exist between a Queen and her servants. She shook her head. It figured that her father, spineless fool that he was, would leave her with such an incompetent dolt as Gun.

After that, perhaps a visit to the acupuncturist, or a massage. This whole ordeal was immensely stressful.

She tapped a jeweled nail on the arm of her throne. “Show them in, Gun,” she called. Across the room, he bowed and scurried away. He returned a minute later, six people trailing after him.

When they reached the throne, he bowed low, and said, “Your majesty, may I present the Avatar Korra, as well as her… ahem, associates: the Lady Jinora Beifong, and Kamal of Republic City.”

Her gaze swept over the peasant quickly. Just as slovenly as she’d expected, and without even the manners to bow properly. Izumi’s niece Jinora was unsurprising, properly and politely dressed. She didn’t bow either, but inclined her head. Hou-Ting supposed that, as the daughter of an elder Air Nomad and a technical princess of the Fire Nation, that was… acceptable. Irksome, but acceptable. Her hair was long but cut away from her forehead, her tattoos clearly visible.

The Avatar, though, she would have known even without a description. Everything about her radiated power, from the set of her shoulders to the grim determination in her eyes. Her skin was darker than she’d been expecting, even for a water-rat. Her hair was brutally short, almost militaristic, sticking up at irregular angles like a boar-q-pine. But her eyes were what caught Hou-Ting’s attention. Almost electric-blue, bright and fierce, like everything else about the girl. She called to mind the jackalion she’d seen in the royal menagerie, coiled with barely-restrained power, surrounded by people that wouldn’t be able to contain her if she were to spring.

But she was the Earth Queen. The Speaker for the Desert Winds, Voice of the Mountains, Queen of the Rivers and the Plains. Ruler of the Earth Kingdom by divine right, chosen by Oma and Shu, her ancestors put into place by the spirits themselves and her power solidified by Avatar Kyoshi. The Dai Li were in the rafters, waiting for any sign of unease. She was in control here. Not the Avatar.

“So,” she said after a measured pause. Her voice rang out, sharp and clear, in the silent throne room. “The esteemed Avatar finally deigns to visit me.”

A muscle tightened in the girl’s jaw. “You’ll forgive me, Your Majesty,” she said, “but I was somewhat preoccupied these past years, what with stabilizing Republic City and securing the world against Order and Chaos. Diplomatic visits have been rather low on my list of priorities.”

“Hmph,” Hou-Ting said. “Then I suppose you want something from me.”

“I had come to investigate rumors of new airbenders appearing in Ba Sing Se, and I had no intention of bothering you,” the girl said, her voice level. “But last night, four of my friends were kidnapped by government agents.” Hou-Ting rolled her eyes. The Dai Li shifted above her, their dark uniforms blending into the shadows near the ceiling, calling to mind a spider-ant swarm. “I’ve come to get them back, one way or another.”

“And you think that threatening me is going to convince me to release your friends?” Hou-Ting said, raising an eyebrow. The boy jabbed her in the side.

The girl closed her eyes and seemed to breathe very deliberately. Temper problems— she should have known, from a water rat. “I apologize, Your Majesty.” She cleared her throat. “That was… inappropriate.”

She should say so! “I understand, Avatar,” Hou-Ting said, forcing herself to smile. “When one’s friends are believed to be in danger, one makes… rash decisions.” The girl inclined her head slightly. “As for your… friends. I was only recently informed of a somewhat glaring oversight in the laws of this city. Until now, men and women have been allowed to run amok believing whatever they wish, even that the Earth Monarchy is fraudulent, that the people need no government. I’m sure you understand, Avatar, that such an oversight needed to be corrected. Anarchism is a threat to my city and to our way of life. The Crown, after all, is the great pillar of our world. Should it fall, society itself would cease to exist, and the world would fall into chaos.” The girl’s jaw clenched, and she saw the salamander boy’s hands curl into fists. She smirked. “Your friends, the ones who were arrested, are known anarchists. As such, the Dai Li and the Ministry of Information saw fit to take them into custody.”

“You can’t do that!” the salamander boy shouted finally, glaring at her. The airbender and the Avatar both shushed him angrily.

She coolly raised one eyebrow. “I am Earth Queen Hou-Ting, boy. I was chosen by the spirits Oma and Shu, and my family has ruled the Earth Kingdom since time immemorial. This city and this nation are mine to rule by right. I am perfectly within my rights to pass laws when I see fit. These laws affect my citizens, among them the four arrested.”

“I understand this, Queen Hou-Ting,” the girl said. Her voice quivered oddly. “But all the same— I would appreciate it if you would notify me— us— of changes in the law before we are affected by them.”

How dare the little brat try to order her! She was the Queen, and Avatar or not, no-one talked to her that way! “Don’t fret, Avatar,” Hou-Ting said, as smugly as possible while maintaining civility. “I know of your, ahem, proclivities, but you won’t be detained. All I ask is that you leave in peace. I have no… quarrel with you.”

Nor could she afford one. The girl hadn’t done anything to endear herself to the rest of the world’s leaders, but the Avatar title held weight, and that counted for something. Izumi, weak-hearted fool that she was, still valued her doddering old father’s council, and she could not afford higher Fire Nation tariffs. The water rats would probably resent their daughter and niece being killed, for that matter, and as much as she hated it her palace wouldn’t be the same without the pelts they regularly sent her as tribute.

“As for your friends,” Hou-Ting continued. “I have been informed that there are four recently-escaped prisoners whose descriptions happen to match theirs.” The girl’s eyes widened a fraction. Hou-Ting relished the triumph in every word. “At this moment they are being held in highly secure quarters, pending investigation by the Order of the White Lotus. But I will, of course, do my best to secure their release.”

The girl’s eyes were like chips of ice. “You have my thanks, Queen Hou-Ting,” she said. She made an abortive parody of a bow, barely inclining her head, before turning on her heel and sweeping out of the room, her misfits following in her wake.

When the ornamental doors had closed, Gun entered from a side chamber, and Wei Fong, head of the Ministry of Information, dropped from the ceiling, flanked by six Dai Li.

“The Avatar is dangerous,” Wei Fong said softly.

“They were— were most improper!” Gun squeaked. Doddering old fool.

“Of course they would be,” Hou-Ting said acidly. “A monk and a terrorist and the thrice-damned Avatar— which of their number would be respectable?” She shook her head. “I had planned to relax after this, but in light of this conversation, I believe I should tour Yǒngù Prison. I have a feeling that the Avatar will attempt to free her allies.” Gun, halfway through a bow when she mentioned relaxation, squeaked and straightened up, and then squeaked again and bowed even lower. His ineptitude would have been comical, if only she didn’t need him to relay orders to her servants.

Wei Fong, meanwhile, simply bowed smoothly. “Very good, your majesty.” He cast a sidelong glance at Gun. “Shall I have the Dai Li escort you?”

“Of course,” she said. “The underground transit is still functioning, is it not?”

“It is, your majesty, but—” he glanced at Gun again— “I fear it will not be… presentable for your majesty.”

She waved a hand. “I’m visiting a prison.”

“Very well,” Wei Fong said, bowing once again. “I shall have a contingent of Dai Li ready within fifteen minutes.”

Hou-Ting gestured to dismiss both of them, and then let herself droop against the throne. This was all so much more difficult than it had to be.

Yǒngù Prison was built into the bedrock of old Ba Sing Se, with the very top level nearly a hundred feet underground. Originally meant to hold dangerous political prisoners, it had fallen into disuse during the Hundred Year War, during that traitorous cockroach Long Feng’s time as head of the Dai Li. He had preferred the distant, shadowed catacombs of Lake Laogai, far from the sight of the Earth King. Both were nearly dismantled by her soft-hearted father, but the Ministry of Information persuaded him to keep the prison open. After he passed and she took the throne, prison reorganization became very important. Always soft on crime, her weakling of a father was.

The inspection lasted longer than she thought; by the time she returned to the palace it was nearly dinnertime. She was assured that the cells were secure. Even if the prisoners somehow managed to slip their restraints, the Dai Li would simply crush them under the weight of the entire city.

Dinner that evening was more satisfying than the previous night, at least, and she was able to finish her book afterwards. Meiying’s story ended with an abrupt cliffhanger: captured by a rival band of sandbenders, she was forced to confront the fact that she had fallen in love with Nootau, who she had grown to recognize as an honorable and courageous warrior. The sequel was waiting in the library, but it was late by that point, and she decided that she would wait to start it.

The next morning, she was awoken by Liling, as was normal; she bathed, and then ate breakfast in the formal dining room, attended to by the proper servants. Hopefully, she thought, the previous day’s upset would be just that, an upset, an irregularity in her routine that would not continue into the future.

Her hopes were dashed as she walked through the southeast colonnade, observing the gardens.

Liwei, Gun’s assistant and second in command, was sprinting across the grass, crying, “Your majesty! Your majesty!”

He vaulted over the colonnade wall (oh, for that youthful energy!) and skidded to a stop in front of her. “Your majesty!” he gasped, bowing hurriedly, “the Avatar— she's here! And she wishes to speak with you— she’s with— she has the four criminals you ordered arrested— we need to get you to safety!”

Four Dai Li agents appeared behind him, rising like wraiths from the ground. “Please come with us, your majesty,” one said. “We will escort you to a more secure location.”

Hou-Ting frowned. “What, precisely, is going on?”

The agent who had spoken pushed past Liwei and bowed to her. “Your majesty,” he said, “there are enemies of the state within the palace. We believe you are at risk here. Please allow us to escort you to safety.”

“The Avatar, is it?”

Liwei nodded, eyes wide with terror. The Dai Li agent said, “The Avatar, along with her accomplices and a large number of people, who we have identified as the airbender recruits.”

Hou-Ting closed her eyes for a moment. “Do I understand correctly when you say that not only has the Avatar returned with malicious intentions and has freed her allies from a supposedly impregnable prison, but that she has also discovered my entire new airbender army, and convinced them to join her gang of lunatics?”

A frown twitched at the corner of the agent's mouth. “That is correct, your majesty,” he said.

I am surrounded by incompetent dolts, she thought. A wonder her half-wit father didn’t give up the whole continent to the Avatar and Fire Lord Zuko, with advisers like these.

“I will not be intimidated, by the Avatar or by anyone else,” she said.

The agent frowned outright. “Your majesty, I do not believe that that is wise,” he said. “The Avatar—”

“Agent—”

“Quon, your majesty,” he said immediately.

“Agent Quon. Did I ask for your counsel?”

“No, your majesty,” the agent murmured.

“Then you will not give it.” The agent looked down. “I am the Earth Queen,” she continued. “I rule this country by the will and authority of the spirits. I will not be intimidated by some jumped-up water rat and her pack of criminals and half-trained rabble. I will speak to the Avatar, and you will escort me to her, or I will have you in a cell before the day's end.”

He bowed. “As you command, your majesty,” he said. “We live but to serve your will.”

Finally.

The Dai Li flanked her on either side as she marched to her throne room. Gun stood outside, and bowed hurriedly when he saw her. She ignored him.

The room was filled with peasants, mostly lower ring by the look (and smell) of it, crowding around and gawking at the furnishings. Dripping their filth on the floor, no doubt, probably infesting everything with all sorts of plagues. Spirits only knew the last time they had a proper bath, if they ever even had. Most of them would probably just gawp at the tub dumbly, waiting for it to do something.

“All hail: Her Majesty, the Fifty-Third Earth Monarch, Earth King Hou-Ting, King of the Rivers and the Plains, Speaker for the Desert Winds, Voice of the Mountains, protector of the realm,” Gun said, his voice for once not shaking.

Most of the airbenders knelt as she mounted the dais and took her place on the throne, she observed with some satisfaction. In the center of the crowd, the Avatar stood. If looks could kill, the palace would have melted into rubble long ago. Around her, the hijra and the four criminals she’d seen in the prison filled out her merry band of terrorists.

She shifted into a more comfortable position and steepled her fingers. “How can I help you, Avatar Korra?” she said, raising her chin.

“I think you fucking know, Hou-Ting,” the girl spat.

Hou-Ting smiled frostily, ignoring the obvious disrespect. “Enlighten me.”

“I found all of these people in a prison underneath your palace. Free men and women, airbenders, who all described being abducted and tortured by the Dai Li.”

“Tortured?” Hou-Ting said, genuinely confused. Torture wouldn’t do for her army. It completely destroyed loyalty, even that as strong as the men would feel to their queen.

“I don’t know what else you’d call being attacked day and night for weeks on end by military-trained fighters, not given a real opportunity to defend yourself, denied sleep or food, constantly and loudly told that you are worthless and only a tool for the Earth Queen to use or dispose of at will,” the girl seethed. Hou-Ting could feel the heat radiating from her, even at this distance. The airbenders looked frightened, edging away from her.

That’s all? “I would and do call that military training,” Hou-Ting said.

“And you— you encourage this?” the girl said, horror and disbelief clear in her voice.

“They are members of the Earth Kingdom army,” she said. “The army’s methods were proven effective over a hundred years of war against the Fire Nation. They should be good enough for a few airbender peasants.”

“How dare you!” the girl bellowed. “They are—”

The airbender girl cut her off with a swift gesture. The girl glared at her, but then took a deep breath and nodded. “Your majesty,” the Beifong girl said, “what Avatar Korra meant to say was— was that we— we assumed that you were unaware of their presence. I’m sure you would not deliberately take part in the unlawful imprisonment of your own subjects.”

“You presume to tell me what I would and would not do?” the Queen said, arching an eyebrow. She shifted on her throne. A queen should always remain poised, but it was difficult when she was so close to putting the upstart Avatar chit in her place.

“The airbenders are my subjects, as you said, and as their Queen I am free to do with them as I please. This includes conscripting them into my army. What you found was a state-of-the-art training facility designed by my army’s best military strategists. I have been assured that the tactics being used have been successful in training countless soldiers. Any trouble they encounter will only make them stronger, more capable and more creative.”

“What I found, Hou-Ting,” the girl growled, “was a prison, where the Dai Li were torturing the inmates. What does the Earth Queen need with a private army, anyway? The world is at peace!”

“You may not have noticed, preoccupied as you were with playing politics in the stolen provinces, but the Earth Kingdom is facing a crisis the likes of which we have never seen before,” Hou-Ting said. “Bandits are roaming the countryside with impunity, taking my citizens’ hard-earned money and hoarding it for themselves. These airbenders will be the beginning of a new, more efficient, more mobile army that can deal with threats such as these and enforce my laws across the continent.”

The girl scowled. “No, they won’t.”

Her eyebrows lifted of their own accord. “You dare to tell me how my kingdom will be run?”

“Yes, I dare! This is barbaric!” Fine words, from a water rat barbarian. “I’m not going to let you torture and brainwash these people into becoming your slaves! I’m leaving this spirits-forsaken city, and they’re coming with me.”

Hou-Ting gestured with her left hand. The Dai Li dropped silently, shadow-like, from the ceiling, surrounding the girl and her terrorist friends instantly. More rose from the floor, and even more entered from side rooms, filling their ranks until even the criminals looked concerned. The airbenders crowded together, clutching at each other, and the criminals took up fighting stances.

The girl didn’t react. Her gaze was fixed on Hou-Ting, and had suddenly become very calm.

“These airbenders are Earth Kingdom citizens, and I am their queen,” Hou-Ting said coolly. “Taking them will constitute an act of war. If you disobey me, I will bear down on you with the entire force of my kingdom.”

The girl closed her eyes and breathed out. Very deliberately. The briefest moment of worry flickered across her mind. That… was probably not good.

The Avatar’s eyes snapped open, and they were burning. “I hate doing this. But, hey, desperate times,” the Avatar said, a million million voices chorusing in time with the girl. The Dai Li shifted and tensed. The Avatar fixed her blank, burning white gaze directly on Hou-Ting. “I am the Avatar. I opened the portals, I turned back Order and Chaos, I killed Amon. I have lived more lives than you could begin to imagine, Hou-Ting of the Earth Kingdom. So hear me. These airbenders— all airbenders— are free men and women. They belong to no one. Their fates are their own, and you do not control them. If you disagree, if you try to stop me, I will consider it an act of war. If you disobey me, there will be no place for your monarchy in this world. And there will be no place left for you in any world. Now: I am leaving, my friends are leaving, my allies are leaving, and the airbenders are leaving. If you order your Dai Li to stand down, we will do so peacefully.”

How dare— “You dare threaten me!” Hou-Ting said. Her blood was thundering in her ears. The Avatar’s expressionless face didn’t even twitch. “I am the Earth Queen! I am the spirits-appointed ruler of the Earth Kingdom! Oma and Shu chose me personally! My family have ruled since time immemorial and you— you dare―” The Avatar, eyes still burning blue-white, smirked. The presumptuous bitch. “Dai Li! Arrest the Avatar!”

The Avatar swept her hands out expansively and the agents gathered around her stumbled and fell and were swallowed by the earth. More dropped from the ceiling, but the Avatar did not move. The floor cracked and rippled, and they struggled to keep their footing.

“Last chance. Let us go in peace.”

“This is going nowhere,” said one of the criminals, a bald man with a battered face and a deep voice. “Avatar. We need to end this.”

Hou-Ting looked between the Avatar and the man. A leverage point? “Wait,” the Avatar said. Her eyes flickered, uncertainty plain on her face. “She’ll back down—”

“I will do no such thing!” Hou-Ting shrieked, and the Avatar blinked, and between one heartbeat and the next the terrible light in the girl’s eyes died, and the floor stilled, and the Dai Li clawed their way out of the stone, gasping for air.

“I knew it,” the man said. He swept his arms down and the Dai Li around them flew backwards, hitting the walls. An airbender.

“Zaheer, stop,” the Avatar said, her voice hard as iron.

“We need to end this, Avatar. And if you can’t, then I will.”

Emotions flickered across the Avatar’s face too fast for Hou-Ting to follow, and settled on stony determination. “Fine,” she said. She stamped one foot into the ground, flipping the floor along the walls onto its side and pinning the Dai Li to the walls they’d landed against. “Make it quick.”

“Korra—” said the Beifong girl, shocked, but then the man leapt towards her, and whatever was happening in the rest of the room was drowned out by her pulse roaring in her ears.

He landed on the high back of her throne and she scrambled away, falling to her knees in front of the throne. She quickly remembered herself— she was in control here!— and drew herself up to her full height. “Whatever the Avatar is offering you,” she said firmly, “I’ll double it if you kill her right now.”

He looked down at her, his face impassive. “What is it about this chair that makes people so damned full of themselves?”

She spluttered. “I’ll— I’ll triple it. You’ll be a lord. Lands, titles, servants, riches beyond what you can imagine— whatever you want, it’s yours— just kill the Avatar!”

He smiled thinly. “I’m sorry. But I don’t believe in queens.” His hands sliced down and—

Pain exploded in her chest.

Chapter Text

Tenzin was awoken by the shrill ringing of his bedside telephone. The telephone that only Lin, the President, and the other council members could contact, the telephone that was for emergencies only. He dragged one hand across the bedside table until he found the receiver.

“H’lo?” he mumbled.

“Tenzin! What the fuck are you doing asleep?” He pulled the telephone away from his ear. Well. Lin’s bark never failed to wake him up.

He checked the clock next to the phone. It took a minute for the illuminated hands to make sense. “Lin, it’s three in the morning,” he croaked. He blinked the sleep out of his eyes.

“Well wake the fuck up,” Lin snapped. “We’re getting reports of a catastrophe in the Earth Kingdom and we need all hands on deck.”

“I’ll…” Tenzin scrubbed a hand over his face, looked at Pema’s sleeping form. “I’ll be over as soon as possible.”

“You’d better fucking hurry,” Lin said sourly, and hung up. Pleasant as ever, then.

He sighed and sat up more fully in bed, rubbing his eyes. After a few seconds, he stood and shuffled to the wardrobe. Full airbender attire, or councilor? At least all of his suits looked alike; it would be hard to match colors properly in this darkness otherwise. He settled on a councilor’s uniform and began dressing.

“Tenzin?” Pema, still half asleep by the sound of it, sat up in bed. “What’s going on?”

“I’ve been called for council business,” he said. “Lin said it’s an emergency.”

Pema sighed. “When will you be back?”

“I don’t know.” He began buttoning his tunic. “I don’t know what’s going on. I’ll call you as soon as I know more.”

“No, no, don’t worry yourself,” Pema said sleepily, waving a hand in his direction. “Call me in the morning. Seven. Kids’ll be up by then.” She beckoned him over and kissed him. “Stay safe,” she said.

“I will,” he said with a smile. She nodded, eyes half-shut, and fell back into bed.

He stopped by the door to put his boots on and grab his cloak, and went out to the stables. The bison were asleep, snoring loudly, but he woke Oogi with a gentle ear tug. “Come on,” he said. “We need to go to the parliament building.”

Oogi grumbled sleepily, but shook himself and lumbered out to the courtyard. Tenzin jumped onto the bison’s head and, with a whoom of compressed air, Oogi took off.

“Reports of a catastrophe in the Earth Kingdom.” That could mean anything. And Lin wasn’t one to dodge issues, which meant that more likely than not, she didn’t know what was going on. The large, illuminated clock downtown tolled three as he was flying. Three in the morning in Republic City was about eleven at night in Ba Sing Se, so whatever had happened was probably still happening. If the radio towers were down, they could still rely on telegraph signals, at least.

It was early spring, and the cold air stung his eyes, but it helped to keep him awake so he made no attempts to divert it. Below him, Republic City slept, the sirens and the horns and the incessant chatter of the city forgotten. All was still.

Oogi landed on the roof of the Parliament. Out of habit, he checked the roof and the perimeter for assailants: all clear. It always was, but it only took being nearly electrocuted by Equalists once to teach you a lesson.

The top three floors, clerk offices during the day, were deserted. But when he passed the sixth floor, where Raiko’s offices were located, he was hit by a wave of noise. Through the propped-open door he could see a chaotic clutter of desks, teeming with activity like a beetle-ant’s nest. Radio and telephone operators were shouting to each other, pages were sprinting between desks with armfuls of paper, and as he paused to look, three exhausted-looking pages rushed up the stairs towards him.

“Councilor Tenzin,” one said, freezing on the landing just below him. “Oh, thank Spirits. Lin’s been unbearable.”

He followed her down to the fifth floor, which was mostly taken up by Raiko’s staff offices.

The room she led him to was harshly lit by the new, low-energy bulbs. He squinted as his eyes adjusted. Lin had been pacing the room, a scowl lining her face deeply. She froze when he walked in the door.

“It’s about time you got here, airhead,” Lin snarled. “Guess what our daughter was just party to.”

Oh, Spirits.

The sun slanted gold through the windows, and Tenzin grumbled to himself as he rose to draw the shades.

The Earth Queen was dead. Long live the King. Except that every member of the Royal Family in Ba Sing Se was also dead.

By some miracle of the spirits, Prince Wu had been attending a lecture at Republic City University, and had missed the attack, though he appeared to be the only one. The assassins were… thorough.

The Dai Li were silent, but whether they had been simply scattered, or dealt with more permanently, it was impossible to tell.

The Inner Wall, and the walls that separated the Rings, had been melted. The Avatar’s work, surely. Nobody else was capable of lava manipulation.

The imperial palace was evidently on fire, as were many homes and estates in the Upper Ring. Looters were running rampant over the upper ring and the palace, probably destroying priceless artifacts thousands of years old…

Overnight, Korra and his daughter had apparently broken into a maximum-security Earth Kingdom prison and freed all of its inhabitants, leaving potentially hundreds (Ba Sing Se had always been wary of publishing its official incarceration numbers) of angry political dissidents free to roam the Kingdom.

And the radio reports, scattered and confused and conflicting as they were, all agreed on one thing: the assassins had fled the city on the back of a flying bison.

Sometimes, Tenzin wondered what he’d done to offend the Spirits so much.

The old clock tower outside tolled seven. He put his head in his hands: what was he going to tell Pema and the children? That their big sister, sweet, bookish Jinora, had been involved in the destruction of the oldest monarchy in the world? Had plunged an entire continent into chaos? That Korra, who they all idolized, had slaughtered the Earth Queen in cold blood?

Groaning quietly, Tenzin rubbed his temples. He’d already drank four cups of tea, and he would need another one soon if his headache was any indication.

A hand slammed down onto the desk in front of him, making him jump and bang his kneecap on the desk.

He looked up to see Lin’s scowling face.

“You’ve been avoiding me all morning, Twinkletoes,” she said. “Our daughter just helped assassinate a monarch. We need to talk.”

“Yes, I suppose we do,” he sighed. “Could it wait until after I call my wife?” Lin’s withering glare was answer enough.

He fixed himself a cup of tea, and as an afterthought got Lin one as well: a splash of cream and no sugar. Some things you never forget. He passed her the cup, and she took it with a slight frown. Or maybe he was seeing things.

They sat in silence for a long minute.

“Are we sure that Jinora helped to… to take down the Earth Queen?” Tenzin said finally.

“Yes,” Lin snapped. “She was positively identified by three surviving prison guards and her bison—”

“Pepper,” Tenzin supplied weakly.

“—is in every report we have.”

“I just— Jinora,” he said desperately. “How could she— why would she—”

“The Avatar,” Lin said. “I told her, I warned her that the Avatar isn’t normal, that they make things seem different just by being around them. She said she’d be careful. But she wasn’t. Clearly.”

“But even Korra— how could she—” And wasn’t that a stupid question, because he’d watched her skewer Amon like a fish, easy as breathing. He'd seen her rip open a hole in reality, push that whatever-it-was out and beyond into empty darkness so complete and deafening that he still saw, heard, felt it in his dreams. At this point the idea that she couldn't do something was more laughable than that she could. He swallowed. “Fine. So what do we do now? We can’t— we can’t arrest our own daughter.”

“She just helped kill the Earth Queen and a majority of the Royal Family, Tenzin,” Lin said grimly. “That’s not the girl I raised. That’s a war criminal.” She shifted in her chair. “And even if she wasn’t— the law is the law.”

“But she’s— she’s Jinora. She’s my daughter, if not yours. I’m not going to help you arrest her.”

“You might not have a choice, Tenzin,” Lin said gravely. “She’s coming here, more likely than not. If Korra has finally gone round the bend, if she’s intent on taking out the Earth Monarchy, she’s going to come for the last claimant to the throne. We need to get Wu somewhere safe, and we need to prepare.”

“I don’t think— I still can’t believe our daughter would kill an entire defenseless family. That’s not her… her style. She’s not— even if Korra managed to turn her into an anarchist, she’s not bloodthirsty. Not like that boy, the firebender.”

Lin squeezed her eyes shut and pinched the bridge of her nose. “Believe it or not,” she said, voice strained, “Jinora participated in a revolution. She’s not our daughter anymore. She’s a terrorist. And if she comes here, if I see her… I’ll do what I need to.”

Tenzin closed his eyes. Great Tengri, he thought. What in your name did I do to deserve this? What law did I break? When did I offend you? Why did my daughter— what made her do this?

“What’s done is done,” he said softly. “But Jinora might not have… actively participated. Maybe she was just there. We won’t know until we get more information. But right now— you’re right. We need to get Wu somewhere safe. And after that… we need to call the United Forces. Your nephew.”

Lin nodded. “I’ll get a line to the Fire Nation. You call your wife.”

Call his wife. Spirits, what was he going to say?

If he could just talk some sense into Jinora… just make her listen to reason for once, instead of the Avatar’s delusional raving, then maybe he could keep her safe. Lin wouldn't hurt her. She couldn't. Not… not her own daughter.

His mind made up, he picked up the phone and dialed his home phone, the one in their private kitchen. He drummed his fingers against the desk as it rang.

Finally, Pema picked up. “Hi honey,” she said. “How are things going?”

“Are the children listening?” he said hesitantly.

“Hi daddy!” came Meelo’s bright voice. “You’re on speaker,” Pema said. And then, from Rohan, “Mommy said you're working on super secret council business!”

“Did Korra kill someone, daddy?” Ikki said, her small voice solemn.

“Ah-- wh-what?” he stammered. How could she have known?

“I had a dream that Korra killed someone. She was in the Avatar State.”

“Did-- Uh. Who did Korra kill, sweetie?”

“Don't know,” Ikki said. “I woke up when they died.”

“Oh, sweetheart, no,” he said. “That was just a nightmare, honey. Korra hasn't killed anyone.” That we can prove. That I would tell you.

“Okay daddy,” Ikki said, sounding unconvinced.

“Now listen,” he said. “Can you three give mommy and me some alone time?”

He waited as they said their goodbyes. After a moment, there was a click, and Pema said, “They're gone, Tenzin. Now tell me, what's going on?”

He hesitated again. “I… we…” He sighed. “The Earth Queen is dead. And the royal family.”

He heard Pema suck in a breath. “What— all of them?”

“The ones in Ba Sing Se,” he said. “Right now it looks like it's just Prince Wu that's left. The whole continent is under a state of emergency, the city is in chaos, the Dai Li aren't responding to emergency transmissions-- it's bad. Really bad.”

Pema didn't respond for a moment. “I'm sorry, honey,” she said. “That's terrible.”

“That's not the worst of it,” he said, heart heavy. “Jinora was a part of it.”

There was a stunned silence for a good minute. Finally, Pema said, her voice shaking, “But… how?”

“I don't know. Korra's influence, according to Lin. I… I'm still not convinced she was even a part of it. But they're coming here next, most likely, so we need to get Wu to a safe location.”

There was a pause. Pema sighed heavily. “Let me guess,” she said. “We're housing him here.”

“It's the safest place I can think of,” he said. “It's isolated from the mainland and there's a number of small places he could hide, if push comes to shove--”

“Barring the fact that it was successfully invaded during that mess with the Equalists,” Pema said, irritation edging her voice, “can't Korra do that… see-with-her-feet thing? She'd be able to find him anywhere on the island. Wouldn't it make more sense for Lin to take him into protective custody, or something like that?”

He sighed, rubbing a hand over his head. He hadn't wanted to say this, but… “Pema, I have to believe— I have to— that even if Jinora really did—” Spirits help him— “did help… kill the Earth Queen, she can't be so far gone as to attack her home. It's the safest place for him right now.”

She sighed as well. “Fine,” she said. “I'll make up one of the empty rooms for him. When will he be here?”

Tenzin checked the office clock. “About an hour,” he said.

“What?”

“Pema, if Korra is coming for him we need to get him to safety as soon as possible.”

“Fine,” she said again, sounding even less pleased than before. “When will you be back?”

“I don't know,” he said. “We're still trying to figure out the extent of the damage, and we're working from sketchy information at best… I'd like to be home for dinner, but I can't promise I will be. I'll call you again when I've got more information?”

“All right,” she said. “Stay safe. And try not to drink too much tea. You remember what Healer Phuong said about caffeine.”

“I will,” he said, smiling for the first time that day. “I love you.”

“I love you too,” Pema said.

He hung up the phone. His headache was getting worse, a dull, coiled pain behind his eyes. He massaged his temples, trying to order his thoughts.

Ling slammed a paper cup of tea— matcha from the break room downstairs— on the desk in front of him. “Up an’ at ‘em, Twinkletoes,” she barked. “We’ve got a long day ahead of us.”

And oh, did they.

He returned home fifteen hours later, soaring over the Unity Tower as the enormous bell inside tolled ten. Wu had been safely delivered to the island and had settled in, according to a very flustered Acolyte, by ordering the dining hall staff to prepare him an elephant koi steak and roasted pheasant-veal for his afternoon meal and then claiming Tenzin and Pema’s room for his own by falling asleep in their bed.

He really, really hoped Pema had gotten him sorted by the time he arrived.

Oogi touched down outside the stable and he couldn’t even muster the will to lift himself down from his head; he just slid to the ground. The bison grumbled and Tenzin patted him absently on the nose. “It’ll be alright,” he mumbled. “I’ll get Wu sorted, if Pema hasn’t already. And tomorrow I’ll make sure you get an extra helping of sugar cane.”

Oogi whuffed gently, bumped his nose against Tenzin’s side in farewell, and trundled into the stable where he settled with a thud.

The lights were still on in the entry hall of the main dormitory, at least. Pema was in the main office with Ogodei, his second-in-command. They were talking rapidly in hushed, strained tones, maps spread on the table between them, and scrolls with columns of figures Tenzin was too tired to decipher. She stood when he entered and kissed him in greeting, but she grimaced when they separated. “You look exhausted,” she said.

“I hear the Earth King commandeered our bedroom,” Tenzin said. “Do I need to sleep on the couch?”

Pema smiled ruefully. “No, I talked with the housing coordinator, and together we managed to convince him that Jinora’s old attic room was luxury accommodation. He’s gotten an Acolyte to carry him up and down the stairs, but I think we can talk him out of that, too.”

“So what’s being discussed now?”

Ogodei rose. “Evacuation proceedings, Master Tenzin.” He raised a hand to silence Tenzin’s objection. “With all due respect, we cannot risk letting the new airbenders fall under the Avatar’s spell. If she comes to Republic City, we need to be prepared to move to a more secure location.”

Tenzin felt his eyebrows rise of what felt like their own accord. He was nowhere near rested enough for this conversation. “A more secure location,” he said. “Do you really think that there’s a place on earth the Avatar couldn’t reach if she really wanted to?” Ogodei opened his mouth, paused, and closed it again. “My father broke into the Royal Palace of Ba Sing Se when he was twelve because he thought it necessary. I imagine Korra’s abilities as a fully realised Avatar far exceed my father’s as a child. And I don’t imagine any of the Air Temples have better security than the palace at Ba Sing Se.”

“Even so, Master Tenzin, it would give the new recruits a sense of— of reassurance to know that there is an escape plan in place,” Ogodei pressed.

“What do the new recruits know, exactly? Nothing more than I do, I hope,” Tenzin said sourly. Gossip and fear were the last things they needed.

“Nothing just yet,” Pema said. “Ogodei was going to tell everyone at breakfast tomorrow.”

“And I believe that if they know we have evacuation plans in place, they will be reassured of their safety.”

Tenzin sighed heavily and ran a hand over his face. “Fine, then. Plot an escape route. Run drills. But we cannot let this interfere with the training of the new airbenders. They— we— cannot succumb to fear.”

“That’s what I was saying,” Pema said. “I doubt Korra will come to kidnap the airbenders. It isn’t her style. She doesn’t force people to do things. So really at this point, evacuating would just be a waste of time. The worst I can imagine her doing is her attempting to kill Wu. Which, frankly—”

Tenzin cleared his throat. “Perhaps we should all get some rest? I, for one, am exhausted.”

Pema bit her lip and nodded. “Of course you are, honey.” She inclined her head to Ogodei. “If you will excuse us.”

“It is always an honor, Master Tenzin, Lady Pema,” he said gravely. He gathered the scrolls and tables, and took his leave with a bow.

“Spirits, he would not stop,” Pema grumbled, leaning against him.

“It seems we both spent the day in less than pleasant company,” Tenzin murmured into her hair.

He felt rather than heard Pema’s soft laugh. “How was Lin?”

“Unbearable, as always. She’s convinced that Korra’s driven Jinora around the bend.”

“Our daughter,” Pema murmured. Even though Jinora wasn’t hers by birth, she had always been as good as in Pema’s eyes, and even now just the thought made Tenzin smile. “I can’t believe she would do such a thing. Do you really think she’ll come here? To kill Wu? To… get to the airbenders?”

“I don’t know,” he said, after too long of a pause. “I just… don’t know.”

He was up the next morning at six sharp, and forewent his morning meditation in favor of matcha, strong and milky, and a virtual sprint across the bay on Oogi to arrive at the Parliament before Lin could work herself into too much of a fury. Later that day, he phoned Pema and the children to tell them that he would be staying at the Parliament for the foreseeable future.

The next week and a half was a frantic blur of activity, waking at the crack of dawn and collapsing into army cots on the floor above. There was simply no precedent for the destruction of the entire royal family of one of the world’s oldest monarchies.

Regular radio operation had been restored by the sixth day, and although it still wasn’t exactly clear what happened, all witnesses agreed that the Avatar had killed the Earth Queen. Had shattered her from the inside out, ripped the breath from her lungs and torn her apart with it. The Palace was in ruins, looted and burned in the continuing riots that followed the collapse of the City Guard and the disappearance of the Dai Li. There were reports of new airbenders inside Ba Sing Se, but they seemed to have vanished like smoke along with Korra and her terrorist friends. Lin assumed the two were connected; Tenzin hoped not, but hope was becoming harder to justify as the problems piled up. The Walls were gone, and the old divisions between Upper and Lower Ring with them. The Inner Wall was crumbled but not completely destroyed, the farmers mostly unharmed; the Outer Wall, mercifully, still stood.

Lin concluded that Korra had taken her anti-authoritarianism to new heights, and had seduced Jinora into her bizarre beliefs along the way. And while he still wasn’t sure about his daughter, Korra seemed to be well and truly insane. He would lie awake at night, unable to sleep despite his bone-deep weariness, trying with less and less success to convince himself that Korra wouldn’t attack the Island. He spent his days juggling the dual task of finding the vanished airbenders— some of them would have returned to their families, but certainly wouldn’t most of them would at least want to make their new abilities known?— and preparing the city for what Lin was convinced was the Avatar’s inevitable assault.

It was about two in the afternoon on the tenth day. He had just gotten hold of Izumi— finally, after hours of waiting and constant re-verification of his identity, after listening to a full report on the nation from Crown Princess Kazue and constant interruptions by her sister, Kaguya. Izumi asked him how bad the fallout was, really. He opened his mouth to respond.

And then the line went dead.

The operators began shouting frantically to each other and the people who were meant to be on the other lines, to no avail.

“Fuck,” Lin said, her voice carrying over the din. Such a way with words.

“Do we still have radio communications?” Tenzin asked the operator next to him, a graying man of perhaps sixty. He flipped a few switches, and the console printed out a ticket. He squinted at it.

“We do, Councilman, but there’s too much interference to make out most of what’s being said.”

“She’s here,” Tenzin said. He stood, nearly knocking over his chair in his haste, and stalked across the room to the fire exit. If Pepper was nearby, he would be able to see her.

As he passed, Lin muttered, “This soon?”

“It’s been over a week,” he said. “Frankly, I’m surprised it took her this long to get here.” He gestured for her to follow him. He heard her growl under her breath, but she followed him up the steps nonetheless.

Three flights up to a locked fire door, easily opened with Lin’s metalbending. The roof was small and Parliament was dwarfed by newer, taller skyscrapers, but for a half-second, he saw a flash of Pepper’s white fur between two of them, and he knew.

“She’s headed for the island,” he said. He felt— disconnected. Like he was floating above his body, connected by only the barest thread.

“Tenzin—”

He swept through the door, down two flights to his office. He heard Lin trailing after him, calling his name, but he didn’t respond. He grabbed the glider staff he’d kept in his office for just this occasion, and went to the window.

“Tenzin.” The latch fused shut. He turned to face Lin. “You can’t just— just charge off like this.”

“She’s headed for the island,” he said. “For my family. She’s insane, I have to protect them. My family, Lin.”

“She’s the Avatar.”

“I know,” he said. She hesitated, and he gave her a hard look. The window latch melted back into place, and he pushed it open.

“Tenzin—”

“Make sure my family is taken care of.” He stepped through the window, and into open air.

The glider snapped open as he fell, and he skimmed low over the ground before sweeping himself back up into the sky. He could still intercept them if he was quick enough— they were just over the bay now, and he was smaller, faster, lighter.

He caught up to them. Jinora sat on the bison’s head, her hair streaming behind her like a banner, and the Avatar was close behind, leaning over the side of the saddle and looking at the Island with an almost hungry expression— but there were two more figures than expected: a pair of children clung near the waterbender.

He hesitated.

The Avatar would be able to save them.

But they were children—

Children the Avatar was using as human shields. She was colder than he had imagined. She was going to attack the island. She would be able to save the children.

His grip on the delicate glider tightened. He had to do this. For his family. For the airbenders. For the future of the world.

He swept himself up over the bison, looped, snapped his glider shut, spun full-body, and jabbed the staff down to hit the animal at the back of its neck with a spear of wind.

The bison groaned, and the children shrieked, and the Avatar looked up, shock and horror and confusion in her eyes.

The bison dropped, blood quickly staining its white fur. Jinora was yelling, and the Avatar turned her attention to the bay below them, moving her arms in wide arcs.

Water roared up towards them, and they hit the wave with what he imagined was less than lethal force. The water was stained red as it crashed against the seawall, but Tenzin turned away before they resurfaced, angling towards the island. Towards his family.

He landed outside the dormitories, and found Pema as quickly as possible. He’d bought them some time by disabling the bison, but they would recover quickly, he knew.

(He’d killed Pepper, he’d killed his little girl’s bison, she would be—)

He found Pema in the main office, examining maps of Republic City’s underground tunnels. “Tenzin?” she gasped. “What are you doing here?”

“We need to evacuate,” he said. His voice sounded cold and distant, even to himself. “They’re— Korra— the Avatar— is here.”

“What?” Pema set down the map and approached him, concern in her features. “Are you sure— I mean, I thought you disagreed with evacuation?”

“I was wrong,” he said. He had gravely misjudged the Avatar, and now the new airbenders would pay for his hubris. “I was wrong, and I’m sorry, but now— now we need to evacuate.”

Pema nodded. “Of course,” she said, though there was a tone in her voice he couldn’t quite place. “You go find Ogodei and prepare the bison. I’ll get the children and the new airbenders.” She kissed him briefly and rushed off to the training grounds, where the airbenders were.

He sighed, taking a moment to steady himself against the doorframe. Spirits. Pepper… he’d killed her… and Jinora, she would…

He pushed his thoughts away. Jinora was lost, he’d learned that much over the past week. Korra was a monster, and her minions were brainwashed at best. The children… if he could get them away, then maybe they could be saved, but—

No. He would do what he had to. For the world, for the airbenders, for his family.

He went to the stables, glad that it was still daytime and the workers and bison were still awake. Working together, they saddled a majority of the herd, just in time for the first evacuees Pema led into the courtyard.

Rohan jumped out of the group and looked up at him with wide, frightened eyes. “Daddy, what’s wrong? Why are we leaving?”

“Because…” Spirits, what to say? “Because Korra is on her way here, and she’s a little angry right now, and I think everyone needs to just… give her some space.”

“But why is Korra angry?” Ikki said, riding up on an air scooter and jumping off next to her brother.

Tenzin glanced over his shoulder, towards the bay. “I’m going to try to find out, sweetie,” he said. “But for now, just listen to your Mom, alright? I need you to look after your brothers.” He gave them an encouraging smile. Ikki nodded solemnly and grabbed Rohan’s hand.

He turned to Ogodei, who was supervising the Acolytes’ evacuation. “If I leave to… check on our visitor, can you handle things on this end?” He flicked his eyes to the shoreline, hoping Ogodei would get the message. Ogodei nodded, and Tenzin clapped him on the shoulder. “Take care, old friend,” he said.

“You do the same, Master Tenzin,” Ogodei said solemnly. “Be safe.”

Tenzin nodded, and walked briskly towards the shore. What awaited him there, he wasn’t sure. A rage-filled Korra? A furious Jinora? The Avatar State, ready to turn him into an icicle pincushion? Something even worse than that?

He rounded the bend to the beach, his grip on his staff white-knuckled. Jinora, Korra, and the Water Tribe girl were keeping the dead bison (Pepper, Pepper, something in him wailed, he’d helped his daughter name her and raise him and he’d killed her) afloat. The others— the girl and the two children— were huddled on the bison’s saddle, the girl holding the children protectively.

Korra saw him, and her eyes flared blue-white, and she raised her arms. The waves receded.

Shit was all he had time to think before water crashed over him. He pulled a sphere of air around him, barely managing to hold the onslaught at bay. When the wave subsided, the bison was in the shallows, and the Avatar was stalking towards him.

He spun up and away from water, away from anything that could form spears of ice—

Air caught him in the side like a bludgeon, and he fell hard to the sand.

“Why?” Jinora screamed, tears streaming down her face. “Why, dad? What did— what— what—” He levered himself to his feet with his staff. “Why did you kill her?”

He looked away, into the Avatar's unforgiving face. “Tell me why,” the Avatar said.

“I had to stop you somehow,” Tenzin coughed. He pressed one hand to his side— his ribs were likely bruised. On the cliffs behind him, he heard the telltale whumps of a herd of sky bison taking off. Safe. His family was safe. He leaned heavily on his staff, drew himself up to his full height.

“Stop me from what?”

“Corrupting the airbenders, like you did Jinora,” he said. “You’ve twisted— you’ve perverted the noble art of airbending into something— something monstrous, something evil, based on hate and destruction. I had to stop you from hurting the others.”

“That’s what you think—?” Korra cut herself off. “It doesn’t matter. You killed Pepper. You almost killed us.”

“I did what I had to. For my family.”

“I’m your family!” Jinora wailed. “I’m your daughter! Don’t I matter to you?”

He looked at her. “Jinora, you… you helped the Avatar in Ba Sing Se.” Her brow furrowed in confusion. “You helped kill the Earth Queen.”

“I didn’t, dad—”

“Tenzin, she just—”

“Your bison was in all the reports, and you were identified by three surviving guards,” he said wearily. “Don’t lie to me Jinora, I know you were there, I know you didn’t stop her— and if you didn’t fight her, if you didn’t try to stop her, then you’re responsible for what she did— you helped her.”

“Dad, I didn’t kill the Earth Queen and neither did Korra—”

“One of you had to,” he said. His chest ached. Spirits, it hurt, like cutting off a limb. “The Earth Queen’s chest was destroyed. Someone tore the breath from her lungs. With airbending, and you— and she— you’re the only ones…”

“It was Zaheer!” Korra shouted, throwing her arms in the air, and Tenzin barely had time to process that in the torrent of information that followed: “He’s an airbender! He killed the Queen! It wasn’t Jinora, you selfish, ignorant, prejudiced—”

“Hey, guys? I hate to interrupt,” the water tribe girl said, “but these guys aren’t so good—”

Korra deflated instantly and looked to Jinora, who made an irritated noise (just like she used to when I told her she couldn’t stay up all night reading, he thought) and waved her away. Korra jumped onto the bison’s back, kicking up a spray of sand and saltwater. She turned away, knelt over the bodies of the nonbender and the two children, water in her hands glowing blue-white.

Tenzin hesitated. He had a clear shot— but she was helping children— he’d already killed his daughter’s bison, what cost were the lives of two more children, to stop the Avatar’s madness?— but they were innocent—

“Don’t, dad,” Jinora said sharply.

“I have to end this, Jinora,” he said. This was— he was flying against the headwinds, pushing against what everything in him said was right— his daughter, his daughter, his little girl— but she had helped kill someone, and that wasn’t the little girl he raised— “She’s— you’re— working with Zaheer. I can’t imagine why. He’s the reason the White Lotus put her in that horrible compound. And she agrees with him.” He shuddered. “She’s insane, Jinora.”

“Dad—” Jinora’s expression crumbled, and rebuilt itself just as quickly into something bitter and detached. “You know, we didn’t even want to hurt anybody,” Jinora said, her voice hitching on hurt. “We just wanted airbender scrolls.” She looked away, at the Avatar kneeling on the back of her dead bison. She had moved away from the nonbender, who was sitting up, one hand on her chest. “We would’ve been perfectly happy— well.” She laughed, hollow and humorless. “Korra would’ve been happy not seeing you. I was looking forward to seeing Ikki and Meelo and eating Pema’s cooking again.”

Something twisted painfully in his gut.

“But I guess that’s never going to happen, is it.”

“Jinora—”

There was a flash on the horizon. A half-second later the low roar of an explosion rolled across the bay, and smoke rose from the skyline as a building crumbled in on itself.

“The Sato Tower,” he murmured. He turned back to his daughter— if he could still call her that. “And I’m to believe that doesn’t have anything to do with you.”

He saw Lin’s face in the set of Jinora’s jaw as she scowled and said, “We called in a bomb threat. Nobody got hurt.” He saw Aunt Toph in the hard line of her shoulders, his mother in the pinch of her eyebrows, and he bit his tongue to stop himself from crying.

Another rolling boom shook the air, another smoke plume rose from the skyline. He shook his head, looked into eyes that reminded him so painfully of his father. “This isn’t you, Jinora—”

“Don’t you fucking give me that, Dad!” she snapped. “All my life, you told me what to do! What to think, who to talk to, where to go, what to believe! And now I’m making my own choices—”

“And people are getting hurt,” he said. “People are dying, Jinora.”

“Only people who deserve it,” she said, her scowl deepening.

He blinked, stunned, feeling like he’d fallen too far, landed too hard. “No one deserves to die, Jinora.”

“Hou-Ting did!” Her eyes flashed with rage. “She deserved to be skewered like Amon, she deserved worse! Letting her people live like that— making them live like that— like rats in a cage, bleeding them dry so she could eat goat-veal and caviar every night, locking them up underground for questioning her, snatching airbenders in the night for some spirits-forsaken army— it was horrible—”

“She was the Earth Queen,” he said. “She was appointed by the spirits, and—”

“That’s bullshit, dad! She was just a petty, selfish thug, abusing her power just like every other leader—”

All of the breath left his lungs, like he’d been struck. “Like me? Like the Council?” he said faintly.

Jinora faltered. “N-no, dad, you— you’re not…” And his daughter was still there. Still fighting, somewhere past the Avatar’s brainwashing.

He approached her slowly, his hands raised. “Listen to me, Jinora, this isn’t you. I know— I know Korra can be… convincing, but what she’s doing, it’s— it’s insane.” Indecision flickered across Jinora’s face. “She might think she knows what she’s doing, but— she doesn’t. We have to stop her. You have to help me stop her.”

His daughter glanced back at Korra, whose hands were pressed against the smaller child’s back, her eyes glowing.

“You killed Pepper,” she said softly.

“I— I did,” he said. His chest ached. “And I’m sorry. But Korra—”

“You killed Pepper,” Jinora said, a bit louder. “Without asking what we were doing. Without knowing anything about us. You—” Something in her eyes, so similar to his father’s, changed— “Airbending is freedom, dad, and— and you never— Pepper—”

Another explosion rolled across the bay— Parliament. Somehow, he knew. Oh, Spirits, Lin… be safe, old friend. He had to finish this. Fast. Before more innocents were hurt.

“Jinora, I’m sorry that I killed Pepper. It was an error in judgement, one I don’t plan to make again, but—”

“Are you, dad?” Jinora looked up, something dark and angry in her eyes. “Are you sorry you killed Pepper? Or are you sorry you lost my loyalty?”

He blinked, would’ve staggered in place had he not been leaning so heavily on his staff.

“Jinora, I don’t know what you want me to do— I’ll— I can’t make it up to you I know, but— but we can discuss this like civilized people once we’ve stopped Korra.”

“No, dad,” Jinora said. Quietly, firmly, in a voice that was so much like Lin’s it hurt. “You started this, you’re the reason Pepper is— is dead.” She swallowed. “You made your choice— you picked hurting innocent people— children and animals— over waiting to hear what we had to say. You assumed that because we’re fighting to free people from tyrants, that makes us just as bad as them. That’s who you are. That’s not who I am.”

“You—”

“Tenzin.” The Avatar’s voice cracked through the air between them like thunder, low and thrumming with power, a reverberating echo that he could feel all the way to his bones, and he shuddered at hearing his own father’s voice layered behind Korra’s. He turned, saw the Avatar’s burning eyes, the fury in every line of her face.

“Avatar Korra,” he said coolly. Or as calmly as he could, faced with all the rage of the world.

“You nearly killed them,” the Avatar snarled. “You should thank every spirit there is that you didn’t.”

“You have to understand, Avatar, that was not my intention—”

“And yet you killed Pepper,” she said. “You knew what you were going to do, you knew what could happen, and you did it anyway. I saw you. Don’t lie to me!”

The Avatar’s rage pressed down on him like a vise. He raised his chin. “I did what I believed was best, Avatar,” he said. “Don’t tell me you aren’t doing otherwise.”

“The difference being, I’m not killing innocents. You attacked a peaceful group. You nearly killed— my friends. The closest thing to family I have. I should kill you for that.”

“Korra.” Jinora’s voice was pained. The Avatar’s jaw clenched.

“But I won’t.” The Avatar state faded. Korra’s gaze was still hard and icy, but the terrible weight was gone. Her feet touched damp sand. “I don’t kill people. Not like this.” She closed her eyes, breathed deliberately. “Jinora, we should go. If I stay I can’t promise I’ll keep it together.”

“Just like that?” he said, frowning.

“We got what we came for,” someone behind him said, and he turned as far as he dared.

The hijra was standing behind him, a cloth bag slung over one shoulder. A bag bulging with scrolls.

He lunged for it without thinking— The airbending scrolls, he thought, the only ones we have, treasures of a lost civilization, they cannot take them— but the hijra dodged nimbly, the earth under her sliding towards the Avatar.

Korra shifted, and a fissure split the earth between Tenzin and her group. Her eyes gleamed for a half-second and lava bubbled in the chasm. “I promise we will return these, after we’ve had time to copy them,” she said. “Knowledge like this doesn’t belong to any one person. We’re just sharing them with the world. There’s a lot of new airbenders, and if they can’t make it here they’ll still need to know how to control their powers.”

“You can’t— those aren’t yours to take,” he said, clenching his fists. “The knowledge of the airbenders does not belong to you.”

“It doesn’t belong to you, either,” Korra said. She passed the bag to Jinora, who took it without looking at him. “But if it makes you feel any better, this whole thing was Jinora’s plan.”

“Jinora…” he said softly, looking at his daughter. The only other airbending master in the world. Heir to the teachings of the monks. The only one of his children who remembered— who’d ever known— the way his father’s eyes crinkled when he smiled. His daughter, who had given them hope that their world could continue.

Jinora looked, very deliberately, at the Avatar. “We should go.”

He bit his lip. Lin was right. She was not their daughter. This wasn’t the girl he’d raised.

“Jinora,” he said, sharper. “If you leave now, with her, you can’t come back.” She turned to him, shock clear on her face. The Avatar seemed puzzled. “You have—” He swallowed. “By standing with the Avatar in this, you have betrayed every principle the Air Nomads stand for.” He drew himself up. “If you leave with her today, you cannot return. You will no longer be an Air Nomad, or an Airbending Master. You will find no home by our fires, or in our tents. You will be shunned.”

The ancient words seemed heavy on his tongue. He could still remember his father teaching him these words, saying this is the gravest punishment we had, Tenzin. Do not use it lightly, the shudder that ran through him at the idea of such a punishment.

His daughter—no, Jinora, she was no longer his daughter no matter her choice— had gone pale and still, her eyes wide as saucers.

Then she swallowed, and her grip on the cloth sack tightened, and she pressed the bag into the Avatar’s hand. “Hold these. I need to take care of this, by myself.” The Avatar took the bag, confused and worried.

“Jinora—”

“Stand back. Make sure the kids are safe.” She tied her hair back into a wolf-tail and straightened her shoulders. When she turned to face him once again, her face was cold and expressionless. “You want to kick me out? You want to exile me doing for what I think is right? Then fight me, elder.”

She attacked, and all Tenzin could think of was the fight.

He’d sparred with his father, and she was no Avatar, but he was tired, and injured, and heartsick, and—

Her blows were like spears of wind, strong as a hurricane, and soon he was on the defensive, dodging and weaving around her strikes as they danced across the island.

In an even fight he would have outmatched her easily, but she was using a technique he didn’t recognize, brutal slices where airbending should have been circles; punching through blows where airbending would have woven around: her new style was heavy-handed and direct, and it was hard to stand against such strength.

Slowly, in their dance of attack and defense, they moved away from the beach, and he thought if he could only make it to the stables, he could distract her for long enough to escape on Oogi and make it to the rendezvous point with the other airbenders. In the half-second between one of Jinora’s strikes and the next he sent a blast of air at her head, just strong enough to distract, to give him time to run—

A stone turned under his feet, and he stumbled. He fell to his his knees and Jinora stood over him, her arms moving in wide circles, her hands pulling at the air.

The air in his throat pulled backwards—

He scrabbled at his throat— something was holding him, choking him, and— He could feel the air around him, but it was gone from his head, there was nothing there— He grasped at the air but couldn’t hold it, his mind already going fuzzy— he gave another desperate, choking gasp— the last of the air left his lungs—

Something slammed into his side, wrenched him out of the not-air. He gulped in air, cool and soothing in his lungs.

The ground was soft, softer than he remembered. His arms were loose, boneless. His head was comfortable here, at the angle where he had fallen. He was content to breathe, at this point.

Above him, Ikki looked at her sister. Her sister looked back.

Darkness crept around the edges of his vision.

He gave into exhaustion.

The steady beep of an EKG machine woke him. Stark white interior, made almost blinding by the noon sunlight. He closed his eyes, but it did little to soothe his pounding headache. Scratchy sheets, uncomfortable bed. The Temple’s medical wing.

Already regretting the decision, he opened his eyes again, and tried to look around.

An empty wicker-backed chair, a stack of magazines: Republic City Gazette, Daily Star-Tribune, Republic Daily Mirror. Pema’s usual array. That week’s issues. Couldn’t have been out long.

He tested his limbs. They were compliant, miraculously, and he managed to wriggle into a more upright position, but just doing so left him winded.

There was a glass of water next to the bed. He took it and drank slowly, remembering his mother’s short-lived healing lessons. His throat felt raw, battered; the water didn’t help much, but his lips were cracked from dehydration. The water tasted stale, as if it had been sitting out overnight. He set the glass down with a sigh.

He heard voices out in the hallway— what they were saying, he couldn’t tell— and braced himself.

The door opened slowly, and a nurse poked his head in. “Oh! Councilman!” he said in a startled whisper. “You’re awake! Excellent. I’ll fetch Acolyte Pema—”

“Wait,” he croaked, and his throat throbbed in pain. “What—?”

The nurse hesitated. “I… think I should let your wife explain.” He ducked out of the room, leaving Tenzin alone in confused silence. A few minutes later, there was another knock, and the nurse entered once again, followed by Pema.

She rushed to his side, grasping his hand. “Oh, Tenzin,” she murmured. Her hand was warm against his, warm and solid, and present.

“What happened?” he managed to croak.

Pema hesitated, and looked to the healer, who gave a bewildered shrug. “You… how much do you remember?”

An odd question, he thought. “Jinora and I fought,” he said, squeezing his eyes shut. His own daughter, his little girl, turning her hand against him— “We fought, and I was trying to escape, to get to the bison, but I tripped and she…” He could still feel his breath being ripped from his throat, and fought a wave of nausea. “I don’t know what she did. I was suffocating.”

“A technique she seems to have picked up from Zaheer,” Pema said.

“Zaheer,” he murmured. Yes, that… made sense. Far more than his panicked mid-fight assumption that the Avatar had corrupted her. Spirits, he’d attacked his daughter on a hunch half formed of terror. “Is she still…?”

Pema bit her lip. “She’s gone.”

Gone? “She… she’s not…?”

“She left with the Avatar.” Pema leaned across the bed and clutched at his shoulders, the closest thing she could come to a hug. “I’m so sorry.”

“I… banished her,” he said slowly. “Before we fought. I told her if she left, she could not return.”

She sat up, took his hand. “Oh, Tenzin.”

“I couldn’t let her stay, and… corrupt the airbenders.” He sighed, though it hurt his battered throat.

“Ikki,” he said suddenly. “She saved me.”

“She’s still here,” Pema said, squeezing his hand. “She was waiting for you to wake up. Meelo and Rohan and Tashi are with Ogodei, on their way to the Northern Air Temple. Evidently, Ikki saw the two of you fighting and jumped off of Oogi’s back, spirits help us.”

“Spirits, she’s going to be a handful,” he mumbled.

“She already is,” Pema said. “Well.” She sighed. “Here’s what we know. Chief Beifong says that most of the big corporate buildings downtown are gone. The Sato Tower, the Leiko-Takeo building, Parliament, the Council Building. Rubble.” She shook her head. “I don’t know what those terrorists were planning, but they managed to kill a lot of people when they took out the Council Building. Raiko included.”

His blood ran cold. Raiko was dead?

“They found him— his remains,” Pema said. Had he voiced his fears? “Under the rubble in the Council Building. He was badly burned. So they’re ruling it a homicide by the Red Lotus, for now.” She sighed again, and then smirked. “There is one silver lining. Chief Beifong managed to take out one of them. A third-eye freak. She seemed to be key to most of their plans— they ran once they realized she was dead— and now that she’s gone, hopefully they won’t have such an easy time of things.” She gave him a brief summary of the other casualties: half of the police force, a handful of executives who'd been in the council building at the time, and most of the upper echelon of the Republic's government; somehow Tenzin doubted that Korra would care too much about any of the losses.

He sighed. “Spirits, so much death.”

“But you’re still here,” Pema said, squeezing his hand. “You’re here, and I’m here, and our family is safe, and the airbenders are safe. We need to focus on what matters right now.”

He was alive. His family was safe. The airbenders were safe.

“You’re right,” he said, and smiled at her, and squeezed her hand back.

Chapter Text

Opening that window for Tenzin hurt more than she had expected it to. It felt like losing something. Or, maybe, finally admitting something.

Her lover had moved on. Her daughter was lost. Her only remaining family was halfway across the world, a target for the Avatar’s rage, and there was nothing she could do to protect them.

But she was Lin Beifong, chief of the Republic City police, daughter to Toph Beifong and Fire Lord Zuko. She was a child of the earth, a princess of the Fire Nation, and she was made of sterner stuff than most. So she watched Tenzin drop from the window and sweep up into the sky, and returned to her work.

Priority one: secure Raiko. Based on what they knew of the terrorists’ actions in Ba Sing Se, he would be a significant target. She sent a squadron of metalbenders to retrieve him from the Parliament building across the square, and met them in the lobby.

“Chief Beifong,” he said, nodding to her.

“Mr. President,” Lin said. He looked remarkably calm, all things considered. “We’ve secured an office on one of the upper floors for your operations center.”

“Very good,” Raiko said.

Priority two: secure the city.

She briefed Raiko, as much as she could given their limited intelligence, as they made their way up the four flights of stairs.

Reports of the Red Lotus’ deaths were greatly exaggerated, evidently. The Avatar had spun up disasters around their prisons: a storm for the lavabender, a volcanic eruption for the armless waterbender, and an earthquake— which Lin had thought suspicious, even at the time— for the combustionbender. And she had freed Zaheer, her would-be kidnapper.

Zaheer, who was now an airbender.

Zaheer, who was now standing in their supposedly secure crisis room, the third-eye freak at his side.

The spirits, she was beginning to suspect, were conspiring against her.

“Zaheer,” she said.

Her voice, she thought, was admirably calm. It had taken her father and Uncle Sokka to take down Zaheer last time. And he hadn’t been an airbender. Just an (admittedly rather dangerous) non-bender.

Lin was a very, very good earthbender. She had a half dozen elite metalbenders and two rookie firefighters by her side. If she was careful, if she was fast, if the spirits were kind…

Lin took three deliberate steps into the room. There was one large plate-glass window against the far wall— or there had been. The wall was destroyed, little more than shattered glass and crumbled masonry where the third-eye freak had clearly blown a hole in the side of the building. The carefully arranged desks were either shattered by the force of the explosion, or piled in a heap against the opposite wall. She felt more than heard her men following: four behind her, four in the hallway guarding Raiko. The door was the only good chokepoint, but Lin figured that if she could keep Raiko behind her, she could keep him safe.

“Zaheer,” she said. “I’m surprised to see you here.” Two more steps, into the open middle of the room. She needed space, space to dodge the freak’s explosions and to keep Zaheer away from her.

The window, or what was left of it, had an unobstructed view of the harbor. Lin could barely make out Air Temple Island, and what must be about a dozen bison rising into the air. As she watched, Lin saw the waves rise and crash against the Temple’s shore, a miniature tsunami. Tenzin hadn’t quite stopped the Avatar, then.

“Now see here,” Raiko said from behind her, his voice tremulous yet imperious, “you can’t just— just walk in here.”

Zaheer ignored him, focusing on Lin. He inclined his head ever so slightly. “I must admit I’m curious,” he said. His voice was deeper than she expected. “Where else would I be, but poised to cut the head off of a viper-rat?”

“With the Avatar, for one,” Lin said. She didn’t cross her arms, although she desperately wanted to. Seeming defensive would be blood in the water. “I know she went to Air Temple Island. It must be hard for you, not getting the chance to twist those new airbenders to your ways.” She narrowed her eyes. “Or are you expecting the Avatar to do your dirty work for you, like last time?”

Zaheer had the gall to laugh. “I think you have a much higher opinion of my persuasive abilities than they deserve,” he said. “I assure you that I have no interest in corrupting the airbenders who have chosen to learn from Master Tenzin.”

“Like you had no interest in abducting the airbenders from Ba Sing Se.”

If she could draw him out, trip him up, throw him off his rhythm, if she could divide the team—

“We freed those airbenders,” the freak snarled. “The queen was torturing them, turning them into weapons, and we let them go—”

“Then where are they? Why have none of them come forward?”

“Would you?” the freak said, her voice low, her yellow eyes practically glowing with hatred. “If the police picked you up in the dead of night, put you in prison, tortured you, starved you, left you for dead? Would you trust people in authority not to just lock you up again? Oh, wait,” she sneered, before Lin could even open her mouth to respond. “That would never happen to you— you’re a cop. And a princess.” She spat the last word with enough venom that it almost made Lin flinch.

“I would,” Lin said stiffly. “Because contrary to what you might think, I know that the police exist to protect people.” She gestured to her badge, proudly fused to her armor over her chest. “That’s what this means. I protect people. And I would appreciate it, since you seem convinced that you’re here on peaceful terms, if you would tell us where the airbenders you abducted are, and then leave.”

Zaheer laughed again, but this was a bitter, angry laugh. “Of course. As if you’d let us leave. We’re too much of a threat.”

And then Lin felt it. An explosion. A horrible pulse in the air, like the beat of an enormous drum, and a rolling shudder that set Lin’s teeth on edge— and even as she struggled to steady herself, a thunderous boom that made her ears ring.

“What did you do?” she snarled, as her men shuffled and exclaimed in alarm behind her.

“Don’t worry,” Zaheer said, with an easy, almost carefree smile. But his eyes were cold, like chips of flint. “It was nothing that can’t be replaced.”

Lin steeled herself. She was a daughter of Toph Beifong and Fire Lord Zuko. She had the earth in her bones and fire in her blood. “I won’t let you hurt anyone else,” she said. She drew her metal cables down from her pack and formed them into short swords. “Not today.”

Zaheer gave her an inscrutable look. And swept into motion.

Priority three: don’t die.

Zaheer was fast. She thanked every spirit she had grown up sparring with Tenzin, because she knew how airbenders moved— how they parried and dodged and redirected, waiting for holes in Lin’s defense— but Zaheer wasn’t moving like a normal airbender. His movements were fast, yes, but choppy, and he was honestly easier to fight than she had been expecting. He dodged and swipe of her sword, and she snapped out a whip-cable to snag his foot, sending him sprawling—

Lin had a half second’s warning from the unnatural stillness of the freak, enough time to punch up a shelf of stone, shattered into dust that Lin condensed with a squeeze of her fist and hurled at the freak. She went down with an oof, but Zaheer was on his feet again, luminescent rage in his eyes.

Another explosion rocked the building, this one closer. Plaster dust showered down from the ceiling, and Zaheer swept his hand out in an arc that sent the dust spinning towards her. Lin squinted through the cloud, and dodged a brutal open-palm strike that would have knocked her back if she was lucky, and ripped open her chest if she wasn’t, but that left his guard wide open to a swipe that he narrowly avoided and tore open his tunic—

And then. She felt it before she saw or heard it: a horrible shudder that rolled through the building, as if the whole earth was shaking. An earthquake, she thought, for the fraction of a second before the world went sideways.

There was a high-pitched ringing in her ears.

Lin looked around, dazed. What…

Explosion. Bomb in the building. Two floors down, it felt like. The thoughts drifted to her, disconnected from everything else.

Zaheer was across the room, hunched over the freak. Lin squinted through the haze of the room, the air choked with dust. She could feel the building wavering under her. She had to… priority one. Raiko. She had to get Raiko to safety. She hadn’t expected the terrorists to set off a bomb while they were in the building.

The freak and Zaheer were talking. Their voices were strained, panic and pain tangled together. Lin pushed it aside and stood. Raiko was behind her, dazed but alive. Four men down, a fifth half-pinned under fallen stone. She lifted the stone off of the pinned one, who nodded gratefully. Agony spiked through her leg. No time. Priority one. Raiko.

“Get—” her voice sounded muffled. Damage from the explosion. “Get Raiko to safety. That’s our priority.” She looked back at the terrorists. Zaheer was shaking his head.

“He’s bad, chief,” one of her men, Takeo, said. “I don’t know if we can move him—”

“We’ll have to,” another said. Raiden, one of the firefighters. “This place isn’t gonna last much longer.”

Lin tore a section of her armor off of her shoulders, enough to harden into an improvised cast around her injury. She just had to last long enough to take down the freak. She squeezed her eyes shut against the pain, and tightened the cast.

“Get Raiko to safety,” she said. “I’ll handle them.”

It seemed the terrorists were having similar thoughts: Zaheer was standing at the edge of the room, poised to jump. He cast one long, desperate glance over his shoulder, to where the freak was slouched against an overturned desk.

No, Lin thought. You’re not getting away that easily.

She snapped out her cables—

She was hurled backwards by an explosion, the beam striking her square in her stomach. She hit the wall and fell to the floor. Pain in her stomach. Cracked rib at least.

“Chief!” she heard someone shout, and looked up in time to see the freak’s psychotic grin as a combustion beam shot out, tkk-tkk, towards her—

And curved, through the doorway and into the hall. The interior wall exploded as the beam made contact with something. Fire bloomed golden. There were screams, and then nothing.

Lin stumbled to her feet. The freak was laughing, a wet, broken sound. Lin staggered towards her, pain nearly blinding her as she struggled to breathe and walk and not black out at the same time. She raised her hands. The freak wasn’t making any attempts to defend herself, or even move.

“Final words?” Lin croaked, though she didn’t care much for what the freak had to say.

The woman bared her teeth in a bloody mockery of a smile. “Do it, pig.”

Lin obliged her.

“Chief,” she heard someone say, as she was bending the blood away from her armor. Takeo was standing in the remains of the doorway. “Chief, we need to get out of here, the building—”

“Right,” Lin said. She could feel the foundations groaning under the weight of the ten stories above them. Mostly empty right now, thank spirits, just a skeleton crew. Officers, mostly. They had cleared out the offices when it became clear the Avatar was on her way. Cleared out the entire downtown, thankfully.

Lin pressed a hand to her abdomen, where the freak’s last blast had struck. The metal was scorched, nearly melted to the woolen under-layer. Aluminum was light, but it conducted heat all too well. Small mercies she hadn’t been hit where the armor touched bare skin. “Survivors?” she said, not hoping for much. Takeo bit his lip and shook his head, not meeting her gaze. “Right,” she said again, and followed him into the smoke-filled hallway.

Chapter Text

Lin took a deep breath, grimacing at the cold-sharp sea air. It still hurt to breathe most of the time. A combination, the healers said, of smoke inhalation and the freak’s attack. They said she would get better with time. Three days wasn’t enough, but it was all she— all the city— could afford.

She ignored the pain in her throat and focused on the statue of Aang in the harbor. At least this time the crazies trying to take over the city hadn’t had the chance to do something as stupid as hang a massive Equalist mask over his face.

She wondered, distantly, what he thought about all of this. The fact that he hadn’t been able to talk sense into Korra was unsettling, and she distantly remembered Jinora telling her, during one of their now very far-off weekly lunches, that the Avatar was on speaking terms with more or less all of her past lives. Maybe he was taking a hands-off approach? He had never been one for confrontation, her uncle.

She was still pondering this when the ferry bumped against the dock. One of the Acolytes was waiting for her, his arms folded behind his back, his brow furrowed in something that might have been concern. “Chief Beifong,” he said gravely. “We were glad to hear you had survived.”

She nodded. Talking hurt more than breathing. “Tenzin?” she rasped.

“The Elder is resting, but he requested we bring you to him when you arrived.”

Lin nodded again, and followed him up the gravel path.

The journey up the hillside was quiet. Lin looked at the landscape, and tried to imagine a future where they had moved beyond all of this. Where she could breathe easily, literally and metaphorically. Where the Avatar was a symbol of hope and peace, rather than chaos and destruction.

Lin still wondered at the Avatar’s motivations. Once Tenzin was incapacitated, it would have been easy for her merry band of terrorists to ransack the Temple. To steal the valuables, to burn the scrolls. There were a good dozen airbenders left, and Lin had no doubt that the Avatar could have twisted their minds like putty, if she was so inclined. And yet by all accounts the girl had fled once Ikki showed up and stopped Jinora from killing Tenzin. Her sentimental side thought that seeing her sister had shocked Jinora out of whatever Avatar-induced fugue state she had been in, but that didn’t explain why she left with the monster instead of driving her off. Her cynical side suggested that seeing Ikki had scared Jinora, had reminded her that she wasn’t the only competent airbender and killing Tenzin (her father) wouldn’t be a good idea.

Regardless, the Temple had been spared the Avatar’s wrath, and the only items missing were a single complete set of airbending scrolls. A loss, certainly, but nothing that Tenzin (or his children, for that matter) couldn’t recreate from memory.

Tenzin, the acolyte waiting outside his door informed her, was currently in a healing session; but this was almost over, and wouldn’t last more than a few minutes. Lin accepted a glass of water and stood against the far wall, her gaze on Tenzin’s door.

“Oh,” she heard, and looked up to see—

“Pema.” Lin took a sip of water. Two syllables shouldn’t hurt that much.

Tenzin’s wife looked briefly stunned, but quickly composed herself. “You should have the healer look at your, ah…” She gestured to her throat. “Tenzin also had some difficulty speaking, initially. After…” She grimaced.

“After Jinora tried to kill him,” Lin croaked.

“I really don’t… I mean, I thought…” Pema sighed. “Our daughter…”

Lin knew that Pema had some sort of fondness for Jinora, saw her as an adopted daughter. That Pema thought herself a better mother than Lin. Jinora had—

Lin cut off that line of thought. It was pointless to remember the past. Lin had no daughter, now. Especially after what she did to Tenzin.

“Jinora was corrupted by the Avatar,” Lin said. “You know as well as I do what she’s done.” Her throat ached. “She is not my daughter.”

Pema looked pained. “I just… she was always such a sweet girl, and— I still can’t believe—”

“Well it’s true, like it or not.” Lin scowled, and swallowed the rest of her water, suddenly wishing desperately that it was baijiu. Or vodka, or even whiskey. Anything to dull the pain of this interminable conversation. “What’s important now is what we do in the future.”

Pema hesitated, but thankfully Lin was spared any more of her chatter by the healer pushing open Tenzin’s door. She looked briefly startled to see them, but bowed after only a moment’s hesitation. “Chief Beifong,” she said, beckoning. “The Elder has been asking for you.” Lin followed the dark-haired young woman into Tenzin’s room.

She wasn’t sure what she had been expecting. A stereotypical hospital room, maybe, sterile white walls and the smell of antiseptic. Or maybe a thinly-veiled precursor to a funeral, with visitors badly masking their grief. But it was a normal Air Temple room, just like every other. Windows open to the breeze. A small desk, clearly unused. A larger bed than was normal. And Tenzin, the only abnormal thing about the room. He was propped up against the cushions, looking weary pale and drawn. He managed a weak smile when she entered, but it didn’t reach his eyes.

“I’m glad to see you, Lin,” he said, his voice much softer than usual.

Spirits, when did he start looking so old?

“Likewise,” she croaked.

The healer pulled a chair to Tenzin’s bedside. “I’ll leave you two alone.” She paused. “Unless you’d like me to take a look at your throat, Chief Beifong?”

“You should,” Tenzin murmured. “We’ll talk easier.”

Lin scowled. “I’m fine.” The healer looked dubious, but retreated under her glare, closing the door behind her.

Tenzin sighed. “Do you always have to be so stubborn, Lin?” Lin didn’t dignify that with a response. He sighed again. “Well. I feel the need to ask how you’ve been, although I suspect the answer is very poorly.”

“Correct,” Lin said. “Raiko is dead. Half my best metalbenders. All of the government offices are destroyed. It’s a miracle they didn’t kill anyone with the Sato Tower—”

“Jinora said they called in a bomb threat,” Tenzin said, frowning. “I thought… perhaps she was telling the truth.”

“What’s more important,” Lin said, pushing past the ache in her throat and her mounting irritation with Tenzin and his need to focus on Jinora, “is what we do about the Avatar.”

Tenzin blinked. “What do you mean?”

“The Avatar, airhead, surely you didn’t miss her? She nearly drowned you with a tidal wave, I heard?”

“Yes, but—”

“We need to do something about her.”

Tenzin looked baffled at the prospect of actually dealing with their problems, rather than simply letting them grow and fester. “Korra is the Avatar,” he said. “An embodiment of the spirit of peace and light. This must be a— a phase. The Avatar has never—”

“Or maybe they have,” Lin rasped, “and we don’t know.” Tenzin’s face fell, but Lin pushed on: “The Avatar is ancient, Tenzin, we just don’t know.”

He sighed. “Regardless. You say what are we going to do, as if— as if we’re going to kill her, or something.”

Lin said nothing.

He gaped. “Lin, you can’t be serious— we can’t— the Avatar—”

“The Avatar,” Lin said, easily cutting over him, “is a force for balance. For peace. Which Korra has clearly decided that she is not.”

Tenzin gave her a long, helpless look. “Lin,” he said. “She’s— we can’t.” He sighed again. Looked down at his hands. His age seemed to weigh on him, in that moment, all fifty four years dragging him down like lead. “My father—”

“Your father did a piss-poor job of talking her down,” Lin snapped. She loved Uncle Aang, she missed him dearly. But he was gone. No point in pretending otherwise. “There’s no point in living in the past.”

“I won’t agree to this,” Tenzin said firmly. As firmly as he could with his voice at a whisper. “There has to be another way.”

Lin sighed. For all that Tenzin badgered her about being stubborn, he could be just as intractable when he chose. She set the issue aside; even if he wasn’t willing to listen, there were other avenues she could pursue to deal with the threat.

“In any case. We need to restore order to the city.” She drew a sheaf of papers and a clipboard from the bag by her side. “Emergency orders. Declaring martial law, shelter-in-place orders, ration distributions, that sort of thing.” She put them in front of him, and held out a pen. “All it needs is your signature.”

Tenzin frowned again. “Lin, we can’t do this sort of thing. Not without the approval of—”

“Tenzin, you’re the only councilor who survived. Raiko is dead. His vice president wasn’t elected, and she’s got maybe a tenth the experience that I do, let alone the two of us combined. You and I are the only useful government the city has right now. We can. We will.”

His mouth set in a nervous, unhappy line, he picked up the pen and signed.

And over the next week, Lin began making changes. Tenzin was adamant that democracy be returned to the people, for whatever good that had done them in the past. Lin agreed that, in exchange for a hefty bump to the police budget and more effective crime-fighting laws, they would hold elections in six months to re-staff the presidency and the council. In the meantime Tenzin took control of the city, while Lin worked in the background to keep the streets quiet and safe.

Slowly, things started to return to normal. Relatively speaking, of course. Food, water, gasoline, and electricity were rationed. There was a curfew, and her men were pulling double and sometimes triple shifts to make sure the streets were adequately patrolled. Lin was working right alongside them, falling into bed each day too exhausted to think about anything except what the next day would bring. The arrival of the United Forces eased the burden a bit, giving them the manpower to set up checkpoints at strategic intersections and stop criminals before they had a chance to act. Tenzin stopped complaining about her methods when he saw how effective they were. Mercifully, he stopped bringing up Jinora.

The Earth Kingdom was descending into a maelstrom of chaos. Every day Ba Sing Se’s grip on the provinces slipped a little more, and Omashu had already declared itself an independent city-state. Gaoling and Ailao were sure to follow, and after that it would be a slippery slope into another Warring States period.

Lin hadn’t broached the topic of a more permanent solution to the walking disaster currently masquerading as the Avatar. Tenzin didn’t, either, but he had to know what she was thinking. She took his silence on the matter as tacit approval— or at least, a desire for plausible deniability— and made a few discreet inquiries. Shu had a soft spot for the girl, something to do with Bumi’s poor reaction to receiving airbending. Izumi didn’t like the idea, but she at least understood its necessity. It was only a matter of time before the girl popped up again like some sort of demonic badger-mole and destroyed another nation or three.

Six months came and went, and Lin managed to talk Tenzin into postponing the elections until the state of emergency could be lifted. Privately, she wasn’t sure what that would take, but no longer having a failed state filled with anarchists and looters and primitive warlords for a next-door neighbor would be a good start. Unfortunately, the United Forces alone weren’t enough to restore order to the entire Earth Kingdom, and without a leader there was no hope of the Kingdom pulling through on its own. There was a sole survivor of the Royal Family’s massacre, a wastrel named Wu who couldn’t tell his up from his down. A malleable figurehead, some thought; others just wanted to carry on the bloodline. Lin didn’t care who was in charge of the place, as long as criminals and degenerates stopped coming across the border like roach-rats. But, for fear of fracturing the nation even further under the rule of an unpopular monarch, Izumi proposed that the Kingdom take a page from the United Republic’s book, and vote on who should lead the Kingdom’s reconstruction.

Which was how Lin ended up at the first “World Conference,” as her sister had called it. Every major world leader, business executive, and spiritual advisor gathered to decide, once and for all, what to do about the Earth Kingdom.

Lin was halfway through her third glass of wine, the dull buzz of alcohol in her veins the only thing keeping her sane during the interminable opening cocktail party. Lin saw her from across the conference hall, and wouldn’t have recognized her if not for the ringing laugh that was impossible to forget.

“Su,” Lin said, approaching her sister. “I’m surprised to see you here.”

Su turned, raising one elegantly-shaped eyebrow. She was taller than when Lin had seen her last, fleeing the Capitol on a stolen airship. She was wearing a dark blue-green gown with silver accents, her iron-gray hair swept into a complicated up-do, her bangs twisted into hair-loops that reminded her of Aunt Katara. If Lin hadn’t known better, she would have said her sister looked almost Water Tribe. “I was invited, Lin. I’m the founder of Zaofu.” Her tone was cool, but not unfriendly.

Lin had heard of Zaofu, of course. It was a hub of innovation, churning out advances in metalbending and technology almost faster than the world could process. That Su had somehow founded a city— even that she had founded Zaofu specifically— wasn’t a surprise. It was the fact that Lin hadn’t noticed that was.

“I’m surprised to see you here, though,” Su continued. “I didn’t realize that the Chief of Police was such an important title.” Lin bristled. “I suppose I shouldn’t be, though. Our family doesn’t like to leave people behind.” She took a sip of her drink, a white wine that Lin had found too dry for her own taste. “Usually.”

“You were a special case, if you’ll recall,” Lin gritted out. “But Su—”

“Don’t,” her sister snapped. Her grip was suddenly very tight on the wineglass, and for a second Lin worried that Su would break the stem. Then her sister took a deliberate breath, in and out (just like their father taught them) and visibly relaxed her grip. “Don’t call me that. It’s Suyin.”

Lin blinked. “Suyin, then,” she said, fighting the urge to roll her eyes. “What are you—” doing here, she almost said. “What are you planning? Zaofu is usually…” She searched for the word that would encompass high and mighty and standoffish and too good for the rest of us without being too scathing. Su raised an eyebrow as the moment stretched on. “Well, you don’t get involved, I thought.”

Su shrugged. “What can I say? I don’t want the terrorists to win. And apparently I count as a world leader, which would put me in their crosshairs.” She took another sip of wine. “Self-interest runs in the family, you know.”

Oh, there were so many things Lin could have said in response. But, as Aunt Suki used to say, discretion was the better part of valor. Instead, she grimaced. “Look, I’m sorry. I didn’t realize you’d founded Zaofu.” I didn’t realize you were still alive. “I would have visited, if I’d known.”

“Yes, that’s what I suspected,” Su said archly, and turned away, leaving Lin standing alone in the middle of the crowd.

The very next day there was a vote, and— by an overwhelming margin— Su was elected to lead the reconstruction efforts. Her speech was brief, nothing unexpected, and yet, as Lin listened to Su promise to forge the remnants of the Earth Kingdom into a greater and more powerful nation than any the world has ever seen, she couldn’t shake the feeling that they had all made a terrible mistake.

Chapter Text

It was a week before the midsummer festival, and Kamal was wondering why, exactly, Korra had called him out here.

Three years of living alone in Gaoling meant that small towns put him on edge, and Bailong was about as small as a town got. Still, it had its advantages: you could never nap under a tree in Gaoling without three people trying to rob you and a fourth trying to sell you a bridge in Republic City. Here, at least, nobody would bother him.

“Kamal. I need your help.”

Scratch that. Kamal tipped his hat up, squinting at the sudden brightness, and then Tikivik loomed over him, blocking out the sun. He closed his eyes again. “Seems unlikely,” he said, pushing his hat back down. If there was one thing he could count on when visiting Korra and co., it was that he was outmatched in almost every regard. At this point, he considered it a nice break.

She nudged him in the ribs with her toe, and said, “No, really. I need your help with something.”

He groaned and sat up, glaring at her. “Why? What can I do that nobody else here can? We’ve got a princess, a shaman, the second coming of Guru Laghima, a lavabender, and the Avatar, and you think I can do anything to help?”

“Yeah,” she said, and held out a hand.

He debated just lying down again, going back to sleep and enjoying the fresh, unpolluted air, but his curiosity got the better of him. Anything he would be useful for would be worth seeing, he figured. So he took Tikivik’s hand and let her pull him to his feet.

“So what’s this about?”

Tikivik opened her mouth, and then closed it, and then said, “Okay, listen. This is going to sound like an insult, but I promise it’s not, it’s a good thing.” Kamal raised one eyebrow. “You’re the least spiritual person I’ve ever met.”

Oh. That did sound like an insult. He scratched his chin, tried to figure out how insulted he should be.

“No, listen, that’s not a bad thing!” Tikivik said. “Look, something weird is going on with Korra. Something spirit-y, and I need you to help me figure out what’s going on.”

Something weird and spirit-y could mean anything, really, and what were the odds he could actually do anything? Not good. But at the very least it would give him something to fill the time between waking up and going to sleep. He sighed. “Fine. Sure. What do you need me to do?”

Tikivik smiled. “We’re going to go talk to the Face-Stealer.”

Kamal watched, feeling as if he was intruding on something sacred, as Tikivik carefully prepared a pipe and muttered in a language he didn't understand. And then he realized that he didn't recognize the leaves in it, and started to have second thoughts.

“Um,” he said. “What is that?”

“Salvia. Seer’s sage.”

“Oh,” he said, and had third, fourth, and fifth thoughts. Because had tried just about everything he could get his hands on in the year between Wenyan and the anarchists, and seer’s sage was just about the only thing that he had never wanted to try again.

Do you know what you're doing, he wanted to ask, but when it came to spirits Tikivik always did. So instead he said, “Are you sure this is a good idea?”

“Mmm.” She didn’t look up from what she was doing. “Kava isn’t easy to find outside the Fire Nation, and even if I had some it's not ideal for this situation. I don’t need you totally out of your gourd. And I don’t like my odds of pulling you into the spirit world by myself, even if we were near the Poles— this far away it’d be impossible.” She stoked the fire and tied the tent flaps shut. “Let me guess, you tried this for kicks and had a really bad trip.”

He eyed the fire, and the pipe filled with its innocuous herb. “Yeah,” he said. “It was enough to put me off drugs for a whole month.”

She smiled, and settled across the fire from him. “That’s because you weren’t doing it right.” She held the pipe out to him. “Would you?”

He hesitated a moment, then sparked a fire in the bundle of leaves and took a long drag.

It was like breathing in after being underwater. The familiar roughness of smoke in his lungs— and then he exhaled, and the moment broke. It wasn’t a cigarette, and it definitely wasn’t heroin. He passed the pipe over the fire, and Tikivik quickly took a drag as well, before setting it aside.

“Seer’s sage isn’t a party drug,” she said. “It’s not like alcohol or ditch weed or poppy’s tears. It doesn’t do anything fun.” Her voice started to drift sideways. “If you use it right, it pulls your soul loose, into the space between the worlds.” Kamal blinked. It was like sunlight was breaking across his face, sunlight after a long, cloudy day, bright and glorious. “I’ll make sure we land in the spirit world, don’t worry,” he heard someone say.

He blinked and space around him distorted, vanished, returned, warm and bright and close and welcoming. Space turned around him, and he looked at it, and saw the sky for what it was: an air bubble, a pocket of sunlight and joy, filled with millions upon millions of spirits, people, happy and sad and angry and fearful and triumphant and vindictive and proud, everything he had ever felt, so had everyone else, because they were really all the same, in the end. How had he thought that he would fall into it? Into that eternal blue-ness? The sky would catch him before he fell, because if he didn’t he would burst the bubble and everyone else would— would—

He landed, hard, on his back.

“Welcome back,” Tikivik said. She held out her hand, and he had a distinct feeling of deja vu.

“What was…” he tried to put into words everything he had just felt, seen, known, the shining clarity and the comforting press of space and the harmony he’d felt for the briefest moment. Failed, and resorted to a gesture. “That?”

“I’m guessing you got a pretty weird trip, then,” she said, grinning. “That was passing through the veil between the worlds.”

For the first time, he looked around. The sky was a million different shades, every color of the sunset and more, all at once— the green-blue before a tornado, the black of a hurricane, the bruised apple-peach of a storm-day sunrise. Every time he blinked, the color changed, and when he turned his eyes back to Tikivik—

“Oh,” he said, because she was glowing. She was shining, like a lamp, like a fire, like a lighthouse guiding home lost ships. “You’re… bright.” And then he looked down at his own skin, and said “Oh” again, because— she was right. Least spiritual person in the world. “And I’m not.”

“Don’t worry,” she said. “That’s actually a very, very good thing.”

He blinked. The world around them changed, in a thousand little ways, greens and blues changing places and the sun moving across the sky that suddenly went from purple-pink to pale snow-coming white. “It is?”

“You should see Korra in here. You think I’m bright… I couldn’t look directly at her the first time we were here together.” She smiled fondly, shook her head. The trees around her rustled, as if in sympathy with her fondness for the Avatar. “Light is spiritual strength— but it also makes me a big glowing target for the less amicable spirits. The Face-Stealer among them. Which is where you come in.” She gestured to his dull skin. “You are completely invisible to spirits. Together, we’re totally unremarkable. Unless you’re addressing them directly, they won’t notice you at all.”

That explained why of all them he’d never wound up the target of jealous spirits. “And here I just thought it was good luck,” he said.

“You could call it that,” Tikivik said, an odd smile on her face. “You’re also, as a benefit, just about immune to their charms, so stop me if I start to do something stupid. Now let’s get going. We’ve got a centipede-eel to speak with.”

He couldn't say how long they walked. The sun moved erratically through the sky, breaking through the shifting clouds occasionally to cast bright, inviting sunbeams that twice he had to stop Tikivik from walking into. (Spirit traps, she called them, after he broke her out of the trance: if they walked into one, they would either be trapped like a spider-fly in amber, or burned to a crisp, depending on how the spirits were feeling.) Moving in the spirit world didn’t feel quite real. When he wasn’t focusing on it, his surroundings blurred away, smearing together into vague shapes and colors. It was like moving in a dream, things distorted and distant, until he focused on something and it was hyper-realistic. The forest they were walking through seemed to repeat itself (he swore he ducked under the same branch at least five times) but Tikivik promised him that they were making progress, so he pushed away his anxieties.

Eventually, she was proven right: the treeline broke on a cliff overlooking a massive series of stone pillars that formed a bridge to an island with a great, twisting tree.

“The home of the Face-Stealer,” Tikivik said. “He’s free now, so he can follow us out. Be very careful. Show no emotion, or he’ll take your face.”

“Yeah, I got the lecture,” Kamal said, staring at the tree. Be good, his parents had said, or the Face-Stealer will come to get you. Branches reached towards the sky, suddenly gone bruise-yellow, like clawed hands. The trunk spilled over the island, roots twisting down into an abyss that seemed bottomless, but where the tree met the island there was a triangle of pure, engulfing blackness. He could feel it, even from here, like an icy finger sliding down his spine. Everyone knew who Koh the Face-Stealer was, what he did and what his rules were, but Kamal had never thought he’d actually have to face him. “What’s he the spirit of, again?”

“Death,” Tikivik said.

There was a sound, then, like bones rattling together, like the first pebbles of an avalanche skittering across a rock face, like icy tree branches clacking against one another.

“So close, little thief, and yet so dreadfully far.”

Kamal felt his blood run cold.

The tree seemed to swell, to grow horribly close, the black void tangled in its roots filling his vision. Tikivik reached up to hold her necklace, and the brightness around her pulsed.

The blackness shattered against her light, and Kamal realized that they had moved across the pillars, onto the island, to stand before the darkness. Which wasn’t as dark as he had thought: it was a tunnel, leading down into a cave under the tree.

“The power-thief,” the voice said. It sounded like dry paper turning in an empty library, like rotten ice cracking under strain. (The seer’s sage must have made him poetic, he thought distantly.) “And you brought a friend.”

“Thief?” Kamal said, unable to help himself. He barely managed to keep the curiosity off of his face. Tikivik shook her head, and started down into the darkness.

The stairs ended in a circular room, cavernous, the walls like tree roots and stone at the same time, an enormous stalactite hanging from the ceiling. And around the stalactite—

“Honored Face-Stealer,” Tikivik said, and the thing around the stalactite— Koh, he knew, the Face Stealer— smiled, his teeth too long, his body long and segmented like a centipede, hundreds of legs clicking over each other as he shifted, too gracefully for a body that should have been unwieldy but moved like an eel-hound, tightening around the stalactite to dip his face closer to them. His face, bone-white and leering. Suspended like an enormous eyeball between a membrane that looked like an eyelid turned inside out, damp and red and raw-looking, and the membrane shut with a squick. Kamal barely stopped his shudder of revulsion. It opened into a different face: dark hair spilled out from behind the membrane, a dark, full-lipped Water Tribe woman smiling with cold blue-gray eyes.

The legs closest to his face curled in anticipation, and Koh’s smile widened into a predatory grin. “Tell me, does the Avatar know that her little pet is here?”

“Thief?” Kamal repeated again, because he felt like that really warranted some explaining, but Tikivik waved away his question.

“The Avatar,” Tikivik said, with deliberate calm, “is busy. And I have questions.”

“Mmm, yes, your kind always does.” Koh darted out three legs to grab Tikivik’s face, and Kamal nearly reached for his firebending before Tikivik elbowed him swiftly in the side. He coughed, but all of Koh’s attention was taken up by inspecting Tikivik’s face, turning it this way and that, and he didn’t notice Kamal’s slip. “What will it be, little thief? You won’t escape unscathed a second time, not after your Avatar’s… choice.” His face closed and reopened, a blue-nosed monkey’s grinning fangs an inch from her nose. “There’s nowhere you can go that I won’t find you.”

“Stop it!” Kamal snapped, and barely managed to smooth over his face as Koh turned fully to face him, his face blinking away into the noh mask.

“Ah. The void,” he said, a hungry glint in his eye, and pushed Tikivik aside to grip Kamal’s face. His claw-legs were shockingly cold, smooth like a beetle’s carapace, but there was no mistaking the strength behind them. Kamal got the distinct impression that he was standing between a whale-wolf’s jaws. He clenched his jaw, but kept his expression steady. “You thought he would protect you, didn’t you, little thief,” Koh said, not looking at Tikivik. His teeth glinted in the low light, too long and too sharp for the almost-human face. “You thought he would distract me. I would be so busy focusing on this little void-spark that I wouldn’t notice as you stole from me a third time.”

Koh’s smile slipped away, replaced by a searching hunger. His face blinked, an old man’s thin mustache and long eyebrows drooping over a lined, weary face. It wove from side to side as Koh turned his face this way and that, his gaze almost searing in its intensity. “How did you make it here, little void? It couldn’t have been easy, a spirit like yours. Even the little thief isn’t that strong, no. So what was it? Kava? Diviner’s sage?” The old man was replaced by the blue oni. Koh smirked behind the fangs. “Oh, but you were so afraid of that, weren’t you? Afraid of what you’d find if you went looking for the truth. The proof of exactly how little you matter. How little people around you actually care.” Kamal swallowed, forced himself to not pull away from the spirit’s crushing grip. A whale-wolf who knew his past (and his present and his future, too). who knew exactly how many scars there were on his arms, who knew how they got there, and why. “Poor little void, what happened to you, to put your own light out like that, hmm? How often have you tried to find me and failed?”

“Answers for answers,” he said, in a flash of inspiration, and Koh pushed him away with a tch.

“All of yours combined couldn’t be worth one of mine,” Koh said, and turned back to Tikivik, whose face had regained some color.

“Answers for answers, Koh,” she said firmly. “We want to know what’s happening to Korra.”

Koh laughed, turned his scaled back on them, tipped his face up to the roof of the cave. Kamal let his face sag into terror, his heart racing. What he wouldn’t give to be lying under the clear blue sky right now, daydreaming about oblivion rather than staring it in the face. “You’ll have to be more specific, thief. Any number of things are happening to her at any given moment.”

“You know what I mean. She’s acting strange. Referencing things that never happened. Knowing things she shouldn’t. Talking about people she’s never met like they’re old friends.”

“Answers for answers, little thief?” Koh said, and turned back fast enough that Kamal nearly lost his face to his terror. Koh laughed, the blue-nose’s fangs glinting in the low light. “Well, answer me this. What do you, with all your mortal wisdom, think is happening to her?” Tikivik swallowed, and said nothing. Koh paced around her, smirking, his pale face seeming to float around her in the darkness. “What, no guesses? You’re always so keen to steal spirit knowledge, but when a spirit asks you for a little in return, you shy away?”

“I think she’s going insane,” Tikivik whispered, staring at the floor, her face blank.

Koh laughed again, the same horrible rasping noise as before. And then he whipped around to face Kamal, and Kamal stumbled back (but somehow, miraculously, didn’t flinch.) “And you, little void, do you share the thief’s utterly mortal opinion?”

“I don’t… I don’t know,” he said. “Korra’s been acting weird, yeah, but she’s the Avatar. A little weird is normal.”

“How predictably human,” Koh sneered, blinking his face to a fanged, snarling blue oni. “A narrow world-view for a narrow-minded species.” He turned his back to them, and Tikivik managed a look at him that seemed both don’t get us killed and I hope I don’t get us killed. “Why my sister cares about you, I’ll never understand.” He paced around them, and in the cave the sound echoed and overlapped and became the sound of an icy waterfall. “Hmm. What is the right price for this knowledge? What does the Owl charge these days? More I’d imagine, since he had to bring his library here.” He paced endlessly, his voice low and hypnotic. “Hmmm. Void.” Koh loomed in front of him, suddenly, his face an old man with a permanent sneer. “What, tell me, should I ask of the little thief? Her eyes? Her voice?” Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Tikivik flinch. “Her childhood? Her love for the Avatar?” He turned back to Tikivik, ran a claw gently over one of the tattooed lines on her face. She shivered, though her expression remained blank. “Should she return what she stole?”

Kamal swallowed. “I think… I think you should tell Tikivik what she wants to know. And then let her decide what she’ll pay.”

“The honor system, mmm?” Koh chuckled. “Your attempts at cunning are laughable.”

“My waterbending,” Tikivik said suddenly. “My waterbending, for knowledge of Korra’s condition and how to fix it. Or stabilize it, if it can’t be fixed.”

“Tikivik—” Kamal said, because she couldn’t sacrifice her bending like that, Korra would never want her to—

“An interesting offer,” Koh said, circling around them, the noh mask’s eyes filled with delight. “But of what use to me is a mortal’s waterbending?”

“He’s playing with you,” Kamal said, his fists clenched. What he wouldn’t give for his firebending right now, to be able to blast the smirk off of the old spirit’s face.

“That’s what I do, little void.” Koh turned his back on him, bent down to look Tikivik square in the eye. “Your waterbending. You’ve intrigued me. Now convince me.”

“My waterbending,” Tikivik repeated. Her voice was shaking. “It’s central to my identity. You can’t have my face or my tattoos but you can have the next best thing.” She swallowed. “I won’t be half as good a shaman without it, and I know that will make you happy.”

The blue oni’s smirk was agreement enough, and Koh gripped Tikivik’s face again with his foremost legs. And then hesitated. “What’s to say, little thief, you wouldn’t simply ask the Avatar to return it to you?”

“My word as a shaman and a friend of the spirits, honored Face-Stealer,” Tikivik said, her voice not wavering. “I might be a thief, but I’ve never broken my word. Ask the Owl, if you don’t believe me.”

Koh turned away again, and Kamal took the chance to shoot Tikivik a glare that he hoped contained everything he was feeling, and Koh hummed, the sound of his legs skittering across the floor like a swarm of rats.

“Very well,” Koh said. “I accept your offer.” He dragged her closer, one leg resting on her forehead, one on her sternum.

“Tikivik, don’t—” Kamal started to say, started to reach out to stop her himself, but Koh’s eyes flashed and Tikivik’s eyes rolled back in her head and it was too late. Kamal lunged to catch her before she hit the ground, and Koh backed away, his legs clicking against one another, tapping agitatedly on the walls and floor.

“Interesting,” he murmured. “Oh, very interesting.”

“Tikivik, come on, wake up,” Kamal said, shaking her gently, not even bothering to hide his fear. He was a passable street medic, sure, but spirit shit? “Wake up, come on, you have to—”

Her eyes flew open, and refocused after a split second. “Kamal,” she said blankly.

“Oh thank spirits,” he gasped, but then she pushed him away, stood up.

“Honored Face Stealer,” she said, her voice still emotionless. “We had a deal.”

“That we did, little thief.” The noh mask blinked away, replaced by the Water Tribe woman. Her blood-red lips curled into a smile. “Far be it from me to break my word. Search your memories; you’ll find the answers you’re looking for.”

She looked into the distance for a minute, her eyes flicking back and forth. Finally, she nodded. “Thank you,” she said, and bowed, and grabbed Kamal’s wrist. “Come on.”

Kamal blinked. He’d fallen backwards at some point. The ground was hard beneath him, and his head was dangerously close to a smouldering fire.

Fuck. That was the weirdest fucking trip, including the time with the poppy’s tears and the dancing rhino-yaks.

He blinked again. Tikivik was sitting across the fire, sobbing silently into her hands.

It flashed back to him in an instant: spirit world. Koh. Waterbending gone. Not just a weird trip, then.

“Um,” he said. Because, along with spirit shit and the intricacies of politics, he was very bad at emotions. “What… happened?”

“Korra looked into the Mirror of Souls,” she said bitterly. And then, after a moment where he didn’t respond (was that supposed to mean something? Was it a literal mirror?) she sighed. “It’s a meeting point. Everything, every world, every single of the infinite possibilities of the universe. I’ve heard stories of people who asked it a question and were driven insane by the possible answers, but everyone knows— everyone knows you don’t look into it. Not directly. It all gets— poured into your head. Everything. Your brain overloads from information, it drives you crazy, even if it takes a while. And Korra looked into it. Like the brave, stupid, wonderful idiot she is.” She tucked her knees up against her chest, squeezed her eyes shut, sighed heavily. “Spirits, what do I even do. I can’t fix— fix having your brain melted like that.”

Kamal bit his lip, pressed the fire into cold ash, and stood. “Well. First thing’s first, let’s see Korra about getting your waterbending back.”

She blinked up at him. Her eyes were red, puffy from crying, her face blotchy. “What?”

“Your waterbending. Korra can give it back.”

“No,” she said, as if he’d suggested she stab him in the eye. “No, I can’t— I made a promise to Koh.”

“Yeah, and he didn’t help you like you asked,” Kamal said. One step at a time, he figured— Korra would keep for a while longer. Enough time to get Tikivik straightened out, at least. “You gave him your bending for knowledge of what was happening, and how to fix it. He didn’t show you how to fix it.”

“No, no, he did, he…” She trailed off, a puzzled expression creeping over her face. “Hmm. He… she said… but— hmm. If I could—”

The tent flaps opened, bringing a cool, sharp, sea-scented breeze into the stuffy tent. “Guys,” Jinora said, stepping in, “we’ve got a problem.” She held out a crumpled piece of paper, a message hastily inked in smeared characters.

Kuvira looking for Korra. Fourth day in Bailong. Run.

Chapter Text

The few scraps of Korra’s whereabouts they had to go on were a year old, and suspect even then, given as they were by a subject under torture and never independently verified. After a week, she threw out the lot of it and started fresh, trusting instincts honed by the years she’d spent ferreting out Ba Sing Se’s criminal underground, and the longer years before spent protecting Zaofu.

The Grand Secretariat of Ba Sing Se was noticeable— but Agent Amisi wasn’t. It was Kuvira’s face that was plastered on every recruitment poster, that cast a stern but understanding gaze over every justice department. Agent Amisi, on the other hand, was just an ordinary citizen. With Yunxu by her side and Bolin tagging behind, the trio became just an ordinary family, roaming in search of a better life, while Kuvira watched from the shadows with the airbender and his handler.

For many, the Avatar was a figure to be feared. Powerful enough to bring the Earth Kingdom to its knees in one night. Strong enough to contain spirits that drove any who looked at them to the brink of madness. Radical enough to turn her power against the spirits-appointed queen. But for others, the Avatar was hope. Insipid as it was, they believed the shit the Avatar was pushing. Freedom and equality and cooperation. As if people could share resources without getting greedy. As if they could work together for no incentive. As if they would all hold hands and sing Secret Tunnel and fucking get along.

So Amisi commiserated with dissenters and nodded along with treason, and Kuvira gathered clues from the conversations like a scavenger picking over a trash heap, and they followed the trail of whispers— did you hear? I think, I saw— across the Empire, from Daxue in the east, over the Serpent’s Pass and through the empty, arid plains north of the Si Wong Desert, down to the southern coast of the Empire, where every town east of Gaoling seemed to have seen the Avatar half a dozen times a month.

But once they crossed the river onto the southern peninsula, the trail started to falter. Every town was more and more hostile, the local hicks more prickly and isolationist, Suyin less revered. In Bailong, which they had (by process of elimination) deduced to be the Avatar’s hiding place, there was hardly a trace of the her presence.

She had been spotted, yes, once or twice, years ago, the locals would say, and then turn back to their business. And when Amisi pressed, when she said, but— forgive my prying, Qin Lao, the butcher from Luliang, said he saw the Avatar and her friends camping on Guang’s Bluff, just to the east of here, during the summer festival, the villagers gave conflicting reports. Said she went east or west— or south, in one particularly bizarre recounting: yes, south, yes, into the sea, I’m the one who saw it; don’t ask me, it’s the Avatar; she’s a waterbender isn’t she? the farmer had said gruffly, fixing her with a flinty stare, which she returned until he shrugged and excused himself with a good amount of open hostility.

Bailong was getting a to be too full of itself, she decided. She sent a telegram to the Ba Sing Se office: The White Dragon shields a nest of vipers, but steel will kill a dragon, double-hidden behind Dai Li code.

The courthouse stood empty, the rusted hinges and ivy-covered windows a testament to the anarchy that had consumed the town. Children lazed about in every open space, and most of the townsfolk they saw weren’t even working; instead, they talked with their neighbors or gardened or wandered aimlessly. There were no beggars, at least, but a city full of such layabouts could hardly be commended.

She gave it one final shot on the fourth day, and trailed Amisi and Yunxu as they prowled the streets at dusk, looking for people that had the shimmery spirit-touched aura that spoke of prolonged contact with the Avatar.

There were two in particular that he pointed out: a tall, muscular, dark-skinned earthbender with long hair and tattoos; and a woman, short and waif-thin, with long, draping sleeves. They were affable enough, but they only seemed puzzled when she mentioned the Avatar, scoffing something about that anarchist freak? Never met her. Kuvira almost snorted at that, but she couldn’t well drag them into questioning without breaking their cover and alerting the Avatar.

“Traitors,” Kuvira snarled over the campfire that night. “Fucking traitors.” Yunxu was meditating in the tent, and Amisi was gathering firewood in the stand of poplar-firs a way’s beyond. The airbender and his handler were well away from the camp, running through long-distance precision drills. (The farther away, the better, Kuvira thought.)

“Maybe they’ve been through a lot,” Bolin said, turning over fish they’d caught earlier in the day, now sizzling in one of his pauldrons flattened into a frying pan. “This area was hit pretty hard by the collapse, you know. Lots of bandit activity here, since Gaoling was so well defended and this was an easy target.”

“You don’t need to tell me that, Bolin,” Kuvira growled. “I wrote half of those reports personally, and I signed off on the rest. This town hasn’t been hit by bandits in years, clearly, which is impossible for a town of this size. That’s the sort of peace that the Avatar’s presence would bring. She’s here, she has to be. So why are they hiding her? And where?”

Someone behind her coughed gently.

There shouldn’t have been anyone behind her.

Kuvira whipped around, bending one of her pauldrons into a short sword that encased her right hand. “Who—” Her thoughts crashed to a halt.

Jinora.

The woman was standing a few feet away, her glider folded and held loosely in her hands. It was a good thing she’d made the sword wrap around her wrist, Kuvira thought, or she would’ve dropped it in shock.

“I hear you’re looking for Korra,” Jinora said. (Spirits, it had been so long—)

Kuvira recovered herself and hurled half a dozen strips of metal, sharpened into lethal points, towards Jinora. She knocked them away with a whirl of her staff, and then drove the staff into the ground and raised her hands in a placating gesture. Kuvira felt Bolin tense, and held up a hand. Wait. She wouldn’t have given up the element of surprise, and put her only real weapon in a position Kuvira could easily take it, without good reason.

“I just want to talk,” Jinora said. “You’re looking for Korra. Korra wants to talk to you.”

Kuvira blinked. That was… unexpected. But Jinora wasn’t lying, she could tell. The Avatar really did want to talk to the head of the Dai Li, the Grand Secretariat of Ba Sing Se, the Great Uniter’s attack dog. Why would the subject of their search, who had been going to such lengths to hide from the Empire for six years, suddenly turn herself in?

Unless the Avatar was deluded enough to think she could win in a fight.

She pulled her armor back together, raised her chin. “I didn’t realize you being disowned meant you had to serve as a glorified messenger-hawk,” she said archly. “The Avatar couldn’t have come and found me herself?”

Jinora shrugged. “I volunteered, ‘Vira.”

She bristled at the old nickname. “Don’t call me that,” she snapped before she could stop herself.

The corner of Jinora’s mouth twitched up. “Mm. You’ve always been so touchy,” she said. “I did volunteer, though. It’s been so long since we saw each other, and I just…”

“You wanted to ‘rescue’ me,” Kuvira said. Jinora’s eyes narrowed, but she didn’t deny it. “Still have that savior complex, then?” Jinora flinched, enough of an admission of guilt for Kuvira. She snorted. “Some things never change, do they. Still trying to fix what isn’t broken.”

“Uh, sorry, Grand Secretariat— ma’am— Kuvira—” Bolin stammered, “but… what?” Spirits, she’d almost forgotten he was there. Her surroundings came rushing back: Yunxu meditating in the tent, Amisi gathering firewood, the airbender and his minder far away. Jinora couldn’t have picked better timing. Her old flame, all alone except for a green recruit.

“We have a history,” Kuvira said, keeping her tone as cool and measured as possible. She’d missed Jinora, yes, for years. But that was behind her. She was better now. Stronger. (And an ocean of blood had risen between them in the meantime.)

“That’s one word for it,” Jinora muttered, glaring at her.

“I don’t believe you came all this way just to tell me Korra wanted to talk.” Without looking down, she tapped her heel, bouncing Bolin’s pauldron-turned-frying pan off of the fire and onto the ground. “Why don’t you stay for dinner?” She smiled. “We’re having fish.”

Jinora’s jaw twitched, but she held the impromptu staring contest. “I don’t eat meat.”

“Oops.” Her smile widened. “I must have forgotten.”

“Uh, guys?” They both, in sync, turned to glare at Bolin. He cowered slightly. Well, she hadn’t picked him for his backbone. “What… what’s going on?”

Kuvira turned back to Jinora. “I don’t know, Nora. What is going on?”

Jinora didn’t scowl, though from the way her jaw was ticking it was a near thing. She very deliberately grabbed her staff (Kuvira almost dragged it into the earth, but decided that was too petty) and took a step back. “I came to deliver a message. We’ll meet you tomorrow, at Guang’s Bluff. At noon. That’s it.”

“We’ll be there,” Kuvira said. And she thought, Camping at Guang’s Bluff. Just in time for the midsummer festival again. But we’ve already looked there— how did they hide?

“Good.” Jinora spun her glider out, and paused. “Your hair looks nice like that. But I liked it better down. You looked…” she hesitated, and her heartbeat did something odd. “Softer, I guess.” With that, she jumped into the air, darting away like a sparrowkeet.

Kuvira snorted, once she was sure Jinora was out of earshot. “I looked softer. Sure.”

“Uh. Ma’am?” Bolin was still looking at her like she might tear his head off. She twitched her fingers. “What… what was that?”

“That, Agent Bolin, was Jinora Beifong.” She sighed, dragged a hand over her face. “We were together in college. She was a year ahead of me, but…” I always have had a thing for bookworms, she almost said. Her eyes were the most beautiful color. She listened to me talk for hours about geopolitics, even though she was concentrating in literature. Her laugh was like music. She made me feel like a complete person, for once in my life. “Well, we were happy for a while, but it didn’t last.”

“What happened?”

Kuvira shrugged. “What always happens. Different priorities. Different worldviews. We started to drift apart, and when she graduated, moved back to the Republic, it made sense to break things off.”

Bolin let it rest with that. He could probably tell, even with his frankly pitiful seismic sense, that the topic was making her uncomfortable.

Eventually Amisi returned with more firewood, and Yunxu emerged from the tent, remarking on the odd spiritual fluctuation he’d felt, and Rinzen, the airbender’s handler, joined them for dinner. (The airbender had already been fed, Rinzen assured her.)

She turned in early, declining offers of baijiu from Amisi and Yunxu, but found sleep elusive. Her thoughts were still on Jinora, on her smirk and her eyes and the odd, sad leap her heart had done just before she left. When sleep finally came, she dreamed of Opal and Jinora and the dark, silent chambers below Ba Sing Se where the airbenders were trained.

Guang’s Bluff at noon. It was like one of those bad wuxia movers, where the hero and the villain would face off in the town square, neither speaking. Her team marched to the top of the Bluff at noon precisely, to find the Avatar and her accomplices already waiting.

The Avatar was… not what she was expecting. In any respect. Her hair was choppy and short, four inches at the longest, sticking up in places and flat in others, seemingly at random, as if she’d cut it with a knife and washed it in a stream. She probably had, Kuvira realized, considering her surroundings. Piercings glittered on her nose and ears and eyebrow, small loops of not-metal, if her failed attempts to tear them out of the girl’s face were any indication— or maybe the Avatar was just holding them there. She wore a green tank top and a loose pair of brown pants, tied at her waist with a green sash and tucked into brown leather boots. A pair of liquid iron armbands were coiled around her biceps, over spiraling black tattoos. She looked far shabbier than Kuvira had thought she would, more a migrant worker than the diplomat she had expected. But, Kuvira realized, that was exactly what the Avatar was. A runaway, a vagrant, one of society’s dregs.

Behind her, the band of rabble she’d accumulated were arrayed— though the shaman was conspicuously absent. The hijra was closest, his stance steady but defensive. Next to him was the firebender, looking even mangier than in his mugshot. On the Avatar’s other side was Jinora, holding her staff in a loose, open stance, a calm, somewhat regretful expression on her face. Her tattoo was visible, her hair swept back in a braid but not shaven in the style of the monks. Kuvira wondered, absently, if that held any deeper meaning, but pushed the thought out of the way: she had to focus on the Avatar.

“Kuvira,” the Avatar said after a while. “I’m glad you came.” She glanced at Kuvira’s team, clustered behind her in a tight defensive position. “And you brought friends.” Her gaze landed on Bolin and she smiled broadly, recognition brightening her features. “Oh, Bolin, hi!” Her brow furrowed in honest confusion. “What are you doing here? I thought you were still with the police.”

Kuvira felt rather than heard Bolin’s confusion, and she shifted her heel to send a tremor through the earth. “Suyin sent us to deal with you,” Kuvira said, cutting off any hesitancy the boy could feel. “We follow orders.”

The Avatar’s smile slid off her face like water, replaced with something like amusement. “Are you going to kill me?” she said, one eyebrow raised. The firebender smirked, tilting his head back cockily.

“If we have to,” Kuvira said, definitely not gritting her teeth in irritation. Behind her, Bolin didn’t waver before settling into a practiced stance with Amisi and the airbender. She let her armor stream into her hands, forming two razor-sharp swords; she relished the hijra’s alarm, the firebender’s confusion. “It’s been ages since I had a good fight. Let’s see what you can do.”

The Avatar took a step back. “I’d rather not,” she said, raising her hands in front of her. “I’m done fighting. I’ve spilled enough blood. Toppled enough dictators. You can tell Suyin that she’s safe from my wrath, if that’s what this whole plot was about.” Kuvira didn’t move. She shifted her grip on her swords.

“Kuvira, please, just go,” Jinora said. If anything, though, that steeled her resolve, as she tightened her grip on her swords, transmitting the attack pattern to Amisi. Distract the minions while I deal with the Avatar. Use the airbender to kill her as a last resort.

“Leave in peace,” the Avatar said. “Or we’ll have to subdue you.”

Amisi shifted, sent back acknowledged.

“Oh, please, try,” Kuvira snarled, and lunged, and felt the rest move into action behind her.

The fight was a blur, even as it happened. The Avatar spun out of the way of her opening strike, and even as Bolin kicked up a hail of obsidian shards Jinora struck him in the chest, knocking him away from the airbender. Kuvira had little attention to spare, though— the Avatar was good, very good, better than she had expected, her strikes impossibly strong, and if they were on even footing the Avatar would easily wipe the floor with her, but— she wasn’t attacking, Kuvira realized, and pressed the attack, arced her left sword over-and-down in a sharp slice that had taken more heads than she cared to count, sliced through the Avatar’s shirt and drew a spurt of crimson blood. The Avatar stumbled, hesitated, and Kuvira took the opening, slammed the blunt side of her sword into the Avatar’s head. The Avatar staggered, threw a weak handful of flames, easily blocked with a wave of her armor, and Kuvira raised her sword to bring it down across the Avatar’s neck—

A fist slammed into her back, just below her right shoulder.

The sword in her right hand fell from numb fingers.

Something struck her hard, twice in her left shoulder, and her left sword spun away from her as her grip slackened— she kicked out, hurled the Avatar towards her team— a line of quick, sharp jabs down her spine— “Go!” she shouted— the ground rushed up to meet her—

Kuvira collapsed.

The ground was under her, but she couldn’t feel it.

Chi blocking, her brain supplied, but she was still replaying the image of her sword dropping to the ground, her fingers slackening of their own accord, the sword hitting the dirt with a dull clank, her arm falling, useless, to her side.

Amisi had the Avatar over one shoulder, fleeing with Bolin on a wave of earth. She couldn’t see Yunxu or Rinzen or the airbender. She turned her head, just enough to see the damned hijra move to stand over her, his hands still curled into loose fists.

They got her, she thought. I didn’t fail. And then, disconnected, as she felt herself being moved, chi-blocking. Black fire licked at the edges of her vision. The hijra can chi-block. Information for Suyin.

A hard, ringing slap brought her back to consciousness.

A snarling, tattooed face.

She jerked away, and the face laughed.

Her brain supplied fragments of a dossier: Shaman. Waterbender girl. Healer. Dangerous. Uncertain relationship with the Avatar.

She blinked. Her head hurt. She couldn’t move her arms. She blinked again, tried to bring the world into focus.

“Hey,” the shaman said, and then said something else. Kuvira focused on her face. Dark blue eyes, the tattoos even more freakish looking up close.

Her head snapped to the side from another slap, her vision spinning.

“Answer me when I’m talking to you,” the shaman snapped.

Her mouth felt full of cotton wool, her tongue heavy. Her throat was dry. “Fuck you,” she managed.

“Good enough.”

Kuvira blinked furiously, tried to get things into focus. Her vision was blurry, her limbs like lead, her mind clouded. Everything felt heavy, unwilling to move the way she wanted it to. She was on the ground, kneeling. Hands… behind her. Ropes around her wrists. Tied to a post. In a tent. A dark stretch of star-studded sky outside. Smell of woodsmoke. A fire, somewhere close.

“Tikivik, please don’t do this,” she heard someone say, and another said, “Are you sure you can do this?”

She could move her fingers— not entirely paralyzed— but she couldn't bend. Still chi-blocked, then. Two others in the tent, besides the shaman. Lanky man, black hair, dressed like a woman, and an actual woman— Jinora.

“Oh, I’m doing this,” the shaman said.

“Torturing me?” she mumbled, pulling her face into a sneer. She hoped. “Don’t think the Avatar will like that.”

The shaman grabbed her face, her grip viselike, and forced Kuvira to look her in the eye. “What Korra would like doesn’t matter right now, because she’s gone. You took her.”

Relief washed over her. Amisi and Bolin had made it, at least. She hadn’t failed.

Another slap. Her vision split, merged again. She rolled her head back, smiled lazily. “Give it your best shot, harbor trash,” she said, baring her teeth. The shaman’s face screwed up in rage, and she savored the expression. “I’ve had worse, trust me.”

And the rage slipped off the woman’s face. “No,” she said, a small, unpleasant smile on her face. “No, I don’t think you have.” Kuvira almost scoffed. Physical torture, sensory deprivation, mindbending and more; she’d learned to resist them all. There was nothing, she thought, that the shaman could do that the Dai Li couldn’t.

“Tikivik,” Jinora said, her tone half desperation and half… anger? “Please, don’t do this. Korra won’t be happy. You know how she feels about this.”

“Korra doesn’t get to make decisions right now,” Tikivik said. “And I’m doing this. I just want to make sure she knows what’s happening before I do.”

Kuvira blinked, confused. Managed to focus on Jinora, whose face was pale and pinched and frightened.

“I don’t like this,” Jinora said, wringing her hands.

“Then leave,” said the hijra, a dark, manic intensity in his eyes. (Street rat, chi-blocker, dangerous, her brain supplied. The Avatar’s romantic partner.) “You don’t have to watch.”

The tent was dark, the only light coming from the fire outside, which cast a weak light over the shaman. Her tattoos stretched her face grotesquely. Cricket-mice were singing outside. She probably couldn’t get her legs under her, unless they needed to move her to do whatever it was they were going to do. Not much she could do but wait it out.

“I…” Jinora made eye contact with Kuvira, bit her lip. Her hazel eyes were red, as if she’d been crying. “No. If you’re doing this, I’m staying.”

The shaman shrugged, and returned her focus to Kuvira. “I just want you to know,” she said, “I don’t know what this is going to be like for you. I hope it hurts, but I’m not sure. Maybe you won’t feel a thing.” Kuvira felt a twinge of worry. What was the shaman going to do to her? “Oh, good. You’re scared. That’s very good.” She smiled, pushed Kuvira’s head back, put one thumb on her forehead and the other on her sternum. “I’m going to take away your earthbending.”

What—

The world flared white.

Zaofu.

Home.

The gardens unfolded around her, green plants and water falling over rocks.

“Nice place,” the shaman said. She kicked a rock, sending it tumbling into a pool with a splash.

Kuvira felt like she’d just dropped twenty feet onto unforgiving stone.

“You,” she said, and reached for earthbending that wasn’t there.

“Me,” the shaman said with a tiger-shark-like smile. “You know, they thought I wouldn’t be able to do this. Korra doesn’t have any idea I can do this.”

I don’t care, Kuvira wanted to say, except— energybending was volatile. If she could keep the shaman talking long enough, she would lose her own energy, be corrupted and destroyed as the quote went. So she said, in what she would freely admit was not her best moment of acting, “Why… not?”

“Oh, it’s a recent development. Recent to last night, in fact.”

The sun was overhead. Birds were singing in the trees. In the courtyard beyond, Kuvira could hear Wing and Wei hashing out the rules of power disc. She remembered this day: the day her application for the Zaofu Guard had been accepted. The happiest day of her life. If she turned, Baatar and Junior would be drafting upgrades to the domes in the shade of the moon peach tree. Huan would be in the outer sculpture garden, working on another abstract metal thing that she would tease him for. Opal would be nearby, watching her brother work and practicing her sketches. (Did she want to find them? Or would it hurt too much, to see what she’d lost? Would they hate what she had become, the butcher with blood on her hands?)

“See, Korra’s been acting odd lately, and I wanted to know why.”

Here, her family was still whole, still united. She could see them all, if she just went looking for them. (But did she want to see them, here, in Zaofu? Before the chaos the Avatar had caused forced them to become what they were now? Junior, creator of the Empire’s most feared weapons. Huan, the Empire’s propagandist. Wing and Wei, soldiers-in-training. And Opal— or would it just hurt too much, to see what she’d lost?)

“So I went and talked to Koh the Face Stealer.”

Her thoughts crashed to a halt. What?

“The Face Stealer,” the shaman said, almost conversationally, and that was when Kuvira realized she’d said the last thing out loud. “You know, big scaly spirit, takes the faces of people who show emotion. Who show weakness of spirit.”

“And… the Face Stealer… taught you energybending?” Kuvira wasn’t sure what to do with that. Someone who’d allied with the spirit of oblivion? Could they reason with someone like that?

“Oh, spirits no,” the shaman said, laughing. “No, he took away my waterbending.”

What?

No. Focus. Spiritual strength. Remember who you are.

“And I realized,” the shaman continued, her tone light, “I was never much of a combat waterbender. I was using it for healing. For spirit shit, as Kamal would so eloquently say.” She smiled, as if that should mean something to Kuvira. “I was using water as a conduit for energy manipulation. Waterbending was just training wheels for…” She trailed off, focusing on something Kuvira couldn’t see. “Ah.” She plucked a metal sphere from the air in front of her, examined it idly. “Meteor iron. Fascinating.”

One of Suyin’s meteorites. The first one she’d earthbent. The one she’d used to defend herself when the guard first tried to arrest her for sneaking in, the one Suyin had given her—

“No!” she shouted, grabbing for it, the shaman freak couldn’t have it, it was hers—

The shaman smiled, and let the meteorite fall, and it shattered into nothing against the ground.

The light faded.

“Fuck,” said the hijra.

“Did it work?” said Jinora.

“Yeah,” said the shaman.

There was something missing from inside her. She felt like she’d been hollowed out, like someone had cracked her open and scraped out all of what made her Kuvira. The earth was under her, but she couldn’t feel it. The shaman had stolen it from her. Had stolen everything she was.

“Oh,” said Jinora.

“Damn,” said the hijra.

The earth was gone.

Her stomach rolled, and she couldn’t summon the energy to stop herself from vomiting.

“Egh,” Jinora muttered. She cut Kuvira free and pulled her away from the mess, but Kuvira was beyond caring, because her fucking bending was gone.

Spirits, she wanted to vomit again. She wanted to sink into the earth, to be swallowed and crushed and never resurface. She was dead, she had to be, because who was she, what was she, without her earthbending? This had to be some sort of twisted torment devised by the Face-Stealer, because she couldn’t be Kuvira, she couldn’t, she couldn’t carry the weight of those lives she’d ended, not without the Earth to support her.

Kuvira was the Uniter’s attack dog, the butcher, the executioner, a murderer with more blood on her hands than she could ever hope to atone for, but at least she was an earthbender. At least she was useful. At least she followed orders if nothing else, at least she was bringing peace even if it was at the edge of a sword. But she couldn’t anymore, because Kuvira was an earthbender and she wasn’t an earthbender anymore, the shaman had fucking stolen it—

“Hey.” Jinora snapped her fingers in front of Kuvira’s face. “Look at me.” Kuvira looked up, into Jinora’s hazel eyes. She’d always thought they were so pretty, but now they were just cold and distant. Cold and distant and sad. “We’re gonna get you cleaned up, and then get you some food,” Jinora said, “and then you’re gonna rest, because I’m pretty sure one of us gave you a concussion. And we’ll talk more tomorrow, when you're rested.” Kuvira blinked at her. Why did any of that matter. “You probably feel like the world just ended,” Jinora continued, as if she could read her mind. “But it didn’t. You’re still here, and we all have to deal with that.” And to think, she used to like how blunt Jinora was. “So get up.”

“Why,” Kuvira croaked. Why should she bother eating. Why should she bother living anymore.

“Because your lackeys took Korra,” Jinora said, dragging Kuvira to her feet. “And you’re going to help us get her back.”

Chapter Text

Gaoling paled in comparison to Ba Sing Se. Birthplace of metalbending aside, the town was completely unremarkable. It was the third-largest city in the Empire, sprawling out from the mountains to the sea, but the buildings themselves were unimpressive, bland and uniform and clearly all built at the same time. Any charm the town might have had in the years after the war had been swallowed by the factories that now loomed like gargoyles on the mountain peaks, by the shabby apartments that had crowded around them as housing for the thousands of workers that filled them.

The regional Dai Li outpost was equally bland, a squat sandstone building sandwiched between the Metalbending Academy and Gaoling University for the Bending Arts. But even though it was in one of the most crowded districts of the new city, Bolin noticed, the courtyard outside the building was completely deserted. People gave the building a wide berth, barely acknowledging him and Amisi as they dragged the unconscious Avatar between them. Perks of the Dai Li, he supposed. In-uniform, nobody in their right mind would question you.

The Agent staffing the front desk looked up in surprise when the door opened (when they crashed through the door, more like, dragging an unconscious woman between them), and then went white as a sheet.

“A-agent Amisi!” she said, almost falling over in her haste to stand and salute.

“At ease, Agent Noe,” Amisi said, dropping the Avatar unceremoniously on the entryway floor. “But please tell me the equipment room is stocked.”

It was, in fact, as Kuvira had ordered before they started their ill-fated mission. The tech agent on duty, who Amisi identified as Agent Lao, snapped anti-bending cuffs— a top-secret and very recent invention of the Dai Li— around the Avatar’s wrists and ankles, assuring a skeptical Amisi that they were completely indestructible, guaranteed to stop anyone's bending, even the Avatar.

Once they had seen her safely to a holding cell, Bolin headed for the barracks for a long, hot shower— or that was his intention, because Amisi stopped him before he could. “Listen, Agent,” she said. “I don't care what the techies say. It'll be almost a whole day before we can get a train out here, so I want you watching her. Make sure she doesn't escape. And if she gets out of those cuffs, take care of her.”

He almost protested, almost said I need to sleep, but at Amisi’s stern look he nodded, and settled himself on the cot opposite the Avatar, a pile of rocks next to him for ammunition, and settled in for a long, boring night.

The Avatar hadn’t so much as stirred in her sleep on their frantic three-hour journey to Gaoling, and that didn’t change now that they were somewhere they’d have a chance of putting her down again. She just lay on the bunk in the cell, barely moving, her cuffs glowing a menacing purple. If she hadn’t been breathing, he might have thought she was dead.

She was a year older than him, he knew, but she hadn’t seemed like it when they were fighting. She’d seemed ageless, eternal, practically vibrating with power. Now, though, he could see it. She was frowning in her sleep, but even so her face was soft, youthful. She could be a cousin of his, he thought, if not for the dark skin.

And then she twitched, mumbled something. He melted down the pile of rocks into lava, readied it to strike.

Her blue, blue eyes blinked open. “Bolin?”

The lava crackled into cold stone.

“Bolin, what’s going on?”

She shouldn’t have been surprised. Shouldn’t have said his name with that familiarity, like he was an old friend.

“What—” She sat up, hampered by the handcuffs, casting her gaze wildly around the room. “Bolin, what’s happening? Where are we? Why am I tied up? Did someone— who attacked us?”

He wasn’t sure what to say. “You—” he managed, before the Avatar cut him off.

“I— this is wrong—” the Avatar choked out, and then her eyes rolled back in her head and she slumped back down onto the bed.

Bolin tried to weigh the merits of getting Amisi, but it was hard to hear his thoughts over the hammering of his heart.

Amisi would know what to do, he thought, but could he afford to leave the Avatar alone? What if her recognizing him had been a trick to get him to lower his guard? What if the restraints didn’t work and she was waiting for him to turn his back so she could put a spike through his head?

She stirred again. Call for Amisi, or watch the Avatar? He split the difference and slid the door open, backed out so that he still had eyes on the Avatar. “Amisi!” he bellowed. “Amisi! Help!” And then ducked back into the room, lava at the ready. Amisi crashed through the door soon after, metal at the ready, but the Avatar hadn’t even twitched in her sleep.

“She— she— she woke up,” Bolin said. “And, and she asked me what was wrong. Like she knew me.”

They stared at the sleeping Avatar.

“Well,” Amisi said eventually, “she's not now. My orders still stand. Keep an eye on her. And if she breaks out of those cuffs, kill her.”

The Avatar “woke up” three more times before they managed to leave Gaoling. Each time she asked him what was wrong, what was happening, where she was. Why she was tied up, usually, and who attacked them, and a dozen other questions he didn’t know how to answer. She never attacked him, though, never remembered that he’d played a part in her capture. After the third time, he decided that she was either remarkably dedicated to the trap, or telling the truth. Either way, he figured, his approach wouldn’t change: watch her, and kill her if she attacked.

And then it occurred to him: maybe if he listened to her, he’d be able to learn something about her. As Kuvira often said, intelligence was their most valuable resource. So the next time she woke up, he changed tack.

“Bolin?” By now her voice was familiar, as was the frantic tone.

“Hey, Korra,” he said, feeling strange, and sat down in front of her. As surreptitiously as he could, he tapped out the alert signal to Amisi next door. “Sorry, you were—” He floundered, tried to think of something that she might believe. “You wouldn’t come out of the Avatar State, so we had to put these cuffs on you.”

Her eyes narrowed. “Well, can you take them off? Obviously I’m out of it now.” She held out her hands expectantly.

“Sorry, no can do,” he said, and she scowled. He held up his hands placatingly. (This was the longest conversation they’d ever had.) “What if you lose control again? I don’t want to risk it!” She scowled, but then nodded grudgingly. (So she was afraid of her own power? Or just aware of what she was capable of?) “Look, what’s the last thing you remember?”

Her brow furrowed, and she looked away. (He breathed a sigh of relief, having the weight of that angry gaze shifted away from him.)

“We were in Kwong’s. Having our annual reunion lunch. Me and Asami, you and Opal—”

“Me and Opal?” he squeaked. As far as he knew, nobody had ever learned of that short-lived and ill-advised crush on the Princess. (He hoped, spirits, because it would be his head if anyone did. The Dai Li code made that very clear: no sleeping with assets.)

“Yeah,” the Avatar said, rolling her eyes. “You got back together again last week, just in time, too.” She waved a hand. “Mako was there too, obviously. Flying solo, though.” She smirked. And then she looked around, as if she was just then noticing her surroundings. “Spirits, where are we? And what happened, anyway? Was the restaurant attacked? I knew there were some Empire supporters still running around, but I didn’t think they’d actually attack civilians—”

Whatever trip the Avatar was on, it was wild. She was in love with Asami Sato, he was in an on-again, off-again relationship with the Princess, Mako was still on speaking terms with him, and they were all friends? Spirits, he’d take a hit of whatever cactus juice she’d drank.

“No, we’re, uh. We’re in Gaoling.” He knocked a knuckle against the sandstone floor. All-clear signal. “The restaurant was attacked, yeah, but you and, uh. Asami. Managed to fend ‘em off. The triads,” he added belatedly. “Mad at you.” Hopefully the Avatar didn’t think she was some kind of triad boss or some shit. She nodded— she bought it.

“So,” he continued, “we, uh—” and he spun a wild story for her. The triads joined together to fight the Avatar, and they had to run and seek help from Toph Beifong herself, and all the while he was half thinking what am I doing right now, and half thinking this is the most fun I’ve had in years. Dad had always said he had a flair for the dramatic, but he hadn’t had the chance to really get creative in ages. Since before the Collapse— spirits, before the triads.

Eventually, though, his creativity ran out— or the Avatar’s famous suspicion for authority finally re-emerged. “Wait,” she said, “that doesn’t make sense. You said we were running from the Triads. Why would they chase us past the city limits? Why wouldn’t Lin catch them before then? And why would they run from Su like that?”

Whatever hole she’d been living in, triad hadn’t come to mean the same as bandit. But why wouldn’t Suyin scare off a handful of bandits? She was the Empress. If she was facing down an army’s worth alone, maybe they wouldn’t flinch, but fewer than fifty?

“And the bit about the Misty Palms— it was still run down when Asami and I went there last month. Better than it was during the war, sure, but—” The Avatar looked around again, her eyes narrowing in suspicion. “This isn’t a hostel,” she said finally. “I’m in a prison.” She scowled. “I don’t know what you’ve done with Bolin, obake, but I swear to Raava and Vaatu and every spirit in between—” She made an aborted gesture, a firebending move, but the cuffs crackled and she yelped. “What—” She looked down at her hands, slack horror replacing her rage. “What are these? Why can't I bend?”

Even through the mattress he could feel her heartbeat, racing like a cornered hare-hound.

“Avatar, calm down,” he said, holding out his hands, but she just jerked away from him.

“Get away from me, obake, let me go or I swear I’ll burn this prison straight out of the spirit world—”

Out of options, Bolin ripped a section out of the wall, melting it down to lava (do what needs to be done, Amisi said) and the Avatar paled even further.

“We’re not in the spirit world,” she said, “and you’re not a spirit, and— and I’m… no. This is wrong, this is wrong—” she said, and Bolin shouted and lunged for her, but before he could do anything (and what he would do, he wasn’t sure) her eyes rolled back in her head and she collapsed.

“Damn,” he said, in the silent room.

It was six days on a high-speed train to Ba Sing Se, most of that spent skirting the Si Wong Desert. It had been twelve before the Full Moon Tunnel opened, and even now that was only used by the highest-priority trains.

Like theirs, Bolin thought, as the landscape rushed past.

The Avatar woke up periodically on the journey, but he was never able to trick her into staying for very long. Every time she came to, he would spin some outrageous tale, a fiction almost as bizarre as the movers that were taking the Republic— the Territories, he reminded himself— by storm. A band of pirates attacked us en route to the Fire Nation and we got separated from the others. An acting troupe used dancing koala-bears to hypnotize us into following them across the desert. Malevolent spirits tricked us into chasing our own shadows halfway across the Kingdom. (He tripped over Empire the first few times, but eventually got so used to saying Kingdom that he worried about accidentally blurting it in front of the Empress.)

Usually the Avatar bought his wild stories until he made them too detailed and she spotted some strange inconsistency that he hadn’t known about, something she’d dreamed up— the price of bread in the Territories, or the time it took to travel from Gaoling to Ba Sing Se, or the person in charge of the New Taku (Republic City in her fantasies) Police. Things he couldn’t predict, and she had no way to know, except her own wild delusional fantasies.

The Gaoling outpost was the longest she’d been awake for, but it hadn’t been the most productive. That had been just after lunch on the second day on the train, when he’d tricked her into revealing basically her entire life’s story— but it didn’t line up at all with what he’d heard of the Avatar’s earlier life. Yes, she had been raised in a White Lotus compound, but now the Avatar seemed to think that she’d run away at age seventeen, fallen in with himself and Mako, who were living in Republic City as pro-benders, become a pro-bender herself, murdered a man named Tarrlok (whoever he was), murdered Amon, and then run off with Asami Sato and his brother to start a new life in the Fire Nation.

He tried to use this information again later, casually dropping Sato’s name into conversation, only to have the Avatar sneer in disgust. “Sato, that capitalist hog-monkey? I think if I got within ten feet of her I’d try to choke her with my bare hands.”

Whatever was going on in the Avatar’s head, it was way stranger than he’d thought.

The Full Moon Tunnel was fast approaching. Soon, he would have to face the Empress and explain that her daughter in all but name had been captured, that the Dai Li’s greatest spiritual authority was dead, that their airbender had been lost, and that Rinzen, one of the world’s only master mindbenders, had been killed by the very asset she was meant to control. (Well, Amisi would have to explain. But he would be standing by her side, every bit as responsible as she was.)

He found Amisi standing in the front car, next to the monitor’s station. She was looking out the front windows at the growing line of the Serpent’s Pass on the horizon, her expression unreadable. He hesitated in the doorway, assuming that she would bend him around and out the door if she minded his presence. When nothing happened, he approached, and stood next to her.

“We’ll be home tomorrow,” he said.

“Mmm.”

He hesitated, looking over at her. He always forgot that they were the same height. In his mind, she towered over him. But she wasn’t that much older or taller than him. She’d just been an Agent longer.

“Are you scared?” The question slipped out before he could stop it, and he immediately cringed. Why had he asked such a personal question in such a public place? She didn’t respond, which he expected. But she didn’t frown, either, or give any indication that she’d heard him. He hoped she hadn’t, so he wouldn’t get written up later for undue familiarity.

“You left the Avatar unguarded,” she said eventually. “Was that wise?”

Bolin shrugged. “She can’t bend with those cuffs. I know you’re suspicious of what the techies say, but she’s not going anywhere. Trust me. I’ve seen her try.” She hadn’t entered the Avatar State, that was true, but he didn’t think she was capable at this point.

“Hmm,” was her only response.

In the window, the Serpent’s Pass was taking shape, its crags and dips one of the last vestiges of the old terrain. The old Earth Kings had thought the Serpent would exact revenge if they tampered with its Pass, but the Empress had no time for that sort of nonsense— but it was still low on her list of priorities. Finding and eliminating the Serpents in the lakes had been a high priority, but that had been dealt with a while ago. Now the West Lake was being farmed for its salt, the East for power from its recently-discovered geothermal vents. Soon, Bolin figured, Suyin would order construction of a causeway between the lakes, demolishing the old Pass and finally giving Ba Sing Se a stable connection to the western half of the Empire.

“I suppose the Avatar will keep long enough for a drink, then.” Amisi turned without looking at him, only stopping in the door when he didn’t immediately follow. “Come on, Agent.”

He followed dutifully, through the second and third cars (equipment testing and storage) and into the lounge in the fourth. Amisi examined the glass bottles that lined one wall, selected one (even though they all looked the same to him), and drew two metal-wrapped glasses to her with a gesture.

“Do you drink whiskey, Bolin?” she said, setting the bottle and glasses on the nearest table.

“Uh. I’m really more of a beer guy, honestly,” he said, thrown off by the familiarity. She never addressed anyone— except Yunxu, maybe— by their first names alone. It was always Agent or Agent Bolin if she needed to be specific. “Can’t really afford much of the good stuff, so I didn’t develop a taste for it. I've had it a few times but it all just tastes like getting hit with a stun baton.” He sat. This was starting to feel like another initiation ritual he’d missed, another crash-course in being a proper agent of the Dai Li.

“Shame,” Amisi said. Carefully, deliberately, she poured a measure of alcohol into each glass, and slid one across the table to him with metalbending. “Single-malt barrel-aged Gaoling whiskey. Thirty years old. Only a hundred bottles made, I’m told.”

He looked down into the unassuming brown liquid, suddenly apprehensive. This was almost definitely some sort of initiation ceremony. He prepared himself for the first, searing gulp, but found the glass resisting.

“Don’t gulp it,” Amisi said sternly. “Sip it.”

He took a sip, gingerly, and choked. It felt like he’d inhaled smoke, the alcohol burning down his throat and making his eyes water. He was careful to put the glass down gently, but made a show of choking and coughing anyway. (Well, half of it was a show. Half of it was real.)

When he’d finished, she was looking at him, her expression caught somewhere between unimpressed and amused. “Now, take another sip, but don’t swallow immediately. Let it sit in your mouth for a second, notice how it feels. Then when you swallow, notice what you’re tasting, how long the flavors stick around.”

He took another sip. The fiery feeling subsided a little bit, and he tasted… vanilla? Honey? Woodsmoke? He suggested these, and Amisi smiled faintly. “Very good,” she said. “You’re a quick study. Gaoling tends to be smokier than what’s produced in the Outer Ring. It’s about how it’s made, and where the barley’s grown. This one’s got vanilla and honey, but also some caramel and—” she took sip— “mm. Dark cherries.”

Bolin took another drink, noticed the flavors she’d mentioned. “It’s… good,” Bolin said, surprised to find that he really did enjoy it.

Amisi smiled, took another long drink, and said nothing.

They drank in silence, Bolin finishing more than half his glass in that time. Eventually, though, Amisi set down her glass. “So. You asked me if I was scared.”

Bolin almost fumbled the glass, halfway to his lips, but found it floating. “Please don’t spill any of this, Bolin. It’s rather hard to come by.” He nodded and tightened his grip on the glass, and she let it go.

“To answer you. I’m not scared. But…” she sighed. “The Empress is wise, make no mistake.” As if that was ever in question. “And she has sacrificed so much for this nation. But she is… still human.”

Of course, Bolin wanted to say, what else would she be, but then he thought about it, took the time to process what that meant. Suyin was a human. She was a person just like him, and she had emotions just like him. What he’d felt when Mako— the last time they’d talked, it was probably what she would feel, once she got the news, only a million times worse.

“I want to say I’m not afraid,” Amisi said eventually, and Bolin carefully didn’t react to the hint of a tremor in her voice. “But I can’t, not with complete honesty. Yes, we fulfilled the mission. Yes, we captured the Avatar. But we lost Kuvira. Her daughter. Our leader. My friend.” She sighed. “I want to believe that the Empress won’t hold it against us. That she will see the strategic gain. But… I also believe that losing a child is—” her voice cracked with something close to grief— “is hard. And I don’t know what Suyin will do.” She drained the last of her whiskey. “Whatever she does, though,” Amisi said firmly, “I believe it will be the just action.”

He lingered over the dregs of his drink, processing this, marshalling his thoughts, long enough that Amisi poured herself another.

“The Avatar… I don’t think she’s…” He hesitated, trying to get his words in order. Even without the alcohol, he would’ve had trouble explaining it. Maybe the whiskey would give him the confidence he needed to explain whatever was going on. Amisi was looking at him, her eyebrows lifted just a little, as if to say, go on. He gulped down the rest of his drink, and launched into it before he could hesitate too much.

“I think she might be insane. Like, actually, undeniably, not-in-this-world insane. She wakes up and thinks we’re best friends, and then the next minute she remembers we’re enemies. Once she told me her whole life story, and it’s almost the exact opposite of what’s in her dossier. She forgets what she’s told me— really, I don’t think she’s remembered we’ve talked once. Every time she wakes up, it’s like she’s a different person. And I don’t think she’s faking it.”

Amisi blinked several times, processing the information. Then she reached over and poured him another measure of the whiskey.

“If you ignore everything else I’ve ever said, listen when I tell you this,” she said. “Don’t look above your rank.” He nodded slowly. She looked him hard in the eye. “Whatever is going on in the Avatar’s head, it is above your rank. That’s mindbender stuff, Yunxu stuff. Spirit shit.” She took a fortifying gulp, and he didn’t mention how her voice broke over Yunxu’s name. “It’s not on us. Whoever she thinks she is, whatever she thinks is happening, it’s not our job. We got her here. We lost—” her voice cracked, and she took another quick gulp of the whiskey, steeling herself. “Spirits, we lost so much to get her. I don’t care if she thinks she’s the queen of the moon— we did our job. That’s all that matters.”

He took another sip of his own whiskey, and nodded.

The train pulled into Outer West Station just before noon the next day, and a thunderstorm followed. They had been travelling in secret, and they had already secured the Avatar in a metal box that they quickly packed into a heavily-armored van, but somehow word had spread. As their convoy— the prison van, his and Amisi’s own lighter armored car, and a small escort of Dai Li on komodo-rhinos and in open-topped cars— lurched away from the station, a small crowd followed, their faces grave and unreadable in the downpour.

Their movement, already slowed by the torrential rain, was brought almost to a standstill by the ever-growing mass of people around them. Rain came down in sheets and thunder crashed every other second, but still the crowd grew. The Agents’ calls to move back were lost under the thunder and the people pushed ever closer, pressing against the open cars and getting in the way of the lead vehicle until two Agents had to get out and start building physical barriers.

“What's going on?” Bolin muttered, watching the crowd. It was hard to tell with the storm deafening them all, but as he watched their faces they only stared back at him, gazes grim and determined, not speaking to one another. With barriers up the convoy made better time, but they could only move so fast. The crowd still easily kept pace with them, and even from the center, behind reinforced steel and glass and flanked by Agents, Bolin could feel the tension in the air.

Did they know who they were transporting? Were they planning to storm the convoy? Could they keep the Avatar safe if what looked like half the city converged on them? Amisi’s expression was grave, like a coiled rat-viper prepared to strike at any moment. The Agents outside looked similar, even if they were soaked through. Something was going to snap soon, Bolin could feel.

The Middle Wall loomed suddenly, emerging from the haze like a mountain. The opening, even redesigned for cars, could only admit two at a time, so they had to reorganize the entire convoy to get the Avatar through first, followed by a few open cars, and then—

“Death to the Empress!” someone screamed, their voice carrying over the rain. “Long live Avatar Korra!” Thunder crashed and lightning exploded around them, and he blinked purple spots out of his vision in time to see Amisi tear off the car door and hurl it, in a foot-long spike of steel, directly at the speaker. A woman, a little older than him, her gray eyes wide with shock as the metal hit her in the chest.

The crowd roared, and thunder crashed again around them, and he could barely make out the shapes as people even as they pressed forward and the other Agents fortified the barriers, as the Avatar’s car crawled through the gates, as rocks and trash and metal started to fly through the air—

Rain engulfed them, temporarily blinding him, as Amisi tore open the roof of the car. “Lava trench! Now!” she bellowed, and without thinking he grounded himself, pushed past the snarling faces, reached down into the earth below and ripped open a gash four feet wide and ten feet long on either side of the convoy. A cloud of rain-turned-steam exploded up from it, and the crowd’s shouts of “Down with the Empire! Long live the Avatar!” turned to screams, and even those were almost lost in the thunder.

The lava stained the mist a terrible red, bodies bleeding and broken on the barriers and half-charred in the lava, and the lava hissed and spat at him as he fought to keep it liquid in the freezing downpour, and lightning flashed—

Part of the trench crackled into stone.

Thunder roared and the lava turned liquid again, back under his control, and he dragged the trench around behind the mounted Agents, and he felt the car under him lurch back into motion, and inch by inch they passed through the gate, until finally they were through, the crowd a screaming mass behind them.

He collapsed onto the leather seat. Amisi was barking orders, and rain pelted his face, but he hardly noticed it. There was a buzzing in his ears, drowning out all other sound. Another lavabender? Or just his own faulty control? Avatar sympathizers in his own city, so soon after the Avatar’s devastation? Red Lotus infiltrators? How many people— good, law-abiding citizens— had he just killed with that lava? His mind was frozen on the image of that first woman, the peasant, her face frozen in shock as Amisi killed her.

The rain stopped.

Bolin blinked water out of his eyes, and looked up: Amisi had closed the roof. Water still ran down the inside walls of the car, but the worst of it was over.

“Bolin,” she said, and just like that sound rushed back.

The crowd was still screaming from the other side of the wall. Rain drummed on the roof, and thunder rolled again. Farther away, though, and quieter. His heartbeat was pounding in his ears, and his breathing was ragged. They were alone except for two bike-mounted Agents and the prison van, making steady progress towards Dai Li headquarters.

“Agent, talk to me. Are you OK?”

He focused on the sound of her voice. “I’ll keep, Cap’n,” he mumbled, half delirious. His mind was replaying the image of the woman dying, again and again. Her face, frozen in shock. Blood spreading over her threadbare shirt. The metal spear sticking out of her chest like some giant thorn.

“You did good,” Amisi said, and pressed a warm hand to his back. His uniform was soaked, he noticed, and shivered. “Breathe, Bolin,” she said. “It’s over.”

He tried, he really did.

They traveled into the heart of the city in grim silence. The rain pattered around them, and the car’s tires hissed on the pavement, and he told himself, They were rebels. They deserved it. They want chaos. I was keeping the city safe. By the time the familiar, imposing outline of the Xiyuan started to take shape in the mist, the rain had stopped, and he’d managed to scrape together a little bit of calm.

But his calm didn't last long. Because there in the courtyard, flanked by a dozen elite Metal Guards, stood the Empress.

Chapter Text

Suyin, First Empress of Zhongguo, greeted the motorcade personally in Xiyuan Square, flanked by her Imperial Guards, the sword that had killed Yugo the Butcher strapped to her back. She kept her glare cool but obviously displeased. She had received word of the mission’s results five days ago, and she had spent those days processing her fear, refining it, purifying it, forging it into something she could use.

The motorcade stopped, and from the center-rear car emerged the two idiots who she was here to see.

“Agent Amisi, Agent Bolin,” she said, nodding. They knelt in front of her. She looked them over. The only sound in the courtyard was the creak of the wind in the trees, the drip of water, and the occasional low rumble of distant thunder as the storm faded. Bolin, who looked more like a sideshow koala-monkey caught out in the rain than a fully-trained Agent of the Dai Li, started to tremble. Amisi said nothing, and her heart rate stayed even, but it was the artificial steadiness of an agent holding the iron in their blood. She was probably even more terrified than Bolin— she’d been in the game longer, knew how much she stood to lose besides her life. How long, she wondered, would it take for one of them to start crying? Not long for the kid, probably.

But she had more important things to do than stand in a courtyard waiting for incompetent Dai Li to express proper dismay at their failures. So finally, she said, “Would you like to explain to me, Agents, why there is a riot currently spreading through the entire Lower Ring?”

Amisi answered before Bolin could even open his mouth. “Our apologies, Empress. The people were…” She cleared her throat. “Not happy to see the Avatar in our custody.”

“I see. And can you explain why you allowed the crowd to grow to critical mass?” She let her irritation slip through, just a little. It just never got old, even after thirty years of statecraft, watching people’s faces go white with terror.

“Again, Empress, I apologize,” Amisi said. “I… did not think that there was sufficient threat to warrant breaking up the crowd, especially with the adverse weather conditions.”

Agni, how did this one make it past basic, much less rise through the ranks to become one of the most senior Dai Li? “I see,” she said coolly. “If the riot is really as insignificant as you seemed to have anticipated, surely you won’t mind supervising the pacification of the Lower Ring yourself.”

“Yes, Empress. Of course not, Empress,” Amisi said, her head still bowed.

There was an awkward pause. Amisi didn’t seem to realize that she had just been dismissed. Suyin raised one eyebrow and circled her finger, turning the Agent toward the Xiyuan gate. “You're dismissed, Agent,” she said. “We will discuss your other failures later.”

Her face burning, Amisi turned to the motorcade and began barking orders.

A flick of her wrist, and Suyin dragged a strip of metal off of the nearest car and sealed it over Amisi’s mouth. “I said you were dismissed. Go to the Lower Ring immediately. Leave the motorcade and the Avatar to me.”

She got the feeling that Amisi’s jaw would have dropped, had it been able. Suyin peeled off the metal. “Y-yes, Empress,” Amisi said, and hesitated only another second before leaving the square on foot.

She turned to Bolin, who was still kneeling, practically cowering at her feet. Why had Kuvira chosen this child? A lavabender he might be, but he was clearly incapable of independent thought, cowering at her feet like some sort of beaten dog. And at the same time, she felt the Avatar stir inside the prison truck. Maybe she would try to escape. That would be entertaining.

She turned her attention back to the Agent cowering in front of her. “Agent Bolin,” she said. He seemed to quail even more under her gaze, if that was possible. “Would you like to explain how Agent Amisi and you are the only remaining members of a task force that composed what my daughter thought were the best and brightest Agents the Dai Li had to offer?”

“I— I— we—” He swallowed, his heart pounding. “One of the Avatar’s accomplices is a chi-blocker, and she disabled Kuvira before Kuvira could capture the Avatar. Kuvira only had time to get the Avatar clear of the fight, and to let us escape.” He cleared his throat. “Yunxu was not— not a good combat bender.” That wasn’t why they’d taken him, of course, and she knew it. “And the airbender— he managed to escape.” All right, that she hadn’t seen coming. Rinzen was the very best, and nobody had ever broken her hold.

“And that’s what happened to Rinzen, then?” That being, of course, the airbender. Airbender training was brutal, even by Dai Li standards, and most were so shattered by the process that they weren’t much use, really only good for training the green recruits against. The turnover rate was high enough that she would consider revising training—except that in the handful that survived, the results spoke for themselves, and Kuvira had a knack for picking out the diamonds in the rough. Rinzen had always been enough to keep the strong ones in line, but if one had managed to slip her hold, then it didn’t take much imagination to see what their next act would be.

“Y-yeah.” Bolin winced. “Um. Yes, Empress. The, uh, the airbender, he killed her. I saw. As we were, uh, escaping.”

Speaking of escaping, she could feel the Avatar testing the strength of the metal. Well, let her try. She was in the Xiyuan now. Not even the Avatar could escape from there.

“And how, precisely, did you and Amisi escape, when my daughter was captured?”

Bolin winced. “I, uh. I’m not— not sure, really, the fight was kind of a blur, and—”

The truck groaned and shook with the force of the Avatar’s first punch. Impressive, Suyin thought. The guards around her tensed, their hands on their stun prods.

“Tarrlok!” the girl bellowed. “Tarrlok, let me out of here, I’m gonna rip your guts out and make you eat them when I get out of here—”

None of that was what Suyin was expecting. (Tarrlok; the name was familiar. A minor triad boss in the Lower Ring. An ex-waterbender who fled Republic City before the Avatar started returning bending. But why, she wondered, would the Avatar have a grudge against someone so insignificant?)

Bolin cringed. She raised one eyebrow. “Care to explain this, Agent?”

“Uh.” Bolin’s face had lost any remaining color it might have had. “I really don’t think I can, Your Majesty.”

Intriguing. Well— she gestured to the guards behind her, who took up defensive stances. “Let’s see what the Avatar has to say for herself.” She waited until she could feel the girl winding up for another punch, and wrenched the metal of the lock, and the back of the truck sprang open.

The girl tumbled out, her hands and feet bound with the anti-bending cuffs Junior had been developing. She executed a perfect kip-up, as if she wasn’t wearing heavy chains, and snarled, “Tarrlok, show your slimy weasel-rat face or I swear to La I’m gonna—” She saw Bolin, and froze. “Bo? What’re you doing here?”

“We, uh, um. I mean, Empress, I just—” Bolin continued to stammer in the background, but Suyin focused her attention on the girl, whose posture and expression had done a complete about-face— she’d dropped into a loose, comfortable stance, her expression open and cheerful.

“How do you know Agent Bolin, Avatar?” she said coolly.

“Agent?” The Avatar laughed. “Spirits, Bo, what kind of mover are we in now? I thought you had to sign a waiver to be in ‘em, but I’m not objecting!” She grinned at Suyin. “Anything for the fans, am I right?”

So one second the Avatar thought she was fighting a mob boss; the next she knew Bolin and thought they were making movers. “I don’t have time for this,” she said, and signaled the guards around her. One of them moved to jab the Avatar in the back with a stun prod, but she ducked out of the way.

“Whoa!” She shouted, tangling the guard— Agent Meiling— in her chains and nearly toppling over herself before she somehow untangled herself with a complicated twist, leaving the Agent sprawling on the ground and the Avatar standing. “Okay, no fight choreography, I’ll improvise.” The smile on her face made Suyin suspect she wasn’t entirely there, before she realized that the Avatar had just single-handedly taken down three guards and was squaring off against a fourth and fifth.

Spirits, the incompetence—

“Enough,” she snapped, and jerked her hand, drawing a shell of earth up around the girl.

The Avatar blinked, wriggling in her prison. “Hey, what— what’s going on? This isn’t… spirits. This isn’t a mover set. You’re not— you’re— Su, I didn’t recognize you— what’s with the armor? And the robes, and the, the, the face? Why are you attacking me? What’s going on?” Putting aside the nickname, the Avatar’s questions made no sense. They’d never met in her life, never so much as seen each other across a room, and the girl was acting as if they were the best of friends.

“And now she panics,” Bolin muttered, and Suyin watched in fascination as he was proven right. The Avatar continued to babble nonsense questions, her thrashing becoming more and more desperate, and then— “She blacks out,” Bolin said, gesturing to the Avatar, who had indeed slumped over, unconscious.

The courtyard was silent. Even the dripping rainwater seemed to hold still.

“Agent Bolin,” Suyin said, still watching the Avatar. “What in Koh’s name was that?”

“I don’t know that I can explain it, Empress,” he said, not meeting her gaze. He focused on the unconscious Avatar instead. “She’s been acting like that since we captured her in Bailong.”

Which reminded her. “Ah, yes, Bailong. Insignificant fishing village on the southern peninsula, and currently the center of the largest rebellion since the end of reunification, the so-called capital of the Free Territory of the Red Lotus.” She fixed him with a steely glare. “Care to explain that, Agent?”

He blinked. “With all due respect, Empress, we’ve been on a train for the past five days, so we haven’t heard any news. I can’t explain what I know nothing about, and what I probably have nothing to do with.”

Look at that! Some semblance of self-respect. Still.

“Nothing to do with.” She snorted. “Then tell me why the Avatar’s accomplices are currently holding my daughter hostage as a bargaining chip in their uprising.” His heartbeat lurched with something alarmingly close to hope.

“She’s—” he muttered, his eyes wide, and he looked up at her, looked her directly in the eye. “Empress, I know the mission wasn’t a resounding success, but I promise— give Agent Amisi and me a chance to settle this rebellion. We’ll take the army and crush the rebels, and we’ll get Kuvira back.”

Wonders never ceased. A spine. Shock of the day, really.

The shame of it was that Amisi really was the best military tactician in the senior Dai Li. Outside of her daughter, of course. She just couldn't handle crowds for shit. And Bolin, looking up at her with his eyes full of hope and certainty, made her pause.

The Red Lotus wouldn’t hesitate to kill Kuvira, she was sure, but they would broadcast the killing as far and wide as they could. If Kuvira's kidnapping was the opening gambit in some broader conflict, then no news was the best they could hope for. Kuvira’s mission hadn’t been a total failure— after all, they did have the Avatar— but now that it was accomplished, Suyin found the price higher than she could accept. She had the Avatar, but the enemy had her daughter. She had realized, in the moments after the telegram reached her, that there was no price too high, no loss of life too great to compare to having Kuvira back. If they failed, if retrieving her daughter cost her the Dai Li's best tactician and a lavabender, well—she suspected she could live with that.

“I will… consider it,” she said.

The motorcade dissipated quickly after that, Agents either returning to the Lower Ring to help with the riot or to their barracks. She wanted as many agents on hand in case the Avatar decided to attempt another breakout. The Avatar, meanwhile, was taken to a holding cell, unconscious and handcuffed to the table. Suyin and Bolin watching from the other, darkened side of the glass.

“Permission to speak freely, Empress?” he said, hesitantly. Suyin, tired of the formality, gave it with a wave of her hand. Bolin cleared his throat. “What are you going to do with her?”

She cut a glance at the junior Agent. If her daughter had chosen him for the mission, she must have been sure of his loyalty, but there was something dangerously like worry in his tone.

“Concerned for your new friend, Agent?”

He flinched. “No, Empress. Er, your majesty. Um. Only… the people already rioted over seeing her. They know she’s here. What’s going to stop them, if they want her out?”

She gave him a Look. The one that could quail even Baatar. And to Bolin's credit, he only cringed a moderate amount.

“Are you telling me, Agent Bolin, that you and your fellow agents of the Dai Li can’t handle a horde of untrained peasants?”

He swallowed. “No, Empress. Of course we can—” he hesitated “—handle them.”

He said it, but the fear and doubt in his shoulders didn't go away. “You don’t want to hurt civilians, and that’s a good thing.” She put a hand on his shoulder, and he seemed startled. “But the safety and security of the Empire comes first, Bolin.”

“Of course, Empress,” he said, meeting her gaze. “Always.” His eyes were bright, clear jade, so much like Lin’s. So much like Opal’s.

She imagined her husband rolling his eyes fondly. Always picking up strays, he might say.

And then someone knocked on the door, and the moment was broken. Reports were made, orders were given. She sent Bolin to the barracks with orders to rest, and summoned guards to take the girl to the deep cells.

On the other side of the glass, the Avatar slept. If Suyin looked at her in just the right way, she could almost see Kuvira in the girl’s outline. Her stocky frame, her lean muscles. The sharp, militaristic haircut. Defiance, she imagined. And pride.

Her heart ached. Three days she’d had to bury the feelings. But the earth always turned up buried things in the end.

“I have you,” Suyin murmured to the sleeping girl. “Now, I have to get my daughter back.”

In retrospect, that was the point where it all went wrong.

Chapter Text

The truth is in the prologue. Death to the romantic fool, to the expert in solitary confinement. We all arrive by different streets, by unequal languages, at Silence.

Hardly the strangest thing the Avatar had spouted after waking. She was under constant guard, and if she woke for more than five minutes there were Dai Li psychologists on standby to speak with her, to tease out what information they could from the girl’s clearly-addled mind. Suyin tapped her pen on her desk, considering. The truth is in the prologue. A warning that one’s birth could not be escaped? Suyin had proven that wrong well enough. Zuko had hardly ever been a father, even before she—

“Empress!” A breathless page burst through the door. “Apologies for the intrusion, Empress, but— the Avatar spoke again.” Suyin raised one eyebrow, and the page hesitated. “She said…” He bit his lip. “She said, ‘I want to speak with Suyin.’”

Ten minutes later, in front of the girl’s cell, Suyin paused to collect herself. This was the first time the girl had asked for her by name. The first time she had given any indication that she knew where she was. But the Dai Li assured her that the anti-bending cuffs were behaving exactly as expected, and that the girl had made no attempts to escape. Suyin took a deep breath, pushed aside the door in a single smooth movement, and entered the cell.

The Avatar looked up, an expression of mild interest on her face. “Oh, Suyin. Nice to see you,” she said, in a tone that was more suited to greeting an old friend than her enemy and captor. “I’d offer a chair but— well.” She shook her wrists, making the cuffs jangle. “Have to say, I’m not impressed with your treatment of political prisoners. I guess it shouldn’t surprise me, but… hope springs eternal, as they say.”

Suyin suppressed a wince at the strangeness of those words. The guards had warned her, but that didn’t fully prepare her for the feeling, the skin-crawling alienness of the sounds. She pushed past the feeling, and raised a chair for herself from the earth of the prison cell.

“You wanted to talk to me?” she said, monitoring the girl’s heartbeat. The cell’s bunk was metal, and the girl had her feet helpfully planted on the floor. Yet the only read Suyin could get on her suggested complete calm.

“Yeah,” the girl said. “I just got back from something of an extended… oh, let’s call it a vision quest. I had some time to think, see, to evaluate my priorities. To pick a direction. And I learned so much, Su Beifong.”

Suyin raised one eyebrow. “You’ll have to do better than that if you want to startle me,” she said. “My family is something of an open secret.” And even so, she’d taken steps to mitigate her unfortunate parentage.

“Oh, I know. I just wanted to warn you. You can’t hold me here forever. You won’t, in fact. I’ve seen the future, and it works.”

Suyin did twitch at that, as much at the girl’s smug overconfidence as the alien words. “Brave words, from someone in a prison cell.”

The girl gave a soft laugh. “Do you want to know a secret?” Her expression turned conspiratorial, and she gestured for Suyin to come closer. Suyin didn’t, of course, she was no idiot, but she did indicate that she should continue. The girl’s smirk broke into a wide, almost manic grin, and her eyes suddenly flared blue-white. “I’m better than you.”

Suyin reeled back, away from the Avatar State and the imminent—

Nothing had happened. The girl was holding her stomach, her shoulders shaking in silent laughter. She had done nothing. The lights were all a show. A trick.

“Clever,” Suyin growled, standing. “But you’re still in those handcuffs, so I think it’s clear which one of us is really better.” She stormed out of the cell, not waiting for a response.

She should have killed the Avatar when she had the chance. That was all Suyin could think, the lone thought circling madly in her mind, like a caged and rabid wolf-weasel.

“Zhu Li?” she called. Her assistant appeared in the doorway, and blanched. Well, most people did have that reaction to seeing a dead body. And Warden Shun was quite clearly dead, his blood already soaking into the fine carpet of her office, dripping loudly from the sword on her arm.

“E-Empress?” she said, badly hiding the fear in her voice.

“Warden Shun had a bit of an accident,” Suyin said. She flicked the blood off of her sword and returned the metal to its normal shape as her pauldrons. “I want the Dai Li on high alert. City guard, too.” She swayed on her feet, vertigo momentarily overtaking her.

“Of course, Empress,” Zhu Li said, her usual unflappable mask in place once more. “Ah— Agents Amisi and Bolin are here to see you.”

“Send them in,” Suyin said. The harsh, metallic stench of blood filled her nose. “And get a cleaner in here.”

“Of course, Empress,” her assistant said again, and departed.

Amisi entered her office, Bolin shadowing her, wary expressions on both of their faces.

“Agents. Thank you for coming,” Suyin said.

“Of course, Empress,” Amisi said, deliberately not looking at the dead body. “How can we be of service?”

Suyin resisted the urge to laugh. As if anything could help her right now. “The Avatar has escaped,” she said.

The steady drip drip of the warden’s blood was the only sound in the room.

“What do you mean, escaped?” Bolin said after a long pause, his face ashen.

Suyin didn’t bother to answer that.

“How?” Amisi said, her expression caught somewhere between terrified and determined.

“One of the guards let her out. This moron—” she gestured at the dead warden— “evidently let a Red Lotus into his ranks.” She fell heavily into her chair and scrubbed a hand over her face. Through the floor, she could feel Amisi’s shock. “He waited three days to tell me. Apparently they thought that they could recapture her on their own and avoid any drama.”

“I’ll have our spiritual experts look for her,” Amisi said firmly. “We’ll close the Walls, set up a grid-pattern search. We’ll find her, Your Majesty.”

Now that was more like the top agent Kuvira used to talk about. “Good. Amisi, you’re in charge of this. I want a full lockdown. Checkpoints at every major intersection. Seismic detectors in case she tries to tunnel out. Coordinate with the City Guard if you need more manpower.” Amisi nodded. “You’ve got my full support in whatever you need to do. I trust your judgment.” Don’t make me regret it, she didn’t need to add.

Amisi’s face went pale, but she nodded, her jaw set in a firm line, and saluted sharply. “I won’t let you down, Empress.” She turned toward the door. “Come on, Agent,” she said to Bolin, but Suyin cut her off.

“I’d actually like to speak with Bolin privately, if you don’t mind.”

“Oh. Ah, of course, Your Majesty,” Amisi said, and took that as her cue to leave.

Of course, she lingered just outside the doorway, of sight but easily within earshot. Why she thought Suyin wouldn’t notice was a mystery, but Amisi hadn’t proven to be the wisest of agents.

“Close the door, please,” Suyin said. Bolin stepped gingerly over the corpse still in the middle of the room, and closed the door with a click. Suyin let herself droop, her head in one hand. “I’m sorry, Bolin. I just…”

“I get it,” he said, his tone something she couldn’t quite place. “They still have Kuvira, and we’ve temporarily lost our best bargaining chip,” he said, taking a seat in front of her desk. And then she realized the odd tone: compassion. She nodded, unable to think of anything to say.

“You said someone let her out,” Bolin said hesitantly. “Do we know anything more than that?”

Suyin sighed heavily, and passed him the incident report the warden had given her. “She escaped sometime in the early morning; one of her normal guards called out sick, so they rotated in someone who had only been on staff for three months.” By all accounts an upstanding citizen from the middle ring; daughter of a tradesman and a teacher, altogether unremarkable. No indications that she had been corrupted, or that she had given a false identity.

Bolin studied the file, a frown on his face. “They took the anti-bending cuffs with them,” he said after a while. “It takes a metalbender to remove them.” He looked up at her. “What are the odds they’ve got one with them?”

Suyin shrugged. “We conscript everyone who’s displayed an ability to metalbend, but there’s always a slight chance one slipped through the cracks.”

He nodded, frowning at the dossier. “Can I take this with me? Show Amisi? I know you don’t— well—”

“She’s a perfectly serviceable agent,” Suyin said, although that was about all that she had to say in the woman’s favor. “It would be foolish to keep information from my agents. So yes, you can show Agent Amisi. Try not to let the news spread too far, though.”

Bolin nodded again, standing. “I’ll get to work on this.” He gave her a smile that, she realized after a moment, was meant to be reassuring. “We’ll get her back. And we’ll get Kuvira. I’m sure of it.”

She wondered, as he left, where that certainty came from. Because all she was sure of was that she should have killed the Avatar when she had the chance.

The girl was a thrice-damned ghost. Every day brought half a dozen Avatar sightings, from every corner of the city. None of them ever panned out. The bounty on her head was considerable, but either the people of Ba Sing Se were dedicated to her and more principled than she had realized, or (far more likely) the Avatar was very good at hiding.

As they swept through the city, the Dai Li were turning up more Red Lotus agents than any of them had expected. The City Guard was efficiently interrogating and sorting people, but they had filled three prisons already, and Suyin was briefly thankful for her otherwise lackluster predecessor’s foresight in revitalizing the prison system. She had no idea what she would do with all of them otherwise.

Amisi was performing her search admirably, though, and the Dai Li’s spiritual advisors assured her that not only was the Avatar still in the city, but that they were narrowing down her location every day.

“It’s only a matter of time, love,” Baatar assured her one night, as he stood in the doorway of her study. She was seated at her desk, long after she should have been asleep, flipping through a stack of reports. There was something off about them, a slight inconsistency in the timelines. Within the bounds of human error, but uncommon in her organization.

He approached, and gently tugged the files out of her grip. “They’ll be there tomorrow morning,” he said, pressing a kiss to her cheek. “You’re running yourself ragged. You need your rest.”

Suyin sighed. “I suppose.”

A map hung on the wall above the desk, the city divided up into neat, square precincts. A full lockdown meant no travel between precincts, and as the reports came in with no sightings of the Avatar, Suyin carefully crossed out square after square, reallocating the cleared precincts’ officers to the uncleared ones. A constantly-tightening noose around the Avatar’s neck

There were only a few left. Baatar was right. Only a matter of time.

“Lower Ring,” Bolin gasped, stumbling into her executive office. “We— Puyi Street Fishmarket.”

Suyin didn’t need to ask for clarification. There was only one thing that would put Bolin in such a state of agitation.

When she arrived at the fishmarket, a squat ugly warehouse half a block from the waterfront, most of the southern wall had collapsed, the southeastern corner was on fire, and there were a dozen or so small figures on the northern edge of the roof, in dark Dai Li greens, fighting a single constantly-moving figure. Suyin ripped the cable-spool off of a nearby officer’s armor, shoddily welded it to her own, and launched herself towards the Avatar.

She landed in a roll and came out of it with a jab of sharpened steel, which the Avatar deflected with an easy sweep of air, the gust pushing Suyin back a half dozen paces. She was wearing a truly hideous assortment of clothes— green top, dark red trousers, several tattered jackets of increasing size, everything fitted horribly— but she looked, and felt, more centered than ever.

Her eyes narrowed as she seemed to recognize Suyin, at the same time easily slapping away a handful of fire thrown by one of the other combatants. “I think,” she called, “this is where I’ll take my leave.”

In unison, every officer on the roof hurled chains to snare her— except one, who performed a complicated twisting motion— the chains just tangled into one another, half a foot away from the Avatar— and there was a flash—

And she was gone.

Suyin stared at the traitor agent. Dai Li greens. One of her own. She looked utterly unrepentant. “Deal with her,” Suyin said to the others, and left.

When she reconvened with Bolin on the ground, his expression was grim. “I just got word from the fifty-fifth street checkpoint,” he said. Three blocks over, Suyin thought. One of the major thoroughfares of the Lower Ring. “The fifty-sixth and fifty-seventh aren’t reporting in.”

It had been a trap, Suyin thought, watching the firemen struggle to contain the blaze in the warehouse. A distraction while her minions broke the perimeter of their precinct. The next one over had been cleared long before, all but a skeleton crew of guards reassigned to the uncleared precincts. At this rate, Suyin thought with a scowl, they could be anywhere in the city.

Suyin stalked through the dim, crystal-lit hallways.

The entire fucking city was crumbling around her.

She should have killed the bitch when she had the chance.

This was all the Avatar’s fault.

Suyin was going to destroy her.

“I’m going in,” she snapped at the two guards posted outside, who were too startled to do anything other than nod as she ripped the door off its hinges.

“You traitor,” she growled, bearing down on the agent handcuffed to the table. She blinked up at her.

“Oh,” the traitor said. “Well, yes. That was the point.”

Suyin didn’t recognize her— with an organization as large as the Dai Li she didn’t have time to memorize every face. But she was an agent, she was one of her agents, and she was a traitor.

“Explain.”

The traitor shrugged. “I joined the Dai Li because I wanted to help people. And we weren’t helping people. So I changed my mind.”

Suyin could hear her pulse roaring in her ears. These were the Red Lotus’s words. The Avatar’s words.

“Bullshit,” she said. “Like fucking hell you think you helped people.”

The traitor spread her hands (as much as she could) and shrugged again. “What do you want me to say? The Dai Li are evil. This empire is evil. And if that makes me a traitor, then I’m a traitor.”

Suyin ignored the obvious bait. The traitor’s pulse was maddeningly steady, as if she had expected this. As if she didn't care that Suyin had her in the deep cells.

Suyin took a deep breath. “You,” she said, “are going to tell me everything.”

The traitor smiled at her. “I don't think so,” she said. “I've waited this long because I wanted to see the look on your face when I tell you. The Avatar is free, and the people are standing up. Your empire won't last much longer. And it’s been an honor bringing it down from the inside.”

Suyin formed her gauntlet into a knife and slit the traitor’s throat.

Suyin felt the earth around her bunker tremble. No earthbending attacks yet (her army must have been better prepared than she thought, or the rioters far weaker) but the trample of that many feet was still significant.

“Your majesty, I believe that now might be a good time to discuss exit strategies—” one of her generals said— “The army can still clear a path to the waterfront, where the navy is waiting—” said another— “We have established rendezvous points in Zaofu—”

Suyin ignored them. She stared at the map-table. Ba Sing Se spread out in front of her, small red tokens marking the districts taken by looters. Half the city at this point. At the southwestern wall a cluster of dark red marked the lurking rebel army. Somewhere in that cluster was Kuvira. Her daughter.

“We cannot abandon the city,” the Captain of the City Guard cut in. “This is the Impenetrable City, the heart of the Kingdom— ah, the Empire—”

“Half the Empire is in rebellion because of the fucking Avatar, and if we want peace we’ve got to turn her loose,” said Xiaoyu, interim head of the Dai Li.

“We can’t let go of the Avatar if they still have Kuvira,” said Bolin.

“We don’t even have the Avatar,” said the first general, the one who had advocated an exit strategy. “We lost her because—”

“Be quiet,” Suyin said. And then again, because she had to shout to be heard over the cross-arguments, “Be quiet!”

The silence was oppressive. “We are not abandoning the city,” she said firmly.

“Your majesty, if the—”

“Everyone out,” she snapped. “I need to think.” There was a brief, suffocating pause. “Now!” The room started to empty, agonizingly slowly. Bolin paused at the door, but was quickly tugged away by a frowning Junior. Baatar hesitated as well, giving her shoulder a squeeze.

There was, for a blessed moment, silence. And then a pair of feet hit the floor behind her, feather-light. She didn’t bother to turn: there was, after all, only one person it could be.

“Here to finish me off?” she said. The Avatar said nothing. Suyin sighed. “I suppose you’re happy, anyway. City in chaos, everything on fire, entire districts levelled, nearly five years of work gone up in smoke— exactly what you wanted.”

Still nothing.

Suyin closed her eyes, and let her earth-sense drift. Bolin and Junior were whispering at each other a few rooms over. Baatar loitered just outside the door— as he always did. Above, dozens if not hundreds of looters ran amok through her palace. She opened her eyes, feeling vaguely nauseous.

“I don’t suppose you’d care for a drink, before you kill me?”

Suyin took out a pair of glasses and an unopened bottle of sake. She poured a glass for herself, and left another for the Avatar to retrieve. The sake was bitter and sharp and sweet on her tongue. She closed her eyes again, and waited.

“I’m not going to kill you,” said the Avatar, her voice quiet. “Even though I probably should.”

Suyin opened her eyes and turned, slowly. The Avatar was standing there, still dressed in that ridiculous getup she’d been wearing in the Lower Ring. Mismatched, baggy clothing that looked like it had been scavenged from a trash heap. Her arms were at her side, her posture relaxed. Suyin narrowed her eyes.

“What are you talking about, Avatar?”

“If I kill you,” the girl said, “that will just be—” she gestured vaguely “—more of the same. More power invested in the Avatar. The only one who can topple empires, the only one who can really save the world.” She reached past Suyin to pick up the glass of sake, and took a preliminary sip.

“That could be poisoned,” Suyin said, more to see the Avatar’s reaction than as any real threat.

The girl laughed, and drained the glass in a single gulp. “Could be, but it’s not. I don’t think suicide by poison is your style, after all.” She licked her lips, squinted at the glass as though it might produce more sake on its own. “Spirits, I haven’t had a decent drink in months. Not here, anyway.” She shook her head again. “Anyway. I’m not going to kill you. If that’s what the people want, they need to do it themselves.”

Excuses, Suyin thought, that was all the girl had. She was too weak to do what needed to be done; would rather leave her problems for others to solve. “So why, if you donʼt mind my asking, are you here?”

The Avatar shrugged. “Consider me your suicide watch,” she said, and floated the entire bottle of sake over to herself. (Bending the glass, Suyin wondered, or the liquid inside it?) Instead of pouring herself another cup, the barbarian took a hefty swig straight from the bottle. “I have to say,” the girl said pleasantly, “you’re taking your impending death pretty well.”

Suyin rolled her eyes. “They won’t beat me to death. Don’t be dramatic.” Oh, they wouldn’t be happy with her, but after the fourth or fifth (or maybe tenth or twentieth) rioter she killed, they would back off, their anger replaced by fear, and she could play the understanding ruler. Of course the Avatar had whipped the crowd into a frenzy; that was exactly what a madwoman like her would do. She would sentence a few to prison, send the rest back to their homes, and get on with her work of civilization. In the end, she suspected, this would be a benefit: a necessary release of tension, a controlled burn rather than an unstoppable explosion.

Through the rumbling in the floor, Suyin could feel something approaching. Something massive. The mob, she suspected, had finally broken through the ranks of her army.

“Shouldnʼt be long now,” the girl said, with a smile that was somehow dark and amused and weary all at once. “Any last words? Deathbed confessions? Expressions of remorse?”

Suyin thought for a long moment. “Youʼre pathetic,” she said finally. “You canʼt bring yourself to kill me, so youʼre shoving your problems off on others. Just like you did with the chaos you caused, killing the Earth Queen. Leaving everyone else to clean up after you while you flit around the world as you please.”

The Avatar snorted. “If you’re trying to get under my skin you’ll have to do better than that.” She took another gulp of Suyin’s finest sake. “No regrets, really?” Suyin gave her her best flinty look, and the Avatar laughed. “Fair enough. Shouldn’t have expected a tyrant to have a conscience.”

And then, faster than Suyin could react, the Avatar stepped forward and struck precisely— one, two three, four times— and Suyin felt the earth vanish underneath her. She blinked, swaying on her feet, as the Avatar stepped back, her hands still curled into loose fists. The bitch winked.

The far wall caved in, and she turned to see— a mob, peasants’ faces blank with rage, pouring through the tunnel— she turned back, and saw the Avatar raise a wall in front of the door where her family was waiting. The peasants surged forward, the sound of their fury enough to deafen her. And as the crowd closed in around her, the last thing Suyin saw was the Avatar’s grim smile.

Chapter Text

It was high summer, and although it was growing late the sun still hung high in the sky. Korra looked up at it, and then down at the small house at the end of the lane. Over a decade had passed since she escaped, and…

She looked down at the snow. It was already hard-packed with travel, and she was leaving no footprints. A hand touched her shoulder, and Korra turned around to see Ling looking at her, worry clear on her face.

“Are you sure you want to—? I mean, we can still turn around. Or I can distract them while you run.”

Korra mustered up a grin, weak and lopsided, for her girlfriend. “Thanks. But.” She bit her lip, looked back at the house. “I need to do this. I need to talk to them.”

She had dealt with worse things than this. She had looked Death in the eye without flinching. She had faced down Order and Chaos, had looked into the Mirror of Souls and held off the torrent of other lives long enough for Tikivik to heal her. But she still remembered the certainty of that liberal Korra, visiting Zaheer, that she could look her tormentor in the eye and declare he had no power over her. That she could make something true by sheer force of will. She had no such pretensions. Seeing her parents might hurt, or it might help, but there was no way to know until it was done. Seeing Katara… that was even thornier. But she had a feeling it would help, and she had questions.

She rang the bell, and waited.

A middle-aged woman opened the door wearing a politely disinterested expression— which was quickly replaced by utter shock. “Korra?” her mother said, tears gathering in her eyes.

Korra gave her a weak smile. “Hi, mom?”

Her mom bustled them into the house, and sat them at the kitchen table. Korra ran her fingers over the grain, feeling the moisture trapped in the wood where the wood was warped. It was rough under her fingers, gouged and scarred from countless too-strong knife strokes, burned in places where a too-hot pot had been set down. There was a tea stain near her place. Normally Tonraq’s, Korra thought, because Senna— her mother— was sitting at the other. Her father was out, she had said as she made a pot of tea, out on a hunting trip, not due back for several days.

“Korra, we— we— I never thought—”

Korra continued to study the table as her mother talked. I never thought I’d see you again. I was so worried. She traced her fingers over the whorls of the grain, and sighed.

“I’m sorry I hurt you,” she said quietly, cutting off her mother. “But I don’t regret running away.”

“Korra—” Senna said, and Korra looked up. Her mother was crying. Korra flinched, and looked down again. “No, no, I’m sorry, I— I shouldn’t have agreed with your father,” she said miserably. “We were just so scared after those terrorists tried to kidnap you, and we thought— and then the White Lotus— and Sokka and Katara— they said— we thought we’d lose you—” she broke off, swiping at her eyes, and blew her nose into a tissue. “I’m sorry. I guess we lost you anyway, didn’t we.” She sighed. “It was a terrible way for you to grow up, and it was our fault. Ever since you turned up in Republic City I’ve regretted it.”

Korra chewed her lip. It's okay, she wanted to say, but it wasn’t. It never would be. But after her talk with Zaheer, knowing that the White Lotus had always intended to put her there, she had to wonder. How far would they have gone if her parents had refused? And even beyond that— “I… understand,” she said slowly. She did, in a way. Not the love a parent felt for their child, but if it was even a shadow of the love she felt for her family, for Ling and Tikivik and Jinora and Kamal, and even Zaheer and Ming-Hua and Ghazan— love so strong it felt like it could power entire cities if she could harness it right— then she could see her parents’ reasoning. She chose her next words carefully. “I’d like to think that I’d make a different choice, a better choice, but I can’t know that. So. I understand.”

Her mother’s smile was watery when Korra met her gaze. “You seem happy,” she said. “I— and you’re eating enough?”

That startled a laugh out of her. “Spirits, mom, yes,” she said. “And— I am happy. Ling—” she gestured to her girlfriend, who was wearing a carefully neutral expression and studiously examining the table “—she’s my girlfriend. Tikivik, too, but she didn’t come— she said it would cause some sort of incident— but— I am. Happy, I mean.”

Her mother’s smile grew stronger. “Good, I’m glad.”

They talked for a little while longer, the tea cooling between them, and Korra was surprised to feel a weight lift from her chest.

"I did want... I mean, if I could— Katara? Is she still here?"

She couldn't read the expression on her mother's face. Worry, maybe, or grief? "I think she would appreciate seeing you," her mother said quietly, giving Korra a sad smile.

Spirits, Korra thought. When did Katara get so old?

Her erstwhile teacher had been elderly in Korra’s memory, sure, but she was so— so much more now. Her hair was snow-white, her face deeply creased with wrinkles, and her still-bright eyes were sunken. And she was so slow. She shuffled toward Korra, one hand on a walker (she definitely hadn’t had one of those earlier), and when she moved it was with such care that Korra thought it had to be exaggerated. Only, she could feel through the ground that it wasn’t. Katara had invited Korra to her home, a modest house on the cliffside overlooking Harbor City. Korra had visited before, on those few rare times that the White Lotus let her out of her prison. The view was spectacular, and one of the few things that Korra deeply missed about the South. As Katara settled herself, Korra looked out at the harbor, at the sun glimmering on the bay.

She had the sudden, awful feeling that Aang should have been there with them, sitting next to his wife and great love in spectral form. And maybe he existed somewhere inside her still, or as an echo in the Spirit World, but she could no longer hear him speak. Tikivik had replaced the spirits of her past lives with her parallel selves. You can't keep both, Tikivik had told her. The past or the future, that's your choice. Had she chosen correctly? The Avatars had refused to counsel her. Her parallel lives were indecisive. So she had chosen the future. And now, looking at Katara, she wondered again at the wisdom of her decision.

Finally settled on a bench Korra had raised from the ground, Katara sighed and looked at Korra expectantly. The air between them felt heavy, and Korra hesitated.

“I— it’s good to see you,” she began.

Katara chuckled. “And you as well, Korra. I have to say, you gave me quite a shock coming back here. I thought after I’d— let’s say, conveniently misplaced— you, you’d never be caught dead in the South again.”

Korra bit her lip. “Well, I wanted… I wanted to see you.” Before you die, she didn’t say.

But apparently she didn't need to. “Before I die, hmm?” Katara said, the wry twist to her smile making the lines on her face even deeper. Korra opened her mouth, but Katara waved an age-gnarled hand. “It’s a fact of life, and I’ve had a good long one. I don’t think anyone can die with no regrets, but I don’t have too many, and I made peace with most of them a long time ago.”

They were quiet for a long time. Korra watched the boats move through the harbor, watched the cranes slowly swing, and tried to gather her thoughts.

“There’s something you’re bothered about, I can tell,” Katara said eventually. “What’s wrong?”

Korra frowned. “I talked to Aang,” she began, slowly, choosing her words carefully. “Before. When— and, and he told me— he showed me— what you used to be like. The way you all used to act.” Blowing up factories, deposing monarchs, fighting sexist old men. Liberating prisons. “What— happened?”

“I grew up, Korra,” Katara said gently. “And we ended the war. Liberating prisons, destroying factories— causing chaos is all well and good during wartime, but when the world is at peace, circumstances change.” Katara paused, gave her a gentle, understanding look. “This isn’t what you want to hear, is it?”

Korra set her jaw and glared at the harbor again. It’s okay to liberate prisoners when they’re no threat to your power, she thought.

“Hmm. Things seem so simple when you’re young,” Katara continued. “Everything is black and white, good and evil— and then you get a little older and it turns out most people aren’t evil, just misguided, or making the best of a bad situation. And at the same time, you have to make choices, and none of the options are good. You make decisions you never thought you would, compromises you never wanted. You work with people you hate because they’re the only choice, do things your younger self would kill you for because the benefits outweigh the costs. And the older you get the more complicated things become, until everything is just shades of gray, and there are no right choices.” She shrugged. “Life happened, Korra. It’s inevitable.”

“It can’t be,” Korra said, and scowled at how petulant she sounded even to herself.

Katara laughed. Or was it a sigh? “If there’s a way to stop it, to make these decisions easier, I haven’t figured it out yet, and at this point I never will. Better to just make peace with it, I think.” She was silent for a moment, and then said, “I’m glad you came back to see me. I— I had worried.”

“Katara,” Korra tried to say, but the old woman made an impatient gesture, and Korra closed her mouth.

“You were the one regret I never made peace with. I had worried that you blamed me,” Katara said quietly. “That you would be angry with me, hate me for my part in your captivity.” She brushed a tear away from her eye, and said, “You would have been justified. That compound— we never should have agreed to it. Sokka spent a week talking me around on it, and— I wanted what was best for you. Not that that’s an excuse, mind you,” she added, before Korra could say anything. “I’m glad you’re happy, because I can tell you are, and.” She stopped, looked down at her hands. “I just hope you can forgive me for what I did.”

Korra felt her throat close up, and had to blink away tears. “Katara, I could never— I could never hate you. You were the only good thing about that compound, you— you let me escape!” She looked away. “I don’t blame you,” she said, quietly. “And I forgive you, if you need to hear that, though I don’t think there’s anything to forgive.”

Katara gave her a bright, beaming smile, and impulsively Korra pulled her into a hug. It felt like home, she thought, and belonging, and comfort. Eventually she pulled away, and Katara was smiling as if her birthday had come early.

“I’m going to figure it out,” Korra said, not looking at Katara. She stared out at the bay, at the sun-shimmer on the water, at the icebergs in the far distance. In her ear, she could almost hear a parallel self whisper: You cannot buy the revolution. You cannot make the revolution. You can only be the revolution. It is in your spirit, or it is nowhere. “I’m going to keep fighting, and I’m going to be the revolution.”

Katara smiled. “If anyone can do it, Korra, it’s you.”