Tonraq is thankful for the pain. Each time he drifts off to sleep, his head falls awkwardly to one side and sends a jolt of fire through his injured shoulder, and he shudders, barely awake before the cool night air reminds him where he is. There are wisps of cloud between patches of black – stars everywhere. Way in front of him, he sees the back of the Sato girl's head, her long curls raked by the breeze, her hands firmly on Oogi's reins.
Panic seizes him for a second, a wave of sickness deep inside his gut, and he looks down to see that her hand is still knotted in his, their fingers threaded together. Her eyes are closed, but there is pressure, and her hand is warm – too warm.
"You should sleep. I can watch her."
He looks up to see the firebender sitting at a calculated distance. His legs are drawn up gawkily to make room for all the injured bodies on the saddle. Tonraq registers the discomfort and sympathizes – he knows what it's like to be a tall boy in a world that doesn't quite fit around him.
"I'm fine," says Tonraq, trying to draw himself up a little straighter, gritting his teeth against the soreness it awakens. Instinctively, he draws Korra's hand closer to himself and realizes only when he sees the look on the young man's face that he likely looks like a moose lion guarding its calf. Mako is no threat. Tonraq has never actually seen him that way.
"You look uncomfortable," Tonraq offers. "You could've ridden back with the others," referring to the group that went back to collect the Zaofu team instead of heading straight to Republic City. The earthbending brother is with them – he wanted to be close to the Beifong girl.
Mako's lips form a line, and he just shakes his head. And Tonraq realizes he is still not helping. He lets go of Korra's hand and tries to rearrange her, to make just a little bit more room. He touches her, and his hands feel too large, too rough, though they used to pick her up when she was so tiny and throw her into the air just to hear her laugh. Higher, higher, she would scream. He tries to lift her, imagining that once again she weighs as much as a seal lion pup, and then his arm flares in pain again, and he bites back a gasp.
Mako unfolds himself and leans forward before hesitating. Tonraq looks in the boy's face and recognizes.
"Could you?" he asks. And Mako immediately reaches out to help him resettle her before stretching out just a little bit more.
"Dad?"
Her voice is like broken glass that cuts him, but the pain feels good. He looks down and sees her eyes slitted open.
"I'm sorry, sweetheart. I didn't mean to wake you up."
"I wasn't asleep," she says, but it's not clear that she can really tell the difference.
"You could've fooled me," he says and tries to crack a smile at her. The swelling on her face is slightly worse, and there is something off about the way she looks at him.
"If I was sleeping, why am I still so tired?"
He laughs a little, "You've been through a lot."
It's then that he notices the chapping on her lips and curses himself. He should be getting her to drink more, but he didn't want to wake her up.
Tonraq gestures at Mako, whose brow is folding in on itself, and the young man freezes for a second before he feels for the water skin lying amid the other baggage. Tonraq opens it and bends a mouthful of water toward her lips. She accepts it a gulp at a time. He wishes, not for the first time, that he'd learned to heal.
"Zaheer," she says, her voice full of distress.
"He's gone," he replies quickly. "You beat him, Korra. You saved everyone. I can't tell you how proud I am…"
"He was here just a second ago."
Tonraq stops and registers the fear in her face. She blinks a few times through the exhaustion and then screws her eyes shut. A moan escapes her mouth, and he can't tell if it's the pain or something else. Nonsense syllables spill from between her lips, and he thinks he hears the word "Vaatu."
"It's ok, sweetheart. You're fine now."
Her voice turns into a cry, and Tonraq decides that the pain medication has worn off. He checks the position of the moon and guesses it's at least an hour before she's due for another dose, but still.
"Mako, get the kit."
Korra struggles a bit when he tries to get her to take the clear liquid. "This will help," he offers. But she keeps her eyes squeezed shut and shakes her head.
Tonraq remembers a song, a song he used to sing to her when she was little, back when it was still his job to rock her to sleep. He doesn't even know if she'll remember it. He runs a hand through her hair, fingernails lightly massaging her scalp. Her hair is beautiful like her mother's, though she's always worn it like a warrior. The song comes out of him, but he can't remember all the words.
Gradually, her face relaxes. "I'm cold," she says. But her skin is hot.
It a flurry of motion, Mako adjusts the blanket around her. Then Tonraq sees him think for a second before removing his own coat and throwing it over her body. She turns her head and blinks in the firebender's direction a few times.
"It's you," she says.
Mako fusses with the worn, grey jacket a bit more, trying to cover as much of her as possible.
"Yeah," he says, before retreating back into his own space. He meets Tonraq's gaze for a second with pain behind his eyes, and Tonraq once again suppresses any curiosity about what happened between them.
"Take the medicine, Korra," the boy finally says. "You'll feel better."
To Tonraq's surprise, his daughter lifts her head just a bit as he bends two drops of the liquid to her mouth. It acts fast, and soon he can hear her breathing, strong and slow in sleep. He takes her hand again and examines the scar tissue on her knuckles and the bandages on her forearms.
He remembers the first time he took her hunting and she fell on the ice. And he had carried her tiny body at a half sprint all the way back to Katara's hut. Korra is going to be fine. She always was. Tonraq would never get used to seeing his daughter fall, but he'd grown accustomed over time to seeing her get back up again.
Silence wraps itself around them again, and once more, the urge to drift off becomes overwhelming. The last thing he sees is the firebender's hand briefly fall over his daughter's before fluttering away again.
…
In the morning, they arrive, and Tonraq is past the point of mere pain. The joint is stiff and completely inflexible where before he could at least move a little. The shock of Oogi's landing elicits an involuntary groan, and Mako is up in an instant, helping him stand. The boy is thin but very strong, and for a moment Tonraq resents his youth.
The island is eerily silent, empty. But out of the dawn mists a group of acolytes come running. "Get the healers," he yells at them, "Go!" His voice is resonant but frayed at the edges, scratching like the needle on a phonograph. He looks down at the bodies of Tenzin, Kya, Bumi, and Korra and massages his bandaged arm.
"Mako, don't wait for them," he says. "Take her inside."
He barely speaks the words, and the firebender is scooping her up, steady as he lifts her and anchors her weight against his body. Asami is tending to the other fallen, and Tonraq stands to watch the bundle that is his child disappear inside the house. And for a second, Mako's back becomes that of a waterbending master with grey hair, and the girl in her arms is four years old. Tonraq has watched his daughter be carried off in the arms of others many, many times.
…
Korra's room at Air Temple Island feels stark, and Tonraq wishes he had Water Tribe furs to throw over her bed and keep her warm. The blankets that cover her are saffron, and the entire place smells like incense. He thinks for a second that Korra should be healing at home in the igloo he and Senna still share in the South. But was that ever really home for Korra? Did she ever spend more than a few days at a time there since they discovered she was the Avatar? It is hard, at times, for him to remember Korra's childhood the way she must remember it.
The healers' prognosis is grim but not hopeless. She may be weak for a long time, they say. Her injuries from the fight will heal, but the long-term effects of the poison are unknown. There may be pain, considerable pain, for a while. A great deal will depend on her. My daughter is strong, he insists to himself. I don't care what they say.
When Korra wakes up, this becomes harder to sustain. The agony in her face is impossible to hide. And she keeps resisting anything that might allow her to sleep through it. "I'm fine," she says, and then her eyes screw shut, and her fists clench, and she always winds up giving in. He offers his hand and lets her squeeze it until she falls asleep again. There is a war happening inside, and it's one he can't fight with of her.
"Chief Tonraq, we finally have your wife on the phone." An acolyte stands tensely at the bedside. Tonraq gently sets Korra's hand back on the sheets and struggles a bit to rise. A slender arm darts out to steady him, and he looks up to see the Sato girl. He doesn't know when she returned to the room. Her face as composed as always but looking somewhat worse for wear.
"Come get me if she wakes up," he says, and Asami's head bobs in assent. He tries not to look too hard at his daughter as he thinks about what he must say. Senna has gotten this sort of call too many times. Korra's bending is gone. Well, she can airbend. It's difficult to explain.
In the hallway, he sees Tenzin stagger out of one of the healing rooms, and Mako is just behind him, grabbing one of the airbending master's arms and throwing it over his shoulder. "We're gonna go see her," the younger man says, and as they pass Tenzin grabs Tonraq by the arm. "Your daughter is very strong."
Tonraq only nods. Tenzin does not look particularly strong. He remembers fighting alongside the airbender when Korra was first kidnapped. They were all much younger then, so much more resilient. It didn't take so long to heal. And they'd been able to protect her. But now Tenzin is leaning hard against Mako after Korra had nearly laid down her life for him. When did the children start carrying them?
There is static on the line when he lifts the receiver to his ear. His wife's voice breaks through, and he can hear the tensing of her jaw as she steels herself for whatever is coming. He has a speech prepared. She deserves to know what he has seen, to know that all was very nearly lost. He is tempted to confess that he was afraid, that he is still afraid. But in the moment, he forgets all of it and says the only thing that seems to matter in the moment: "Senna, she's alive. She was brilliant, and she is going to be just fine."