Title: Broken
Summary: "Once gone, it can never be identified, never named. All Tahno can say is that it takes everything that he is with it. It leaves him weak and almost empty. It leaves him broken."
Rating: K
Author: Illyria Lives
Word Count: 1,756
Disclaimer: I do not own Legend of Korra. I do, however, really like Tahno.
Pain.
Pain in every pore, every fiber of his bones and skin. Pain in places he never even perceived as capable of feeling pain. The pain drives everything from his mind, from his lungs. For a moment his entire existence is the pressure of a thumb on his forehead, and the pain that will surely break him.
Breaking.
Something is shattering, deep inside of him, breaking off from some section of his body that he cannot fully detect. It forces itself out through his lips, escaping in the exhalation that was meant to be a scream, but is in actuality little more than a series of frightened gasps. As the air is forced by the pain and pressure to leave his lungs, it takes with him something extra, something beyond air. Almost tangibly, he can feel it travel past his lips, shaking his teeth, and fading away. Once gone, it can never be identified, never named. All Tahno can say is that it takes everything that he is with it. All of the pain, the fear, the panic. It takes his laughing years amongst the snow and leaves it a lie. It makes every punch forgettable, every win nothing more than a ghost that he can never shake. It leaves him weak and almost empty. It leaves him broken.
Broken.
He has been broken into a thousand pieces, he thinks, and he is going to die. There is nothing to stop him from falling apart at the seams and simply fading away between the cracks in the pavement.
He tries to breathe and finds that he cannot. Will not.
Water.
He is suspended in space, drifting away, the water cool as a kiss on his skin. It takes him into its arms like a mother would to a child and begins to murmur sweet nothings into his hair. And, like a child, he allows himself to be comforted for the moment, opening his arms and body to the drifting coolness that was as well known to him as his own name. The water had always cared for him.
The pain seeps away, carried off by gentle whorls of the tides, and he can swear that he feels the light on the moon from behind his eyelids, silver and so, so beautiful. What he saw with his eyes closed was beyond human description. The moon was life. The moon would save him, surely. He felt it in the creak of his bones, in the burning fire in his lungs…
Fire.
With a shock he opens his eyes to see that although he is indeed in water, always as gentle as a lover to him, he is burning. Fire runs along his arms and legs, concentrates on a thumb-sized area on his forehead, and forces itself into his mouth. Water is flooding in, into his nose, amongst his teeth and tongue, tasting like cleaning materials and blood. Sharp and sour. So unnatural and yet so human. It burns into his throat and he again realizes that he is going to die. Although a waterbender, born and raised among the ice and the snow, water is not a human element. It does not look kindly on things that are not its creatures. It burns its land-locked children and crushes them until they drift along as placated as any corpse. As every corpse.
The fire has reached his lungs.
He wants for air.
Air.
The shimmer of lights that he had detected through the skin of his eyelids was the warped glow of the electrical lights, shifting and mutating from below the rippling sheen of the water, reminding him, oddly enough, of reflective silver silk. The light was air. It was life.
It was just beyond his reach.
Reach.
He spreads his fingers and waves his arms in familiar patterns, expecting for the water to respond and lift him. The motions are second nature and he is confident that it will work. By the flick of a wrist and the splaying of fingers, he will live. As he always has. As he always will, he tells himself.
The fire builds in his lungs. It sears the point of his forehead that feels like a calloused finger, pressed forever. It holds him down and continues to push, running currents along his arms and legs, making him cry out. What little air he had left drifted from his lips in luxurious bubbles, unbroken, unchanged. They float upwards, taking the last of his strength with him.
The thumb continues to push.
He continues to burn.
For the briefest second he thinks that perhaps he can close his eyes and make it all go away. He can let the fire get doused by the water that is keeping him from the surface. It will feel so calm and cool, he tells himself. He nearly begins to inhale.
And then he sees Haku.
Haku is almost an arm's length away, flailing like an unnatural fish, eyes open and staring, blood vessels huge and pupils dilated in fear. As they hit the surface of the water, the bolos that had tied their limbs together had come loose, and Haku was only now starting to try and swim, the rope still trailing from one wrist. At any second he could shoot up to the light and the air, where it was safe.
Safe.
But Tahno knew better.
He could recall a very specific conversation with Haku concerning his swimming skills, namely, the lack thereof. It was a rare thing to find a probender who hadn't picked up the skill at one point or another, but Tahno considered it a sign of how successful they were; Haku never needed to learn, because he never fell out of the ring. It was a fact much bragged about in the winner's circles, in the clubs and after parties.
But.
Now.
Tahno reached over and got a secure hand on Haku's jersey, finding with a strange degree of separation that he could not longer feel his fingers. Light was darkening around his eyes and he could barely find the strength to kick his legs. As he began to slowly rise, struggling to remember the motions that he had been taught as a child, before he had learned that water wasn't his enemy. Before he learned about his power.
Before he had his power.
Lost.
He drifts upwards, dragging Haku along behind him, and again feels that pressure in his mind, burning into the skin of his forehead. It tells him to let go of Haku's weight. It tells him to breathe. Breathe in the flames. Let them sear into the spot deep inside his chest where he could swear that something was now missing. Something had been stolen from him. It was destroying him from the inside out.
He tightened his grip on Haku's shirt and continued to push upwards, against the pressure. He was not someone to lie down and allow anything other than the spirits themselves stop him. And although that… thing up on the probending arena was not human, neither was he divine. He had felt the touch of his hand on his face. He had seen his eyes. His eyes… so dark…
Never.
He kicked out furiously, struggling against the pain and emptiness and the urge to inhale a lungful of water, Amon's dark and emotionless eyes burning into his mind like a nightmare. His head broke surface, and he pulled Haku up beside him.
Blind.
He can see nothing but the limpness in his fingers for several moments, and, if not for the stone ledge to hang onto, he knows that he would slip back under the gentle ripples in the water, body heaving with a combination of sobs and coughs as he forces out the water from his lungs and throat. Every section of skin that was now not fully immersed burned and smarted beneath the electric lights. He could, however, find no physical damage. He searched for it, pulled up his arms and tried to look for the proof of the pressure in his head and the searing burn in his limbs. A break, a cut, a burn, anything that could give a name to that sore spot in his chest where the strange burst of air had left him empty. All he saw, through a teary haze, was a bright spot of red on the gray stone block, almost directly below his chin.
Blood.
With the tip of his tongue he probes the cut on the inside of his mouth and spits again, watching the blood pale in the water that drips in rivers from his hair.
That is all. Just that one coin-sized blot of red on the floor.
He searches and searches, from the hospital to his apartment, deep into the night, but he finds no damage aside from the ache that tells him that something vital had been stolen from him.
Stolen.
He searches and searches for it, and never finds it again.
Never.
What he does find is a bright light after a dark tunnel. She has dark skin and hair, and her eyes are like stars. Although she doesn't smile at him, the way her words travel over his skin reminds him of how water was once so soft and so strong, pulling at him and guiding him in the currents. She reminds him, oddly enough, of feeling whole.
Whole.
He doesn't know how to properly explain it to her, but she makes him think back to the touch of a finger on his forehead and the burning of his chi paths being ravaged beneath the water. She makes him think back to how powerless he was beneath the surf, breathing in water and blood. Maybe… maybe she could help.
He turns to her.
"You got to get him for me."
She nods.
The empty place inside his chest gives a weak thump and he can almost summon up a memory of how he was before, so confident, so solid. Perhaps the old him would have somehow tried to sweeten the deal for her, but he can't even begin to think of how he could possibly do that. Everything he had once held close was now beyond his fingertips.
As he stands to follow the metalbending cop and Councilman Tenzin out, he yearns for something to carry with him that will remind him of the moment when Korra's voice had lifted him up, for just the fraction of a second. But what?
A Promise.
"See you around, Avatar."
The End, for now at least.