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


Interrogation


The dark was colder than usual. If not for Jinora, it might have been unbearable. It trickled into his skin and threatened to eat him alive no matter what he did or what he thought of. Yet, they sat apart. Kai sat on one side of the bed while Jinora stood against the wall of their quarters, each needing the other's presence, but their arms and limbs reminded each other too much that they were both half of the child they'd just lost. Nima had gotten her brown skin from him and her green eyes, but Jinora had blessed her with her features: the shape of those eyes, the color of her hair, the curve of her face…

All of it gone.

Not even a body to bury.

No... that was floating to the bottom of the ocean, discarded like nothing.

Kai sat on the bed, elbows on knees and threatened to curve in on himself. He couldn't even think about going after Captain Teng right at this very moment whose ship had disappeared sometime during his fight with Quil. Probably run off when they saw the fight from their ship and got scared. Good. He should be scared because when Kai finished hunting him down he was going to kill him. And that was a promise and more.

But right now he could barely move and only swiveled his head when he heard a thump and a sob. Jinora had slid to the ground, holding her mouth. She dropped to her knees, back against the wall and just cried and cried.

"I'm so sorry," she sobbed. "I-I should have let you go find her. I should have-"

But Kai was already on his knees next to her, holding her in his arms as she curled in and held him for dear life.

"Don't-" He choked, tears leaking from his eyes at the sight of her crying and his own crushing feelings. "Don't you dare think for one second that this is your fault. Gyatso, it's mine. She ran off because of me. Rama's right…"

Jinora shook her head, laying it against his chest as he held her tighter, tucking her head under his chin. "I-I told you not to go and find her. We should have gone to find her right away, I just… what type of mother just lets her daughter run off on some jungle island!?"

Her tearful shouts were muffled against his shirt and Kai stroked her hair, just holding her because he didn't know what else to do. What else was there to do? If it weren't for her and the twins and everybody else on this ship he might have thrown himself into the sea as well. To go find his daughter's body or to join it…

He wanted the gods to take him instead. Let him be the one Quil killed. She had no business being out there and nothing… nothing was going to settle the issue in his mind that Nima was only out there because Kai had made her cry that terrible.

She cried before she died. He remembered seeing the tear stains on her cheeks, still fresh and the skin delicate and it made him sick the moment he'd realized that she had been dead for less than an hour at the time. That she was probably running around such a short time ago and the last moments of her life had been so horrible…

Did she cry as she died…? Was she scared? How scared was she? Had she tried to run away when he killed her? Her eyes were open when Quil had shown Kai the body so she'd at least been awake…

God, did he…? Did Quil finish what he started four years ago when he'd first met Nima?

The questions haunted him and not for one second did Kai deserve to be left at peace when his daughter's death fell squarely on his shoulders, no matter what Jinora said. All he wanted to do was go bash his head into a wall, blister the knuckles of his fists or bloody himself somewhere. Just let it hurt on his body, but his soul couldn't take this.

It was like somebody had ripped a piece of his core out and stabbed it, but the rest of his body was still expected to keep on going, heart in tatters and bleeding out. He thought of all the blood that had stained Nima's dress and knew perfectly well that her death had not been swift. It'd been slow and… by gods, it's been painful. Quil had made sure of that.

Quil.

An anger unlike anything he could have ever fathomed burned in his heart and up and down his spine. That evil monster of a man had killed his daughter just to get back at him. He hadn't even been man enough to face him one-on-one and had resorted to killing his child-

His hands tightened on Jinora's sleeves.

When Kai got a hold of him he was going to die the worst death he could imagine if it was the last thing he-

"I-I can't do this…"

Jinora's sobs brought him back to reality and he immediately planted his lips in her hair. He couldn't stand her crying like this and sought only to make it better, but what the hell could he do when he'd effectively had killed their own kid?

"Jinora, it was my fault. I killed Nima. I…" Kai let the tears fall into her hair. "If I hadn't ignored her then she wouldn't have ran off in the first place. I'm so sorry… I'm so sorry…"

He felt Jinora's hand on his heart and her head shifted to look up at him. They stared in one another's eyes, their shared grief the only comfort in this world that had taken their daughter so cruelly.

She didn't deserve this.

Nima hadn't deserved to lose her life like that, and how was their lives going to ever be the same without her? Without her and knowing that she'd died in such a gruesome way? In the way that every parent feared would become of their child?

Jinora placed her head back on his chest and clutched the crook of his elbow. He held her. He held her and did not dare let her go lest either of them break apart from the inside out.

For the time being, this was the only thing they could do.

They could cry and they could hold each other.

So, cry and hold each other was what they would do. For the sake of themselves and for their other two children that still needed parents.

-:-:-:-

The first order of business, above all, was to get everybody rested in some form of way. Skoochy didn't want to eat and he insisted on just staying outside steering the ship with his cigarettes for company, grabbing only a quick snack from the kitchen for strength.

But Yung knew he just didn't need anybody around when he cried. It was then that he realized Skoochy had actually left his cigarettes lying on the table.

Of course, Yung thought tiredly.

Nima was the only who got those for him from Shen's Smokes and Liquors. If he were Skoochy, no matter how bad he needed his fix, smoking those particular cigarettes would make him feel sick too.

The dining hall was somber. Silent. And there was little talk aside from the occasional request to pass something. Most of them were too busy with their own tears. Momo was the biggest mess, sniffing hard with Pabu rubbing his back. The twins had gone to their own rooms, Rama too angry to deal with anybody and Taani probably needing to not be social for some time. Yung let them, too busy trying to figure out what their next step was without bursting into tears himself. Again.

His eyes burned from all the crying he'd done himself already, on the beach and after they'd had to break the news to Lefty, Momo and the twins. Everybody in the room had red-rimmed eyes though. From Appa silently eating his soup to Daw who was busy coming back and forth from the kitchen with this little thing he whipped up and that snack he'd been meaning to make last night anyway. Needless to say, the soup was actually a little burnt.

Twenty four men sat in that dining hall and each one looked like they'd had a piece of them chipped off. Yung felt like that himself. Nima had essentially been his granddaughter. Hell, she was his granddaughter. She'd lived on this ship her whole life and they'd all known her since she was born. She'd called him grandpa. She'd asked him to read her stories and sing lullabies to her as a little girl. They'd looked at the constellations at night when he was on lookout duty and she couldn't sleep.

Yung sighed through his nose, trying to still the quake in his chest.

He should have tried harder to convince Kai and Nima to talk. He should have relentlessly drilled Kai until he yanked him out of his well that he'd dug himself into and now…

Now, look.

He was going to cry again, but blinked the tears away.

He could cry in private when the rest of his men, for the moment, didn't need him to be strong. Kai needed him to be strong. Jinora did too and the twins and all these men sitting here.

Still, her empty chair two seats down Kai's at the head of the table on the left side stung more than anything.

"So, what's our next plan here?" asked Lefty, quietly.

Of course, it would be Lefty who could share the weight of grief with Yung. He could shoulder it so Yung didn't have to do it alone.

Yung sighed. "Right now, we rest," he said loud enough to announce to the table. "Most of us have been up all night in the cold and we can't afford to get sick. We'll sail out of the Amaterasu Sea. Into the Wujin Sea. Korra and Mako's girl rules those waters and we'll be safe there. We just need a place to get ourselves together…"

Tikaani Iluak was Mako and Korra's younger child. As Pirate Lord of the Wujin Sea she would welcome them to her waters with open arms. But telling her about Nima… that was going to be a task. Yung would write the letter and send it ahead of time. Perhaps Otaku could help him… in a few days they were going to need to let certain people know about Nima's death. Jinora's family, Tikaani who was… had been for all intents and purposes an older sister to Nima, one or two friends of the family.

People who were going to miss her dearly. Her playful smile and her dancing feet. Gods, he was going to miss watching her be so happy when she danced.

Yung closed his eyes, sighing through his nose again as he tried to stave off tears. He felt a large hand on his forearm, however, and looked over to see Lefty reaching out to grab him, the bigger man with a glassy look in his eyes as well.

"And after that?" croaked Zedd, almost appearing drunk from his own sorrow. Zedd was an avid - more like addicted - gambler, saved from certain death by Kai ages ago after a betting pool had nearly gotten him killed. The man's dice, normally always shifting around in his hands like a nervous tick, laid still on the table. They were the red and black ones Nima had gotten him on an outing one day. "We can't stay out there hidin'. We need to get out there and go kill that bastard!"

"Easy, Zedd," said Lefty, crossing his arms. "Quil's not the easiest man to kill. Not just because of his skill with a sword, but he's also usually pretty well guarded. A man like that has a mountain of enemies and people who want him dead. We're not the only ones."

"So, we're just going to let him get away with it? Killing our little girl like that?" Sudhir took a hefty swig of beer and set the bottle down with an audible thud. "H-he gutted her like she was nothing! We should let Kai put his head on a spike."

"And I agree," said Yung, letting his sense of vengeance take over for but only a precious moment. "And we will. We will take him down, but we can't do that if we're all half dead from cold and disease ourselves. We need to get our strength back and to get ourselves together. Does everybody, understand?"

His crew nodded, some immediately and some reluctantly, but all understood.

Yung nodded back at them.

"Good."

-:-:-:-

The brig here was small. Very small, actually. Dan noticed a set of rooms on the way down, several where the wood looked rather new compared to the rest of the ship. Then again, having a full crew plus three extra kids on a ship certainly required somewhere to put them all.

He'd heard about Captain Kai. Captain of The Waterbender and one of the seven Pirate Lords, he being Lord of the Amaterasu Sea. He was famous for his sword fighting, slave liberation and list of enemies. He was married and had three children. His daughter was… had been a famous dancer and a rather attractive gem to slave traders due to her dancing skills and lineage. That made them somewhat high risk targets, but it was the Captain's reputation that kept most away.

That, in all its glory, was what Dan knew about Captain Kai personally. All he needed. He didn't really need nor did he want to know too much more. It made it easier to hunt the man and his crew down.

He snorted.

And where had that gotten?

Sitting in the tiny brig of the ship he'd been tracking down in the first place. God, this was just perfect. How on earth did he get himself into this mess? He should have just left it alone, but he couldn't, his body almost involuntarily letting that knife slip from between his fingers back on the island.

But he did have to admit that he had a problem with the dead girl for reasons he shoved back down his throat and didn't dare entertain… still though. Even for him it was a bit too much. Next time, he'd ask why he was hunting them down. Dan had gotten the distinct impression that the girl's father had been the only intended target, their crew maybe and Quil had been a pirate who wanted to settle a sizable rivalry. What he hadn't expected was for Captain Quil to waste his time and energy killing the girl. What had been the point of that?

Dan was perfectly well aware of that simple reason, having heard stories about Captain Quil's ruthlessness and sadism. Efficiency made the man, but it was also something he enjoyed. The girl had been an appetizer to him.

Dan sighed. Caring made his job a lot harder. Killing was easier if you didn't think about the target, but something about this last job left a very bitter taste in his mouth. He was not and had never signed up to be in the business of killing kids. Though the girl didn't exactly look like a kid, she was still definitely no older than him. A kid to Captain Quil by all standards. Next time, he'd have to care. At least a little bit to avoid this mess he was in now. If there was going to be a next time that is. He would have to think of some way to escape in case Captain Kai decided he wanted to stab something else that had even the tiniest part in his daughter's death.

As if some divine figure was having a laugh with him, the door clanked open and Dan looked up from his seat on a old sturdy crate that'd been left in there. The man named Appa looked at him for a long moment as if to study him. What now?

"Come on," said Appa, jerking his head. "You've got some explaining to do."

Dragging himself to his feet, Dan raised a cold brow at the man waiting for him at the door, no chains and no weapons drawn. Then again, the guy was big enough to be a weapon in and of himself, even bigger than Captain Quil.

"I won't be killin' you right now," said Appa when Dan began to walk toward him in a slow fashion. "Just come on. The captain wants to see you."

"See me or kill me?" drawled Dan.

Appa smiled in something of a half grimace. "Well, that depends on what you have to say for yourself, doesn't it? My niece is still dead."

Eyeing the man, no matter what he claimed he wasn't going to do, Dan slipped out of the cell with a glance over his shoulder. Appa didn't push him or lay a hand on him, only a heavy footfall being the indicator that somebody was there.

Still, he tensed his muscles.

Just in case he was indeed being led to an execution.

-:-:-:-

"We should make him talk. By whatever means necessary."

"We'll get him to talk, but we're not going to torture him."

"He deserves it," hissed Skoochy.

Kai didn't look at him. "Maybe he does. Maybe he doesn't. Either way, we're better than that… and it's not something Nima would have wanted. Now, be quiet for a minute."

When Appa finally brought the boy into the dining hall, Kai could only look on with a resentment he could feel burning behind his eyes. Perhaps it was unfair, just maybe, but he couldn't bring himself to care. Not when Jinora sat at his right, her eyes so red-rimmed he knew they probably hurt and not when his twins were basically locked in their rooms from grief - and justified rage in Rama's case. He couldn't bring himself to care when his crew had a broken heart just like he did.

He couldn't bring himself to care because here was a guy whose hand had some of Nima's blood underneath his fingernails even if he'd never even laid his eyes on her until he saw her body.

Kai took him in all at once.

He was clearly Water Tribe. Both from his features and from the accessories adorning his long hair. Roughly just twenty years old. A young man. His stance showed a casual preparedness. Like a prisoner who knew some kind of day was coming for him. Good. He was scared for his life right now. Or, at least, cautious about it's standing.

As he should be, thought Kai, cold rage still running through his own veins. In reality, the only thing keeping him from cutting himself open and letting his blood run out of his body was business with this boy and his family needing him more than he needed a release. He tried not to think about the fact that it was Jinora's tears that kept him grounded.

There was silence as he came in. All eyes of his twenty-six man crew, Jinora included, were on him. Seated at their long dining table where the chair two down from Kai's left remained empty. Kai eyed the boy, a silent order to take a seat somewhere, but then he slowly began pulling out that chair two down Kai's left.

"Don't you dare sit there," snapped Skoochy, a growl furling in his throat. He looked at the young man with an evident fury barely contained behind his dark eyes. The young man stilled at the harsh reprimand that Kai didn't bother to correct, a mask of careful calculation as he looked at them all over his dark features.

Jinora sniffed hard, her voice but a whisper. "That was my daughter's chair…"

Kai could have swore he saw something in young man's eyes, but that knife that had gouged a wound into his heart was letting some of the warmth out and he wasn't feeling particularly understanding today. A real, sharp actual knife was on the end of his fingertips, the wooden hilt smooth against his skin as Kai recalled the last time he actually threw a knife at someone - and took their life with it.

The young man took a seat on the end of the table so that he and Kai were staring at each other face to face.

More silence, more studying, neither man saying a word to the other for a little while. The young man's expression read nothing but apathy and a kind of careful disregard. He just yet might get stabbed after all.

It was Kai who broke the silence. "What's your name?"

"Danuma," said the young man.

"Danuma," repeated Kai, committing the name to memory. "Well, Danuma. Who the hell are you and why was my daughter's death and my capture "fruits of your labor" as your employer so quaintly put it?"

"Because I worked for him."

The sharp end of Kai's knife met the table with an audible thunk. "Don't make me jam this knife into your throat."

Danuma frowned, hardly batting an eye. "You're going to ask me for answers I just don't have."

"Like hell you don't," growled Kai, feeling a spike of heat in his blood."I just saw my daughter's gutted body get thrown into the ocean without so much as a proper burial. Now, you're going to tell me what part you had in that and then pray I don't kill you."

"You're not going to kill me," said Danuma, his face still stone.

"Oh?" Kai raised his eyebrows, the lightest lilt of amusement flitting through his voice. "Is that so?"

Finally, Danuma shifted, crossing his arms over his chest. "If you were going to kill me then you would have had it done by now. I had no part in your daughter's death."

"You did something for Quil and you're going to tell me what or I may actually dig this knife into your heart just because I don't know what I'm going to do with myself, quite frankly."

Nobody at the table protested. Not even Jinora. He wasn't sure if that was good or bad.

"First of all," said Danuma in such an apathetic way that Kai's muscles twitched. "I work for Captain Teng. Not Captain Quil. Captain Teng went to Captain Quil about acquiring some financial support and Captain Quil provided that in the form of a deal."

Kai pressed the knife further into the table. "What deal was this?"

"That should be obvious," said Danuma plainly. "You were the deal. I was simply to find you."

"You weren't simply to find me for the sake of finding me. You had to have known what the hell was going to happen," said Kai, his lip curling. "Which means that you are probably the reason why I've suspected that we were being followed. I had us go to that island so that we could shake your lot off our trail."

"I'm aware. My job was to predict your routes. Guess where you would go next based off your financial records, purchase records and supply records I managed to dig around in your frequented cities of Jietou, Yun Ho and Republic City. You'd been buying things associated with ship repairs and most of your crew had spent a lot of personal money at a bar in Yun Ho a few months ago." Kai squinted at Danuma, who went on, drumming his fingers against the hilt of his knife with a tic of irritation. "I take it that they damaged the ship coming home drunk, as pirates are known to do on summer nights when a festival is in town as it had been that week. However, you'd also spent quite a bit of money on herbs. Am I correct?"

Indeed, a sickness had gone through the ship that scared them all half to death. It'd just been an odd cold from their time in the Canyue Sea during prime spring time fever season, but Longshot had used a hefty sums worth of medicine and herbs to stave off anything too terrible from sweeping through the crew and they'd needed to replenish their stores.

"You were coming from the Gold Coast and needed to save money. If you veered southwest, then you were probably heading for an uninhabited island for supplies to scrounge for. If you headed northwest then you were probably headed for the trading towns near Lushe north of the Fire Nation for cheaper supplies."

Kai raised his eyebrows slightly and clucked his tongue. "I see… Quil has never bothered to pursue us, I've always predicted, because it's always been a hassle. The time he spends tracking us down is time wasted doing business. Time he can't really waste. You eliminated that waste of time and made it much easier."

Danuma didn't say anything.

"You know, you're right, I didn't plan on killing you, but just saying all of that makes me… Oh, I don't know… twitchy." Kai's fingers curl on the knife hilt. "If you knew all of that, then you probably knew I had children and that is something I may want to slit your throat fo-"

"Captain," Yung on his left said quietly.

"Not now, Yung-"

"Captain, we can't just kill him. That's not us. It's not you. You even said it yourself. And what if he really didn't know-"

"He should have guessed it! Asked questions! But he only cared about his goddamn money and now Nima's dead! How the hell can you sit there and tell me not to-"

"Because it's not going to bring her back, Kai."

It was then that Kai uncurled his fingers from the hilt and swallowed hard. His breathing was no less tense, but he was aware of it now as his jaw clenched. The world lost a little bit of it's light when Yung said that. His first mate looked at him, eyes pleading, yet, holding him with a firmness. A desperation. A shared sense of grief.

But Kai had never handled grief well. Or feelings in general. Not hard feelings and certainly not this. Not this bottomless aching sensation that reached far, far down past the cavity of his chest and into his belly.

It made him sick and and it was turning him into something empty.

Kai looked back at Danuma.

He should pay for what he helped Quil do. Gods above, he should pay. That being said, Kai wasn't the one who would swing the axe of justice because, try as he might, he couldn't bring himself to cross that line quite so much.

"Why the fuck didn't you ask for what purpose were you hunting me down for if it wasn't obvious why a slave trader might want to find somebody?" he asked, suddenly very tired.

Danuma shook his head slightly. "I do my job. That's it. That is all. I was under contract with Captain Teng and it was his deal to make. I was just a part of his arsenal. If it's any consolation, I never liked Captain Quil. I can tell you that for certain."

"You could have refused," said Kai through gritted teeth.

"Not how that works."

It was Kai's turn to shake his head, a bitter chuckle escaping his lips. "You just have all the answers don't you?"

"I didn't know he was going to kill your daughter-"

"You knew something. I can see that even in eyes like yours." Kai frowned. "You knew and you didn't ask. You didn't say a damn thing."

Danuma was quiet for a long moment. "I didn't kill your daughter. Nor did I know that he was going to kill her," he said. "That's the truth."

"But do you care?"

Kai was met with another long silence, nothing but a flicker of the eyes from the young man. With that, Kai had enough. He got up, sheathing his knife as he did.

"You'll stay in the brig at night. I won't keep you there all day. You'll be free enough to move around the ship for the most part." Not a soul on his crew dared defy him on it at the moment despite a few of the looks he got from them. Especially from Skoochy, Sudhir and even Ryu. "You can try to escape, but we won't be hitting any land for a good while, so, you can dive into the ocean and drown for all I care. When we do hit land again, then we'll figure out what to do with you. Stay out of my way and that won't be burying your body."

Now, up to his neck in emotions that were threatening to strangle him, Kai left the dining hall.

-:-:-:-

I didn't know she would get hurt like that, Dan reminded himself. I didn't know she would die.

He was forced to stare at each of these people who had loved this girl he'd helped track down. Some of them looked at him pure disgust, others with a grimace, but the mother didn't look at him. She only looked at the table, like there was a whole world she'd just lost. A hollowness glazed her eyes and he could see the dying laughs and smiles that might have been around this table before him.

Exhaling, he steadied his breath.

Well, if he was free to move about the ship then he wasn't going to spend it in here.

He got up to go outside and meet the morning light or the sea or the god unending horizon - anything but more faces.

"He didn't kill you because he knows you didn't do it." The man named Yung spoke just as Dan made it for the door. Dan turned slightly, just enough to see the back of the man's head. "The captain knows you didn't kill our girl."

Dan went in the opposite direction of the Captain, not letting himself stay there another moment.

-:-:-:-

Shipwrecks were awfully useful when placed just right.

The body floated just above a large hulk of wood that once was called a ship. Her brown hair floated around her and the green of her eyes danced with the color of the sea this far down. It'd taken a hell and a half of magic to track her down so precisely and this was where she'd ended up?

But then again, what an opportunity.

When she'd stopped being able to sense the tracking magic on the girl, she hadn't known why. What other magic would have been able to dissolve a tracking spell like that? It was one of her own concoctions after all. A pretty little stroke of genius charmed with the Touch of Permanency spell she'd read in that book about ten years back. That fine bit of tracking magic shouldn't have worn off until she'd gotten her hands on her target. Now, here she was, wondering what had made the confounded thing wear off three days ago.

At first, realizing the girl was now a floating body in the middle of the Amaterasu had almost made Tianmei turn around and never come back. What promise she had seen was clearly a fluke if the girl had somehow ended up dead at the bottom of the ocean. She actually had turned right around. To the nearest town, in fact, on an island more than a hundred miles away.

But then her server at a nice little restaurant had gotten a bit too clumsy and was being oh, so lovingly chucked out the doors.

"Please, I need this job! How am I going to live!?" begged the wench, getting down on her knees.

And Tianmei thought with a little smile, just like that. Just what you're doing now.

Then, like the light of dawn, it pierced through the cloud in her mind. How blind. How utterly careless she must have been not to think of it sooner.

Not even finishing her meal, she swooped right back to that spot over the middle of the ocean and descended it's depths where she saw the body, the end of the girl's dress caught on the spike of what used to be the bowsprit. The girl's arms were spread out, her dress dyed through in what could be presumed to be her own blood, and she floated like a flower drowned in a lake.

Yes.

She would do nicely.


More aftermath of Nima's death, but this chapter has a lot of swirling emotions in it. Everybody trying to grapple with the grief and, in some cases, guilt.

Next chapter is going to have a centric crew scene in it though! So, look out for that!

Lastly, meet Tianmei. I won't say much more than that lest I spoil you, but I'm a few chapters ahead in writing and I'll say she's a fun one to write.

If you guys can spare a minute to leave a review, I'd be really grateful! This fic hasn't gotten much attention or reviews in general and I'd love to hear from you! Even if it's just you pointing something out, taking that minute really means a lot! Thank you for reading! Tune in for next chapter!