Bolin was happy. For the first time in months, he was happy, and he'd been happy and he'd been healthy and life had been good. For the first time in a long time, Bolin could say that he was content, and that wasn't a descriptor he thought would ever apply to him again.

He'd come far, and he knew it. Where before there had been some doubt in his mind as to the extent of his progress, there was none of that left because he spent far more days feeling healthy than he spent feeling rotten and sick. He spent more time outside with Toma and the hunting party who had adopted him, and after a few weeks of hard daily work, he found that he could keep pace with them relatively well and didn't have to worry so much about heat stroke and sunburn. And with all that success came a confidence so strong that it pushed the self-loathing out of his mind so that he could mostly ignore it, so that the panic only hit him in times of particular duress, like when he and Shibu had nearly been taken out by a sand shark on their first proper hunt.

There were still bad days, though, and there were plenty of them. There were days when the tiny scraps of self-doubt left over in his mind reared up and threatened to take control. There were days when he pushed himself too hard or too far and had to sit while the others kept going. There were days when he caught glimpses of himself and didn't believe that the person he was looking at was really him, that the Bolin who'd waked from collapse would never be able to get back into such good shape, because ten months ago when he'd wound up on Hokki's doorstep a sloppy, weak mess he'd barely been able to drag a wagon up a hill. Now he felt like he could drag ten wagons up a hill, and sometimes, when he was feeling particularly good and particularly cocky, he admitted to himself that he looked like he could drag ten wagons up a hill, too.

The nights were the worst because they were the only times when his mind had time to wander, and in the dark, it didn't seem to matter how good he felt or how good he looked. In the dark, none of that mattered at all. There was no one to see him or to compliment him, and most of the time he wasn't actually confident enough to compliment himself. The nights were the times when the self-doubt crept back in, when Bolin thought of home and of the people he'd left behind, when he thought about the places he'd been and the things he'd seen along the way. When sleep finally overcame him, sometimes he would dream of Mako or Opal and wake up feeling at once warm with nostalgia and cold with sadness that he'd never see them again. Sometimes he would dream of Korra, and he counted those dreams nearly equal to the nightmares of the collapse and Baihe Island, because no matter how much time or distance he put between himself and those things, it seemed they would never stop haunting him.

But not right now. There was none of that now and there hadn't been for the last week because there wasn't enough time to entertain self-doubt or loathing while on the hunt. There was just enough time to make camp and sleep in a safe spot aboard one of the half dozen sand-sailers, just enough time to wake up and make sure that both he and Shibu had eaten breakfast before the party set off again toward the hunting grounds that would feed the commune and provide enough in the way of exports to carry them through the year. And now they'd gotten their kill-a double-there would be no rest at all until they returned home. The carcasses wouldn't last that long.

Bolin inflated a little when he thought about the kill. It had been entirely accidental, he supposed, or at least it was unplanned. They'd been following a juvenile over the dunes toward a rocky segment of desert where it couldn't burrow when a fully-grown sand shark caught them off guard. It all had happened so suddenly: Toma and the left flank had been gunning for the juvenile when the adult breached the sand to the right, on a path perpendicular to their own. It came straight at them with hungry eyes, mouth agape, and all of the points had been too caught up with the juvenile to change course. So, when it opened its enormous mouth and the terrifying, wide-flapped jaws seemed poised to close over the lot of them, Bolin drew Shibu up short and yanked the biggest tendril of sand he could from the earth. He liquefied it as it came forth and heaved it with all his might toward the enormous beast, and the shards of obsidian that connected with the inside of its mouth and throat stopped its advance and sent it burrowing back into the dunes. Within ten minutes, the party regrouped and struck out, and then the wounded adult and the juvenile both lay unmoving atop the sand.

Per the usual, Toma was credited with one kill, with the juvenile they'd been pursuing, but Bolin was credited with the other. Without his quick action the whole right flank would've been shark food, and the swell of pride that rose in him more than made up for his initial terror. He would be marked for the fourth time, but rather than another thumbprint dot on his ribs he'd be granted a line above them, his first line, and then he'd be celebrated.

Sun would never believe it.

The prideful feeling stayed in Bolin's chest and in his stomach the whole way back to the commune, even while they lashed the sharks by their caudal fins to the sailers and the overwhelming stench of dead fish and ammonia fell over them like a fog. The prideful feeling stayed there even when he realized that Shibu had suffered a jagged cut to her hind quarter that would definitely put Sun in a horrible mood. It stayed there even when Toma reminded him of how much it was going to hurt when Yan and the elders carved the long thin line into his skin that symbolized his kill, because no matter how many times a person was marked, it never stopped hurting.

The prideful feeling stayed in Bolin's chest until they crested the hill overlooking their communal home and he saw the Future Industries airship grounded just beyond its borders. When he saw the airship, his heart fell, his stomach fell, and all the pride inside him rotted away and weighed his body down with an overwhelming sense of despair that he couldn't cover up if he tried.

There was only one reason that an airship would show up out of the blue.

Everything went as it always did. The hunters dragged the sharks up to the very borders of the commune and everyone from children to elders poured out into the dusk to meet them. Everything went as usual when the people dug twin trenches into the sand and when the hunters untied the sharks and dragged them over, when Sun came out and wrapped Bolin in an enormous hug before leading Shibu back home to be washed and fed. Worse was that Sun didn't mention anything about the cut on Shibu's flank or the strange airship or the visitors that Bolin knew it carried. She didn't say anything at all. She just hugged him, grabbed Shibu around the horns, and led her off.

Bolin kept his eyes peeled the whole time and hoped beyond hope that he wouldn't see anyone he recognized, and the strangest feeling of self-consciousness came over him. All of a sudden, he felt aware of how weird he must look with his sand bender clothes and the marks on his ribs, with the brown sand shark-leather shoulder brace that Yan had made for him and the awkward, kind-of farmer's tan from the long sleeve he wore beneath it. Then there was his hair that had gone a little bit shaggy because there weren't any barber shops in the middle of the desert and he hadn't had an occasion to go into town since he'd arrived. To any sandbender in the commune he looked completely normal, but to someone from Republic City he'd look completely ridiculous.

But maybe he'd blend in.

The pall followed Bolin for the rest of the very busy evening until well after he retired home to the tiny sandstone yurt he'd built with Sun and Yan at the end of his second month, until he'd changed into modest clothes more fit for days of sandstorms than clear evenings, climbed the ladder to his loft, and dropped like a stone onto his cot to begin his nighttime routine of staring out through the open dome at the stars. It should've been relaxing. He should've been reveling in his accomplishment.

He wasn't.

Instead of feeling good about himself and allowing that positivity to fill him up, Bolin worried. He found his eyes darting to the opening to his yurt, found himself regretting he'd never installed a door. But then, none of the houses had a door, not a proper one, anyway. Most of them had only cloths over their entrances, and he'd never bothered with it because he spent so little time inside and anyone who might visit him was more than welcome to walk in any time. Now he worried that someone would walk through that open entrance. He worried that they'd come in, look up at him, and say, "Bolin, it's time to go home," and then they would drag him back to the airship and drag him back to Zaofu or Republic City so that he could be punished for all the stupid things he'd done in the name of coping.

He worried so much that he felt the panic coming up in him, and in that moment, he knew he had two choices: Lie there and panic or get up and work his way through it.

He got up.

It had taken a long time to learn how to deal with the panic. It had taken a great many failures and anxiety attacks and sleepless nights spent in a shivering, thoughtless ball on his cot for Bolin to know that the first step in overcoming the panic was to get up and move, to get away from the place where the panic set in so that he could begin the hard work of forcing the offending thoughts out of his mind. As he had on so many other nights, Bolin climbed down from his loft and began pacing the perimeter of his yurt, stepping purposefully over sitting pillows that he'd stepped over a hundred times now, making sure he didn't stub his toe on the cookpot opposite the door or the wicker chest that held the belongings from his past life. He paced and he spoke to himself the same way he spoke to himself every other night that he engaged in this annoying but entirely necessary ritual.

"Stop. You're not in danger. You're not in trouble. You're safe at home. There's no reason to panic. You are in control. Stop. You're not in danger. You're not in trouble. You're safe at home. There's no reason to panic. You are in control."

He repeated it once for every lap he made around the yurt, but no matter how many laps he made or how many times he told himself that there was nothing to panic about, the airship was still grounded outside. This panic was justified because there was a threat and the threat was very real, and there was no way that anyone who'd come for Bolin would leave without first making contact. He was genuinely surprised that they hadn't made contact already.

Bolin left his yurt to pursue step two in the panic avoidance process: seeking help. It didn't matter that the night had gone dark in the way that only a desert could go dark, because Bolin had walked this very path so many times that he could have done it blind. It was a relatively long trek to Sun's yurt, as she lived clear on the other side of the commune, but most times Bolin had needed to resort to asking her for help he'd calmed by the time he reached her doorstep. This wasn't one of those nights, and he walked straight inside without knocking or announcing he was there at all, and if Sun cared, she didn't show it. She just watched him from her place on the floor, where she sat coolly embroidering something or other that Bolin didn't care about.

"Rough night?"

Bolin sat down on the rug across from her and dropped his face into his hands. She knew perfectly well why he'd shown up. She knew that his being there at such a ridiculous hour meant that he needed help. He'd done his part by recognizing that he couldn't fix himself and finding her, and now the proverbial panic ball was in her court.

"How strong? Sixty?"

"Seventy."

"Oh. So, it's a really bad night."

That was all Sun said before she stood and made her way across the single room structure to her own cookpot and countertop. Bolin felt her walk away apparently without a care in the world, apparently completely unperturbed by his distress. And the same as she always did when he sought her help, she mixed his water on the very strong side, presented it to him, and sat in silence while he drank it as fast as he could.

It didn't even faze him anymore, the taste of the bitter juice in his water, not even at such a high concentration. All it did was make him tired. That was the point, though. If he couldn't calm down on his own...

"Let's walk," Sun said after Bolin had drained his cup, set it back on the floor, and resumed his head-in-hands posture. "Come on. Let's get you outside for some air."

She stood again, and before Bolin could protest she'd hooked him by the elbow, dragged him to his feet, and led him out into the night.

They walked for a long time in utter silence such that the only noise they could hear was the wind through the dunes and the constant chips and splats and squishes of people working overnight to dismantle the sand sharks. A double kill required that kind of dedication. But that noise was far away, and as she always did, Sun led him straight out of the borders of the commune and into the desert proper, and they walked in what might have been a straight line or what might have been a circle. It made no difference. Bolin wasn't paying attention to where they were going anyway.

"Well, what's got our tender little desert flower all up in a tizzy this time?" Sun asked dryly.

"Shut up."

"Okay," Sun sighed, "a really, really bad night."

The silence fell again and lasted until the cactus juice had begun spreading its comfortably heavy warmth through Bolin's middle and into his limbs. This was the whole point: If he could slow his thoughts down, slow his body down, he could control it more easily. If he could just get ahold of himself, he'd be okay.

"I hear you got the kill," Sun started again, more tentatively this time, "on the juvenile?"

"The adult."

"I guess Toma took it well, then? That you got the bigger one?"

"He didn't have much choice," Bolin said, a deliberateness to his speaking. "If I hadn't killed it, half the right flank would be shark food right now."

"Then it was an accident?"

"No, but it could've been bad."

Silence again. Comfortable silence. Sun had always been good at getting Bolin's mind off of whatever was troubling him, off of whatever was causing the panic. Bolin knew that, but the thought still nagged at him that there was an airship anchored outside the commune. There was a Future Industries airship on the ground. At that thought, another jolt of panic tore through the haze and Bolin caught his breath, but if Sun noticed, she didn't say anything.

"You'll get your first kill line. Do you want me to do it?"

Bolin didn't honestly know. He'd never seen her etch a line before. As far as he knew, Sun had only learned the delicate process of inking the thumbprint dots.

"Mom says it's time I did one. If you want, I can do yours. We can have our first time together."

"If you want."

"Are you excited about it?"

"I was excited about it."

Sun slowed her pace then, and Bolin slowed to match. Then she stopped. Then Bolin stopped. He was confused. She'd never stopped like this before. Usually their late-night chats turned into cynical commentary and lighthearted jabs before Sun dropped Bolin off at his yurt and went on her way. This didn't seem to be going the right direction.

"Look, I know why you're upset tonight," Sun said. Even without watching her fidget, Bolin could feel her nerves springing up. It wasn't a feeling he got from her often. "It's because of the airship. It's because they came-"

"Who's here?"

Bolin hadn't meant the question to come out so forcefully, but he supposed there was little helping it. He'd not taken such an aggressive tone in a long, long time, but now seemed as good an excuse as any to let a little anger go and Yan always told him not to hold it in.

"The Avatar..."

They were the only two words Bolin heard Sun say, though he knew that she spoke beyond that. At the very mention of Korra's title, Bolin felt the blood drain from his face so quickly that the world began to spin, felt his feet and hands go numb with an explosion of terror that completely overshadowed the calming effects of the drink. For a second, he reeled. For a second, he felt like he would faint. But then he felt Sun's hands on his arms and he shook his head as though trying to drive the terror away, and when he opened his eyes again, she looked concerned.

"Are you okay? Do you need to sit down?"

"No."

"You looked like you were going to-"

"I'm not."

"Did you hear what I said, then?"

"No."

Sun grumbled something that Bolin didn't hear, but she drew an enormous breath and dropped her hands down, then folded her arms across her chest a bit defensively. "I remember a long time ago you told me about how you left home without telling anyone where you were going, or that you were going at all. And you told me that someday your friends would probably find you and try to drag you back home. Now, I haven't talked to any of them very much and I tried to keep my cool, but it's not a long shot to guess that they want to take you home with them. It's Avatar Korra and two of her friends. Two other girls."

Bolin shook his head, at a loss for what to say. He remembered that conversation very clearly. It had been on a colder evening just after the turn of the season and Bolin had dreamt of Korra so vividly that he woke in a blind panic, all drenched with sweat and initially incapable of dragging himself off his loft to seek Yan or Sun for help. Somehow, he managed to stumble his way down and stagger to Sun's yurt, but he hadn't been able to speak for a long time. He hadn't been able to answer her questions until he'd downed a tall glass of eighty percent, and though the drink numbed the panic, it also took away the inhibition that had always kept his personal life personal.

He dumped every secret he'd ever kept out that night, and consequently, that night marked the end of Sun's mistreating him.

"Mom has been entertaining them for the last couple days, giving them tours of the commune and things like that."

"Why didn't they come to the sand shark docking today?"

"Mom doesn't want you all to meet up until someone talked to you about it. She didn't want to cause you to panic, but I guess that didn't matter in the end. And she wants to talk to the girls, too, about you. She wants to prepare them as much as she wants me to prepare you."

"What do you mean, she wants to prepare them?"

"I don't really know. I'd imagine that she's going to talk to them about you, if she hasn't already. My mom isn't a person to jump into things without a lot of discussion and thinking first. She did tell me that she's not going to let them see you until the feast, and you're going to be so busy between the marking and all the honors that you probably won't have to talk to them at all if you don't want to."

Bolin contemplated, his arms crossed self-consciously. He'd taken part in the sand shark celebrations before. He'd been at the center of those celebrations three times now, the nights when he'd been marked for successful hunts and had shared the choice cuts of meat from the sharks at the feasts. They were the best nights, because people treated him as one of their own and they didn't dwell on the mistakes of his past but instead focused on his current success, and Bolin didn't want to miss out on that. He deserved to be there.

Still, the idea of anyone from Republic City seeing him in his hunting garb made Bolin nervous because the only people who'd seen him without a shirt were Opal and Korra, and even then, it had been dark or there had been sheets. Something had obscured him. And the last time anyone had seen him he'd been scrawny and sick and there'd been an enormous bruise all up and down his side. All that was gone now, replaced by muscle and bone and three ovals on his ribs, and in a couple of days there'd be a line over them, too. In short, there was no real reason for him to be ashamed, but he was anyway. If Sun had been right in calling them, "the girls," it certainly meant Korra, Opal, and Asami.

"How are you going to handle it?"

Bolin looked up to find Sun eyeing him carefully. "What?"

"Well, what are you going to do? What's your plan?"

He didn't know what to say, so he looked down at his feet and kicked nervously at the sand. "I don't really know," he said honestly. "I wonder how bad it would be if I just sat out."

"You're not sitting out."

"Can you mark me in private?"

"No. That would be disrespectful. And don't even think of asking the elders to do it in private because you'll get an earful about it."

Bolin threw up his hands, defeated. "Then I really don't know. I don't want to be a spectacle for them. I don't want to be some kind of sideshow freak but I feel like a freak and I kind of look like a freak, at least compared to how I looked when I got here."

"You were a pale, scrawny little boy when you got here. Well, a pale, scrawny, sometimes scary little boy. I'd argue that you look better now than you did when you showed up."

"Yeah," Bolin sighed, downcast, "sure I do."

"Here's what you're going to do," Sun said, her voice very bright now. "You're going to show up to the feast exactly the way you normally would. You're going to show up in your gear, you're going to be honored, and you're going to eat. Then you'll go to the marking ceremony and pretend like the Avatar doesn't even exist. You're going to go enjoy yourself because you deserve to go enjoy yourself. Don't let them being here ruin your night."

On the one hand, Sun was most certainly right. On the other, ignoring that he'd be in the same room with Korra, Opal, and Asami was much easier said than done. All the same, Bolin didn't know what other choice he had. Thus, he followed Sun in their walk and he made his decision: He'd play the delicate desert flower for Sun's sake, because this was her time to shine just as much as it was his, and there was nothing from his past that should stand in the way of that.


Korra wasn't sure who Yan was talking to anymore. She'd been sitting there for what felt like forever, staring at her knees and fidgeting in her lap. It seemed as though Asami was the one doing most of the talking now, that she was the one who was really interacting with Yan because Opal had gone quiet out of what must have been nervousness and Korra had gone quiet out of fear and anger. Yan had verified that Bolin was in the village, that he'd returned with the hunting party and that he'd retired back to his yurt to rest before the feast. There was something about being so near to him that made Korra desperately uncomfortable even if she hadn't seen him.

Yan sat them down that night to talk, and while she hadn't been angry, she'd definitely been stern. She explained very clearly that the decision to stay or go was Bolin's to make, and that she wasn't going to force him one way or another. She said, in fact, that she was going to try to avoid influencing his opinion at all and that she wanted him to have plenty of time to think. She said that Sun was going to speak with him about the whole thing and that until the night of the feast, Yan didn't want any of them to try to talk to him. And if it seemed like he didn't want to talk at the feast or subsequent celebration, they shouldn't force him into it. Doing so could only end badly.

But then Yan lightened up and began entertaining the idea that he might go home with them, and the conversation that followed between her and Asami was fruitful and informative. Yan talked through a great deal of information that detailed how Bolin had changed since he'd arrived, and with Asami's help they painted a fairly robust picture of his progress in certain areas and his stagnation in others. They determined that on the whole, Bolin was healthier than he'd been before he left, at least physically, but Yan conceded that he still had issues with anxiety and sleeplessness and that he was prone to bouts of low self-esteem and periods of depression that she assumed stemmed from his lingering lack of confidence. She explained that he still had nightmares, and that there had been several times that he'd come out of his yurt in the morning looking like he'd not slept in months.

"If he decides to come home with you, he'll need support," Yan concluded. "He'll need someone that he can go to at any time of the day or night if he's panicking and can't stop it on his own. Right now, he knows to come to either me or to Sun, depending on who's closer, and it's been working well to keep things under control. He'll need somewhere that he can go to be alone, too, and he'll need to be able to go there without any interference. Bolin has learned to cope, I'll give him that, but he relies heavily on very specific routines and he's the only one who knows what he needs to do and when he needs to do it. I'd argue that most everything he's done for the last several months has been on a strict routine, and without that in place, it's very likely that he'll become more prone to panic and rage."

Korra glanced up to see Asami nodding, her eyes locked on Yan in rapt attention. There was something about the look on Asami's face that calmed Korra's nerves somehow. She looked so concerned and so parental, and Korra understood then that if Bolin was to come home with them, it would be Asami who looked after him. It would be Asami who served as his safety net because who else would accept that responsibility? Mako was too caught up with working, and Opal would likely go straight back to Zaofu.

It was all a mess, Korra thought. It was all a horrible, horrible mess. What the heck would they do with Bolin if he came home with them? Would he go live with Mako again? Would Mako be able to deal with Bolin at the same time he dealt with his incredibly heavy work load? And what if he stayed on Air Temple Island? That would be catastrophic because no matter where she went or what she did, Korra would know that Bolin was always five minutes away. She couldn't handle him being so close. She couldn't even handle the thought of him being so close.

And what of the Society? All the battle plans were drawn, all of the gears had begun turning which would ultimately lead to the Society's downfall. The United Forces had started planning raids on suspected Earth Nation hideaways, and Korra, Mako, and Asami had agreed to take on covert missions in Fire Nation territory because they were more mobile and could move about in secret. They'd only stopped their planning to follow up on this out-of-the-blue lead, and no one had actually expected it to pan out. Was Bolin just supposed to come with them?

She didn't know. She didn't know anything, and she wasn't sure that she'd ever be able to figure it out.

Most of the next two days Korra spent hiding away in the airship, deflecting Asami's concerned questions and working hard to avoid Opal's nervous anticipation. Asami troubled herself with the radio, trying to amplify the signal so that she could reach Republic City or Zaofu at the very least, but nothing seemed to pan out. Opal did a lot of pacing, a lot of looking out the windows. She was restless like a child.

Korra hid in her bunk.

Inevitably, the day arrived for the promised celebration, for the feast surrounding the successful sand shark hunt, and all day Korra spent battling the feeling that buzzard wasps were nesting in her stomach. By the time evening fell and Yan arrived at the airship to escort the girls away, Korra felt utterly sick, and she kept her eyes on the ground from the moment they stepped out of the airship. There was no formal gathering when they arrived, but whenever Korra glanced about she saw the makings of an enormous event.

All over the place were pedestals and tables raised and bent into place. There were pitchers and platters and place settings all made of the same light sandstone as everything else. And there were people. There were dozens and dozens of people just milling about, tending to this and that in preparation, and again Korra was struck by the weirdness of this whole situation. It was like culture shock. Everyone had dressed not in the bland browns of Hongji, but in bright, bold blues and reds that stood out starkly against the sand. The women wore ribbons and light-looking dresses that flowed even without wind. Many of the men went shirtless, but what clothes they wore sported beautiful embroidery all up and down in a million shapes that could have been abstract or concrete, but Korra couldn't tell from far away exactly what they were meant to represent.

The three girls sat at a place of honor at a long table outside the Chieftain's yurt on bright and lavishly decorated pads that Korra hadn't yet seen. After they were seated and settled, it wasn't long before more people followed and the whole place began to resonate with the sounds of celebration. Korra, Opal, and Asami watched the crowds gather from their seats, and while Opal and Asami looked as though they might be enjoying themselves-certainly they were at attention in case Bolin walked by-Korra kept her head low.

By the time things settled and more people had taken seats at the remaining tables, there were too many bodies for Korra to bother searching, and when she glanced at Opal and Asami they'd struck up a conversation between the two of them that had them both grinning like fools. Korra wished she could be so carefree.

It wasn't until after the dinner was served that anything of interest happened. In fact, outside of the dinner service itself, things seemed benign. Plates heaped with fish were passed down the tables, and each person took a portion of whatever size they wanted, and after the fish came grains and vegetables and breads. Fifteen minutes passed between the first plate and when Korra finally got to try eating, but by that time her stomach had tightened up so much that she wasn't sure she could.

Through the meal Korra listened to Asami, Opal, and Yan's conversations about everything from what kind of food they were eating to the layout of the feast, how this setup was different than their usual gatherings because it needed to be more formal on account of Avatar Korra's being there. When a younger girl came around filling their cups and Yan pointedly covered Asami's with her hand, they discussed what exactly Yan meant when she requested pure water, and after some convincing, Asami managed to get her hands on a small cup made of fifteen percent cactus juice, the highest Yan would permit. Asami took a tentative sip, curled her face in disgust, then passed the cup to Opal who did much the same, except that her nose curled when she sniffed at it. Then the cup came to Korra and as a matter of course she took the tiniest sip, and immediately she knew that she wasn't going to be eating. If her appetite hadn't been ruined before, it certainly was now.

In the middle of their dinners it finally happened, and it happened in no way that Korra expected. Opal gasped very suddenly and very tremulously, a sound so obvious that Korra couldn't ignore it, and when she looked over to see Opal's expression, she knew.

For a few seconds, Korra watched Opal and considered how in a different situation the look on her face might have been comical. Her eyes had gone so wide they might've fallen straight out of her skull, and the rest of her face had turned utterly pink. It was an expression of complete surprise, of slack-jawed stupor that left Opal incapable of doing anything but pawing insistently at Asami's sleeve until Asami looked over, saw Opal's expression the same way that Korra had, and looked out toward the people. Then, after a few moments, Asami's eyes went wide, too, and it was then that Korra knew she had to look.

It was difficult to follow the line of Asami and Opal's cartoonish gawking through the thick crowd, but Korra tried. She paused looking at every table in that general direction, but she couldn't pick him out. Against her better judgment she whispered, "Where?" and Opal pointed none too subtly outward.

"There," Opal whispered, "at the table with all the boys." Then Opal paused and she seemed to be counting. "Fourth? Fifth from the end?"

Korra felt at once very stupid and very scared because she'd looked over that very table three times without seeing him, but when Opal pointed Bolin out so obviously there was no missing him, and there was no question about Opal and Asami's ridiculous reactions. He was there, and he was undoubtedly healthy.

Amongst a table of men mostly of an age with himself, Bolin was presently leaning forward to carry on a very animated conversation with someone two people down the bench. He wore an enormous and slightly sly smile, a smile that seemed reminiscent of the time before the collapse, and when one of the other men roared something about "the spine of a cactus," which Korra could hear only partially above the other noise, the whole table erupted in raucous laughter. Korra hadn't seen Bolin laugh so hard in ages, so hard that he leaned back and covered his face as though he was embarrassed, and he only sat upright again when a couple of his tablemates him slapped him about the shoulders and back and made gestures at him that Korra didn't understand. Then the lot of them went back to their food and drink, though there was certainly still more talking and laughing being done than there was eating. The whole while, it seemed that Bolin and one other, perhaps the slightly older man sitting beside him, were the center of attention.

She watched for a long time, until she realized that she wasn't merely watching. She was staring at him, gaping at him, gawking the same way that Opal had seemed to have been doing, fixated on how the person at the table looked like Bolin at the same time he didn't look like Bolin, because there was something very Bolin-ish about him at the same time there was something very not Bolin-ish about him. The only real indication that she was indeed staring at the correct person was the very recognizable, very unique metal vambrace on his left forearm. There was no way Korra could've missed it. It was the only metal adornment in the entire gathering, and she'd seen it before.

If Korra listened hard enough she could hear Opal and Asami gabbing with one another excitedly, though she couldn't tell what Opal was saying on account of her talking too fast. She caught snippets of words like different and exotic and gorgeous that made her blood boil. There was nothing gorgeous about any of this. Bolin was disgusting and Korra knew it.

Eventually there were more people finished with their dinners than were still eating, and Korra kept watching while a girl-it had to be a girl-came around to all the men at Bolin's table and presented them all with tiny sandstone cups, and once they'd all been served they promptly knocked the drinks back as one. Less than five minutes later a person who looked suspiciously like Sun and another older woman approached the table, and Bolin and the man who'd been seated beside him stood and walked away.

Not long after their exodus, Yan stood and called the attention of the gathering, and once they quieted she announced that it was time for the marking and that anyone who wished to attend was welcome to join her in the Chieftain's yurt, but that anyone who wished to stay and continue their dinnertime conversations were just as welcome to do that, too. Then, once her announcement was finished, Yan looked toward Opal, Korra, and Asami, and she said genially, "Come along."

There was a marked difference between the beginning of the dinner and the present, a shift made noticeable by the general looseness of the crowd, by the fact that their laughter was louder and more frequent than it had been at the start, and Korra wondered exactly how much of that frivolity was because of the cactus juice they'd all apparently mixed in with their water. But no one seemed impaired, not as Korra would imagine they might be, and the moment they entered Yan's yurt, everything went very quiet.

The yurt had changed in layout since the last time Korra had been inside so that the decorative mats and rugs upon which people sat occupied much more of the space than usual. And rather than the mats being focused toward the center of the place, they were situated in lines facing the back quarter of the yurt, where there sat three pairs of purposefully placed stools with a tiny, three-legged table for each pair. Korra couldn't see exactly what sat atop the tables, but they were definitely tools and none of them looked particularly friendly.

Yan presented the three with seats behind the apparent stage, in a place with a decent view but not somewhere that would impede the viewing of others, and very shortly after they'd settled in the rest of the yurt began to fill. Korra wasn't sure that everyone from the feast had come to watch whatever this marking was, but the way the people packed inside shoulder to shoulder, standing and sitting, made it seem like everyone had. The place ended up absolutely claustrophobic, and Korra understood why Yan had seated them behind: No one else joined them.

There weren't any words from then on, and it didn't seem like they were needed. Within a few moments of filling, the yurt went deadly quiet, and very shortly after that the people cleared a narrow aisle from the cloth-covered entrance to the stage, and the ceremony began.

Korra believed it to be a ceremony because it was the most formal thing she'd seen to date in the sand bender commune. Three women took their places at the stools-Sun among them-and three by three groups of men filed in and sat down, and they stayed there for a while before clearing out so the next group could sit down after them. When the women set to work, Korra suddenly understood the purpose of the tools and implements on the table. Korra understood that when Yan said marking she really meant tattooing, so when Bolin sat on the stool beside Sun something like an hour and a half later, Korra was surprised and oddly indignant.

She watched him enter the tent alongside the man he'd left with earlier, and while Bolin kept his eyes on the floor a little bashfully, the man beside him absolutely beamed. Bolin didn't look up, not even when he reached the head of the room and Yan presented the two of them joyfully to the congregation.

If Bolin had looked odd from far away, he looked odder still from up close. It wasn't because he didn't look like himself; he did look like himself now that Korra could actually see him in the light. Rather, there were details about his appearance and his mannerisms that stuck out as obvious and a little weird, and when compounded together, they made Bolin seem like someone else. It was the bright blue of the sleeve he wore over his right arm and breast, the delicate red and yellow flower embroidered on the wrist, the weird boots and the fact that it didn't look like he'd had a proper shower in a very long time. None of this was anything that the Bolin of old would ever have accepted, and it all went without considering the very obvious marks he'd already received and the fact that he was, on the whole, a shade darker than usual.

Bolin was a sand bender.

Maybe that meant he wouldn't come home.

That was a prospect that Korra could live with.

When Bolin sat facing away from them, Korra heard Opal groan just a little in disappointment, and when Korra looked over, Opal seemed a little downtrodden at the lack of view. But then Asami caught Korra's eye, because Asami was seated down just far enough that she might be able to see Bolin's face and just far enough that he might catch a glimpse of her out of the corner of his eye, and she maintained her rapt, respectful attention while she watched.

All Korra could see was Sun bent low with her brow all furrowed in concentration, her tongue poking out. She could hear gentle tapping that must have been the instruments in use, and every few seconds Sun would say, "Breathe," and Bolin would breathe deep breaths that were either meant to calm him down or ease the pain. Korra couldn't tell which it was.

Before long the other man, the one Yan had introduced as Toma, seemed to be finished, and he turned to watch Sun and Bolin with a look of amused interest. This seemed to make the two of them uncomfortable, as they started talking to one another in hushed whispers.

"Are you almost done?"

"Stop talking, you'll make me mess up. Breathe. You don't want a crooked line, do you?"

"No."

"Then be quiet or I'll-" Sun stopped and Bolin twitched uncomfortably, and Korra could see a look of worry cross Sun's face as she looked up. "Sorry," she said, "my hand slipped."

"Liar."

"Cut it out or it'll slip again. And don't laugh, you'll make me mess up."

Again, the two fell to silence, and after another ten or so minutes the job seemed to be done. Sun sat straight and beamed first at Bolin, then at Yan, and then she and Bolin stood up together. Korra watched Bolin looking down at himself, then at Sun, and she could barely hear him whisper, "Is it supposed to bleed that much?" before Sun punched him playfully about the shoulder and he went all quiet.

"Tender little flower," Sun chided.

"Shut up."

Then they left together, and the others followed them out.


The line really did hurt. It hurt a lot more than the dots had hurt, and Bolin wasn't sure if it was because Sun had all but stabbed him with her broad-headed needle, if it was because it was such a big mark, or if it was because his ribs were just a tender area. But the line was as straight as it could possibly be and the wound it left behind seemed to have stopped bleeding so that when Sun dabbed at it with her sleeve, nothing came away. Still, it looked gross, but the marks always looked gross for a day or two.

Things had gone as smoothly as he could've imagined, and with Sun's dutiful guidance, he'd managed to avoid the girls thus far. He hadn't seen them at all during dinner, and he'd found that a little surprising. He had seen them after dinner at the marking ceremony, of course, sitting behind the appointed area on their little padded mats with Yan, but he'd made a conscious effort against looking straight at them. He kept catching glimpses of Asami watching with interest out of the corner of his eye.

He'd tried to make a conscious effort against feeling them, too, but they all stood out in such contrast with the people Bolin had grown accustomed to feeling that he couldn't ignore them at all. He felt everything through the ground, through his boots, through his feet. He felt Opal's nervousness, which he might've qualified as impatience, and he felt Asami's composure in direct opposition. But he felt Korra, too, and try as he might, he couldn't help that her angry presence made him exceptionally anxious. It made him so anxious that Sun had needed to remind him to breathe, and he'd never had to have that kind of coaching before.

He was surprised that Korra hadn't killed him on sight.

"That wasn't so bad, was it?" Sun asked after a time. "They didn't bite."

Bolin grunted a non-answer.

"And your kill line is straight."

"Good. If I'd have known you hadn't practiced I probably wouldn't have let you do it."

"What was I supposed to practice on? Besides, it's just a line. It's not that difficult."

Bolin eyed her, and Sun shrank back a little. His sour mood was showing clearly on his face, that much was obvious, and Bolin didn't care to try and cover it up. He didn't have to cover it up, either, not now that he and Sun had found their customary place outside of the celebration proper, sitting on the ground near the edge of the firelight. They sat here often, drinking and talking and watching while people danced around the bonfire, and neither one of them ever seemed to miss participating. Bolin was content to watch, and Sun was apparently content merely having someone to sit with.

Besides, he figured it would be best to brood somewhere out of the limelight, somewhere that most people wouldn't see him and the few who came up to congratulate him on the kill would have to make an effort. It wasn't like they didn't know where to find him, anyway.

"I thought you'd be more excited."

"Like I said, I was excited."

"Until you saw the airship. I know."

The two of them fell back into silence because Bolin didn't want to continue talking and Sun didn't seem to know what to say. He'd worried her or frightened her. He'd made her nervous at the very least. He could feel it in her breathing, in the way she shifted uncomfortably on the ground. But Bolin didn't know what to say to make her feel better because he didn't honestly feel that good himself. He certainly wasn't in a mood to provide a pick-me-up.

Sun drew a breath that sounded like she was going to speak, but it hitched and she didn't say anything at all. She tensed, and when Bolin looked up from his own cup he understood why. How he'd not noticed Asami approaching went well beyond him, but by the time he registered the fact that it was her, it was too late to abandon ship.

"Can I sit?"

What was Bolin supposed to say? Was he supposed to tell her that she couldn't sit down? Who was he to do that?

But Sun looked at him, wide eyed with her eyebrows peaked, and Bolin knew that she wasn't going to help him out. Then he looked up at Asami, who stood there as impassively as it was possible to stand, her face a blank slate, and he knew that she wasn't going to take the initiative, either. It was his decision, and both the girls made that clear.

All Bolin could do was shrug, and then Asami sat at a comfortable distance, cross legged, and she folded her hands in her lap. Everything about the way she moved was deliberate and respectful, and Bolin noted the lack of nervousness or anticipation in her, the complete blank that she managed to exude in expression and vibration. It wasn't something he was used to. In every way, though, this was how Asami acted when she had a business engagement, when she was meeting someone for the first time and didn't want to give a bad first impression. She had to be doing it on purpose. She must have been testing the water.

"Does it hurt?" Asami asked after a few minutes, and when Bolin looked at her all confused, she pointed at the mark and repeated herself. "Does it hurt?"

"Yeah," Bolin said dryly, "it hurts."

At the exchange, Bolin felt Sun's nervousness flare so that after a moment she said, "I'll go refill our drinks, okay?" and she made to stand but stopped when Bolin put his hand firmly on her forearm and pulled her back down. He didn't say anything because he didn't have to, because the look that Sun gave him made it clear that she understood what he didn't want to say in front of Asami: He needed her to stay and be his security blanket.

When Bolin glanced up at Sun, she was offering Asami an awkward and slightly fake smile, and Asami nodded back at her with an equally awkward smile of her own. Bolin dropped his eyes back to the ground. He didn't need to smile at them to convey how awkward he felt. He figured it was obvious.

"What do they mean?" Asami asked tentatively after the silence fell again. "The marks. What do they mean?"

"They're honor marks," Sun said, and Bolin didn't stop her. Sun sounded excited suddenly, but she'd always been more than happy to expound on the finer nuances of sand bender culture, or she'd always been that way toward Bolin, anyway. "These," she poked the three dots with her index, middle, and ring fingers, "are called points and they say that he's been part of three successful hunts. It means he was part of the group that took the shark down. This one," she drew her finger absently over the line and Bolin flinched and glared at her, but she looked at him with a coy grin and said, "Man up a little," and then turned back to Asami. "That is a kill line, and obviously it says that he got a kill. So, in total he's got three points and one line, which means he's been part of four successful hunts but has only gotten one kill. It's like a tally counter, a way to show off. If you saw Toma, he's got four points, two lines, two points, and another two lines. Well, three after tonight. If you count, that means he's been part of eleven successful hunts and has been credited with five kills. That's why he's so good, see? That's why he's the leader."

"I see," Asami said, and she seemed genuinely interested. "I guess some congratulations are in order, then." Her eyes were locked on the marks, and Bolin suddenly felt very self-conscious about her staring at him. He'd always been modest around Asami, and for one reason or another that instinct was coming back. He pulled his knees up and hugged at his legs.

"Where are the other two?" Bolin asked tentatively.

Asami looked at Bolin, surprised. "The airship," she said plainly. "Korra didn't want to come out again and I told Opal that she needed to stay put. She's... Excited... To see you again."

Bolin nodded. He understood completely on Korra's count. She probably wanted nothing to do with him and would do everything she possibly could to avoid seeing him, if it could be helped. He felt the same way about her. But Opal was a different story. It didn't make much sense for her to be excited. He'd left her on no better terms than he'd left anyone else. He'd left her on awful terms, actually, because he hadn't said goodbye to her. Yet clearly Korra hadn't mentioned anything about the night she'd spent with him, because if she had, neither Asami or Opal would probably be there, much less be excited to see him.

"You look good," Asami said. "You look healthy."

At a loss for an appropriate response, Bolin shook his head in embarrassment.

"We missed you."

Bolin couldn't help but glance up to see Asami's gentle smile. It made him even more self-conscious. How could they possibly have missed him? How could they have forgotten all the things he'd done?

"Can I hug you?"

The request caught Bolin off guard, and he sat straight, stunned. Then he looked at Sun, and Sun elbowed him in the arm and jerked her head toward Asami quite obviously.

"I guess," grumbled Bolin.

If he was honest with himself, Bolin had missed Asami's hugs. She gave the best hugs, though she'd always told him that he gave the best hugs. He supposed it didn't matter, because the contact set a nostalgic jerk in his stomach that made his throat close a little. He hadn't expected something so simple as a hug to make him even remotely emotional. But it did, and to Bolin's relief, Asami held on to him long enough for the wave to roll over him and recede back again. When she pulled away from him, she rubbed at her eyes, too, and Bolin felt a bit better about the whole thing.

"We really missed you. We were worried."

"You didn't need to be worried."

"You disappeared."

"I had to."

The statement stopped Asami's arguments dead, and the expression she wore after that was both very hurt and very concerned. For a second, Bolin felt guilty, but then he realized that he had no reason to feel guilty. He hadn't taken an aggressive tone with her. He hadn't even been all that argumentative. He'd said the truth as plainly as it was possible for him to say it, and the rest was on Asami.

"That's not what you wanted to hear, is it?" Bolin asked.

"No. It's not."

With a sigh, Bolin shook his head again and dropped his eyes back down. "Well, I'm sorry," he said thoughtfully, carefully. "I'm sorry that that's not what you wanted, but it's the truth. I had no choice but to go. Yeah, I could probably have gone about it better but I didn't know how to do that at the time. I left you guys because I didn't want to be a burden and I didn't want to hurt you anymore, and I left without ever planning to go back."

"You weren't going to come home?"

Bolin nodded. "I didn't feel like I could." He peeked up at her again, and the hurt on her face had deepened. But he had to say the words. He had to make his intentions clear before anyone got the wrong idea, even if it wasn't what they wanted. Bolin drew a very deep breath, looked back at his knees, and said, "And I still don't feel like I can. I'm not going home with you, Asami."

He felt the shift in her, and to his surprise he felt a similar shift in Sun. He felt all the fire in Asami die away until she felt empty again. She felt hopeless, but the expression on her face didn't convey that. As for Sun, something like excitement jumped inside her, something like surprise and anticipation, and her face conveyed every part of that. Her eyes had widened, her brow furrowed, and her lips pursed together curiously. But Bolin didn't want to entertain them anymore. He was tired.

"I'm going to go home," Bolin said with finality. As if to punctuate the statement, he grabbed his sandstone cup from the ground beside him and drained the rest of it, and then he stood and looked down at Asami with what he hoped was a soft expression.

"Bolin," Asami started quietly, "please stay here. I just want to talk-"

"It was nice to see you," Bolin interrupted. "Thank you for coming."

At the same time he turned and started across the sand toward his yurt he could swear he heard a helpless squeak of protest come out of Asami, like she'd wanted to say something but the words stuck in her throat, but Bolin didn't feel bad. The sand benders had taught him the value of honesty, and he'd been as honest as it was possible to be when he'd said the words. He meant them, and he hoped that Asami understood: He wasn't going home.