Trigger Warnings: suicide, degenerative illness, dubcon-but-not-in-the-way-you-think (not sexual)
This is dark. This is not happy. You have been warned.
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Release
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"Avatar Korra?" The voice is whispered, barely a rasp. She lifts her head, at once startled and grateful for the distraction from her depressing paperwork.
A man is slumped against the doorframe. He wears a dark hooded robe; his sharp chin and broad, wrinkled mouth are all that are visible beneath it.
"Can I help you?" she asks, standing. She wipes her eyes, hoping the tears she was just crying haven't stained her face.
"I need healing," wheezes the man, and then he collapses on the floor.
She hurries forward and pulls in water from the glass on her desk, enrobing her hand in a healing blue glow. There is no immediately discernible injury, so she unbuttons the front of the cloak and spreads it, baring the man's chest. Her eyes close as she prods deep into his body, sending tendrils of energy along this bones.
Her eyes fly open.
This man is dying – nearly dead. Muscles are wilting, nerves are dulling. His heart is weak, its beats sporadic rather than a steady rhythm. She's amazed he was able to stand at all, let alone travel to her home without aid. Already, she knows that she won't be able to save him.
But she can try.
Her hands slip beneath his frail body and she deposits him on the couch. Her hand slides the hood off of his head, but then freezes. Curls away.
The hair is silvered and heavy lines mark the papery skin, but there is no mistaking the sharp nose and broad mouth. It is a face she only saw once, but one that is indelibly inked in her memory.
Amon.
.*.*.*.
The first thing he sees when he regains consciousness are her eyes, crystalline blue, and he almost laughs at the spite he sees there. The faint wrinkles around them are all that have changed about her: she is still a barely-contained fire.
"Tell me why I should save you," she says. "Tell me why I shouldn't let you shrivel and die."
So both of his secrets are out. He slowly lifts himself upright, pulling his uncooperative body into a sitting position. Her eyes widen.
"You shouldn't be able to move."
"I can't."
"But then how-" Her lips suddenly flatten into a line. "You're bloodbending yourself."
He holds her gaze. "It was only aiding me, at first – a layer of control over my failing muscles." His words are laboured, but he refuses to shorten his phrases. His illness will not strip him of his decorum. "As time progressed, I became reliant on it. My body will no longer move of its own volition and, as time progresses, more and more of it requires my constant attention. Soon, I will need to control each heartbeat, each breath, a puppet master trapped within an increasingly complex puppet." He pauses to catch his breath. "The effort is taking its toll, draining life's essence from my body to maintain the constant bloodbending. And so I accelerate my own demise."
"Sounds hellish." There is not one hint of mercy in the words.
This is a hole in his plan. "I expected the Avatar to be more sympathetic."
"If you're looking for redemption and forgiveness, you came at the wrong time."
His eyes sweep her figure: black robes, three knotted armbands. "Ah. I am sorry for your loss."
She snorts and stands, folding her arms over her chest. "What could you ever understand about loss? You, who delighted in taking so much from so many?"
Tarrlok's eyes, dead and glazed, never leave his thoughts.
"Thirty years have passed," is what he says, "and I have paid the price for my mistakes."
Her glare is hard. "I can't heal you, even if I wanted to. At most, I could reverse some of the effects, but that would only be temporary."
"I suspected as much." He struggles to keep his voice steady as he adds:
"I came here to ask you to kill me."
.*.*.*.
"Kill you," repeats Korra.
She stares down at the man, seeing the same intensity in his eyes that, three decades earlier, had peered at her – through her – from behind his mask. He had planned to destroy her, then – the irony of their role-reversal almost makes her laugh.
"I wish to drown in Yue Bay," he says, "where the currents will pull my body out to the sea that claimed my brother. Tonight, beneath the full moon, I want you to carry me into the water and let me sink."
She shakes her head. "I don't kill people, Amon. Not if I can help it."
"You were ready to let me die, just a moment ago."
"That's different." She grasps for excuses. "You'll just waterbend your way out before you drown, anyway."
His laugh is low, humourless. "Look at me, Avatar. I can barely move. Waterbending is no longer a possibility. Don't you want the opportunity to finally levy justice on the man you once feared?"
The offer is tempting. She has fought many enemies since Amon, ones who caused damage that, unlike Amon's, could not be reversed. Amon's psychological mark, however, was far more devastating. You never forget your first enemy, Aang had told her once. They become your personification of fear.
"Isn't there anyone else who can do this for you?" she asks.
He looks away. "I have no one, Avatar."
Her hand rises to the knotted armbands and she nods.
.*.*.*.
The strange intimacy of their arrangement is intensified when she bathes him. The water glows blue; he can feel it inside him, attempting to mend what cannot be mended. At least it soothes the constant ache, one he had grown so accustomed to that he doesn't notice it until it is gone.
The Avatar's brows knit as she attends to him. She studies him as if he is a specimen, not a man, and he is both humbled and grateful. He is all too aware that his muscles have begun to atrophy, that his once robust body is wilting. Her clinical approach is saving him face.
When her healing hands reach his back, however, he feels her healing glow fade. He doesn't have to see her face to know its expression: staring. Mouth open. Her fingers trace all the way down and across the expanse of the scar.
"My brother's attempt to kill me," he says.
"You are resilient."
His eyes close as he retreads worn ground in his mind: if only I had been two feet closer to the blast...if only you had succeeded in taking me with you.
"That should help," she says finally, and she lifts him out of the tub and pulls the water from his skin. "It isn't a cure, but it will make you more comfortable until..." Her mouth snaps shut.
She carries him to a bed, depositing him there as if he is a child. He expects her to leave, but instead she sits beside him watching him with pity.
Pity. This is an indignity he cannot bear. He closes his eyes, looks away. "Do not remember me this way."
"You would rather I remember you as the monster who tried to eradicate bending?"
"A man," he says. "Not a monster. A man who made a mistake. A man who would give anything to go back and change it."
.*.*.*.
She pities him. Spirits help her, she pities him.
The man she feared more than any other is now so frail, so reliant on her. His weary face is still startlingly handsome in spite of the weathering it has endured.
She feels weathered, too. Her soul has been eroded, the once strong contours worn to a nub. In his eyes, she sees what he feels: they are alone. Even their past convictions have abandoned them.
Her hand finds his. Fingers interlace.
"Don't," he whispers, but she wants this contact. She needs it, needs to know she's still relevant to someone, that she hasn't been left completely alone. She doesn't push him further, but doesn't let his hand drop, either.
"Why did you seek me out?" she asks.
His hesitation reveals his impending lie. "You are the strongest healer in-"
"No, Amon. You had already resigned yourself to death. Why did you seek me out?"
He swallows audibly. "I needed to look into the eyes of the one person who ever managed to beat me at my own game. I needed to reassure myself that she was stronger than me, that losing to her did not make me weak. Only then could I die in peace."
"And what did you see when you looked into my eyes?" she asks.
"All I ever wanted was to be stronger than you, and now I see that will never be a possibility."
She smells the choking incense from the shrine, feels the constriction of the bands on her arm. "I'm not as strong as you think."
His fingers tighten around hers. She stares at the union, surprised to find herself clinging to a dying man for support.
"Lie with me," he whispers.
Shocked, she tries to pull away, but he doesn't release her.
"Not as man and woman," he says, "but as two lost souls clinging to each other for warmth, huddled together against the encroaching night." A pause. "I can't bear to spend the remainder of my life alone."
With a nod, she stretches out on the bed beside him, facing him, and pulls his arm over her in mimicry of an embrace. Their foreheads press together and she combs a hand into the nape of his neck. Their breath mingles between their noses, their lips.
"You taste human," he whispers.
"So do you." Above the mint of her own breath, she tastes a sweet fragrance on his: seasoned, like pepper and parsley.
"Do you think, Korra," he says, and the use of her name makes her heart race, "that all our enmity could have been avoided if we had just taken the time to breathe together?"
Slowly, her head tilts, her lips just barely skimming his. A small taste of what might have been.
When she pulls away, he is smiling.
.*.*.*.
He can think of no more fitting end to his life than having the Avatar breathe in his last breath. His life had been consumed with goals of besting her; it would be poetic for her to consume his death as well.
He is disappointed when he wakes up alive.
Korra's forehead is still pressed to his, her hand curled against his jaw. He calls her name, and she stirs.
"Night has fallen," he says, and he pretends it doesn't hurt him to see her face collapse. For a second, he hopes she will back down, but then he tries to sit up and remembers just how frail his body has become. There is no going back. It has to end now, or it will get worse.
"Amon," she says. "I wish-" She stops herself, then begins to dress him, and he wonders if he's going to die without knowing what she wanted to say.
It doesn't matter, he tells himself. It's too late, anyway. His head falls against her shoulder as she carries him outside.
She powers a skiff into the bay, not acknowledging him. At the mouth of the bay, the sea stretches before them, and he feels goosebumps erupt across his skin.
You will not be alone for much longer, brother.
The skiff slows, drifts. Korra scoops him into her arms. Cradles him. Again, he can taste her breath, and this time a tear drips from her nose onto his cheek. He almost stops her, but reminds himself that his body will inexorably continue its decline. This is how it must end.
She kneels by the edge of the boat, holding him over the water. His heart races as he waits.
And waits.
"Korra," he says.
Her head drops. "I can't do it."
"Think of all my crimes," he says. "Think of how much you would have relished in this, once upon a time."
She shakes her head. "All I can think about is the taste of your breath on my lips."
His mouth curves as he sees what he must do. "Fate is odd, Korra. I tried all my life to prove that I was stronger than the Avatar, and I had to wait until my death to do it." He stares intently into her watering eyes to make sure that she hears the words: "Forgive me."
.*.*.*.
Her muscles betray her.
They seize and jerk, guided by forces beyond her control.
"No!" she screams, but her body will not listen. She watches, helpless, as her hands submerge him.
At first, his face is placid, bubbles slipping from his lips. She screams his name, pleads with him, but he holds her gaze and his grip does not relent. Then his eyes widen, and she feels the muscles in his chest tense; his panic ripples through her, and she struggles against his hold. She cannot bear to see his life extinguish, so her eyes squeeze shut.
There is no relief when the bloodbending falls away from her, for she knows what that means.
When she at last dares to look down, he is limp, his skin tinted blue by the moon and the water. Her hands begin to glow, probing. No heartbeat, but a flicker of energy kindles within him. She can still save him if she acts now.
But as she looks at his face, she sees that he is smiling.
She withdraws her hands and falls back into the boat, staring up at the full moon until it begins to blur.
Beside her, Amon's body begins to drift.
.*.*.*.
As the sun rises over the city, Korra ties a fourth black band around her arm, lights another candle in the shrine, then curls up on the bed.
Her hand claws into the pillow, breathing in his scent, as she thinks of all that might have been…