Regrets, I had a few
This was how it ended?
No, not fighting the Equalist terrorist, or the Dark Avatar, or the Red Lotus cult, or that giant doomsday robot, or even her own sister. No, this was how it ended. Slumped against a car with a wound in her chest from those fancy new weapons that gang was using, the Shockers, they were called. It was a case of false advertising. The blast from the barrel of the weapon didn't just shock, it also burned, and now it just had her coughing up blood.
Her men and women were too involved in the chaos. An entire gang of thugs armed with these new weapons, a way for non-benders to defend themselves allegedly. It became a way for a non-bending gang called the Sons of Amon to declare war on the Triple Threat Triad and the result was a city at war.
She never really cared about any of those politics. It didn't matter to her if they could bend or they could chi-block, if they contributed by metal bending handcuffs or flying a helicopter, if they could help, and were willing to follow orders, she would have them on board her force.
Her officers needed her, but the wound was rather firm in insisting that she not go anywhere. At this point her arms and legs were starting to feel numb, and that could only mean nerve damage. Well, that and a slow, agonizing death. But that part was inevitable with the life she chose. She had no delusions of a happy retirement, surrounded by children and grandchildren seeing 'Gran-Gran' and asking about old war stories while telling her she was a prude.
Any desire to have a family was admittedly long beaten out of her by her mother, and when they got married, any inkling of that being an option was destroyed along with those statues on Air Temple Island. She chuckled slightly, for all her air of authority and sternness, that tantrum was still remarkably satisfying at the time.
Mom's probably laughing at me, she thought to herself, only to realize that was a lie. By the alleged legend's own admission, she was a pretty horrible mother. It was a small wonder her sister and she turned out OK. Relatively, anyway. No father, absent mother, that was usually the type of family that created criminals.
I did what I had to do.
Dad was never there, and maybe that was why she never wanted children. She could never live with herself if she put them in the same situation she had been in. She knew she would be just as bad a mother as well…her mother, and no child deserved that. To do anything else would be utterly selfish.
That was her life in a nutshell, wasn't it? Give, give, give, give, give. Never receive. Never take. Her conscience wouldn't let her take. It wouldn't let her accept a gift. The one councilman found that out when he tried to offer her the representative position. The rant about politicians that she belted out would have been one of legend if someone actually recorded the damn thing. But the position, the salary, the end of her police career, it would have let her retire old and rich…had her conscience not sliced the desire apart faster than any metal bender could have.
And this was her reward for literal decades of hard work, an unceremonious end at the hands of a new type of weapon, bleeding out in the middle of a city street. No parades, no massive firework displays, no honorable Air Nation whatzits to see off the departing legends of the world. Just this.
And even with everything going numb, and her vision blurring, she had one question. Where were her men?
She looked up, seeing that the police had been able to corral the gangsters, trapping the majority of them after their brazen assault, the survivors all in her handcuffs. The speed and efficiency that they used to bring the criminals down was exactly like she taught them, drilled in countless hours and reinforced in her men and women ad nauseum.
Her officers were just fine, thanks to her.
Two of them were yelling, running towards her, but she couldn't hear a single word. She did recognize one of them at least, the kid. He was still 'the kid' to her, even though he had put his ass on the line countless times both under her orders and on his own; and never once complained. And here he was again, saving the city they had sworn to protect, and emerging just fine. She was only glad that he couldn't hear the sentimental nonsense echoing through her mind. The last memory she had of him could not have been whining about life. But it was then that she had a realization.
Her men would be fine after she was gone. Every ounce of sweat she put into them would ensure that. The kid would make a good chief, because she had trained him well enough to be one, and he had the experience to do it correctly. And every decision through her life, leading the metal bending police after her mom retired, being a single career woman, were all intertwined. People she cared about would have died had she not made the sacrifices she did, both personally and professionally. And this was just her making the sacrifice one last time for the city she held dear.
This must have been what letting children go felt like.
With no one to turn to, and her hearing having vanished, she closed her eyes. In the end, the regrets that were there, but compared to the good she did, they weren't worth mentioning. The only real regret she had was not ducking to the right. But even that was forgivable considering it gave one of her officers an opening, and pretty much saved his life. She did what she had to do, and did it without concern for herself. And now, she had no regrets.
My life didn't turn out so bad.
Because I did it my way.