"Tahno. Look at us."

The strained voice was too familiar in the new environment. It was out of place. Tahno was trying not to think about anything, at least not yet. He couldn't handle remembering with exactly what he had lost.

So he stared at the white wall till his vision was lined with a bright glow that only made his headache worse.

"Tahno." There was a pause heavy with the attempts of the two other people in the room to come up with something to say. They probably weren't quite sure what they were trying to say. That they were sorry? Holy hell, Tahno we're so fucking sorry. That they wanted to help? We want to get you out of this white hell hole. That they were scared? Stop staring like that and start acting like a dick again we miss you.

In the end it all sounded like too much and too little to voice so the group of three sat in silence, waiting for something to change. But nothing did.

The clock on the wall whirred at the hour mark and Ming stretched out his legs. Tahno felt jealousy that made him want to gag with self-loathing because these were his teammates and how could he feel that? You're sick Tahno, but not that sick.

A cell phone going off filled the silence. It was Shaozu's and he swore and slid out of the room to take it. Ming just stared at Tahno, waiting for a flicker or irritation or condescension.

Nothing.

"Tahno, you need to get it together. Yeah, it sucks but you need-"

Tahno glared, angry words rising quicker than common sense. "Yeah it does suck doesn't it," he hissed. The silence had been building to this because damn it, he wasn't used to not being able to mold silences and words to his benefit. "And don't you dare tell me what I need."

After the initial surprise, Ming's eyes narrowed.

"Fine. I don't know what else you want me to say because hell if I know what I should be doing."

He paused and pushed himself to his feet, looking down at Tahno. Tahno glared at the height change, hating the fact that he couldn't stand up to match him. Wasn't this what their team was all about? Matching each other? Matching jokes, matching times on the track, matching the number of hook ups that month and what they hell were they supposed to do with him now?

It had been more than his nature—it was his very habitat. The admiring glances in the hallways at school, the whispers of the incoming freshmen who hadn't seen the legendary Tahno, the simpering pressure of feminine hands on his biceps, the brush of glossy lips near his ears to whisper something mindless but still welcome because the sound meant he was on top and getting what he wanted. More than anything, it was the parting of the other runners when it was time to line up for shot that split the tension before races was the start of what made him feel alive.

His dependency had been apparent then but he'd never thought of it as a problem.

If Tahno can't run, what is Tahno?

Shaozu stuck his head back in through the door, eyes flicking back and forth between his teammates. "We gotta go, Ming."

They both looked expectantly at Tahno but his gaze had drifted back to the wall where he could bury the unnatural rise of shame.

They stood like that for a moment before Ming sighed and moved over to the door. "We're here for you, Tahno."

Something thick rose in his throat before he swallowed it back down. He watched the door shut behind them.

Tahno pressed his head against the cold car window and tried not to re-live the wheelchair ride down from the hospital. He'd only spent one night there. He could have gone home that day but he must have looked shell shocked because the doctor told him to wait 24 hours just in case.

In case of what?

His fingers had dug into the leather wheelchair grips on the armrests (the snide part of him that was still alive and kicking made several comments about how he was sitting in something dead how appropriate) while the nurse wheeled him through long corridors. He had looked around at the repeated carts, empty gurneys and uninterested eyes that slid right over him. Time stretched on and on and on.

The sunlight that hit him when the sliding doors opened almost made him hiss. (Holy fuck, it hadn't even been a day.) Memories from months of running under sunlight were quickly stifled before they could come back up to remind him of where he had been just days earlier. The drip of sweat down his neck, the dull burn of moving muscles, and the cry of victory—

Tahno swore and slammed his head against the window, holding it there. He heard his father shift in the front seat to look back at him but there was no comment.

Tahno focused on unclenching his muscles and let his eyes drift to the large metal thing clamped around his leg. The long sturdy brace kept his knee in complete immobility. It almost felt like there was no knee there at all. He couldn't feel blood pumping there and he wasn't sure if the leg would even respond if he tried moving it. All he could feel was the top layer of skin. It was as though a sleeve of his flesh was encasing nothing.

"We'll be there soon."

His father's voice made Tahno want to crawl back up to his hospital room. At least there he had been alone. No one to look at the brace eating his leg, no one to look at the beginnings of circles under his eyes, no one to look at failure.

The car eased to a stop and Tahno looked up. A large building rose above the car. Columns of fitted rocks marked the glass door entry way. On the top, in blue writing was White Lotus Physical Therapy.

Tahno just stared till his door swung open with a click to reveal the wheelchair waiting for him. He closed his eyes and he heard the impatient scuff of his father's business shoes on the black top.

"Tahno. Let's go."

The words were spoken with certainty at the follow through of orders and once upon a time Tahno might have looked back with the same certainty, albeit a little more vicious than cold, and replied no.

But once upon a time wasn't now so Tahno opened his eyes. He swung his legs to the side and allowed himself to be lifted up and over into the saggy seat. He closed his eyes again to the comforting darkness so that he wouldn't have first reactions to remember when his dad started wheeling him inside.

The swip of the doors opening and the low mutterings of a lobby room greeted his ears. Perhaps if he kept his eyes shut long enough he could forget that other people were there. He used to love the weight of eyes on him and he savored the taste of others' curiosity. The adrenaline of having attention in the palm of his hand was like a high. In the space of twenty-four hours it had become suffocating.

His father's muted conversation with the secretary lasted a few moments and all that Tahno caught of it was the hushed is he ok? And his father's reply in a tone that clearly meant there would be no more discussion he's fine. There was an awkward silence before he was being wheeled away again.

After a few minutes there was a halt and Tahno sensed shifting in the air in front of him. He resisted the urge to creak an eye open, already committed to having nothing to visualize because hell if he was having another nightmare of white coats and carefully disconnected faces that couldn't be bothered to care because he was just another patient.

"This must be Tahno!"

The voice was middle aged and deep. He could hear the false enthusiasm in the words as well as the slight confusion as to why the patient had his eyes shut and why he was gripping the arms of the wheelchair like a vice.

"Yes." His father's tone was measured with a professional quality. As if Tahno were something he was selling. "He's been having some difficulty… adapting."

"That's just fine. We'll be taking good care of him here. He'll be up and going in no time." The mindless promise made Tahno want to leap up and screech liar. His dad clasped a hand on his shoulder and Tahno twitched in surprise. "Tahno, do you want me to come with you?"

His father's voice had grown gentler and the pressure of the hand unleashed a stream of memories. A scuffed wooden table with paper plates, laughter around cheap mouthfuls of boiled or microwaved dinner, the low buzz of childhood tv shows in the background. Those were times before business calls, business suits, and the business face.

"Could you wait for me, Dad?"

He sensed his father's surprise and then the hand squeezed before letting go. "Of course, Tahno."

Footsteps clacked away. Tahno sensed the other man move behind the wheelchair and grip the handles to propel them forward.

"My name is Tenzin and I'll be your physical therapist."

"Not Doctor Tenzin?"

"Just Tenzin. Would you mind telling me why your eyes are closed?"

"Yes."

"Alright. That's fine. I'll do my best to talk you through anything we want you to do."

Tahno felt childish but childish was better than embarrassed. A door clicked open and he was wheeled in. "Alright, Tahno, Jinora and I are going to help you on the examining bed."

"Jinora?"

"I'm right here." Her voice was young. What was a kid doing in a physical therapy center? He'd opened his mouth to ask when strong hands and small ones wrapped around his arms to brace under his elbows.

"Alright, you're going to try and stand with all your weight on your left leg. Don't put anything on your right. We've moved the table lower so you'll be able to turn around and sit on it."

Tahno nodded, making sure his face was schooled into apathetic dignity.

He pushed himself up and damn how could this have happened so fast. He felt unbalanced without aids to keep him standing. His right leg jerked and buckled. He was struck with horror and he was about to try again, because it was his fucking leg why wasn't it working, when he was firmly steered and pushed down on the hard padding of the examining table.

"Tahno, you must wait till you start putting weight back on that leg. If it is your ACL as your doctor believed, it will be unstable. When it's time for you to go, we'll see how much it can handle."

Tahno's breathing was shallow and he hardly heard the reprimanding words, unable to believe how quickly his leg had folded under him. Tahno didn't trust much but he'd always trusted in the readiness of his own body.

"Now we're going to perform the Lachman test. It's going to tell me if it really is an ACL tear that we're looking at. It's painless and it only involves me going through one simple motion with your knee."

The metal around his knee loosened abruptly before being lifted away with a sharp click. He felt naked without it. The hot skin cooled quickly and Tahno felt an immeasurable rush of relief that he had kept his eyes closed. He hadn't looked at his leg directly since the last minute stretches before yesterday's race. Of course, it couldn't have changed much.

In his nightmare the skin had been mottled with dark splotches of red and purple thatspread like drops of dye in water. Ridges of tissue rose up into shiny, puckered scars and the skin had felt like it was stretched to the point of tearing over bone. After awhile the leg morphed to the soft, folded black of the withered flowers from bouquets he received after races. It was deflated and shriveled and overall, unbelievably dead.

He knew it was silly everything wrong with his leg was wrong under the surface (like you whispered the spiteful voice in his head) but Tahno was an appearance-oriented person. If his leg was ruined, it didn't just feel ruined. It looked ruined.

"Alright. You're going to lay back nice and easy now." Tahno let himself be pressed down backwards on the table. Cool, dry hands closed around his knee and lifted his leg up gently but left his ankle resting on solid surface. "Now I'm just going to hold your knee at a ninety degree light bend and feel around your tibia to see if it's being held by your ACL."

The hand settled right beneath where knee moved down to calf and began to gently push the knee up to the ceiling in small repeated movements. Tahno was struck by an overwhelming sense of instability in his knee. The joint seemed to slide without order as if the puppet strings holding it together had been cut. He forced his breathing under control.

"Now we're going to do a pivot test which is very similar. You're doing great."

Tahno repressed a sneer that he knew stemmed from the fear and suspense growing in his head. He didn't want reassurance but at the same time he needed it.

His entire leg was lifted off the table. The hands closed around his calf and pressed his knee slightly back towards his torso. The process was repeated several times before his knee was stopped and held in the lightly flexed position. Fingers felt around the lower base of his knee.

"Look at his tibia," Tenzin murmured. Fingers slid over the protruding bone and Tahno shivered. His leg was set down and Tenzin let out a short breath.

"Are you ready to hear your diagnosis?"

Tahno stiffened. No. "Already? Don't I need an MRI?"

"We'll get you an MRI soon but this physical examination was a very clear indicator."

Tahno's pulse spiked. Was he ready? Something was expanding in his chest and his rib cage felt like stretched bands of metal. "Yes. I'm ready."

Tenzin's voice began to rapidly fill the silence, speaking in a tone meant to engage him. "The ACL is one of the four main ligaments in your knee. The ligaments connect bone to bone to give joints stability. The ACL and the PCL cross each other inside the knee joint to connect the femur and the tibia. Luckily, your PCL seems to be fine. The ACL's primary function is to keep the tibia from slipping forward. For example, when you're running down hill or slowing from a run to a stop—"

"What's wrong with mine," Tahno bit out, fingers clenching in the crackling paper he was lying on.

A pause and then, "You've torn it. We have several options but as I assume that you want to return to competitive sports, surgery would be the best to avoid future complications. I recommend having some pre-rehab physical therapy for about three weeks before going into the surgery. The better you're moving before the surgery, the sooner you'll be moving even better afterwards. The surgery itself will involve taking grafts from surrounding tendons to reconstruct—"

"Dad, stop it! He's freaking out!"

The darkness behind his lids was smothering him with words that he saw rather than heard. Torn. Surgery. Pain. Reconstruct. Pain. His head was spinning but it was hard to tell because his eyes were still closed. He could feel the rotation around and around. If he could see the room he was in, he was sure it would be a blur. He felt dizzy and his breath was coming too fast but he couldn't stop the sharp gasps In. Out. In. Out. In Out. In Out.

"Hey there, Pretty Boy. C'mon. Open your eyes."

Tahno felt his eyes creaking open before he could stop them at the sound of the new voice—the voice he remembered from another time that felt lives away from where he was now.

The initial brightness faded and he fixed his gaze on inscrutable blue eyes. They regarded him nearly indifferently, judgment carefully concealed to reveal nothing. They just watched him, waiting for something he wasn't sure he could give.

She'd called him Pretty Boy. The old name that had been snapped venomously, hissed in an effort to make him feel ashamed. It had been used to try to convey her hatred for the extent of his vanity back to him so that he'd feel something close to shame. She'd said it in such a neutral tone, he wondered if he'd misheard because those could not have been the same words. Here he was sat, hair plastered to his head with cold sweat, lips chapped and bitten, eyes filled with creeping red webs across the whites—

And she was calling him Pretty Boy? As if he was the same person. As if nothing had changed.

He just stared, locked in between past Tahno that had only been gone for a little under twenty-four hours and present Tahno who was just starting to take root. He wasn't sure if his words should be biting or just as neutral so he just stared.

Tenzin coughed. "I suppose you two know each other."

Her eyes slid away from his and he was struck with relief and disappointment in equal amounts. "Yeah. I guess."

Tenzin nodded, seeming to accept the lack of explanation. Tahno looked at the man for the first time, matching the voice to the person. He had a long face with a strong chin covered in a neatly groomed dark beard. His head was bare and his eyes were pale grey like the calm of a storm. Tahno could see why so many people came to him. Just looking at the man was reassuring.

"Tahno, you're going to need to tell me if we're moving too quickly for you.'

"I'm fine," Tahno said in a brittle voice, instantly defensive at the implied need to coddle him.

Korra snorted. "Yeah that little fit you had just now was real fine."

Tahno glared. "Who let you in here?"

"Um, I work here? Uncle Tenzin told me we were going to be getting a runner in. I wanted to meet him." Her nose crinkled. "I'm not so sure anymore."

"Getting a runner in?" He pushed himself up into a sitting position and the paper under him crackled loudly. "What am I, your new pet gerbil?"

Her eyes narrowed. "Well I certainly wasn't expecting a rat."

"You're one to talk, Ferret," Tahno hissed.

"Alright then," Tenzin said loudly, clapping his hands together. "That's plenty of that." He said the words with an air of calm as if they had just been light heartedly squabbling over a pack of gum. Tahno shot her one last scathing look that she quickly returned.

"I'm going to go find Pema," she said, turning to leave.

"Wait outside for a moment, Korra. I need to speak with you."

She spun back around with a sharp flick of her brown ponytail, eyes widened in disbelief. "Oh, so this is my fault—"

"I didn't say anything about fault, Korra. "

"No, but you're going to drag me out there and give me that half hour patience lecture that—"

"You guys aren't being very professional." All eyes in the room turned to focus on Jinora, who had one hip pressed out and her arms crossed. She regarded them all with a disapproving stare.

Tahno suddenly felt very tired. He rested an elbow on his thigh to prop his head up and his eyes were drawn to his injured leg for the first time. He'd always been pale but on the brown exam table his leg looked far too white. He just stared. It had taken one moment to end up here and these people still hadn't told him when he'd be getting out.

"Jinora, why don't you ask Tahno if he'd like you to give the muscles around his knee a heat patch? They might be able to use a little fresh circulation. I'm going to talk with Korra for a moment outside. I'll be right back in to finish giving Tahno a rough sketch of his treatment plan. "

Tahno said nothing at his careful exclusion from the conversation. They were giving him a moment to cope and holy shit did he need it. Not that he'd let them know.

Tahno glanced up as the door clicked open to take one last look at the girl. Her eyes were fixed on him and he saw something foreign but increasingly familiar in her eyes.

Pity.

He scowled and the look was gone before he could even be sure that it had even been there. She scowled back and slid out of the room with all the grace of an athlete.

Tahno was left with the hollow sense of remembering challenges he used to be able to take.