Everything was wrong.
Everything was horribly, horribly wrong.
Bolin's mind had become a weird blur, both thoughtless and thoughtful all at once. It had disconnected from the rest of him but he didn't understand how or why or when. It was like his mind existed in some strange sideways dimension, like his brain had come untethered from reality. Thoughts shot in and out fleetingly, and very rarely were the ideas grounded in the present. It felt like he was daydreaming, like he was asleep while he was awake. He felt detached. He felt unreal.
The world felt unreal.
Bolin tried to focus on his body and the warnings he'd been listening to so closely for so long, but he couldn't get a read. Not since he'd waked in the cavern. He couldn't understand the signals being sent to his brain. The communication was being interrupted somehow. His bare feet were hitting the ground but it seemed to him as though he was floating. He knew that his feet should hurt but there was nothing. He knew that his shoulder and arm and chest should hurt but there was nothing. He knew he should be exhausted but there was nothing. He felt nothing yet he felt everything, and he knew that he felt nothing and everything. It was as though he'd been pulled out of himself, like he was watching himself walk through the dimly lit tunnel in some kind of strange thriller on a mover screen, like whatever had happened and would happen to him wouldn't really exist, like it was all fake and terrible and inconsequential.
The disconnect didn't stop with his mind. It extended beyond, into his vision and his sense of touch. It extended into his perception of the world around him. He recognized the rough stone corridors down which he presently walked, and he knew that he was beneath a horde of firebenders in Fire Fountain City, but he didn't understand what that meant. He'd been in this place before, but he didn't understand the significance. He knew it was all important, but he didn't know how.
Everything looked strange. When his eyes darted between objects of focus there seemed to be a weird halo, a distortion that made everything feel as though he'd been staring at the sun before being plunged into darkness. The light from Korra's fire was beginning to hurt. His head was starting to throb.
His perspective had somehow distorted, too, though there was no way he could have described it. His eyes focused of their own will on seemingly unimportant details, on a stone here or a crack in the wall there, and everything around that focal point shifted such that even things that he knew must be nearby seemed inexplicably far away. When he looked into the distance the corridor seemed to have narrowed dangerously, seemed to have stretched into oblivion.
He didn't feel like himself.
He didn't feel as part of the world.
He'd lost his grounding.
Everything felt as some weird fantasy that he'd thought himself into in which the people he killed weren't really people but figments of his damaged imagination. He knew he wouldn't wake until he'd delivered the fake-but-real Korra trailing behind him to safety, no matter the cost to himself.
That thought drove him forward. If he fulfilled the mission, he would wake up. If he did what he had to do then the dream would end and he would wake up and everything would be normal.
He just had to keep pushing.
His mind kept threatening to come back to him, and every time it did he willed it away again. The veil of unreality that had fallen over him was scary, it was true, but facing the truth of what he'd done was more frightening still. The understanding of what had truly happened lingered somewhere in the dark parts of his brain, somewhere far behind the racing, incoherent thoughts that rushed around and crashed into each other and made everything all confused.
He saw the people burning. He imagined them melting beneath the lava. It had been so different in reality than it had been in his dreams. In his dreams, their bodies disappeared beneath the molten waves and left no trace that they had ever existed. In reality, their corpses stayed where they fell, encased in shells of rock that hardened over their bodies when the lava met the moisture in their skin. In his dreams, they slowly sank down in the pools he created. In reality, when he opened the ground beneath them they didn't sink at all. They dropped down a few inches and then lingered on the surface, consumed by flames feet first until they fell with sickening splats and their bodies boiled and the superheated gases exploded out of them like the popping of a giant fleshy balloon. Then the lava bubbled and spat, and if they were very, very lucky, they'd be dead before it swallowed them whole and crept along the way.
Perhaps the only thing that remained consistent between the dreams and reality was the screaming. Without fail, even the most hard-faced man devolved into hysterical screaming and flailing the instant the lava hit the mark and splattered. They tried to peel it away but it burned them more. It fused their limbs together and melted the fat and flesh like candle wax. And the times when screaming would've been most expected-the times Bolin had cast enormous swelling waves of the stuff over their heads-there was nothing. Maybe they screamed, but the thickness of the lava prevented the noise from coming out. It muffled the sound. He wondered if it had gone into their mouths or down their throats. He wondered if their eyeballs had exploded in the heat. He wondered if they had lived long enough to feel it.
He'd never considered the crushing that way. He'd never dreamed about it before. He'd never had nightmares about bending stone because he'd never imagined it to be so deadly, but in the end it may have been worse than the lava. The lava didn't make a lot of noise, at least not in such a way that he could hear, but there had been noise with the stone. There had been crunches and splatters and squishes.
He wondered how many times he'd come close to killing someone before, bending rocks at them without truly understanding how dangerous it was. He wondered if he'd ever be able to do it again. Once he was out of this horrible place, he wondered if he'd ever be able to bend without thinking of the bodies and the blood and the screaming.
He stumbled.
Or had his leg gone out from under him?
Either way, he caught himself before he went too far.
Korra talked to him then. He heard her voice and he heard his voice responding to her, but he didn't know what the conversation was about. He didn't know what she'd said, if it had been a statement or a question. He didn't recognize the words or the subtle, worried undertone contained in every sound she made. And his voice didn't sound like his voice, either. It wasn't the first time his voice hadn't sounded like his own. There was a time when it had sounded timid and weak and soft and boyish because he'd fainted and nearly died, and everyone he knew and loved and cared about had crowded around him to watch him falling apart at the seams. But this wasn't the same. The words came out of him and he knew they were coming out, but his voice sounded entirely foreign. It was hard and cold and low. It sounded like he was listening to himself on a radio. It sounded fake, like some stranger was trying to impersonate him and doing a middling job at best.
The worst thing was that somewhere in the back of his mind, Bolin could hear his real voice, tiny but persistent, telling him that he was a murderer. It told him that he'd done a terrible thing. It told him he'd made a horrible decision, that there had been alternatives, that he was a killer and that his hands would forever be stained with the blood of people who had once been people with dreams and hopes and families.
He was a horrible person.
He was a murderer.
He shouldn't be here.
He never should have left Zaofu.
He hadn't been ready.
Bolin drew a deep breath and tightened his grip on Korra's hand. All he had to do was focus on the thoughts that came one after another in an endless loop, the thoughts that occasionally broke through the haze of unreality and tethered him back to the world. One foot in front of the other. Maintain an upward course. Keep breathing so you don't pass out. Don't fall down. Keep hold of Korra's hand. If someone comes around that corner, do something. Do whatever it takes to keep Korra safe. She's the Avatar. Her life is worth more than yours. Do whatever it takes. If you lose her, you've failed.
He shuddered, and Korra asked if he was all right. He didn't say anything back to her. There was nothing to say. He just had to keep going. He couldn't let her know how strange he felt. He couldn't let her know how far his mind had gone.
It was pure stubborn willpower that kept Bolin going. Every inch of his body screamed for relief, but his mind wouldn't slow down. His link to reality broke and mended, broke and mended. The thoughts wouldn't quit and his body couldn't rest; his head was pounding and his hands were shaking and his skin wouldn't stop crawling. Every part of him filled with a strange, intense tingle. Every bump he felt through the earth set him even farther on edge. Every time Korra's fingers twitched between his own he worried that it was the end, that she'd seen or heard or felt something that he'd not picked up on.
And what of Korra? She'd seen it all. She'd said it herself: She knew what he'd been doing, she'd seen it and she'd understood it. It had frightened her. She hadn't said that part but Bolin knew. He could feel it in her, and he wondered what she saw when she looked at him. He wondered what she thought of him now they were in the dark and all they could rely on was each other.
And what of Opal and Asami? What of Mako? The girls had watched him crush the firebenders in the hall. They'd heard the disgusting, guttural noise he'd made when he heaved the rock from the ground. They'd probably watched the guts come shooting out of the cracks between the stones. They'd probably seen the arm. They might've even seen who it belonged to. Maybe it had been the combustion bender who'd knocked Bolin from his feet to skid into the corpse on the floor. He didn't know. He hadn't been watching.
Mako had to have seen the aftermath. He had to have heard the racket, even if he didn't know what was happening at the time. Even if he was mindless with shock, he'd have looked at the bloody corridor, and though it might take some time he would piece together the truth. He'd eventually come to understand exactly what had happened. There had only been one earthbender in the tunnels.
He wondered how it would change things. He wondered if it would change them at all. Everything had already gotten so bad; he'd alienated himself from everyone he cared about. He'd yelled at everyone and hit them and hurt them and otherwise pushed them away so far that he'd be surprised if they could drift any farther.
But he'd killed people. That had to change something. It had certainly changed something in him. He recognized that it had, but he couldn't describe it. There was a time before and there was a time after. He knew that. But he couldn't have numbered the moments between to save his life. The change must have happened when he'd realized what he'd done, when he'd turned around to see that hand dangling from the ceiling, when he'd recognized the blood on the rock for what it was and when he understood that the weird wetness he'd landed in hadn't been his own blood or a puddle of water, but the seeping remains of some poor idiot who'd gotten himself killed.
No, things would never be the same. Even if the others pretended like everything was okay Bolin knew better. Somewhere deep inside them, they would all be afraid of him, afraid of what he could do when he lost control and perhaps more afraid of what he could do when he kept it. And if they weren't already terrified of his outbursts and panic attacks, they certainly would be now. The panic had driven it all.
He hated himself. He was afraid of himself. He was afraid of the consequences once everything was said and done. He was afraid of what would happen if he was unlucky enough to make it out of this mess alive. He'd return to Republic City or Zaofu where news would almost certainly spread of how he had roasted a couple dozen people alive and kept a straight face about it. Someone would tell. It would probably be Korra, with her gigantic mouth. Tenzin and Pema would find out. Beifong would find out. Su would find out.
Under the weight of that thought Bolin's knee really did buckle, and then he was sitting on his feet on the ground, his palms flat on the stone while he reeled.
He heard Korra gasp the instant he fell, and before he had the chance to make up some kind of excuse she was down on her knees beside him, that infernal flame in hand shining light directly into his eyes. It was blinding. It hurt.
"Are you okay?"
It was a stupid question and Bolin wanted to say so, but something had happened to his throat that made the words impossible. He could breathe and he could move and he wasn't panicking again, but a lump had blocked his voice from coming out of him. He nodded and closed his eyes. The room was spinning.
"When... When was the last time you ate?"
"Shut up."
Korra didn't shut up, but she lowered her voice to a hoarse whisper. "We need to stop. You need to rest."
Effortfully and with the slightest stagger, Bolin pushed himself back to his feet and steadied himself against the wall. He swallowed hard. "No, we need to keep going. If we stop, we're never getting out of here."
"I thought that was the idea."
Confused, Bolin glared at Korra while she stood back up. She looked somewhere between sad and angry but he couldn't tell. He couldn't read the look on her face and he wasn't sure if it was because he'd not seen it before or because something in his brain had shut down.
"Don't look at me like that," Korra said. Her voice sounded very far away. It sounded like it was floating. "You know exactly what I'm talking about. I'm not stupid. You don't want to go home. You came here to die."
Bolin couldn't say anything. The lump had come back. The thoughts wouldn't form. So he took a deep breath, grabbed Korra's free hand, and set off.
"And the fact that you're not saying anything doesn't prove me wrong."
"What do you want me to say?"
"Anything."
Bolin sighed. He thought for a fleeting moment about halting again, but then thought better. To stop would make them a target. At least if they kept moving it would be harder for the firebenders to find them.
"I'm getting you back to the bison," Bolin said at last. "And then you're going to get out of here."
Korra stopped dead in her tracks, and when Bolin pulled at her to keep going, she yanked him back hard enough that he stumbled again and his shoulder seared anew. He felt a grinding separation in the joint. He wanted to yell at her but held his breath instead.
"Look," Korra said, her whisper low and dangerous now, "I need to make something really clear to you, okay?" She paused as if she expected him to nod. When he didn't, she went on with intentional clarity. "You are coming home with us. Do you understand that? I'm not letting you stay here. I'm not letting you die here, and you're being ridiculous if you think otherwise."
It took a long time for the words to sink in, but when they finally did, all Bolin could say was, "Why?"
"Because I..." Korra stopped suddenly and looked at the floor. Her expression had changed but Bolin didn't know what it reflected. Her voice turned soft but he didn't know why. "I need you to come home with us," she continued. "Because you and I have some things we need to work out and it's not going to happen if-"
"You've got to be kidding me."
The words had fallen out of him before he had the chance to stop them, and they'd dripped venom that he'd not intended.
Korra shut up.
"You're seriously doing this right now?" Bolin continued, his own whisper growing ever more uncontrolled. "You're seriously going to discuss this right now?"
Korra stammered, but she couldn't force out a reply.
"You are absolutely unbelievable, you know that?" Bolin turned around and began to set off, but then thought again, stopped, and rounded on Korra angrily. "You know what? I'm going to work this something out for us right here and right now: I don't need you to babysit me and I don't need you to pity me... I don't need you and I don't need anyone else. I can handle myself. Whatever it is you're trying to prove with this caring about me bit is... Is... Well, it's pointless. You're not changing my mind about anything and you're definitely not making me feel better!"
"Bolin, I-"
"Oh no. No you don't. Every time you say my name like that I end up in worse trouble than I started. So just shut up and leave me alone! Let me do what I'm going to do to get you out of here and just... Just worry about yourself for once!"
His stumbling couldn't have happened at a more inconvenient time, and Bolin knew it as soon as he turned around and his head started spinning. He'd moved too fast and the wall came to meet him entirely too quickly. The lull between fighting had him feeling weak and sick all over again. The weird detachment faded just enough for him to gain awareness of his self, and Bolin knew that such awareness only made things worse. The panic had been all that was holding him together, and now that it was gone he was falling apart again.
Every sensation he'd been trying to ignore seemed to hit him at once. His skin tingled weirdly and an unfamiliar flutter tightened his chest and stole his breath. The shaking in his hands felt worse than it'd been before, and what had once been a warm sweat of exertion had gone cold and clammy. All the effects of the adrenaline had gone away, and in their absence he wanted to faint.
He leaned against the stone and closed his eyes, embarrassed and exhausted.
"Yeah," Korra said dryly, the whisper all but gone. "About that whole not worrying thing. You're making it a little difficult."
"Shut up."
Korra stood stunned while Bolin regained his balance, and he turned back toward her, his eyes focused on some point in the distance. He'd stopped paying attention to her. Something had moved while he'd been standing there. He'd felt it through his feet and through the wall. He'd felt it through all that was wrong with his body, but Korra hadn't noticed. She couldn't have noticed: She couldn't feel the vibrations.
Korra kept on with her ranting. "I'd have thought by now you'd have figured out that telling me to shut up all the time won't actually make me-"
Bolin clapped one hand over Korra's mouth, turned her around with the other, and held her close to his chest. Satisfied that he'd startled her into silence, he let go her mouth and grasped the hand holding the flame to force it to her side, and then he pointed back down the way they'd come.
Korra drew a sharp breath.
She'd seen it, too. Someone had followed them.
Bolin lowered his chin to her shoulder and kept staring into the dark while he gave his instruction. "You need to go on," he said, his whisper more forceful than it had been before. "I'll follow."
"Absolutely not!" Korra replied. She rounded on him with a look like she was going to yell, and when she opened her mouth Bolin clapped his hand over it again.
"No." There was no argument to be had. Things were going to get bad and worse again, and Bolin didn't want Korra to be in the middle of it. He didn't want her to be anywhere nearby when he set to work with the lava. He didn't want her to be anywhere nearby if his body gave out. She had to go, and she had to go now. "Get out of here."
When Bolin lowered his hand again, Korra didn't move. "How do I know you're actually going to follow me?" she asked.
Bolin looked at the ground, a little ashamed, but then he rolled his shoulders and started into the dark. "Because I can't be finished until you're out of here."
"If you die you know I'll never forgive you."
Korra took off, but Bolin didn't watch her go. Her words had come out just as tersely as his own had, but her emotions didn't match. She was scared.
If Bolin was truthful with himself, he was scared, too. There could be no telling what was coming after him or how many firebenders were trailing them, how many of them were capable of combustion or lightning, how many of them would open fire in the tight corridor without a second glance. Add to that the terrible sick feeling in his body and the unpredictable detachment of his mind, and there was no way to know how things would go. The thought made him tense and the panic began to well up again.
He didn't try to fight it.
As he walked and waited he felt the change, the weird shift in him that had taken over when he'd found Korra and fled. It was the same feeling that had come over him when he saw Opal fall. His senses felt sharper, his vision less blurred, his hearing more acute. But that came at the expense of his rationality. Pure, blind instinct would take over the minute he saw the firebenders, and beyond that point there would be no more control until the fighting was over and he came back to himself. That was supposed to be how it worked, anyway. Last time he hadn't come back to himself at all. Last time he'd detached from reality almost entirely.
He crouched low and watched as the darkness came and went, as shadows passed through the corridor far down the way. Then an idea struck. He and Korra had progressed along a generally ascending path: If he set the lava in motion, gravity would pull it along and nature would do the work for him. It might prevent more death, too. They might see it coming and flee before it could do any damage.
He hoped.
Bolin pressed the pads of his fingers against the ground and braced himself. Then he drove his hands into the earth, sending a mighty wave rolling through the rock, and as it advanced it liquefied and filled the corridor from wall to wall. It flowed with speed he'd not expected.
Satisfied that the barrier would work, Bolin turned and ran. He didn't want to see what happened when the light radiating off the lava reached the shadows. He didn't want to know how the firebenders would react. He didn't want to hear the noises again. When the shouting started, he tried to close his ears.
He found Korra some distance ahead, and though she was certainly making progress she wasn't doing it with purpose. He didn't stop to scold her for waiting, but as he passed grabbed her roughly by the arm and cast her ahead.
"That's not going to hold them off for long," Bolin said breathlessly. "We've got to get out."
The shouting that echoed down through the corridor shifted in its tone and volume until what once had been commanding orders deteriorated into shrieks of fear and pain that set Bolin's stomach to turning.
"I thought..." Korra started, her pace slowing a bit. She looked over her shoulder and behind. "I thought you were…" Bolin pushed her along again, and she stopped speaking. She looked afraid again. She looked disgusted.
Bolin kept pressing. He kept his hand firmly planted between Korra's shoulders, pushing her as fast as he could go. When she raised her hand to ignite her flame, he forced it back to her side and held it there. They couldn't afford the light. They couldn't afford to draw any more attention to themselves than they already had.
When he saw another flicker ahead, he grabbed Korra by the shoulder and yanked her back, a dread filling him from head to foot. Surrounded? They must have been. Or a squad of guards must have heard the yelling. The sounds had filled the corridor and then stopped again. The sudden change must have drawn them down.
But that meant there was an entrance nearby. There must be a way out.
Bolin didn't think twice about jumping ahead of Korra to meet the light head on. He didn't think at all, and when the firebenders rounded the corner he sprang to motion.
They didn't see it coming. With a mighty heave, Bolin pulled a ten-foot span of the ceiling down and a rain of dirt and rock fell atop them, burying the lot. This time there wasn't any screaming. The tunnel collapsing on them had muffled the sounds of death, and when the enormous chunks of stone settled and the dust cleared only a single person remained visible, buried to his chest with his face in the dirt.
He wasn't dead, but he would be soon.
The flutter hit Bolin in the chest again, pulling the breath from his lungs and tightening it such that he had to work hard to breathe. It made him lightheaded. Ignoring it, he marched forward and crouched low. "How do we get out?" he asked. He wasn't surprised to hear the cold, low quality in his voice again. The tone was frightening. It was unreal. "Where is the exit?"
The soldier lifted his head. He looked in a daze, like he hadn't fully understood what just happened. The realization seemed to come on him slowly-it could've been Bolin's perception skewing again-but eventually the man's eyes grew wide and his mouth hung open and he stared at Bolin with a look of abject horror. Then the shock set in.
The firebender screamed. He wailed and he cried and he writhed and pried at the rocks pinning his body like he was going to lift them away. There was no way it would work. He'd been all but crushed. There was no way he'd get himself out, and even if he did, he'd bleed out almost immediately.
The noises he was making were disgusting and inhuman. They were noises that Bolin knew he would never forget the same way he'd never forget the crunching of bones and the screaming of people burning in the lava. The only difference was that these noises wouldn't stop. The firebender wasn't dying quickly, he was just lying there suffering.
Bolin had to stop it. It would be an act of mercy.
At a loss for what to do, Bolin palmed the firebender's head in his shaking hand and slammed it to the ground. He had to stop the noise before it drew more attention. He had to stop it before it made him sick.
"Shut up!"
The firebender whimpered pathetically and squinted his eyes closed. There was dirt stuck to his face. The whole situation made Bolin want to throw up, but he didn't know what else to do. The damage had been done, and now that the firebender was lying there he may as well prove of some use.
"Tell me how to get out of here and I'll let you go."
It wasn't wholly a lie. He'd be let go, but in no way he likely imagined.
The firebender cried. He pressed his forehead into the ground and tried futilely to get his hands beneath himself. It was like watching a wounded animal.
"How do we get out?"
At last the firebender responded. He thrust his finger back the way he'd come and said tremulously, "Right."
"Thank you."
It struck Bolin as profoundly strange the way the response had come out of him. It was ridiculous now he thought on it. Here he was in the midst of a flat-out killing spree, and he was thanking a dying man for directions he'd gotten by force.
He didn't know what he was doing anymore.
Bolin stood and looked back at Korra, but he could only hold her gaze for a fluttering heartbeat. She hadn't moved from the spot he'd left her, and as she stood there gaping at him her hands crept up to her mouth in fear. She looked revolted. She looked like everything Bolin had done and would do was an affront to humanity.
And it was.
He looked at the ground and listened while the buried firebender whimpered and cried and begged to be spared. Then, with a steadying breath, he turned back to the pile of stone and dirt, planted his feet, and at the same time he liquefied the rock he pulled it forward, covering the soldier and leveling the ground. It lingered there for a time, and the lava swelled and bubbled as the gases released. Then, satisfied that the deed was done, he cooled the ground and said quietly, "Come on, let's go."
He didn't wait for Korra to catch up before he rushed on. He didn't want to look at her, and he assumed that she didn't want to look at him. He wouldn't have wanted to look at himself either if he was in her shoes. He didn't want to be himself. He didn't want to be at all.
Yet here he was, stuck and desperate to detach again, but he didn't know how. It had come naturally the last time, it had happened against his will and he'd not recognized the weirdness until well after it had faded and he'd come back to himself. It was strange how badly he wanted it back.
All he had to do was convince himself it wasn't real. All he had to do was repeat the litany over and over until it sank into his thick skull. The thoughts cycled through his mind effortlessly: This was a sick dream his mind had contrived after the collapse. None of this was happening. These people weren't real. He'd been attacked by the combustion bender and everything thereafter was his mind realizing a primal urge for revenge. Everything he'd done since that horrible day was an attempt at vindication, at reclaiming his brain and his personality and his dignity and everything else he'd lost when that building had come down on top of him.
It was all a dream. None of these people were real. As long as he pushed through to the end of it, he'd wake up. Things would be normal. He'd be happy. He'd have Opal. He'd be healthy. All he had to do was deliver Korra safely to the bison. The rest didn't matter.
The rest didn't matter.
None of it mattered.
It was all a dream.
He was asleep. He was unconscious. He was dead. He was anything that would make what he'd been doing a fantasy.
Without ever knowing, Bolin detached, and even when Korra managed to catch him and lock her hand in his he didn't come back. She wasn't real. She was a figment of his imagination, an arbitrary icon in a meaningless test that he could pass or fail without consequence. Even if he died in the end, he'd wake up in his bed in the hospital and be slow and stupid but altogether safe, and he'd start over again. The dream would break. The firebenders would be alive. He wouldn't be a murderer.
Bolin had gotten so lost in his brain that he barely noticed the sharp shift in the angle of the tunnel, the way it transitioned into a delicately crafted hallway, the way the ground leveled out and rose in a long, steep staircase. All he recognized of the outside was the bizarrely intimate feeling of Korra's fingers between his, the feeling of her sweaty palm against his sweaty palm, and he concentrated on that connection with every fiber of his being. If he didn't, he'd get caught up in everything else. He'd get caught up in the constant, burning flutter in his chest, the encroaching dizziness, the prickling pain in his legs as he pushed himself forward, the nausea, and the cold sweat dripping down his everything. He'd get caught up in what he was doing, and if he got caught up with that he'd hesitate and his instinct would fail. If his instinct failed, they would both die.
He couldn't let that happen.
He had to press on.
He had to wake up.
If Bolin had had his head about him he'd have dropped Korra's hand before beginning to bend, but he didn't, and the second he registered foreign bodies in the suddenly red-carpeted, ornately decorated hallway, he unleashed with reckless ferocity. He pulled at the walls left-handed, thrust the rock forward and into the enemy line as quickly and powerfully as he could, and for a moment he was immune to the agonizing strain in his ribs. He didn't see the arcs of lightning and bolts of fire passing inches to the side of his head. He didn't recognize his own reflexive dodging or Korra's cries of alarm. He only knew that the rocks hadn't finished the job, and he was barreling toward the enemy while a few were still standing.
Desperate, Bolin heaved Korra toward the wall and dove into the fray. The first firebender fell immediately when Bolin's fist connected with the side of his head, and the second, stunned by the sudden offensive, followed shortly after. Bolin made every strike count. He punched so forcefully that for a fraction of a second he remembered reality, that his shoulder was weak and could dislocate if a stiff wind blew the wrong way, and he changed tack accordingly. Two handed, he ripped a slab of rock from the wall and cast it at the remaining firebenders, who fell beneath its weight and didn't get back up.
It happened so fast that Korra hadn't yet regained her feet, and when Bolin's hand found hers again and he pulled her up, she looked at the carnage wide-eyed with wonder. It seemed as though she said something, but Bolin didn't hear it and didn't stop to ask. There wasn't enough time for that.
Together and temporarily uncontested, Bolin and Korra burst out into the open.
The sky was dark but light. The east had begun to burn with the warmth of daybreak, but the west had gone eerily bright, too. A halo of red-orange light rose above the buildings before diffusing into the dark, and here and there plumes of thick black smoke rose into the sky. A strange heat had fallen over the city that Bolin couldn't think to explain away.
He barely paused before dragging Korra eastward, back into the narrow and dangerous alleys between buildings. He didn't stop when the firebenders presented themselves. He didn't lob rock at them. If ever there was a time for full-on lavabending, it was now. He'd brought Korra too close to safety for anything less. Anything less would leave her vulnerable, and vulnerability meant death.
At every intersection, Bolin sent recklessly large waves of lava hurtling down the way to protect their flanks, and the lava crept on around corners and into foundations, burning wood and liquefying rock and summarily killing any fool too slow or too stubborn to run away.
He didn't break stride, not when combustion bolts burst at their feet and showered them with debris. He didn't break stride when a group of five firebenders intercepted their path and he stomped mid-step to produce a pillar of rock that sent them skyward. He heard them land with sickening cracks, but he didn't look. He was too focused to look.
The end was in sight. He could see the boundaries of the city, the last buildings along the path that would lead back up the mountain, back into the clearing where Oogi and safety awaited. It was the home stretch, and it was a good thing. The exhaustion had begun breaking through the wall of detachment. A persistent sense of impending doom had fallen over Bolin that he couldn't shake. Something was desperately wrong.
As they neared the outer limits of the city, Bolin heaved Korra ahead, threw her so hard she stumbled, and as he rounded to close off the way behind he shouted at her to run, that he would follow when he could. Without listening for a response he opened the earth before him and pushed down against the lava, producing an enormous swell that rose and broke and fell again, flooding the path back into the city and spreading through every turn between every building as far as he could see. He threw the lava wide and far, spreading it to every surface he could find regardless of its structure or population, and when he turned to flee he could hear the cracks and snaps of buildings threatening to fall. He could hear buildings crumbling in the distance. He could hear the roar of the lava eating away at everything.
It sounded like thunder.
Bolin rushed up the path. He stumbled. He caught himself and ran again. The tingling in his limbs had given way to complete numbness, and the floating sensation was no longer solely a result of his detachment. Now it was physical. It was mental. It was everything and nothing all at once.
He crested the ridge that concealed their tidy clearing from the city, prepared to see Korra safe and for relief to wash over him. He crested the hill prepared to realize he'd been successful and wake up. He crested the hill to see Korra sprinting ahead, two firebenders flanking her and gaining ground on her fast. She'd been just as tired as Bolin was. She didn't have the energy to push through.
He had to do something before they struck.
At the perimeter of their clearing the earth rose around their path as a small valley between hills, and when Korra passed through it, Bolin made his move. It was perfect. It was narrow and enclosed so the only way out was forward or back, and if Bolin had the back locked down, there would be nowhere to run.
The first firebender wound up to strike and the second paused behind, assuming the telltale posture of combustion, and Bolin's instinct took over. He wasn't sure what sound came out of him, if it was a word or if it was an incoherent yell or if it was a cry of exertion, but it came forth with such volume and power that the first firebender stopped dead in his tracks. At the same time the firebender turned about Bolin swept his right hand low, drawing the lava from the earth as he'd trained himself so relentlessly to do in Zaofu, and with the full force of his body he whipped it forward. As his right hand rose in a painful diagonal follow-through, fingers spread wide, he grasped at the tendril with his left and willed the lava to respond.
The combustion bender fell with a breathy, sickening grunt when the shards connected with his back. And for a fleeting, fluttering heartbeat, the first firebender stood stone still, staring at Bolin with the empty eyes of death. Then he fell, too, and the blood pooled thick around his punctured neck.
Bolin rushed on between the fallen soldiers, his bare feet squishing in the warm, bloody mud, and he broke into the clearing at a dead sprint just in time to see Korra scrambling into the back of the sky bison's basket with Asami's help, the others staring dumbly out. With a left-handed thrust, he raised a column of earth that threw him hard enough to land clumsily in Oogi's basket. He stumbled unceremoniously to his knees.
"Go!" he screamed, throwing his arm out in a desperate gesture. "Go! Go!"
He hadn't needed to yell. The moment he'd touched down someone had coaxed Oogi into the air, and within seconds the world had gone quiet and cold with the breeze of flight.
Bolin couldn't hear. His ears rang and his chest heaved. His hands were numb. His head was spinning. Still, he forced himself up and braced himself against the walls of the basket, and he stared back at Baihe Island as it began to slowly shrink into the distance.
He didn't know what possessed him to look. He wished he hadn't.
The red-orange glow of lava had engulfed the whole of Fire Fountain City, and even as Bolin stared dumbfounded by his own potency, buildings crumbled into the ocean of molten earth that spread over the land. Small islands of rock-debris from the buildings, no doubt-peeked out from the ground, and Bolin imagined people cowering atop them. To punctuate the horror, the fire-belching statue sagged, lingered for an impossible moment, and then tumbled sideward and out of sight.
"Wake up," he whispered desperately. He couldn't hear himself. He could only feel the vibration in his throat as the words came out of him. "Wake up. Wake up."
He recognized the dream come to life. He recognized the expanse of lava that had plagued his sleep for weeks. Fire Fountain City was the Ba Sing Se that wasn't Ba Sing Se, and the enemy firebenders-could he even call them enemies?-had been the people who weren't people. The combustion benders had chased him just as they had in his dream. He'd run from them in fear. And just as it had in his dream, the tide shifted, and in the end of things he was the one doing the chasing. He had been the one attacking.
A shock of cold washed over Bolin, numbing him from his head to his toes. It was the nightmare. But how could it be? He was already dreaming. He knew he was dreaming. He had to have been dreaming.
Bolin didn't know how long he stood there watching the city burn before he felt Korra's hand gentle on his shoulder. It startled him out of the calm of disbelief and he looked at her confused beyond reason. He wasn't ready to talk. He wasn't even ready to stand. Every part of him felt on the edge of giving out.
Her mouth moved and he heard her say something, but the message didn't cut through his own mounting terror. He'd delivered her to safety. That was the deal: He was supposed to get Korra to safety and then he would wake up. Once he fulfilled the goal everything would disappear and the nightmare would end.
He stammered for a few long seconds, incapable of forming words strong enough to convey his surprise. "What... You... What are you... What are you doing here?" He heard himself. He sounded distant and sick again. He sounded the same way he had the night he'd been sentenced to Zaofu, all weak and boyish and quiet. He could scarcely understand the words for the quivering in his voice. It didn't stop them pouring out. "You're not supposed to be here. What are you doing here?"
Korra's face scrunched up. He'd confused her. "What are you talking about?" She'd practically whispered the words. Her confusion changed to concern. She looked worried. She looked like Su had looked. She looked like Asami had looked. "Bolin, what are you..."
"You can't be here," Bolin said, more frantic now. "You're not supposed to be here!"
Korra's puzzlement deepened, and she looked around. Bolin followed her eyes as they landed on Asami and Opal and Mako all staring back at them with weird looks of revulsion and disbelief. When his gaze snapped back to Korra, she'd started staring at him, too. Everyone was looking at him like they'd looked at him the night he'd collapsed. They were looking at him like he was a stranger. They were looking at him like he was a monster.
The reality of the matter dawned on him very, very slowly, and with each step his mind took toward the truth the feelings of fear and denial multiplied. He kept telling himself to wake up. He kept willing himself to wake up, but no matter how hard he concentrated, nothing changed. The panic welled up again and Bolin's first instinct was to run, but there was nowhere to go. He was hundreds of feet in the air.
As it had so many times before, the anxiety stole away his awareness. It made his body act of its own accord, without the instruction of his mind or the benefit of reason. His stomach twisted and he felt suddenly very lightheaded. As his breathing quickened he recognized again the fluttering in his chest. He'd started shaking his head in disbelief, but he didn't recognize the action until Korra stepped closer and caught his face in her hands. The touch was surreal. Her palms were still sweaty, and they felt weird and warm pressing against his cheeks and his neck. But they felt real. Everything about everything felt real from Korra's touch to the sick sensations rolling through the rest of him.
"Hey," Korra said, a bit firmer of tone now she'd caught him. "Look at me."
He wanted to run. He wanted to hide. He didn't want to look at her and see the horrible expression he knew she'd be wearing. He'd seen that expression before. Futilely, he squinted his eyes closed and tried to turn his face to the ground. He heard the weird boyish voice saying, "No, no, no," over and over again. He couldn't catch his breath. "You can't be here," Bolin said. "None of you can be here. You're not supposed to-" He choked on his own heaving breaths and panted, unable to complete the thought.
Korra wouldn't let him retreat. She held him firm, and when he turned his face away from her she moved to stay in his line of sight. She leaned down when he cast his eyes to the ground, and she watched him with unmistakable worry.
"Look at me," she commanded. "Please."
He looked at her, horrified. "I have to wake up. You can't be here."
Korra's face softened in what looked like pity. Bolin didn't know. And when she spoke again her voice was no longer commanding; her voice was soft and inoffensive. It was as neutral as Bolin imagined it had ever sounded before.
"…Where do you think you are?"
He was supposed to be in the hospital. He was supposed to be in his bed waking from this weird series of nightmares. But Bolin knew somehow that it wasn't a dream. His dreams weren't self-aware. His dreams had never sounded so real or looked so real or felt so real. This was reality. He wasn't going to wake up.
It was all real. He'd really crushed those people. He'd really heaved lava at them. He really was a murderer.
With an uncontrollable tremble, he grasped Korra's wrists either side of his head and held them as tightly as he dared. She was real. She was there, and she'd seen everything he'd done.
"You need to sit down," Korra said so quietly that Bolin was certain he was the only one that could hear her. "Come on. Sit down with me."
He didn't sit. All he could do was shake his head and pant and say, "No, no, no," all over again. He couldn't contain the panic, and it washed over him more completely than it had ever done before. It swallowed him like a horrible high tide so that eventually he couldn't even speak. He couldn't utter a single syllable and he couldn't keep his eyes open. Every muscle tensed and he felt his body working to double over. He squeezed Korra's wrists so hard that he could feel her pulse in his hands. He held his breath.
The flutter hit harder than ever, and next Bolin knew he'd landed on all fours, his chest and back heaving uncontrolled. He didn't remember falling. He didn't remember letting go of Korra's wrists. When he forced his eyes open again he saw his hands and his arms all dirt-stained and bloodied. He watched beads of sweat trickle down, leaving tiny trails of white skin and shining metal in their wake.
His vision swam, and Bolin swooned again.
All at once he felt Korra's hands on his back, on his shoulders holding him up. She whispered at him, "Are you okay? What's going on? Talk to me, you have to talk to me." But Bolin didn't know how to respond. He didn't know if he could respond if he tried, and he desperately wanted to try. Korra sounded on the edge of tears now, a little panicked herself, and there was little Bolin wanted less than to cause more trouble than he already had.
"Please," Korra begged, "what's going on?"
At a loss, Bolin grabbed Korra's hand clumsily and pressed it flat against his throat so firmly that he could feel the fluttering of his pulse against her palm. He held it there until he felt her react.
"Asami!"
Korra's voice had gone shaky and unusually high pitched, and in the seconds between her call and the feeling of Asami dropping down beside them, she pulled him forward and planted his forehead on her thighs. It was a kind gesture. If nothing else it kept him from having to put his face on the floor.
He slumped, weak, and lay with his head pressing into Korra's stomach and his face on her legs, doubled over on his knees. And in a last, desperate attempt to hide, he clasped his hands behind his head and pulled his elbows in to block his face. While Korra shushed him and touched his arms and rubbed at the back of his neck, he felt Asami's cold, clinical hands feeling about his throat and his chest.
"What is that?" he heard Asami ask.
"I don't know!" Korra replied.
Their voices had begun to fade. All the sound stretched and softened until again it sounded like everything was passing through an impossibly long tunnel. He heard Asami and Korra's tense, frightened discussion, but he stopped being able to attach meaning to the sounds. Then he stopped hearing their voices entirely so the only thing left in his ears was his own heaving, choking breath. Then he didn't even hear that.
The last thing he felt was Korra's hand gentle against the back of his neck. Then a weird warmth came over him, and he didn't fight against it. He couldn't. He was too tired to fight against it, too winded and too weak, and the exhaustion took him before he could ever consider the consequences.