This fic is also on my tumblr blog where my username is Kuno-chan and my blog name is Dragoness Ramblings.

Disclaimer: Legend of Korra belongs to Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko

Iron and Salt

It was some time before Kai felt safe enough pulling himself out of his bonds. His muscles ached from fighting the urge to get right up and go kill Quil and all of his men with his bare hands. He'd been fighting every instinct to tear them apart, but he thought very hard about his crew. About Jinora and about their two other children. They needed him to stay cool. At least, stay cool just long enough to have some kind of advantage.

By now, the fire wasn't quite so high and the roaring of the men's laughter had died down slightly. Kai knew that sound. The sound of men who'd passed out from being drunk. Quil's mistake for letting them do that. Now, those men weren't even going to be able to stumble to their feet before Kai killed them.

He made sure that nobody was watching them before he slowly got up. Most of the men were too busy with beer in their hands anyway. Quil had his back turned toward them and, to their luck, was moving farther and farther away as he walked to down the shoreline with what looked like his first mate. The first person Kai went to break out was Skoochy. Skoochy would get these locks undone quick as lightning, far faster than Kai probably could. When he was done, he handed over his knife and immediately went to sit back down next to Jinora, pretending to still be in his bonds just in case somebody looked over. Skoochy, skinny as he was, was nimble, quick and inconspicuous.

It didn't take long before the former slave came by, working as briskly as humanly possible to finally release Jinora, the last to have her bonds unlocked - special instructions Kai gave as a signal. For the first time in hours, he traded looks with Jinora, giving her a silent warning to stay down and not move too suddenly. That was the thing about Jinora. She usually knew what he was thinking and he was grateful for that especially with the calculated bloodlust ready to burst behind his eyes. She didn't need to see him when he started this.

While his crew remained creeping behind him in the shadows, Kai maneuvered through them, imagining that he was the shadows. He did this a lot as a kid on the streets and life as a pirate had only helped him hone that skill. It helped a lot that half these men were ready to pass out.

He spotted a man with long hair, practically swaying on his feet, back turned to Kai. His muscles twitched.

He remembered the braid of this man who helped haul Nima's body to him. He remembered the solid build of this man who then threw her to the ground like she was trash.

In an instant, Kai felt his instincts react. He reached out, bringing the man's crown and chin between his hands and did a rapid twist of the neck that resulted in the most unmistakable snap. The man dropped, but Kai didn't wait until he even hit the floor before dragging the other scumbag beside him - this one in particular had been grinning at Nima's body - to the ground and punching him square in the nose. He didn't even bother turning to see if somebody was going to be on him because Appa was there, grabbing a man in each hand and throwing them clear over the fire. When the one with the bloody nose drew his sword, Kai was quicker, drawing another knife off the man's person and sliding the sharp end right across his throat. After a minute of struggling for air that would never come - just like what all these men had let his baby go through - the man died slacked, dead.

But Kai wasn't finished, weapon in his hand and satisfied that the rest of his crew had managed to locate their own weapons again, he grabbed and stabbed the next nearest member of Quil's crew. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Imaru with Kai's personal weapon in his hand. Kai turned and caught it just in time, using the momentum to cut a rather skinny scoundrel from nose to navel almost literally. Kai left him to bleed out.

All these men were responsible for his daughter's death. All of them. They each had a hand in killing her and Kai- he choked on a bitter taste threatening to overtake him, but he wrangled it back again. His daughter was dead, but he'd be damned if any of them were going to get at his remaining children either.

A bulky fellow brandishing a rather fancy sword came at him with a run, nearly running over Kai when they met, but Kai ducked in and drove his sword through the man's belly and instantly he thought of his daughter's wound and the way she died. It made him run the sword deep as he could and twisted it, relishing in the man's last death cry.

All these men needed to pay, but his crew would take care of that. His crew would make sure that Quil was out of at least most of his crew. He said most since a few of them were seen running off when the chaos started.

Kai looked for only one.

His eyes raked through the mayhem, searching for that one he needed to find when he caught sight of Ryu fighting the boy who'd spilled beer on him. The boy's name started with a D - Kai couldn't bring himself to remember much right now, but the boy had given Kai the knife just small enough to pick a lock. He wasn't stupid.

He waded over to the two and separated them with a clash of his sword. Kai gave Ryu a look and Ryu took the hint begrudgingly, throwing himself at another of Quil's crew nearby, but Kai looked at the boy. Water Tribe, taller than him and much longer hair than him.

"I won't kill you," Kai growled. "We're even. If you stay out of our way then I may not strand you on this island either. Do anything stupid and I'll cut you to ribbons."

His personal motives might not have been the most noble in that statement. He couldn't kill this one out of some confounded need to be somewhat honorable, but at the same time his urge to make them all pay was a bit undying. They'd have to figure out what to do with him.

Kai pushed him aside, wanting anyone who wasn't apart of his crew to get out of his way if they didn't want to die.

Kai only looked for one man.

And as if the gods had heard him, a large dark shadow rolled up into the light. Quil stood across the fire from him, their eyes meeting with a hatred Kai wasn't sure was even human. They circled each other until they were both on the same side of the fire and it was like a natural reaction when their swords clashed. Kai struck, going for blood and an eye if possible.

This bastard.

This monster had killed his daughter in cold blood. She was just a- just a pawn in his little game. A simple device in his little petty revenge to get back at Kai.

Well, he wanted Kai? Now, he had him right here.

Quil struck down, but Kai parried it, bringing his sword back to slash him across the chest and Quil met it swiftly, pushing him back. They stepped around the fire and Kai was perfectly aware he needed to be careful not to fall in too close lest Quil use his own height and weight as a weapon. Their blades clashed at a speed impossible to keep up with aside from the two of them. All Kai desired, all he craved in this moment, was to have his sword meet Quil's flesh in a fatal strike. This man needed to die for killing his daughter, for trying to hurt her for so long. Not that he expected Quil to treat anybody like a person, but at a point, Kai just wished this devil would have faced Kai himself and quit trying to go through his children.

"Coward. Every last fiber of you," spat Kai through the clanging of metal. "You can't face me like a man so you went through her and you kept trying to go through her."

Quil bared his teeth. "If that's what you'd like to call it. That's just a good business plan," he grunted, pulling back as Kai's defenses refused to break. Kai recoiled, bringing his weight back, but their swords only met again and again. "She was the quickest route to you and you know that. Who put her in harm's way in the first place?"

"Shut the hell up! You killed her! You killed her because you're afraid to face me without any leverage! WELL HERE I AM YOU FUCKING BASTARD!"

Feeling a surge of energy run through him, Kai parried Quil's sword to the side and swiped back up, his blade cutting clean across Quil's cheek and over his nose. It was a single cut, but it bled profusely and the bigger man stumbled back, holding his wound with a murderous welling in his eyes.

Pushing itself to the front of Kai's attention were Jinora's cries with recognizable anguish and anger in them. It was pulling him away from his fight with Quil, his natural concern for her overriding even his deepest need to kill the man in front of him.

"You dirty rat. I'll run you through like the filthy rag you are-"

"Likewise," snapped Kai, his voice viciously hoarse. "And every time you look at yourself in the mirror you'll be reminded of the fact that I will come for you and I will kill you. Remember that."

He didn't wait for a reply, glancing over in the direction of Jinora's voice to see her fending off two men by herself, her sword meeting theirs with the speed and force of a mother in agony. Even now, Kai could see the angry tears rolling down her cheeks.

He leapt away from Quil, having every intention to get back to him as soon as Jinora was safe. In a brutal jab with his sword, he ran one man through as Jinora finished the other by bringing her blade to his throat. In a moment of clarity in the chaos, he looked up, the reached out to caress her cheek, wiping away rolling tears as she suppressed a sob. A kind of immovable shame roiled in him as they both were thinking the same thing and about the same face of their baby that they were never going to see again.

She had blood on her face from where she'd cut through their daughter's killers in a blind… blind something. He wouldn't call it rage. Jinora wasn't exactly the type to slip into total controlling rage like he could, but rather, a fiery anguish that just wouldn't douse itself out no matter how hard she tried to calm herself.

A shriek of pain brought them back to reality as a body landed right behind Kai. He twisted around, Jinora raising her sword and his own instinct to protect her causing him to step forward. But it was only Skoochy who had attacked a man and stabbed him multiple times. Neither he nor Jinora stopped Skoochy. The man he was stabbing had made some lewd comments about Nima's body when they'd left her lying in the sand. Kai had personally wanted to slit the guy's throat, but what Skoochy had in mind would do too.

Remembering his original target, Kai looked back at where he and Quil had been fighting, but the other captain was gone. He looked through the fighting and the injured men scrambling away into the darkness. Nothing. His grip on his sword tightened. The monster had probably slipped away back to his ship the second Kai sprang away from him to help Jinora.

The mess of blades and blood died down almost in slow motion and he would have been more proud of his crew for their fighting skills today had it not been partially fueled by a deep seated need for revenge. They were all bloody. Ryu had lost his glasses and there was blood splattered on the side of his face, Appa was mostly red stained on the arms, Imaru on his forehead probably from where he'd headbutted someone, Pabu's shirt was as red as his hair and even Daw looked as if he'd hacked a few men to pieces. Longshot was almost a little scary to look at, practically covered head to toe in the stuff. There was something to be said about a man who knew the body's mortal weak spots.

Skoochy was seated on the man he'd left numerous holes in, panting from the effort it probably took to stab a man over what looked like thirty times.

Looking beside him, he was almost taken aback by all the blood on Jinora's hands and shirt, the patterns on which they stained her clothes telling him that she'd used her short stature to reach up and slash a lot of throats today.

He didn't even look down at himself, knowing, feeling and smelling the overwhelming scent of human iron running all over him. By this time, he'd lost count of how many people he'd cut through. They were alone, all of Quil's crew having fled or been slain by now, except for one:

The Water Tribe boy who had given Kai the little knife.

He was easy to see, taller and broader than most of his crew, standing there on the other side of the fire still going. This one too was bloodied, not quite as much as Kai or the rest of his crew - he hadn't been out for blood. He hadn't given a damn about the sweet girl's life that Quil had ended so horrifically.

What pissed him off the most were those impassive dark eyes, what color he couldn't make out nor did he care. They looked at him without much feeling at all. As if this was just a staring contest and he hadn't personally helped Quil end Nima's life.

It made Kai just want to throw him in the fire.

"You," began Kai, a cold seething radiating from his every word. "Are coming with us."

-:-:-:-

Getting on the ship hit Jinora harder than she had anticipated. Of course, she hadn't anticipated it. She hadn't anticipated her daughter being dead.

With each step onto the ship, she wanted to cry more and more. How were they ever going to be here without her? The ship had been Nima's home her entire life and-

"What happened to you guys…?"

Momo's eyes widened when Jinora turned to face him. It'd been a long time since the entire crew had been this bloody and it had been as second since they'd been in a fight that bad. Jinora didn't answer him. She didn't have the heart to.

"We were worried like crazy," he said in disbelief. "You were gone for the whole night…. what happened?"

But it was Lefty, Jinora knew, that realized it first. Bless him for always being observant. She didn't have to say it. Her breath hitched in an effort not to burst into tears. His expression slowly clicked into one of horror when he looked over them all. When he realized that one sixteen year old girl standing about five foot four was missing from their bloodied crew.

"Jinora, what is it? Hey, will you guys say something?" asked Momo, brows knitted in distress. "What happened? Where's Neems? She okay? Did you take her to the infirmary or-"

And, bless him again, it was Lefty who put a hand Momo's shoulder. As if knowing what was going on, Appa walked over next to Jinora, shaking his head at Momo in a lost kind of way. Momo's eyes widened and tears immediately began to fall. Momo was smart. He knew and when he finally figured it out, Jinora couldn't stand to see his tears fall or hear his cries or telling his uncle that it couldn't be true.

She turned and walked away, clutching her chest, feeling like she was going to have a heart attack. Her whole world seemed to be falling to pieces right from that moment as even the air didn't want to grace her lungs right now nor did she feel like she could handle breathing much at all. Just-

Her baby was dead.

"...Mom?"

Rama had been watching the whole thing, she realized, when he too looked like he was going to cry. Taani clutched the sleeve of his shirt, her face blank, but Jinora knowing full well the dreadful anticipation that the twins probably shared in that moment.

Jinora sucked in a shaky breath. Appa and Lefty could tell Momo, but she needed to tell her children herself.

"...Mom, where''s Nima?" he asked quickly, his throat bobbing when she didn't bother to hide her tears anymore and reached out to touch their cheeks. "Don't look at me like that, where is she?"

Jinora took a moment - several - to get the words in her throat and then another to finally get them out in a single sentence that almost made her pass out entirely. "Baby," she wheezed. "Nima's dead."

There was an earth shattering moment of silence where the twins looked at their mother, Rama's eyes wide and frozen - too much like Nima's were when they'd thrown her body on the ground - and Taani's sleepy and unassuming, but the stillness in them both reverberated the shock.

"You're lying," was finally what Rama said and Jinora almost choked on air.

Jinora shook her head, lips burning as her own salt met them through her tears, and did not have the heart to say it again. She reached out to hold him, but he pushed her away, a slight panic taking over his features. "Rama-"

"No! You're lying! Just tell me where she is! Why won't you tell me?" he asked, raising his voice now, but Jinora could only stare at him as she cried more if that was even possible. "Just tell me! I want to see her. She's-"

But it was Taani who gripped the back of his rust colored shirt. He looked at her, but she didn't looked at him, her hand clamped down on his rolled up sleeves the only thing she needed to reach a mutual understanding. Still, Rama looked back at his mother and the only word to describe the look on his face was heartbroken.

His face screwed up with the effort not to cry, but it eventually contorted into the kind Jinora had come to know meant resentment and even rage. Her son wasn't oblivious and he could put two and two together about how his sister had died.

"Sweetie-"

Rama tore away from his mother and sister and turned to face his father who was leaning over the rails of the ship, head hung and staring at the water as if waiting for something. Marching over to him, Rama shoved his father, tears in his eyes.

"Why did you have to treat her so badly? She kept trying to say she was sorry!" Rama shouted at his father when Kai turned around. Kai didn't say anything, but only looked down at his son with a miserable hollowness in his eyes. "She ran away because you made her and she felt so bad she just had to get away from the ship where it was safe!"

"Rama…" croaked Jinora though it was barely audible, her voice breaking apart.

Her son ignored her. "Why couldn't you have just accepted her apology? But no! It's always about your pain and how you feel, but you didn't even care how upset she was! And now she's dead! And it's your-"

Yung had moved across the deck and clamped his hand down on Rama's shoulder, not so much as a warning, but as an instinct of damage control. Panting, Rama turned away from Kai and pushed Yung away from him as well. He looked up at Yung, biting on his bottom lip and failing at his attempt not to cry.

Unable to stand it, he stormed away and below deck, wiping his tears away with the base of his palm. Kai, on the other hand, stood there. He looked past Yung and only looked at Jinora, the rest of the crew hovering around when they saw what most of them thought to be the impossible.

His eyes became overbright as tears began to overcome his ability to hold them back. The control he had over his own feelings were crumbling, Jinora knew, and he seemed to be battling with a bitter taste in his mouth the way his mouth was so tight and he reached up to rub his eyes.

-:-:-:-

He was crying.

Dan had to repeat that to himself several times before it really hit that this infamous Pirate Lord was crying right in front of his own crew. He stared for a moment, slightly stunned but keeping his face still. He willed his gaze to wander to where the horizon was invisible in the dark.

I had no part in her death, he told himself.

He hadn't killed the girl. He hadn't even known what Quil or Teng would do with her. He only did his job.

Still, the younger boy's outburst - one of the twins probably - had been hard to ignore. Even harder to ignore was the mother who was barely standing upright it seemed her every step was so weak. And now the captain was crying as well.

Even if they hadn't been crying, the grip the two bigger men of the crew - Appa and Imaru, the captain had called them when he ordered them to grab him - was a clear sign that he was less than welcome right now. Dan hadn't said anything in protest or even resisted. Firstly, he was absolutely outnumbered. Secondly, it would be rather counterproductive to fight the only ride he was probably going to get. Thirdly, he couldn't exactly blame them.

I didn't even know what they wanted, Dan reminded himself. I was just told to track them down.

Why had he agreed to work for Captain Quil? Why hadn't he just found some loophole, the payment they'd agreed on be damned. The money hadn't been something he really cared about anyway. He should have known exactly what would become of the victims of a slave trader, but he hadn't bothered to ask questions. It was always better never to ask questions. Just do your job and move on, but… still. Slave traders were never a group of people that Dan was exactly the type to take jobs from. Just pirates hunting other pirates, yes. Hell, even government officials weren't beyond his list of clients as long as they weren't too buddy buddy with the law. In fact, he'd only agreed to contract with Captain's Teng's crew for that very reason: the man was a pirate hunter who was basically as corrupt as most pirates. More so when he thought about the fact that the man had worked with slave traders.

One of the men holding him, the bigger one, clamped a hand on his neck and half shoved him toward the door leading below deck. "Nothing for you to see here," he said. "Imaru and I will come and get you when the captain's ready."

They took him below deck, far below deck and threw him into what Dan knew to be the brig.

"Just sit tight," said the one that must have been Appa.

Dan shook his head when they slammed the door.

What else was he exactly supposed to do?

-:-:-:-

Kai closed his eyes and took in a deep, trembling breath. He cleared his throat, his voice still not allowing him a solid tone. "I-I'm sorry. I'm… I'm fine. Let's just d-do what we need to do so we can get out of-"

"Kai. Let me take charge," said Yung, putting a hand on his shoulder. "I can take care of all this."

"Yung, I'm alright. Really, I just need to-"

"Jinora needs you. Both of you need to take a little time. Please, Kai. Just let me help you..."

"How can you help?" snapped Kai. "I don't need time to think, okay!? I just need to do my job! You can't help me right now, Yung! If you can bring Nima back, then you can-"

"Jinora needs you," repeated Yung, grabbing him by the sleeve and pulling him forward. It made Kai look up at his wife, standing in the middle of the deck like she didn't know what to do. He'd never seen her looking quite so broken and lost. She was always the one who could stand up when he couldn't.

But now…

He swallowed hard and looked at Yung again, tired. "Okay… okay, I get it. Are you sure…?"

"Positive. Just go be together for a while, okay? We'll take care of everything up here."

Kai walked up to Jinora and took her in his arms. They didn't care who was there and who saw them. Their baby was gone and, somehow, some way, they were going to have to figure out how to live without her.

This chapter was just so much grief. I mean, there's no other way to describe this chapter aside from grief and revenge because that's all that's going through Kai's mind and everybody else's too. The next chapters are going to cover a lot of the feelings, amongst other things.

This fic hasn't gotten but attention, so, if you're reading and you have some thoughts about it, leave a review and some feedback! I'd love to hear from it even if it's just you pointing something out. The feedback really keeps me writing and keeps me going. If I'm so bold as to say, I feel like this is some of my best work so I'd love to see a few more reviews for it and hear more feedback! Thank you for reading! Tune in for next chapter!