i.

The woman on the bier didn't look like Asami's mother. Her mother was always full of light and life, her eyes glittering like the sun. This woman wore too much makeup and was too stiff and still. She's heard strange words she doesn't quite understand floating around when her dad thinks she can't hear: Agni kai, murder, extortion. All she knows is that bad men attacked the house while she and Dad were at the factory.

Her dad laid a hand on her shoulder. His eyes were red. "It's just us now, sweetie. I promise I'll keep you safe. You won't want for anything."

But as Asami stared at what used to be her mom, she knew she had lost something.

ii.

Her dad cleared his throat and looked away. Asami felt an anticipatory blush spreading across her cheeks. They'd been building up to this question ever since she had started visiting him in prison. "So…you and the—Mako, excuse me. You're back with him."

"Yes." Asami didn't know how much he knew about the stories that were splashed across the tabloids two years ago and wasn't keen on revisiting them. Mako wanted her this time, and that was enough. "I love him, Dad."

Her dad was silent, and memories flashed across Asami's mind. Her dad, wild-eyed and with his hair askew. "The most difficult part was watching my daughter traipse around with a firebending street rat like you! She sucked in a breath. As kind and apologetic as he was now, he was still Hiroshi Sato, the man who had been Amon's most fanatical supporter and who had tried to kill her.

But then he smiled. Tight, but sincere, or at least trying to be. "Then I hope you two are very happy together. Bring me a wedding picture, would you?"

Asami never got the chance. A year later, she watched helplessly as her father was crushed. They didn't even find enough of him to hold a funeral. Mako held her in her grief, but this time she understood the words whispered around her only too well. Traitor. Redeemed. A better death than he deserved. And one word reserved for her:

Orphan.

iii.

"So," Bolin said with a forced casualness that wouldn't fool a two-year-old, "Opal and I are kind of having a baby."

Mako spat out his drink and sent Pabu Jr. diving for cover. Asami swallowed hard. A baby. A real, live squirming, adorable bundle of human. She felt suddenly, at twenty-seven, very old. It seemed like just yesterday that they were racing around fighting Equalists and bickering over silly love triangles. She looked around the apartment she shared with Mako. Tasteful, understated furniture. Her scientific journals on the coffee table. Photos of him with Raiko hanging on the wall. They had built a life together. A quiet, adult life where he would fix her tea in the mornings and she would curl up beside him at night. She smiled. A life where she was about to spoil her future niece or nephew absolutely rotten.

"That's great!" She shot up to envelop Bolin in a hug and the congratulations flowed like wine.

And then of course, something happened.

"You do realize Grandma Yin will be after you guys next?" Bolin said. "She never has enough great-grandkids."

Asami froze. Mako looked like a catdeer caught in the headlights. They had never discussed having kids of their own; between her job and his, how would they find the time? But images pushed themselves into her mind like insistent salespeople. She imagined the second bedroom made up into a nursery. She would stand over the crib cooing at a little girl with her father's eyes. She'd teach the kid how to drive every vehicle ever invented and a few that hadn't yet. She would teach her everything there was to know about machines, just like her dad had taught her.

Her dad. Sometimes it was easy to forget how hard-won their quiet life had been and how fragile it was. But the shadows were always there, reminding her how easy it was for a greedy thief or a tyrannical general to steal away her happiness. Asami swallowed. Or her child's happiness. All it would take was one car accident or one threat that sent Team Avatar back into action for her child to be orphaned. She imagined that golden eyed girl staring at her too-still body or watching her murdered. Asami clenched her fist. No, never again. No one should have to endure what she had.

She watched as a similar stream of emotions played across Mako's face: elation, thoughtfulness, absolute terror. "I think she's got plenty to keep her hands full," he said at last.

After Bolin had left to tell Korra the good news, Mako sighed. "Too dangerous. Wouldn't be fair to the kid, you know. Never home. And it's not like we had great role models on how to do it growing up." He bowed his head, and his next words were so quiet she could barely hear them. She thought she saw tears in his eyes. "We really would be good parents."

iv.

"Can I have another ice cream, Uncle Mako?"

"Afraid not, kid," he said with the same tender seriousness he used when speaking to particularly sympathetic suspects. "Your mom will kill us."

Little Lin switched over to her, giving Asami puppy dog eyes that you we should've been registered as lethal weapons. "Aunt Asami? Please? Have I mentioned that you're my favorite aunt?"

Mako covered his mouth with his hand to stifle his laughter. "Enough!" He looked up and over at Asami. "I do not envy Bolin one little bit when she's a teenager."

They really would have been good parents.

The phone rang, and tension spread across Asami's shoulders. Calling either of them at home on a weekend was never a good sign.

Half an hour later, they were both racing towards the ruined husk of a Future Industries factory. A gas leak. An explosion. Not her fault, they said. Twenty-five of her workers dead. Asami leaned against Mako as she fought to keep her voice even enough for another detective to take her statement. Hadn't the world seen enough death over the last twenty-five years?

"Mommy!"

The shriek of a child cut through the air like a knife. Asami turned. The girl couldn't have been any older than Lin, all knees and fat fingers. Her golden eyes were wide with terror. A knife twisted in Asami's chest. She remembered being that age and wanting to know where her mother was. She excused herself and walked over to the girl and knelt so that they were at eye level. "What's your name?" she asked gently.

"H—Hiroka." She sniffed. "Where's my mommy? She told me she was going to meet me right here, but she's not here."

"What's her name?"

"Ai."

A pit opened in Asami's stomach. She knew that name. One of the forklift operators. Her husband had died of influenza a few years ago. She and her daughter lived in the Dragon Flats Borough. She looked back at Mako. He shook his head and gestured to one of the sheet covered bodies.

Asami didn't sleep that night. Hadn't the world seen enough death? And this time there no murderer, no one to blame. Just more orphans. She looked over to Mako as he stared at the ceiling next to her. "The guys at the station said they couldn't find a next-of-kin." She didn't have to ask who he was talking about. "They're taking her to the orphanage in the morning. Guess it's better than what happened to me and Bolin." He didn't sound convinced.

She'd helped build and fund that orphanage. Mako was right. It was clean and the staff were professional. But she'd seen how tired they always were and noticed that the prospective parents always wanted healthy, happy newborns with no memories that would muddy the bonding process. A five-year-old stood almost no chance of being adopted. Hiroka would grow up clean and well-fed and slightly neglected.

She sat up and pulled the cover around herself. "What good is all this—" she swept her hand to encompass the bedroom and all its quiet opulence "—if we can't help these kids? If we can't stop things like this from happening." Team Avatar, a clean modern city. And still the cycle continued. Just now, she didn't want to be a hero or a philanthropist. She just wanted to save one little girl.

And then the idea hit her. It wasn't the mansion, but there was still so much space in the apartment. Far too much for one couple. "Maybe we could take her in for a while if she wanted?"

Mako set up beside her. His wide eyes glinted in the darkness. "Take her in? You mean like adopt her?"

"Maybe. I don't know. We never had kids because we were afraid of what could happen to us. But it happens to other people anyway. We could…" Her brow furrowed as she searched for the right words. "… We could break the cycle. For Hiroka at least."

"Still no guarantees. And it won't be easy." He took her hand. "Think I could teach her to lightningbend?"

v.

Three pairs of eyes looked back at Asami as she and Mako exited the doctor's office. Hiroka held a science magazine limply in her lap while Hui and Jeong held their blocks suspended in midair. Her children were doing a very bad job of pretending not to be curious.

Hui broke the silence. "So am I getting a little brother or not?"

Hiroka elbowed him. "Don't be rude!" But even she couldn't hide her curiosity for long. "Are you…"

Asami's vision wavered. It shouldn't matter so much. She and Mako already had three beautiful children. One more shouldn't leave her a mess. She decided to blame it on a rush of hormones. "Yes."

"Maybe I can help? We've been learning all about pregnancy in health class. The morning sickness, the cramps, the—"

"Hiroka," Mako said warningly. Then, under his breath, "We can survive seven months of this right?"

Asami surveyed her children. If someone had told her when she was six years old or even when she was twenty-one that the hollow spaces left by her parents would lead her and Mako to make space for these three lives, she wouldn't have believed them or understood. But she had grafted them into her life. There were no guarantees, but there never had been. They were happy, and now someone else was about to join that happiness.

"Who wants ice cream?"