It wasn't until long after the chaos ended that Korra realized how wrong things truly were, when Bolin stood wide-eyed and silent before a plain platinum box atop a bare earth dais. He had been there for a while, long enough for the silence to grow awkward, groping for words that wouldn't come despite hours of preparation. Korra would have said he looked afraid, but she had seen Bolin afraid before and this was not the same. Now, he seemed tired and vacant.
"I don't know what to say," Bolin uttered with great effort, and he looked toward the floor with an expression that begged forgiveness. "I can't do this. I'm sorry," he repeated quietly, and then he stepped down from the platform. He sat in the only empty chair in the front row, folded his hands listlessly in his lap, and stared at his feet.
Korra wanted to go to him more than anything, but the moment she made her move Asami, seated at her side, told her, "No," in a firm but gentle tone.
"Leave him be. He needs space right now."
The ceremony didn't last long after that. The small crowd filed out of the funeral hall past the platinum box, placing their hands on it, stopping to bow before it, some without acknowledging it at all. Bolin sat silent the whole while with his eyes on the floor, accepting the occasional pat on the shoulder or condolence as the procession rolled past to timid strains of "Leaves from the Vine." After a time the place was empty but for close friends and family, who exchanged uncertain looks before standing to offer their assistance.
Asami stood and offered a hand to Korra, and together they approached their bereaved friend. Korra knelt before him and took his hands in hers, but he didn't move. For a long moment she looked at him, struck by the emptiness on his face. Everyone had expected Bolin to be sad, but no one had expected this.
Bolin had never been quiet. He'd never been reserved and he'd never been so serious. It was as though some time in the last week he'd withdrawn into an entirely different person.
"Are you ready?" she asked quietly.
Bolin nodded and accepted her help to his feet.
"The airbenders are going to move him to the island for burial," Asami said. She hugged him gently. "Under Aang's monument like we agreed."
With another exchange of looks, Korra hooked her arm around Bolin's elbow and ushered him from the room with as much dignity as she could. Asami followed immediately behind, and at a respectable distance behind her, Tenzin and his family airlifted the platinum box from its dais with utmost care.
It had been almost a week since an explosion rocked Ba Sing Se's upper ring, ruining its inaugural election and killing more than sixty. Mako had been there with Prince Wu, attending to the very last of his duties as monarchical bodyguard, and had apparently been enveloped by the blast. While Wu had made it out and now rested unconscious but undoubtedly alive in a Republic City hospital, Mako's mangled body had been brought home and packed away in a box.
Lin had been the one to identify the body, and being the closest city official to the family, she was the one who notified them of the loss. She brought them-Korra, Asami, and Bolin-into a small metal room at the precinct without warning, and the news had been laid bare. And while Korra and Asami looked to each other for confirmation that what they had heard was correct Bolin stood resolute and stone faced.
Korra remembered the sound of the shaking breath he'd taken before saying, "What?" without inflection, and when Lin repeated herself he simply stared, stupefied.
At once Korra moved to his side, grasped his hand, and asked if he was all right. But he didn't look to her at all, didn't even acknowledge that she had touched him, and Korra couldn't be certain if he was angry or confused. His thick brows knit, his eyes narrowed, and the longer she stared at him the more she noticed a pulsing tendon in his firmly set jaw.
"I want to see him," Bolin said in a voice so sharp that Korra jumped.
For a beat Lin seemed surprised, but she dared not argue with the look on Bolin's face. "If you're sure that's what you want, kid," she said quietly, and motioned for him to follow her.
Bolin jerked his hand away from Korra and followed Beifong from the room. She and Asami lingered in stunned silence, exchanging glances full of mourning and doubt, and after a long, long time alone in the room they left. The next time Korra saw Bolin was that night when he unexpectedly arrived at Air Temple Island, Pabu in tow, with his earlier bluster conspicuously absent.
"I'd like to stay the night here, please," he said, eyes locked on the ground. "Will you get Tenzin, or ask him, or do whatever needs to be done? I'll sleep outside if I need to, but I can't go back home."
Korra pulled Bolin inside at once, and without so much as a word to Tenzin she escorted him to a room in the male dormitory, where he made his way to the bed and collapsed atop it. And once Pabu had jumped from his shoulder, he rolled away and remained utterly, eerily silent until Korra left.
The day after the news came had been worse than the day before. Funeral arrangements had to be made before the remains deteriorated and the stink of rotting flesh could permeate the metal. Eulogies had to be written, and quickly. Korra offered to help, but Bolin adamantly refused to allow her into his room. Asami had the same bad luck. He'd barely spoken to them through the door. But when Pema brought an offering of steam buns and hot tea, Bolin relented. Korra imagined that it helped that Pema had threatened, very maternally, to break down the door if he didn't let her in. The two sat in the room for most of the morning and afternoon, and Pema emerged that night with a shrug and empty script.
"He said he would think about what he wants to say," she'd said. "Otherwise he doesn't care about the ceremony, he just doesn't want to take care of it himself. He mentioned we should contact his grandmother."
The third day, Tenzin and Pema worked with Yin to make preparations for the funeral. A modest number of invitations were extended beyond the boundaries of Republic City, and each recipient reported that he or she would attend.
The fourth day saw the release of a message from the man who orchestrated the explosion, and the subsequent closing of all transport into and out of Republic City. Even Su Beifong and her family would be unable to attend the proceedings, and Tenzin reported the news through Bolin's door with increasing melancholy.
The fifth day Bolin emerged with Pabu on his shoulder, and he sat on the pavilion stairs and watched Korra walking through her airbending forms. She offered for him to join her and blow off steam, but he waved her away with a dismissive, "No thanks." When he stood to return inside not long thereafter, Pabu jumped from his shoulder and scampered to Korra. Pabu had remained with her ever since.
The sixth day brought the funeral. Korra and Asami dressed together in their finest formal attire before providing Bolin with some assistance. He had obviously neglected himself in his grief, but after an hour he'd seemed ready to leave, or as ready as he was bound to be. Pabu rode in the Satomobile on his lap, licking absently at his hands, but when the party arrived at the hall Bolin had passed him off to Korra again. Then Bolin had taken his designated seat alone at the front of the hall and stared resolutely at the floor, flailed in his speech, and stared at the floor some more.
The ride to Avatar Aang Memorial Island stretched in awkward silence from car to boat to car. Asami commented on the lovely ceremony and Korra heartily agreed-they hoped the conversation might spark some reaction, -but Bolin continued to thoroughly examine his dress shoes. Korra watched him the whole while, worried by his quiet.
An armed escort led Korra, Asami, and Bolin to the plot where the tiny crowd waited, their heads bowed respectfully. The officiate, an aging and agitated man in dark green robes, said words that Korra didn't hear, and then motioned to Bolin. The silence grew awkward again.
"Bo?" Korra prompted with a gentle touch to his elbow, and he looked to her with confusion. "The burial."
He looked at the box with some surprise, as if he hadn't noticed it being placed into a perfectly proportioned rectangular hole cut from the earth at Aang's feet, in the shadow of the great white lotus upon which the immense statue stood. There was no way he could've heard the officiate ask if he wanted to partake in the burial ceremony. Bolin looked momentarily confused, but it seemed obvious to Korra: An earthbender could easily close a hole in the ground.
Bolin shook his head sadly. "I can't."
Korra looked to Asami, confused, and when Asami shrugged her own puzzlement, Korra turned back to Bolin. "What do you mean, you can't?" she whispered. She had heard those words come out of him so often in the last days that they'd ceased to carry any meaning at all.
He looked at her out of the corner of his eye, ashamed. "I can't. I haven't been able to bend for days," he said, practically a whisper. "Please don't say anything."
The request came as a shock, but Korra stepped forward at the official's gesture, planted her right foot, and closed the grave with a strong sweep of her arms. The earth rumbled as if in protest, but the deed was done, and no one was any the wiser for Bolin's apparent incompetence.
After more words, the burial ceremony concluded and Korra and Asami stood beside Bolin and watched as he accepted comments, handshakes, and condolences without speaking in reply. Eventually the crowd was gone except Tenzin and the airbenders, Korra, Asami, and Bolin.
Again, Korra prompted him hopefully. "Are you ready?"
He shook his head. "No. I'll follow along in a while. You guys go ahead without me." He spoke evenly, his voice as blank as his face.
"Are you sure?" asked Asami.
But Tenzin had placed his hands firmly on Korra and Asami's shoulders and pulled them away before Bolin could answer, not that Korra was certain he'd say anything at all. As one, the group left him alone at the grave. Korra looked back many times as they went. She wasn't sure what she was looking for.
"Do you think he'll be okay?" Asami asked generally as the group approached the airbender compound.
Tenzin replied after a moment of thought. "This has come as a shock to all of us. I imagine that it will take time, but sooner or later things will balance out again."
Korra thought for a moment, the worry building in her stomach. She wanted to help, but she didn't know how, and now that Bolin had explained his bending block to her, the concern grew. "He told me he can't earthbend," she said to Tenzin. "He told me just now. He didn't want me to say anything, but he hasn't been able to. I'm worried."
Tenzin shrugged. "Our bending is deeply connected to our spirit. A disturbance like this could easily disconnect the body and mind."
Korra patted Pabu on the head when he whined. It was as though he knew they were talking about Bolin, and he wanted to express his worry as well.
Pema spoke next, as wisely as her husband. "Well, when I was helping him write the eulogy, Bolin seemed okay. He didn't want to talk about much. I think he was more upset when he found out that Opal and the others couldn't be here because of the travel restrictions. But he was never tearful or angry."
This was the part that had Korra worried. The news of Mako's death had hit everyone except for Bolin like a train. Everyone except for Bolin had been openly mourning, crying, and meditating. Only once had he seemed particularly grief stricken, and that was when he asked to stay at the island. Since then, Bolin had been a blank slate no matter the circumstance. He'd locked himself up, hadn't come out to eat, and when he finally emerged he'd seemed to float around Air Temple Island like a ghost.
"Dinner will be in an hour or so," Pema said when the lot entered the airbender compound. "Please be on time."
Korra and Asami excused themselves to Korra's bedroom in the women's dormitory, where they changed out of their formal attire and into their nightclothes. Then they sat and stared out of the west-facing window at the statue of Avatar Aang, all red and blue and orange in the sunset.
"He reminds me of how you were," Asami said at length as she stroked Pabu's back, "after you were poisoned."
"That was different," Korra replied. "I was wounded."
"So is he. Just different."
Korra swallowed her budding rage and sighed. "The funeral was a disaster."
Asami shook her head. "No, it was all right. Considering the problems everyone is having getting in and out of the city and the trouble we had booking everything on such short notice, I think things were fine. Mako probably would have thought it was funny, if he didn't think it was ridiculous."
"If I hear Leaves from the Vine one more time I might throw up, though," Korra said.
Asami giggled. "Mako would have thrown up, too."
"He wouldn't want us to be sad, would he?"
Asami shrugged. "Who knows what he would have wanted. I don't want to be sad, though, so I won't. There's been too much of that going around lately between Mako, my dad, Kuvira, and all the fallout. It hasn't been that long."
Korra put her arm gently around Asami's waist and heaved another great sigh.
"It's a nice place for him, don't you think?" Asami asked. "All protected beneath the statue?"
"Mako didn't need to be protected," Korra said, the edge of anger returned to her voice. "He needed to be away from that idiot Wu. If he hadn't been there—"
"He wanted to be there," Asami interrupted. "It was his choice to return to his duty as bodyguard and he took it. No one could've foreseen what happened at the election."
"And nobody knows who did it, either, all we have to go on is that psychotic message they put in the paper!" Korra cried, frustrated. "I have trouble believing that it caught everyone completely off guard."
"It didn't catch them off guard, or so I heard on the radio," Asami replied. "I heard that there was a suspicious persons call put out before the attack that called forces to the lower ring. You know how people feel about the lower ring of Ba Sing Se-even with increased security they're going to ramp up more there than in the upper ring. It happened when the police forces were separated."
"And I find it hard to believe that a firebender was burned alive."
Asami winced. "They'll figure out who did it, and he'll be punished," was all the rebuttal she could offer, and even to her the words rang empty.
It was well into dinnertime when Bolin returned to the compound. Without ceremony or introduction he took his place across from Korra at the dinner table, loosened the collar of his dress shirt, and began to eat slowly and wordlessly. This, too, had become common, and this, too, worried Korra. Never one for table manners, Bolin on a normal day would have cleared his plate in seconds. Now he did as much rearranging of the items as he did actual eating, and at every meal he'd been present for, he'd left at least half his food untouched.
"You're looking a little sick," Pema said to him when he sat, and Bolin looked at her as if he didn't understand. Then she stood and walked around the table to sit beside him. "Are you feeling okay?" She pressed her palm to his forehead in motherly fashion. "You're pale."
But dry eyed, Korra noted. She had hoped he was staying at the grave to mourn finally, but all signs showed that he was still all pent up. It was so strange for him to be so quiet. Normally, Bolin wore his heart on his sleeve. He didn't hold back. Either there was nothing in him or he'd done a very good job disguising it.
Bolin stared at his bowl of rice, untouched, and the stack of steamed vegetables that lay beside it. "I just need to eat something."
"When you've finished your dinner I'll send an acolyte to your room with some tea and a cold compress." Pema said, and then stood to retake her place at the table. "We can't have you getting sick on us."
Once Pema had situated herself again, Korra cast a meaningful glance to Tenzin, and then jerked her head toward Bolin. Then, deliberately, she said, "I'd be happy if you'd come train with me tomorrow." She'd tried to make herself sound bright and inviting. "Pabu would love to spend time with you."
"No, thanks," Bolin replied shortly.
Apparently Tenzin had understood Korra's gesticulating, because he cleared his throat to command the attention of the table. "It's healthy to exercise during stressful times," he said, picking up on Korra's obvious lead. "And Pema is right that you've been looking ill. Maybe working with Korra will help take your mind off of things."
Bolin perked up, and the look he shot between Tenzin and Korra sent a cold streak up Korra's back. He'd never leveled such an intense look at her before. "You told him, didn't you? That I can't bend," he said, more incredulous than angry. Then, without waiting for an answer, he stood. "Why would you do that? Why would you ever think that was a good idea?" With Korra sufficiently shamed, he turned on Tenzin. "I appreciate that you're letting me stay in your house, but I don't need any of your special airbender spirituality nonsense."
Bolin marched out of the room and slammed the door behind him. An awkward quiet remained.
Again, Tenzin cleared his throat. "That went well."
"Can I go to my room, too, daddy?" asked Ikki, and when Tenzin nodded his approval the airbender children left the table one by one.
Korra felt horribly guilty as she sat there staring at the remnants of Bolin's dinner still on the table. She regretted that she'd said anything at all, and she hoped desperately that she hadn't set him back. He'd just now started coming out, he'd just now started talking to people: If he quit now, it would be all her fault for betraying his secret to Tenzin.
"I'll go talk to him," Korra sighed. "I made him angry, it seems only right that I should calm him down. Come on, Pabs."
The fire ferret skittered up to rest on her shoulder.
"Don't wait up for me," Korra said to Asami, and with a heavy lump in her stomach, she left.
