UGH Sorry this has taken me so long to get up. I promised Makorra...
"Korra," Mako tapped his knuckles lightly against her door. "Korra, it's me." He heard footsteps approach the door. She let him in, but immediately turned back into the room.
"Korra," he gasped when he saw her. She was gorgeous. Her hair had been released from it's usual bands and put into a loose up do. The dress she wore was deep, dark blue and most of the back was cut out. He came to stand behind her, running his fingers down the exposed skin. She sighed, not the response he was expecting. He remembered the previous night's exchange...
"Mako," a whisper managed to pull him away from the dream world. He sat up, rubbing the sleep from his eyes, and tried to figure out who was calling his name. "Mako." The voice came again. He managed to focus as his eyes adjusted to the dark. It was Korra. She was kneeling at the foot of his bed. Her hair was loose and waved down her back. In her sleep clothes, perched like she was, with her hair falling into her face, the Avatar seemed so vulnerable. She tried to explain, in whispers so as to not wake Bolin who slept across the room, why she was in his room in the middle of the night, but he could only hear how her voice shook.
Mako held his arms open and she crawled to his embrace.
"Tell me," he said. And she did. At first it was the same reoccurring dream, the dream of the green light in the distance. Soon, however, Mako could tell the nightmares were getting worse, more vivid. The intricacies of the dream multiplied to include a symphony of lights and sounds, of laughter turned to screams.
"Bolin was there this time," The night became heavy around them. Bolin's snoring from the other bed ruptured their quiet.
Mako stiffened at the mention of his brother. Korra did not go on, so he knew that what become oh his brother was either uncertain, or very painful. He hoped for uncertainty.
"Shhh," he stroked her hair and rocked her slightly, hating what these premonitions did to her. "Tenzin and Lin are on top of it."
"No," she said, pulling away from him slightly to look him in the eye. "They're missing something. I've tried meditating. I've gone into the city to search. It's all a dead end. Something is calling for me." she paused, "something is coming."
Mako continued to whisper soothing nothings, but she would not relax.
"I'm the Avatar," at last, she no longer trembled with the after effects of her nightmare. She spoke strongly, but softly. "It is my duty to protect the city." A heavy sigh. "But how do I fight an enemy I cannot find?" He could feel the ice of her frustration.
For a long time, Korra and Mako whispered in the darkness of his bedroom. Eventually, at sunrise, she had fallen asleep. Mako, a firebender, could not drift off with her as the sun rose over the bay. So, he watched over her. Thankfully, the dreams did not return...
Yet, Korra was still troubled.
"It's here," was all she managed. Her words echoed in his mind. Something is coming...an enemy I cannot find.
"Tonight?" he breathed. "I'll keep an eye on Bolin." He kissed her lightly. "I promise. We'll get through this." He felt her squeeze his hand in reassurance. She was ready. Whatever it was. They would tackle it.
"Hey, Mako," Korra called to him as we was about to leave. He turned to see her roguish smile before leaving to search fro his brother.
Mako found Bolin in their bathroom. In his undershirt, he combed his hair, still not ready. The older brother shook his head.
Ikki sat on the counter, chattering on. "Who is she, Bolin? Huh? Who is she? Is she pretty? Does she have long hair? Does she have freckles? Is she an earthbender too?"
"Of course she's pretty! Yes. Yes. No."
"Is she smart?" Jinora piped from the corner.
"Very smart."
"Who?" asked Mako, stepping in with a grin. He was happy his brother had found a date for tonight.
"Kai." A blush appeared on his cheeks. Bolin disguised it by turning away.
"The girl from the locker room?"
"They met in the park," squealed Ikki.
"I didn't know that." Mako raised an eyebrow at Bolin who shrugged his shoulders in reply.
"He's a fellow lady magnet." Meelo sat up from where he was laying in the bathtub.
"What can I say?" Bolin grinned sarcastically, but Mako could see his brother's eyes soften.
Kai, Asami, and Iroh sat in the car as they drove to the Gatz estate. They were silent and Kai swore the others could hear the beat of her heart. It thudded in her chest and thundered in her ears. This was it. She manages a glimpse of herself in the window and once again was shocked by her appearance. It was perfect. In her mind, she let herself picture dancing with Bolin, his arms around her. Each time she would drift into her daydream, however, they ended up apart, pulled by some plot of Jaak Gatz's devising.
"Kai," Iroh said her name, "I mean this with the most respect, but I must ask: if you possess the ability to bend minds, why did you not use that power to escape?"
"Oh, I tried," she said, "but mindbending is not like waterbending, or even bloodbending. It is difficult and takes great concentration. I cannot just grab someone's mind and run. I have to control the flow of chemicals in a person's brain. Tiny amounts of water. My special ability," she looked down at her palms, "allows me to sense what I need to bend, move it in synchronization with my own thoughts or whatever is the...desired result." She hated how scientific she sounded, how surgical, as if the act of mindbending was not actually a gruesome affair.
"It's hard," she said to Iroh, "really hard, and when I did manage to escape, I wore myself out on the escape itself. When his men dragged my back, I was drained. Each time I tried, not matter how skilled I was, I always failed. I guess, it has its limits."
"Like bloodbending only during a full moon," offered Asami.
"Exactly," said Kai.
Kai knew she had just told them a lie. When she had been brought before Gatz, she was furious and eager to explode against him. How easy it would have been to stop his heart just like the first mouse. She would have enjoyed it, grasping his consciousnesses like it were an insect and crushing it just as easy.
He pushed her, taunting her to bend his mind, knowing she hated it. She did. She entered his mind. Having had experience with her, he was able to resist longer than anyone else, but soon he too fell. When their boss fell to the ground, guards had grasped her arms so hard they had left bruises. They didn't dare pull her away, afraid she would kill Gatz. She had continued to creep into his mind. Then, the dreams began...
Just like with Pyke, everything Gatz felt Kai felt. They became each other for the brief time that they were melded. She learned of Lan, the girl who had refused to run away with him. She felt the utter sorrow and gut wrenching heartbreak that had twisted Jaikko Zatug into Jaak Gatz. Kai was torn apart by the experiences that corrupted Jaikko: the bootlegging, the crime, the loneliness. At his heart, she found innocence perverted and could not bring herself to destroy something so pitiful., for it would destroy, in turn, all she stood for, beleived in, and fought for.
She had never tried to bend Gatz mind again. And she knew, this is where she had gone wrong. At his core, Gatz may be victim of a cruel twist of fate, but he had done disgusting dreadful things. He had kidnapped her and Pyke. He had forced them to ruin people. In the end, Kai knew she would have to slaughter that small creature of innocence within Gatz in order to save the lives of more to come. It had to be done.
WILL KAI BE ABLE TO DEFEAT GATZ? WILL SHE EVER GET THAT DANCE WITH BOLIN? AND WILL KORRA'S UNSETTLING NIGHTMARES BECOME REALITY?
STAY TUNED!
Okay so i had some pretty heavy stuff coming on here so I sandwiched some Bolin and airbender kid humor in there. Gotta love Meelo.
How did that whole scene go? PLEASE PLEASE PLEASEEEEEE PLEASSSEEEEEE PLEASSSSSEEEEEE PLEEEEAAAAASSSEEEEE give me some feedback about the whole scene with Bolin. Are you getting enough of his character in the relationship with Kai? Is he too two-dimensional? I need to hear from my lovely readers!