Stricken
Tenzin entered the room quietly, not wanting to disturb its lone occupant. Tarrlok waited until the sound of the door closing behind his fellow Councilman had faded before he turned to face the Airbender, his expression looking far more fatigued than irritated.
"I was wondering when you might show up," Tarrlok said, sitting up on his bed as Tenzin took a seat in a nearby chair. "Have you come to formally announce my removal from the Council, Tenzin?"
"No, Tarrlok," the Airbender said seriously, "I haven't. Your seat on the Council will remain yours."
"Really?" Tarrlok said, surprised. "Whose decision was that?"
"Mine," Tenzin answered without missing a beat. "If we removed you from the Council just because you'd lost your Waterbending, we'd be playing right into Amon's hands. You would become his perfect poster-boy for a Bending bias among the leaders of Republic City. "
Tarrlok laughed, but it was a dry and bitter sound.
"And here I thought it was because you cared," he said spitefully, glaring at his political rival. "I don't suppose your father ever learned how to give people back their Bending, did he?"
The Airbender shook his head sadly, his eyes coming to rest on the stump that had once been one of Tarrlok's arms.
"No," Tenzin admitted, "he never did. I'm sorry."
"No," the Councilman countered sharply, "you're not. I might be a cripple now, Tenzin, but I'm not an idiot. What did you really come here for?"
The Airbender sighed, saddened even further by the reality that Tarrlok's bitterness ran so deep, he wasn't even able to recognize sincerity anymore.
"I need answers," Tenzin said at last. "Two answers, to two very important questions."
"So?" the other Councilman snapped back. "Spit them out; the sooner we get this over with, the sooner I get to stop speaking to you."
The Airbender bit back another sigh before continuing.
"We might as well start with the easier one," he said. "Who is Hanzo?"
Tarrlok gave a strangled snarl at the mention of his former bodyguard's name, his blue eyes bright with hate.
"Besides being an Equalist and a traitor?" the Councilman seethed. "What else is there that matters?"
"Why he chose you to target, for one," Tenzin pressed back. "If all he'd wanted to do was spy on the Council for Amon, he could have gotten close to any of us and the result would have been the same. But Hanzo got close to you for a reason, Tarrlok. Why?"
The Councilman stared the Airbender down with an icy gaze that hadn't dulled at all, even with the loss of his Bending.
"I stepped over a lot of people to be where I am now, Tenzin," he said lowly. "It wouldn't surprise me if a few of them want me dead. What's your other question?"
"Who," the Airbender asked, pulling a scroll out of his jacket and handing it to Tarrlok, "is Inara?"
The other Councilman took the scroll with a steady hand, unrolling it and looking over the words.
"Ah," he said after a moment, "that would explain it. Where did you get this?"
When no other explanation was offered, Tenzin had to fight to keep his steadily-rising irritation out of his voice.
"It was on your body when we found you outside, unconscious," he answered. "And what, exactly," he prodded, "would this scroll happen to explain, Tarrlok?"
"A few years ago," Tarrlok answered with a sigh, "when I was still climbing the ranks in the Northern Water Tribe, I got wind of someone close to the Chieftain selling information to a group of Fire Nation radicals. I realized the leak had to be sealed—"
"— And you hired Inara to do your dirty work for you?" the Airbender finished accusingly, drawing a scornful snort from the other Councilman.
"I wouldn't expect you to know anything about making hard choices, Tenzin," Tarrlok shot back, frowning. "Regardless, the means don't matter here nearly as much as the end. Inara did her job, but she didn't come back from it. She and Hanzo were probably close," the Councilman finished with a weak shrug. "I've had people try to assault me over less than a broken heart."
"Wonderful," Tenzin said bitterly. "As if the Equalists needed even more reasons to hate us."
"Right," Tarrlok countered, "because I'm the only person on the Council whose hands are less than clean. Spare me your sanctimony."
The Airbender swallowed the first reply that came to his lips, taking another deep breath and calming himself back down. Did people from the Water Tribes just possess a particular talent for getting under his skin?
"Is there anything else you can tell me about that day?" he asked. "Was anyone else there, besides you, Amon and Hanzo?"
"Yes," the other Councilman answered. "Hiroshi Sato's daughter had been abducted, as well. Asami."
"And did Amon say anything to her?"
"Not that I can remember, no. Is there a point to this, Tenzin? I'd like to go back to sleep, if you don't mind."
The Airbender nodded and rose, disappointed that nothing had come of their last possible lead. Amon kept slipping through the Council's fingers like smoke, and even Lin didn't seem capable of tracking down any solid evidence.
He was sure that she'd never let him hear the end of it for letting Hanzo get away, at the very least. The Police Chief in a bad mood was about as terrifying a force as Tenzin ever had to deal with, no matter how long they'd known each other.
"Don't do this. Are you really going to make me say 'please'? You know how much I hate saying 'please'."
"You just said it twice," she teased, her dark amber eyes twinkling for an instant before she shifted over and kissed him. "So you must not hate it that much," she finished, before leaning back slightly to look her companion in the eye. "Why are you so afraid of this job, Hanzo?"
"I'm not afraid of the job," the green-eyed youth replied. "I'm afraid of the guy who's giving it to you. Tarrlok is a snake, and snakes don't like leaving loose ends. Not when they can come back to haunt them."
"You think he'll try to kill me, just to shut me up?"
Hanzo reached over, gently brushing a lock of Inara's dark hair back behind her ear.
"I don't think he'll try," he said quietly, bringing his hand back down to rest in the space between them. Inara smiled, a sight that broke Hanzo's heart almost as badly as the answer he knew would come out of her mouth.
"I'll be fine," she said. "I've survived worse than a snake-bite. Trust me."
"I do." Hanzo paused, feeling his chest tighten. "Why did we even let this happen?" he asked, and the young woman next to him frowned.
"You're not regretting it," Inara said slowly, "are you?"
"Of course not," Hanzo answered. "I'm just tired of burying people I care about."
Inara gave him another smile, but there was only melancholy in her eyes this time.
"Then you're in the wrong line of work," she said pityingly.
"I'd say it's worked out all right so far," he said with a matching smile, before reciprocating Inara's earlier kiss. "I'll be waiting for you," Hanzo finished, taking a silver ring off of his finger and handing it to her. "Your turn."
Inara slipped the ring onto her own finger, the unspoken promise made once again.
"Of course," she replied, getting up and walking to the corner of the room where her spear leaned against the wall. "I'm not about to break my streak now, Hanzo."
The green-eyed young man let himself wake up slowly as the last shreds of the dream faded, holding his hand up and looking at his bare ring finger.
"Not about to break it, huh?" he said to the empty room. "Right."
Hanzo got up and got dressed in silence, strapping on his pair of katana before walking out into the small common room of the modest apartment he rented with Sarrak and Mira. It was in one of the forgotten districts of Republic City, too poor for the wealthy to frequent but just rich enough that it wasn't notorious for its violence or general desperation.
The perfect place to hide.
"There he is," Sarrak called out, causing Mira to turn away from their game of pai sho to nod in greeting. "You sleep like the dead, man," Sarrak finished as his friend shrugged and pulled up a chair, sitting down with them at the table.
"By the way, Hanzo," Mira broached a few moments later, punctuating it with the clack of a tile as she blocked Sarrak's attempted gambit, "Muguruma came by earlier, while you were still sleeping. Looks like he sniffed out a potential recruit for the mission tomorrow night."
Hanzo sighed, trying not to think about how much Mira looked like Inara. Even now, it still hurt every time he saw her.
"And he wants me to track him down?"
"Her, actually," the archer corrected him, and Hanzo felt a foolishly hopeful clench in his chest.
He squashed it.
"Fine," the swordsman said, rising again. He didn't enjoy being an errand boy, but at least it would get his mind off of the past. As he reached the door, Hanzo turned back over his shoulder.
"Hey, Mira."
"Yeah?"
"You don't have any siblings, do you?"
"No…" the archer answered slowly, giving Hanzo a sidelong look. "Why?"
He shrugged, pushing the door open.
"Nothing."
Mako pushed through another round of Firebending kata, ignoring the tiredness in his muscles and the fact that moonlight had long since replaced the sunlight that had been pouring through the window when he'd started training. The tension he felt about the next night's championship Pro-Bending match was enough to put him on edge just by itself, but the unexpected run-in with Sarrak earlier had turned Mako's mood from edgy to outright rotten.
"So, you can't sleep either?"
He didn't turn at the sound of the voice, continuing to Firebend as his teammate entered the room and began slinging bursts of water at the pictures hanging near the wall.
"Nope."
"Something bothering you?"
"Nope."
The next burst of water snaked around and whipped Mako on the leg, just hard enough to break his stance.
"You're a horrible liar," Korra said as the Firebender turned sharply to face her. "Don't you think I've earned the truth by now?"
Mako frowned, his eyes narrowing for a moment. But in the end he just sighed, swallowing back the barb that had sprung to his lips and replacing it with milder words.
"Yeah," he admitted, "you have. Sorry. It's just…"
"Not something you like to talk about," the Avatar finished for him. "I know. But if what Sarrak said has gotten to you this badly, you need to talk it out. Otherwise you'll be a wreck tomorrow night, and there's no way we'll beat Tahno and those other clowns if we're not firing on all cylinders. And I mean all of us," Korra pressed. Mako nodded.
"Fair," he said shortly, before taking a seat cross-legged on the floor. Korra sat across from him, waiting for Mako to begin.
"When I said I'd just been a bookie for the Triple Threats," the Firebender said, looking squarely at the floor in between them, "I wasn't being completely honest with you."
"So," the Avatar spoke up after Mako had kept quiet for a little bit longer than was comfortable, "you did some work as muscle, too?"
"Not exactly," he hedged, looking Korra in the eye and seeming embarrassed. "I was more like protection. Sarrak was the muscle, and I followed him around to make sure he didn't wind up murdering the people the Triad was making money off of. The guy was an animal when we were younger, Korra."
The Avatar raised an eyebrow, confused by the conflicting description.
"He seemed pretty calm, both of the times I talked to him."
"That's because he wasn't trying to carve your face off with a knife," Mako replied, all of the hesitation in his eyes overshadowed by deadly seriousness. "He's like a dog; if you're on his good side, he'll put himself on the line for you in a second. Get on his bad side, and, well— it won't be pretty."
"Having to keep an eye on someone like that sounds awful," Korra said, her blue eyes bright and sympathetic. "I'm sorry, Mako."
The Firebender shrugged.
"It kept other people from getting hurt, so I didn't mind it," he said evenly. "I just wish we hadn't run into him. Every time I see that guy, it's like opening up an old wound."
Korra held her silence, thinking back over the conversation she'd had with Sarrak in his cell. He'd been furious over what had happened to Mira, even if he'd tried to hide his emotions at the time: it was clear he cared a lot about her. Korra sighed, wondering how she would be able to deal with the Equalists if their conflict ever exploded into all-out war. Someone like Amon, a single, egotistical maniac, she could handle.
It was the thought of killing normal people who just happened to be non-Benders that made Korra's stomach turn. She knew that she could get away with not killing them, if she wanted to— but sooner or later, the bodies would start to pile up on both sides of the line.
And it didn't seem like Amon was the world's biggest fan of diplomacy, either, so that was a dead-end.
"Great," Mako's voice broke into the Avatar's thoughts, sounding tired and slightly ashamed, "now I've gotten you all depressed, too. Sorry. Again."
"You don't have to keep apologizing to me," Korra said with a small smile, relieved to see her friend's grimace fade away. "I'm not depressed, I just don't know what the hell to do about the rest of my life outside of Pro-Bending."
Mako raised an eyebrow.
"That sounds even worse than being depressed," he said, and Korra laughed.
"I have the feeling that dealing with extraordinary problems is pretty much the Avatar's job," she replied. "I'll get through it."
"Well," Mako said, smiling as the two of them got back up and continued bending their respective elements into pictures of Tahno's smug face, "if you ever need our help with anything at all, you know Bolin and I have your back."
"And I couldn't ask for more than that," Korra answered as she flung a spike of water at the wall, purposefully ignoring the slight tug in her chest at the sound of the half-truth.
Outside, the sun slowly, finally, began to rise.
"There we go," Mako said with a sigh, before slinging a burst of fire that was much more powerful than his previous few had been. "I was waiting for that thing to get its lazy behind out of bed."
"Speak for yourself," Korra shot back, feeling the faintest of tugs from the moon before she disappeared from the Avatar's senses altogether. "This is going to be a long day; I can feel it."
"What's with the doom and gloom, Korra?" Bolin's upbeat voice greeted the training pair, drawing their eyes towards the door. "We're gonna do awesome tonight; that's what I'm feelin' right now. Am I right, Pabu, or am I right?"
The fire ferret squeaked and nodded, before hopping over to the nearby table with the radio on it and curling up next to the device.
The trio trained in focused silence for the next few minutes, until an unexpected crackle from the radio broke their concentration.
And the word that followed a heartbeat later shattered it completely.
"Good morning, citizens of Republic City," a voice that Korra knew all-too-well spoke with calm insidiousness. "This is Amon."
…
…
A/N: There we go; number three is in the bag! That's the last of the big plot-bunnies for now... although Episode 6 broke my brain into a bunch of tiny little pieces with its pure awesomeness, so I'll probably wind up incorporating that into a one-shot, if/when I make another one. And if/when I do that, it'll incorporate these OCs, because they're useful like that. But for now, Tarrlok's history with Hanzo is out in the open, and a bit more of Mako's past has been brought to light thanks to Sarrak. In other words, all the plot threads that the first two one-shots introduced have been tied off. Good times!
I know I deviated from the canonical moment in Episode 6 a bit at the end there, but I just didn't feel like writing out all of that dialogue again. Oh well.
I hope you all enjoyed the read!
- Jazz