TITLE: Transparent Things
AUTHOR: lucindasparks
SUMMARY: Through which the past shines.
A/N: This is an AU in which nobody gets their bending back. It's Tahno's point of view for the most part.
The title and summary are both borrowed from the book Transparent Things by Vladimir Nabokov (aka my one true love). I don't own that, or Legend of Korra. I hope you enjoy, and if you do, that you please review.
Trigger warnings for off-screen, pre-fic suicide attempt, and talk of suicide.
They meet on a busy street corner.
Korra gapes. Tahno pulls his shirtsleeves down, around his hands, behind his back, like a shy girl. In reality, he doesn't want her to see the tape and gauze on his wrists. He's just been discharged, see, and there were no healers left after Amon got through most of the benders in the city. He's stuck with stitches and surgical glue.
"Tahno?" she asks, like it's the first time she's seeing him in years. And it is, but instead of years it has been three months.
"Korra," he mumbles in acknowledgment, without looking at her.
"Tahno," she repeats, "How are you? Are you okay? Have you been able to…" She stops.
"No, I still can't bend." He knows what she meant. If he could, he'd tell her there was hope. But Tahno hasn't known hope in a very, very long time.
"Oh. I'm sorry. Neither can I," she adds. "Have you been holding up, at least?" She winces when someone bumps her as they walk by.
He doesn't bother to fake a smile or an answer. "Not really."
"Oh," she says again.
"You?" He reaches up to scratch his face and she pauses.
"Um, well," she finally says, "Do you want to get some food or something? It's a long story. And I want to hear more about you. About those." She gives his briefly exposed wrist a pointed look and he curses himself.
"Well…" What does he have to lose? "Sure."
There's a place uptown where the owners give Korra free meals. She doesn't go there often, she doesn't want to burden them, but their food and company are nice.
"I helped the owner's brother get away from the Triple Threats a while back," she says with a small smile. They sit at a table in the very back.
"So…" Korra begins after a few minutes of eating in silence. He looks up from his partially-devoured noodles— hospital food is really terrible, and this is the first quality meal he's had in weeks.
"So," he responds after swallowing.
"You've been somewhere."
"Yeah."
"Where?"
"Republic City General."
Very suddenly, but also very slowly, she reaches across the table and touches his pale, cold left hand. "What happened?" she finally murmurs. He clenches that hand into a fist, and she draws away. He can't tell if he regrets that.
"Really long story. Dunno if you want to hear it."
It's a stupid thing to say, but she stays silent anyway, allowing him to begin. He takes a deep breath.
"I just couldn't do it anymore, I guess. I mean, after everything. And knowing that there was no chance of ever…" He doesn't know whether to say bending again or being happy again.
"I understand. I think. I mean, I've never…" She shivers. The idea of turning a knife on herself is still a repulsive thought to her, he can tell. A hideous voice in the back of his head says, give her time.
"It's okay. I'm… better now." He could mention any number of things in that moment. He could reassure her, tell her that it's fucking impossible to successfully lie to a doctor and anyone who says they can is lying to you. He could tell her how empty he still feels. Or he could even be really honest, and tell her all about his plan to go home to his apartment make another halfhearted attempt, choking down every pill in the cabinet. But none of that feels right, so he stays quiet.
"Oh. Well, I'm glad," she offers.
"Spirits," he finally says, "How do you do that?"
She blinks twice. "Do what?"
"Stay so cheerful. You really have yourself together."
She snorts, laughing, but it's a hollow sort of laugh. Forced, as if she's filling space in the conversation to gather her thoughts. "I'm really not. And I don't." She looks at him seriously now. "What made you think I have it together?"
He smiles, for the first time in weeks. "You don't have these," he holds up his hand, allowing the sleeve to fall and her to see the bandages in detail. Too late, he wonders if the comment and gesture were in poor taste.
Korra doesn't seem to mind; this time, she really does laugh. "I guess you're right, there," she says.
For a moment it's quiet. Tahno clears his throat. "Do you…" he stops. She looks at him expectantly. "Do you want to… do this again sometime?"
And her smile is the most beautiful thing, he swears. "Yeah, I do."
Tahno is eight when they send him to Republic City for something like education.
School, yes, but training in waterbending as well. He'll be their ticket to everything. Fame, fortune. The Foggy Swamp is nice and all, and the cat-gators aren't too mean, but it doesn't compare to city life. His older brothers and sisters are too old now, but pro-bending is just getting popular. He has time.
He cries when they send him away. It'll be over ten years before he really, really cries again.
Korra is approximately four the day the White Lotus comes for her.
She's excited, you know, so very excited. Bending is the coolest thing ever and they do say three out of four ain't bad.
She won't realize for thirteen years that, in order to grasp the fourth, she has to let go of the other three.
They've gotten to know the basics, but one day she throws something at him. Almost like a test, but too genuine.
"Sometimes I get these, these thoughts," Korra says. She holds her hands to her head and speaks to the water. He is only a listener. The waves lick at the rocky, snowy beach and he's getting cold and wet sitting there. It doesn't matter. "Like, these murderous thoughts. I just think about all the evil in this world, and there's something in me that says destroy it all."
She sniffs. Has she been crying? Tahno realizes with alarm. Something in him tells him to put his arm around her, but another part tells him he can't possibly help. His hand is splayed on his own knee as if spread-eagled and it feels so empty.
"But then," she continues. "There's this other part. And it tells me to be patient and calm, and not to do anything drastic, you know? But I'm somewhere in the middle, and I don't know which to listen to. One seems insane and other stupidly naïve."
"Where do you think they come from? Neither of them sounds like you."
"Um. I think they could be my past lives, actually." She glances at his expression and laughs. "I know. But Aang has spoken to me before, so it's not… that big of a stretch. I guess."
He stares at her, peering in through the fibrous punctures in her soul.
And he begins to understand her.
When she talks about the cryptic dreams she has, he doesn't say much. He says even less when she talks about how when she meditates, nowadays, nothing happens, it's like the beginning of my airbending training all over again. When she really, really cries in front of him for the first time, talking about how much she resents airbending, how she wishes she couldn't do it so that people would stop thinking she's lucky, he says nothing at all.
But then she smiles, watery and slight, and thanks him for listening, it means a lot… and he never wants to talk again, but instead listen to her speak for the rest of his life.
"I learned all about the Avatars when I was still being tutored," she explains, pulling a book off the shelf in her room. "But I still did some reading."
Tahno has been invited in, and he doesn't know exactly what to do. It's funny; he's never had any problem being in girls' rooms before. He always knew what to do.
Call it a hunch, but he has a feeling that nothing he'd try on ordinary girls will work on her.
"Yeah?" he says.
"Yeah. You can sit," she adds.
Awkwardly, he sinks onto the edge of her bed.
"Now," she begins. "I could tell from the beginning that the calmer of the voices has to have been an airbender. I mean, that's their whole thing. Pacifism."
"Right," he says as she sits next to him. She balances the book on their knees and he sees the entry is open to a list of past Avatars. "Are you in there?"
She smiles. "No, this book is probably fifty years old. Anyway, I thought the destructive voice might be a firebender, so I looked into Avatar Roku's history. And after maybe a minute of reading about him, I knew it couldn't be him."
"Why not?"
"He's too similar to Aang. Roku was described as being disciplined and restrained, but you know who really surprised me? Avatar Kyoshi," she says, without waiting for an answer. "I think it's her."
He blinks. "Okay," he says. "What about her makes you think—"
"She was always the most hostile," Korra explains. "And she had no trouble killing people for the greater good. She's basically the opposite of Aang."
She stops. "But," she continues after a moment, "It keeps me up, you know? Like, why would they push these thoughts on me when I can't do anything without my bending? I just don't know."
In this moment, where she isn't even looking at him, where she's staring down at her book without actually reading from it… in this moment, she's beautiful and strong and he wants to tell her she can do absolutely anything if she tries. She's worlds ahead of him in bravery and resilience and he wants nothing more than to help her see that for herself. But none of that seems appropriate to say now, so he finally does reach his arm around her and she leans into him.
Kyoshi is why she fights, and Aang, why she lies awake.
But here is the truth of the matter.
Tahno isn't cured. He'll likely never be cured, bending restored or otherwise.
But the indisputable thing is that he no longer feels like he's drowning in the black, freezing water of Yue Bay. The scars are fading, literally and figuratively.
There will always be parts of him, deep within, that bleed. But when he remembers the day they saw each other again, where he thought she would eventually be where he was… he realizes now that she will never sink into that void. She's indestructible, a force of nature. And she will never need him as much as he needs her.
This last thought comes to him in bed one night, a few months after their reunion. He doesn't know how to feel, happy for her or sorry for himself, so he falls asleep instead.
"You know…"
"Yeah?" he responds.
"I was wondering." She readjusts, inching just that much closer on the park bench.
"What is it?"
She grins. "Have you ever been to the South Pole?"
He gapes at her. "Well, no."
"Good. You should come with me soon, then. My parents want me to visit. You can meet them."
"You… want me to meet your parents?" He's never had a girl say that before.
"Of course! They always said they wanted to meet any boy I…" she stops. "You know."
"What?" She's not a shy girl, Korra. What is she doing now?
"I mean. You know? I…"
"What, Korra?"
She shifts, and when she captures his lips in her own, he imagines she tastes the passion every Avatar has ever shared with another person.
In a moment of triumph, he kisses her back. Her hand tangles itself into his lank hair and her other hand, resting on his chest, seems to reach in and hook itself there too.