A/N: hearts for everyone reading this :)
Previous chapter: Noatak and Korra bond over their struggles with power, and Kwan questions his ability to face down Amon.
XXIV
Bloodbender
Noatak and Korra stand side-by-side at the doorway. Korra takes in a deep breath and smells the menthol of the healing salve and a hint of cinnamon from Noatak's scent. She meant for the breath to steady her pulse, but now her heart beats even faster.
"Ready?" she asks, trying to keep the tremble from her voice. She has always loved a good fight, but this mission has grown far beyond a regular conflict. This is the closing chapter to a far-too-short era of her life. When she tries to imagine what her future looks like - even just the next few days - she sees a gaping black void.
Noatak reaches to his side and intertwines his fingers with hers. "I'm sorry for dragging you into this, Korra."
She looks up at him, surprised. Her instinct is to dismiss it - I don't regret anything - but she regrets a lot, like hurting Mako.
Overall, however, she's learning some important lessons about herself. She's learned that keeping herself occupied keeps her depression at bay, and she's regaining her confidence. Most of all, she definitely does not regret falling for Noatak, even though she's sure she's going to pay for it later.
Noatak. She studies his handsome features, the gentleness on his face, and her throat tightens. Something about the finality of the pending battle makes her realize just how hard she has fallen for him.
"Don't be sorry," she says. "I agreed to join the mission. Besides..." She blushes. "It hasn't all been bad."
He smiles, and she smiles back.
One last kiss, and then they step through the door.
They're silent as the walk to the hotel, but he doesn't drop her hand, and his thumb strokes hers. The gesture is reassuring. It's comfortable to stroll through the crowd hand-in-hand like this, and it makes her long for more time together. Maybe she can figure out a way to get him exonerated for his crimes. She's the Avatar, after all; she has a lot of pull. At the very least, maybe she can arrange for him to be transferred to a low-security prison or a halfway house, where she might be allowed to escort him on day passes.
Besides, she intends to demonstrate to the world that bloodbending isn't inherently evil. Right now, as backwards as it is, it seems as if the courts are more afraid of bloodbenders than of war criminals, and that might work in their favour if she can convince the Council that bloodbending is just like any other form of bending.
Noatak glances down at her. "You should probably keep your face hidden for anonymity," he says gently, and she realizes she has been staring at him, no doubt with a look of blushing adoration.
Mortified, she pulls her hood far over her face, keeping her eyes trained on the ground. Trying to focus, she runs through her role over and over again in her mind. She's so distracted that she doesn't notice Noatak fall behind her as they reach Kwan's hotel.
"Korra, I'm going to chi-block you before we enter," he says, and the words completely negate all the pleasant thoughts she had about him a few minutes ago.
She whirls. "What the hell?"
Noatak's face is grim. "We can't take the chance that you might lose control." His hand clamps onto her shoulder to spin her around, but she knocks it away.
"I've been controlling it just fine!" Rage flares within her, burning the back of her throat. "What gives you the right to decide whether or not I can use it? I'm not your goddamned lieutenant or something. You can't just make a call and enforce it on me. We're supposed to be equal partners here."
"We are equals in all other things, but when it comes to the Avatar State, your judgement has been compromised."
"Compromised!" She has the sudden urge to blast a puff of flame at his face and march back to the house. Let him clean up his own damned mess!
"I'm sorry, Korra," he says, and he seems so genuine that her anger begins to subside. "I don't mean to treat you as though you can't make your own decisions, but I need to protect myself." He hesitates. "And, even though it isn't my place, I feel the urge to protect you. Think about how you would feel if you lost control."
She sighs. He isn't exactly wrong about her instability, but she's still feeling defensive. "Well, Lin expressly said that it didn't matter if he died-"
"You and I both know that Kwan is more valuable to police alive than dead." His face softens. "Besides, you aren't a killer, Korra. The lives you have taken in your lifetime still haunt you. I can see it in the way you spoke of it, when you told me about the circumstances of Miss Sato's passing."
"I can handle it." Her jaw trembles so badly that she can barely form the words. She thinks of Asami's panicked eyes and ashen skin. Then Mako's eyes rise in her mind, wide with betrayal. How can she pretend she's in control, when she did that to her own boyfriend? What if, in this battle, she loses control, and ends up hurting Noatak? Her heart twists, and she clutches at her forehead.
"Do it," she mutters before she changes her mind.
The jab makes her wince, but she does feel a little more secure after it's over. When she turns to face him again, he's wearing a look of hesitation, as if he feels badly about suggesting it in the first place. He's worried he offended me. It's bizarre that he feels badly when she is the out-of-control one, the one who needs constant baby-sitting.
"Let's just go," she mutters, and he nods.
They stride through the lobby with confidence, as if they belong. Korra's heart pounds as she watches the front desk clerks with her peripheral vision, expecting them to recognize her, or somehow sense that they're there to create conflict. The clerks don't even lift their heads.
They pass beyond the view of the clerks, and the hallway branches ahead of them.
"Which way?" asks Korra.
"Room 103. Check to the right," says Noatak, heading left. After a few steps, she sees the room numbers climbing, not dropping, so she turns to catch up to him.
Noatak stands in front of a door down the hall. He slowly crouches down, examining the cracks in the door for traps, and then peers into the keyhole.
Korra counts: it's three rooms from the end. She waits until Noatak looks up, then cocks her head toward the lobby. He nods: he's confident that he can pick the lock.
"Let's do this," she mutters to herself, bouncing on the balls of her feet with anticipation.
Holding eye contact with him, she sticks out one finger, then two, then three, establishing their rhythm; he mirrors the motions perfectly. Confident they're synchronized, she turns to stride back to the front entrance. In her mind, she continues counting the same rhythm: four, five, six...
As she circles the outside of the building, it becomes apparent that counting to fifty, as Noatak requested of her, is not going to leave her with a lot of time. The hotel is a lot bigger than she expected, and the back wall is set only a few feet away from a steep cliff overlooking the city. She hugs the back wall, carefully hurrying along it, as she counts the windows. Three from the end: there. The curtains are drawn, and a cursory glance suggests there are no traps lining the frame. She hopes she has the correct room.
Forty-three, fourty-four...
Normally, she would use a concussive gust of airbending to smash the window in, but a quick test reveals she still can't bend even a puff of air. Gritting her teeth, she uses earthbending to tear a lump of earth from the ground. It's a strain to lift, and she groans. She's losing her earthbending, too?
Forty-nine, fifty.
Hoping she and Noatak are still relatively synchronized, she hurls the earth at the window. The glass shatters, the earth kicking up a cloud of dust. She barrels through, then lands on the bed in a crouch, just in time to see Noatak burst through the door, barely visible through the dust. He dodges a wire trap and a falling weight so deftly that he must have anticipated them.
The dust settles to reveal Kwan standing between them, backing toward the wall. His kali sticks are in hand, and he's awkwardly trying to pull a gas mask over his face. His eyes tick above Korra's head.
Shit! Instinctively, she rolls to the side, twisting mid-air and uncapping her water flask. Her eyes lock onto a gas canister that had been carefully set above the window; it's already hissing.
As she lands in stance on the floor, she encases the canister in ice. It falls to the bed, disabled.
"Korra," barks Noatak. "Behind you."
She spins. Her heel is a hair's breadth from another wire trap, a second canister ready to fire. Breathing hard, she quickly freezes that one, too.
Her relief is short-lived as she hears Kwan's kali sticks buzz to life. She barrels toward him, but almost trips over another wire between them; she leaps over it just in time.
How many traps are there? she thinks as she closes the distance. Noatak flanks their target's other side. Kwan is keeping his back to the wall, and his furrowed brow and bared teeth show that he knows he's cornered; his eyes tick between them. Korra falls into stance, waiting to see who will make the first move.
"You're outnumbered," says Noatak. "Stand down and surrender."
Kwan's sticks waver, but don't drop. For a moment, their hum is the only noise in the room.
"Where's Qing?" demands Noatak in the deep, threatening voice he used as Amon.
"I sent her home," says his ex-lieutenant, his voice growling as well. "I was wrong to involve her in this mess in the first place."
Korra buys his answer without even questioning it, but there's an advantage to having a partner who had a two-decade relationship with their quarry.
"You're lying," says Noatak.
Kwan's eyes narrow. "No. After your Avatar bloodbent her, I decided it was too risky for Qing to stay on the field."
The words seem to startle Noatak; his gaze locks onto Korra, and she realizes he was unconscious when she bloodbent Qing. He looks disappointed in her, almost sad, and her jaw clenches. You don't have the right to judge me, not after all the times you used bloodbending yourself.
Kwan must catch the gaze that passes between them, because he grins. "I see. You didn't know she was using her bloodbending on us. I guess your little plan of using the Avatar as your guard dog got away on you." He shakes his head. "So like you, Amon, to think you could control the world's most powerful being. So like you to underestimate everyone around you."
Without warning, a kali stick thrusts at Noatak's gut; he spins around it and drives two fingers toward Kwan's neck. Forearm meets forearm as they block each other's blows.
Rushing to her partner's aid, Korra drives her fist in Kwan's direction, intending to firebend a blast of flame. Nothing happens. She tries to lift a chunk of the earth from her earlier assault on the window, and it doesn't move.
With a howl of frustration, she falls back on the only bending that seems to be working: waterbending. She pulls a strand of water from the flask and attempts to wrap it around Kwan's wrist, but he moves through it without even noticing it.
Even my waterbending is weak! She begins to panic.
Noatak grunts with pain and staggers backwards as a blow lands on his ear. As Kwan moves in to follow up, Korra darts forward with a punch. If she has to resort to pure martial arts, she will.
Her distraction works; Kwan zeroes in on her, and Noatak takes advantage of it by knocking one of the sticks from his hands. Torn between two targets, with only one kali stick remaining, Kwan ricochets between them, but he's tiring fast. Noatak manages to knock the other stick away, and Korra kicks out the back of Kwan's knee, dropping him to his shins.
She clamps a hand on his shoulder, locking him in place. Noatak stands before him and clasps his arms behind his back.
"It's time to be reasonable," he says.
Kwan spits at his face, and Noatak just barely dodges to avoid it.
"That's hardly reasonable."
"Fuck you, Amon. If you think I'm going to be reasonable after all you did-" begins Kwan.
The door opens, and a blur flies at Korra. She dodges and steps back just in time to avoid a pair of bolas; they fly through the smashed window.
Her face snaps to a crouched figure in the doorway. Qing.
Already reacting, Noatak drives his fingers at Kwan's neck in an attempt to knock him unconscious, but Kwan rolls out of the way.
"Mask!" Kwan barks at Qing.
Mask? Korra barely has time to register the word when she sees Qing pulling a mask over her head, and Kwan dropping to the ground. His hand is reaching for another canister, one that hasn't been frozen.
"Korra!" yells Noatak, but it's too late for either of them to run. She sends a blast of water at the canister, but her flask is almost empty, and she can't encase it completely. The slow hiss of gas starts to fill the room.
Noatak begins to hack and cough, and she feels her eyes tingle.
If only I could airbend, I could clear the room and protect us! Instead, she dives forward and slides up to the canister, grabs it, then tosses it through the open window. There's enough residual gas in the room that her eyes and nose begin to stream. Coughs burst from her chest so violently that she doubles over, gagging. She touches her hand to her nose to check for blood – none there, but spirits, she can barely breathe.
Get it together! You're in battle, she scolds herself, but she can't quite clear the effects of the gas. She feels as if someone rubbed onion on every surface of her body, inside and out.
Every hair on her body stands on end as she hears Noatak's sharp, pained yell. She wipes her eyes, desperately trying to clear them, and sees him drop to his knees, clutching his arm. His teeth are bared, and he's still giving small coughs, even through his pain. Qing stands behind him, holding her stance. She must have chi-blocked him.
Protective instinct swells within Korra. She yells and charges at Qing and Kwan. Her watering eyes obscure her vision, but she doesn't need it: she can sense every drop of blood in their bodies with perfect clarity. Her hands twist in the air. Both attackers drop flat to the ground, twitching.
She can feel Noatak's disapproval in his racing pulse, can feel him wiping his eyes as he tries to stare at her. She doesn't let any shame show in her stance. Bloodbending is her only reliable weapon right now. He's smart enough to understand that.
To his credit, he doesn't speak out against her actions, maintaining their appearance of solidarity. With a few closed-mouth coughs, he drags himself to his feet. "Surrender," he says to their captives, his voice gravelled from the gas. He's still clutching his arm.
The air is clean enough now that the sting in Korra's eyes is finally fading. She wipes away sticky tears. Kwan and Qing come into view, both prone, and she's surprised to see their bodies vibrating, their eyes wide. The bloodbending feels so easy and effortless that she assumed she was barely holding them in place, but she has completely overpowered them. Experimentally, she lowers her hands, and finds it's easy to psychically maintain the bloodbending, even at this strength. Her lips purse. At least one type of bending is working in my favour.
Noatak's gaze meets hers, and she cocks her brows at him to ask, you all right? He gives a barely perceptible nod, then clasps his hands behind his back and strides to stand between the restrained Equalists.
"Surrender," he says again.
"Yes. I surrender." Kwan's voice is distorted with strain. "Take me. Leave Qing."
"What?" rasps Qing. "No."
"I'll come peacefully. Let her go."
"Kwan, don't you-"
"Do it!" snaps Kwan.
Noatak stands tall, apparently fully recovered; it's almost as if the gas hasn't impacted him at all, and Korra admires his resilience. "Release them," he says to her.
She has no qualms with that request; Kwan's the one they want, and the sooner they end this, the sooner they can begin their last night together. She drops the bloodbending.
The two captives rise to their feet. The corner of Noatak's mouth lifts at her, and she returns the smile. It didn't go as smoothly as they had hoped, but it's finally over.
Qing spins so quickly that no one sees it coming.
The heel of her palm drives into Noatak's nose. He reacts in time to lean back, but the blow still connects, and the crunch reverberates through Korra's body.
Time slows.
Korra hears herself yell his name. She sees him drop, eyes clenched with pain. A shard of sympathy pain spikes through her face like steel, and makes her eyes burn even more strongly than the gas.
This ends now.
Her hand claws the air, and she launches bloodbending at Qing as if throwing a boulder. The woman slams to the ground, her body rippling with crunching spasms.
Kwan howls and rushes forward to her aid, and Korra pins him to the ground, leaving him restrained, but unharmed. Kwan, she needs alive, but the other one...the other one...
"Korra." The tone of Noatak's voice is wrong: he sounds horrified. She's protecting him. He should be grateful.
He stands, shaking so hard that it's visible even across the room. His skin is pale and blood trickles from his nose, and the sight of his blood makes her even angrier. She clenches her fist, and Qing's body falls limp. Kwan struggles against the bloodbending, yelling his lieutenant's name over and over, but Korra keeps him pinned.
"Let them go," growls Noatak.
He's still not grateful – why isn't he grateful? "She hurt you. You gave her the opportunity to walk, and she hurt you." The words come out in a sob, and she realizes that tears are streaming down her cheeks.
Noatak takes a step forward. "Korra, look at her."
Her eyes lock on to Qing's body: the skin is greying, the colour just like Asami's body, that night when Korra tried so hard to revive her... Panicking, she feels for a pulse and finds none.
Oh spirits. She's dead...she's dead!
This time, she doesn't even have the Avatar State to blame. This is her, completely conscious; she chose to kill.
No! I won't kill anyone else. I won't.
She tugs at the blood deep in the woman's heart, trying to coax the organ into beating again. Come on... A cry of frustration leaves her lips. There's a faint quiver of a pulse, but it fades away the instant she stops manipulating it. Come on! Keep beating.
Noatak closes his eyes as if in great pain. Slowly, he walks up to Korra and puts a hand on her shoulder.
"Korra, release them."
"I can't," she sobs. He's interrupting her concentration; she needs to undo this. She massages Qing's heart, trying to force it into a steady rhythm. As she loosens her grip, it finally seems to be beating on its own, and she holds her breath. Yes; keep beating, keep beating...
"I'm sorry," says Noatak flatly.
Too late, she realizes that he thinks she's still attacking Qing, not saving her. "Wait-"
His knuckles drive up her flank, and her bloodbending falls away.
"No!" she shrieks. She tries to sense Qing's body - she needs to make sure her heart kept beating - but it's futile: she's completely cut off from the element. She howls and whirls on Noatak.
"I was saving her!"
He's already pushing past her, striding toward the window.
Korra turns back to see Kwan crawling across the floor to the fallen woman, crying her name - not a monster, just a man, mourning a dear friend. A dear friend Korra chose to kill. She's frozen in place by the sight. Should she apologize? Is that even appropriate? Oh spirits, please let her live. Please let her live...
Kwan looks up at her, and his eyes burn with fury. "Get the fuck out of here!" he snarls.
Swallowing the lump in her throat, she runs for the window.