Amon had won.
Korra sat huddled in the darkness of her underground cell, rocking back and forth slowly. Emotion had drained from her features long ago; there was no longer any reason for anger, or fear, or resentment. The wound had scabbed over and gone frigid and there was nothing left of her but iron. Avatar Korra was emptiness. In the darkness, her eyes saw nothing, her ears heard empty silence, and the only sensation was that of the cold, wet floor beneath her. The scent of the room was grim; torn between feces and mildew, the putrid smell overpowered her. There were no tears left to cry. Her long hours of weeping and sniffling like a child were behind her.
Amon had beaten her. Despite the best efforts of Republic City, Amon had overpowered their young Avatar and taken away the singular thing that had defined her life: if the Avatar was no longer master of the four elements, she could no longer restore balance, and the world was Amon's to change and shape at his will.
She had become a block of ice. Impenetrable. Unconquerable. Silent. How long she had been left in her underground prison, she could not be sure. But she longed to feel the earth, alive and tingling beneath her toes, and the lack of sensation left her blind. It was a quarter of her soul that was gone forever. She longed to feel chi rush through her like it once had, bursting forth into light and life and flame, but that too was gone. Amon had slaughtered her mercilessly. And water… That was a loss too deep for the young woman to contemplate. Her singular connection to her people had been snatched away from her and smashed into millions of fragments. The Water Tribe's golden girl could no longer shift and change upon will. Everything about her was now permanent, inalterable, and rigid.
Air was not such a loss. It had only been hers for mere moments before it had been taken. She could only hope that Tenzin and his family had escaped, preserving the noble art of Airbending for another generation. But it seemed unlikely in this frightening new world that there was a safe place for Aang's legacies. Perhaps they would be safe for a time, but if Amon had been able to conquer the capital of the world in such a short time, who was truly safe from his far-reaching power and abilities?
No bender was.
Korra, trapped in the darkness, did not know what had become of her friends. Perhaps they had escaped. Perhaps they had suffered similar fates and sat in cells beside her. That alone plagued her in the darkness; if only she could be sure that they were safe, this unending night would burst into dawn. She supposed that was exactly why Amon had chosen to keep the world shut off from her. She knew nothing but these four walls, the bucket in the corner, and the maggoty blanket that she refused to touch. She had divorced herself from it after the wriggling worms that had disturbed her first night of sleep in the darkness.
Her meals of crusty bread and stale water came through a slot twice in a twenty four hour period. That routine anchored her to reality – her life had become a game of waiting for her meals to slip through the hole in her door. Light would spill onto the floor in a beautiful array of sparkling concrete and a grubby human hand. Sometimes, a voice would call her name gruffly. There was never conversation, but it was something. And huddled in her small corner, it was something worth holding onto.
Amon had broken Avatar Korra.