-Tied Fates—
Avatar… Avatar. Wake up.
Korra couldn't move. She heard voices, she felt a presence, but she could not speak, could not summon the energy to lift her legs. They were fixed in one place. She stared forward. The room she was in moved in and out like waves.
She could move her eyes. She looked up. Above her was a starry night sky, rich with twinkles of distant suns. Flowing across the celestial painting was cosmic energy. It looked like a stream of stardust. She must have been far from the city to see the stars shining this brightly.
Suddenly she could move. She looked around her. This wasn't the city. She was on grass. It was blue, and plants grew around her that looked like diamonds, glittering, reflecting the light of the stars. She was on a floating platform, the cosmic energy stream revolved around it. Korra stood and saw the opposite side of the platform. A statue rested on the edge, and someone stood before it. Korra ran toward the statue but stopped as the figure in front of it began to rise and turned to her.
"Korra," the figure said. As it spoke, it's voice sounded initially like Daya's, then gradually decreased in pitch to sound like a man. It sounded sinister. "You have failed. Your time has come, this whole world's time has come. It no longer deserves its existence." The environment slowly began to transform back into the room she was previously in. Her body becoming more and more paralyzed. The shadowed man continued to speak, "I will gladly take your place, and fulfill the destiny of the Avatar. To end the misery, the violence, the self-destruction. The destiny you have so foolishly refused."
Korra was lying down again. She was in a room of a house. The house was bleak and looked as if it was going to fall apart any second. The man remained before her. She couldn't see his face. He held up a sword, red with human blood.
"To establish my existence in this world, I must take the life of one of its living members. A member who would give his life if it meant the salvation of mankind." He swung the blade in the air, and the blood spat across the room. He looked at Korra, his eyes shining green. "We will be in touch, Korra."
Korra stared in the man's direction long after he disappeared. She realized that she was not dreaming anymore. She was awake, in an actual house in the real world. The lights in the room flickered on and off periodically. She was confused, and sprang up when she heard footsteps.
A man rounded the corner, "What the hell is this…" he said, looking at the wall but Korra had gotten behind him and put a kitchen knife to his throat.
"Who are you? Where are my weapons?" she asked.
"Gah, right there, man,"he said, pointing at the ground. Korra's blades just laid there.
"Oh."
"Korra!" Asami said, coming from the basement.
"Asami? Where are we? Who is this guy?"
"Name is O-Ren," he pulled his hands from his throat to see if there was any blood. "Gee thanks for sparing my neck."
"Korra, we were able to escape from the drones but…well, you passed out. Mako knew of his friend, O-Ren, and said we'd be safe here. We ditched the car in the river and came here. It's far from the city so it should buy us some time. We can trust him."
"Yeah," O-Ren interrupted, "but what I want to know is where all that blood came from?" The three looked to where he was pointing. A line of blood splattered the wall. O-Ren continued, "It looks like someone in here got cut real bad. Did someone try to break in, Korra?"
Korra walked up to the blood. "Please, don't be…" she said to herself. It was fresh, still running down the wall. "No. It was just me here. This wasn't here before? Are you sure?"
"No, we were just here when we arrived." Korra eyed the blood. It took her a few seconds to realize the most probable source of it.
She turned quickly. "I think this is a sign from the spirits."
O-Ren and Asami just stared at her, confused.
"Please, I'm telling the truth. I was able to feel the energy inside those drones because there was so much of it, but when I tried to get rid of it, I somehow interfered with something. The Spirits...they're angry. With me. With everything. If we are going to calm them, we have to move fast."
"Well, then let's get back downstairs," Asami said. "We're finally planning infiltration of Graft's Headquarters."
l-l
The basement was a depressing and dimly-lit room occupied by the desperate Team Avatar. Every step down the stairs squeaked and seemed to jeopardize the structure of the building. Windows indicated to Korra that they were in the industrial district, an abandoned one, far from the metropolitan sectors of Republic City. The saw the lights of the city barely reaching the house they were operating in. The team was able to avoid the police by driving on the city's perimeter to get to this place. Around the dilapidated house they were in there were empty, old factories, boarded up homes, abandoned cars. Smoke rose from the sewers and water overflowed onto the street from the drains. No one had been to this district in years to clean it up. No one lived here except one person: O-Ren.
Paint peeled from the basement walls, pipes leaked, a few crates were set up as chairs, bottles laid in the corners, and the buzzing of the weak lamp was silenced by the sirens echoing in the distance as the Team planned their attack on Graft's Headquarters.
"Solomon Solutions," O-Ren corrected.
"What?" Lin asked, frustrated.
"You keep referring to it as just Graft. Graft's government or his regime. Graft's Headquarters. That 'S' that you've mentioned. Look closer at it. There are two S's, but they just look like one."
"So?"
"So," O-Ren said, elongating the word, "It stands for something. It stands for Solomon Solutions."
"What is that?"
"It's the name of the 'company'," O-Ren said, putting two fingers up one each hand to emphasize the quote, "that Graft runs. That's what he calls it."
"So what?" Lin asked. "Why does it even matter?"
"It does matter," O-Ren corrected. He walked over to the closet and opened it. "Because I have these." He grabbed two coat-hangers. Contained on these two hangers were black uniforms. "Two uniforms of Graft's henchmen. Came across them a couple days ago. They didn't realize I was a metalbender, heh."
"How is your metalbending going, O-Ren?" Lin asked.
O-Ren's smile disappeared. "Still hurts. Anyway, I figure these can help us get inside Graft's domain."
"You only have two, though," Bolin said. He was sweating with frustration. "What about the rest of us?"
"Hey man, you know how hard these were to get?" O-Ren yelled. It had been difficult.
"How did you get those?" Mako asked.
"Saw these two beating up some fiend. Or, I guess, Graft's experiments as you've been calling them. Anyway just wrapped some metal around my hands and took them out. You know something funny, they may be jacked up on other people's bending, but it's just something that was given to them. They don't always know how to use it."
Lin spoke, "So two of us need to wear them. As for everyone else, I suppose once we get inside, those without a uniform can act as prisoners. For a short while, just to get around security. If it can reduce how often we need to use physical combat, it will help."
"Yeah," O-Ren agreed. "That is good. We can have two of us act as guards taking in four people. That would work, and in that case, remember that it's Solomon Solutions. It's important that whoever is going to impersonate the guards knows who the hell they are working for."
"I don't need a uniform," Korra said. "I'll go on my own. I won't be seen. That way you'll only have three fake prisoners."
"Oh," O-Ren responded sarcastically, "too good for our plans? Guess you can just get around fine, then?"
"I can sense things around that most people can't," Korra said angrily.
"Being the avatar…"
"It's not because I'm the avatar. It's because I've been trained to understand the patterns in the energy flowing around me. It's trained me to be stealthy because I can anticipate things long before they happen. Trust me, I won't need a uniform."
"Fine, Korra," Lin interrupted. "We have to decide then who is wearing the uniform. Our prisoners can't bring too much attention. Those of us who are more notorious to Graft should be the ones wearing the disguise." Everyone immediately looked at Lin. "Fine, I'll wear one."
"Probably a good idea. I'm guessing they got eyes looking for you everywhere," Bolin said.
"What about the other one?" Asami asked. "Graft knows me. He made it his mission to put me out of business, but I don't think I'd cause a panic if I got captured by them."
"I can do it," Bolin said angrily. "I'll go right up to Graft's office and demand he give Sydney's life back to her."
Korra was about to ask who Sydney was, but saw Bolin on the verge of tears upon merely saying her name. Korra had been gone a while, and she was assuming, and hoping, that Bolin had finally found a girl. She wanted to ask if Graft had gotten his handprints over her, but she could tell from Bolin's face that he had.
"Bolin, I know you're upset about this," Lin began. "I hate to be the one to say but I think you should be one of the prisoner's as well. You are angry, but we have more of a chance this way. I know it's hard to hear, but no one at the station ever paid attention to you except me. They won't exactly go nuts if you've been captured. I think O-Ren should be the one alongside me in disguise."
"What? Why him?" Korra asked.
"Yeah, why me?"
"Because you can talk to people. I believe you can talk your way out of any situation. You are good at that, and I would know. You've almost convinced me of things several times when you worked for me, and I couldn't easily tell if you were lying even by listening to your heartbeat. Plus it will be like old times again." O-Ren shrugged. "Now that we have that in order, we have our main problem: how do we get in this place?"
"You said you thought it was the building that the police station faced," Mako inquired. "We could look there."
"Mako, my head is a bounty right now. We can't just roll through the front door of Graft's hideout…"
"It isn't 'Graft', Lin, it's 'Solomon Solutions'…," Lin cut O-Ren off by slapping him in the face.
"Shut up!"
Bolin walked forward. "We don't need to worry about that. We aren't going through the front door. Sydney told me how she escaped the first time. She used the sewer system. There is an underground network of tunnels, and one of them somehow goes directly underneath Solomon Solutions. There is probably some way to access the building from there."
"Unless they sealed it up," Asami added. "And if they chased Sydney out of there, they are probably going to have the area under surveillance."
"I'll take care of that," Korra said. "I'll be our radar for any of Graft's men scouting the area."
"No matter what disguise we have, we aren't trying to be seen. Keep it to a minimum. You are only our prisoners if we have been detected. It is our backup plan. If that fails, we just fight our way through," Lin clarified. Everyone nodded. "So, Bolin, you can find this sewer?"
"She told me where it is. We won't need to go through the city. It is right on the channel."
Lin looked around at everyone's face. They were gathered around a small table under the light of a dim lamp in the basement. It was quiet, the faint sound of police sirens in the distance, somewhere in the city that was slowly being overtaken by Graft's failed experiments. Lin explained that once Graft was taken care of, the city would need to be quarantined so that the government's poison didn't leak out into the outside world.
"So it seems that this is it," Lin spoke somberly. "Somehow, this city has fallen right into the hands of a man with no morals. Of a murderer. We are the only ones who see the darkness and have chosen to take action against him. To fight for what is right." She looked across the table. Korra stood there, her face veiled, a shadow casted over it. "We have our personal reasons as well. In a way that seems anomalous to me, Graft has reached his filthy hands into each of our lives. Personally, he has attacked each of us. Our fates have been tied. He has twisted us and broken us all, and for some, he has taken something from us that is irreplaceable."
Legacy. Identity. Sanity. Family. Love.
Korra had a feeling she knew what Lin was talking about. "Lin, is Tenzin okay?"
Lin looked down. "I have not heard from him. The possibility that Graft has had his men take Tenzin in is very real, and on this mission, I will validate it. I will find Tenzin, and no matter what, I will get him out. And I will bring him to his family. He does not deserve to suffer for what I have done."
Bolin's hand clenched into a fist. Mako looked at his brother, knowing that telling Bolin the horrible truth about the death of his parents now would only break his brother more. His brother who had finally found someone, only to lose them at the hand of Graft. What was Graft's hatred toward the two brothers?
Asami grabbed Bolin's hand, hoping to loosen the tightly bound fist. She had lost everything. She had lost her business, her home, her happiness. She had nothing left, and Graft had made sure of that. Why had he gotten so involved in her life as well? She now had nothing except the people surrounding her now. The only people left who would do something if Asami needed help. She looked at O-Ren, who was lighting a cigarette, who had his personal reasons against Graft, his mysterious ones, then she looked over to Korra, who was already watching Asami.
Lin's words were powerful to Korra, and the first person she thought to save was Asami. Korra needed to stay alive, to defeat Graft, to stop the unrest in the Spirit World. Graft had not directly touched her like he had somehow touched the rest. She was not a victim. In this fight, Graft had tied the fates of her team together. But he had not accounted for Korra. She chose to be here and fight. Graft had not directly done anything to her to draw her to him. Korra was not here out of personal anger against Graft. Graft was hardly a person to her. He was an embodiment. He was the monster in everyone's life. The shapeshifting nightmare that affected everyone differently. Finding the single fear and weakness of all of us, and stabbing them right in the heart. How? How did he know, just exactly how to strike these people? Is it coincidence that they were together that night, each of them having their own completely independent vengeances to fulfill against a single person?
And she realized: Graft embodied the qualities which prompted Daya to want to destroy the world. Was he the final straw…?
Shhh…
Korra heard the sound, but knew that no one else had. The young boy with the hood, the one similar to hers, the boy with the dark skin stood next to her and tugged at her. You don't have to worry about her. She's left you. She won't bother you anymore. But…this is far from good news. You didn't listen to her, but listen to me. You have to endure the pain. You have to get through it, and it will be okay once we meet again.
"Korra?" Lin asked. Korra was confused and looked at her. "Do you know your role in all of this?" Lin was asking about Korra's role in the mission, but she began to think about her role as…as what?
No. Korra didn't know what her role was. She had no idea. She was not the Avatar. She lost sight of her goal in that single moment. Was it real? Were the spirits even planning anything? Just a dream?
What is my role? What am I doing? Korra felt like a child left by her mother. Daya had abandoned her. Had she failed? Was she ever even doing the right thing?
Lin signaled for the team to move out. Korra remained. Asami came back for her.
"Korra, is everything okay?"
Korra's eyes were watering. "I'm…not sure."
"Don't worry, Graft's time has come. We can do this," Asami said, then hugged Korra tightly.
Korra felt warm in Asami's embrace. She wanted this forever. Beforehand, she was thinking of Graft, she was thinking of the stories of Ozai, of the corrupt government at Ba Sing Sei, of all the wars and deaths in the past. She hoped it wasn't too late for this race. And at that moment, in that single instance when she felt the warmth of Asami, Korra experienced something. A sensation that fueled her desire to save everything. She saw the goodness of the world. The value of this life, and the connections between everyone. The light that begins to glow when there is a loving connection between two people. If that can exist in this corrupted world, then it was worth saving.
If that existed anywhere, it existed here, in this room, in this hug, and Korra would continue to fight and give everything she had to save this world. And if the Spirits arrived with their armies to end all life, Korra would give her own life to save it. Like Lin, Korra would not let any innocent person suffer for the sins committed by another.