Korra did everything she could to act normal in the wake of Bolin's return. She tried to carry on conversations with Asami over dinner and tried to remain as sociable as she could with Opal, but there was no denying how difficult it had become to ignore Bolin's presence and the shift it caused in everyone around. He seemed to appear from nowhere when Korra least expected it so that she could barely come out of the bunks without wondering when or where he'd pop up next.
Bolin had assumed a ghostly quality, a weird softness that made him seem somehow ethereal. When he moved about the airship he did so with quiet strides and as graceful a gait as Korra had ever seen out of a boy, particularly one as clumsy as Bolin had once been. His mannerisms and the tone of his voice (on the rare occasion he spoke) seemed softer, too. He seemed more contemplative. He carried himself more confidently, with a straighter posture, and yet his eyes remained almost always on the floor.
When the four of them ate, Korra kept a surreptitious eye on Bolin, watching and waiting for the moment he might screw up and let the collected mask come off, but the moment never came. For lunch and dinner, Bolin emerged as wordlessly as he always did. He ate slowly. He didn't put his elbows on the table. He didn't belch. He left a solid portion of his food untouched, including every last scrap of meat he was served. And then he dismissed himself with remarkable politeness back to the bunks and left before anyone could invite him to stay. On the single occasion that Asami had managed to stammer out a request for his continued company, he responded with a very quiet, "No, thank you," and left all the same.
Bolin's aura spread all over the airship, like a pocket of unreality surrounded him and engulfed anyone who happened to stray too close. In his presence, Opal and Asami both changed, and Korra had to admit that when she was near him, she changed, too. Over the last months, whenever Bolin had been mentioned Korra assumed a jumpiness and stammering stupidity that she couldn't seem to overcome, a stammering stupidity compounded by the deep-rooted anger in her heart. When Bolin showed his face now, it all seemed to smooth out. She didn't feel jumpy. She didn't even feel all that angry. She felt conflicted and complicated and cold.
All the jumpiness that had once come over Korra seemed to have spread to Opal, because whenever Bolin came around she lost her composure entirely and melted into a hot stuttering mess. She couldn't get a word out to him without stumbling over it, and she kept eyeing Bolin with a hungry look that made Korra feel exceptionally sick. When Bolin was gone, Opal came alive. She babbled and carried on, talking fast and constantly about how cute he was. On the single occasion that Opal used the word exotic, Korra wanted to smack her upside the head.
She didn't.
Asami's change was the subtlest of all, because she didn't stammer and didn't get angry. She didn't gush about how far Bolin had come since the last time they'd seen him. Instead, Asami got quiet. She seemed to listen more carefully and think a little bit harder than usual about how to respond to things. Weirder still was that this quietness didn't just set in when Bolin was nearby; it set in when Korra was nearby, too. When Korra paid close enough attention, it seemed like Asami was acting the same way toward them both, but Korra couldn't imagine why.
On the second day, Asami radioed to Zaofu to let them know that all was well, that they had found Bolin, and that they all were on the way back. Bolin, Opal, and Korra were all in attendance for the call, and though they each remained silent, Bolin was clearly uncomfortable. When the transmission ended, he voiced his disapproval with the arrangement quietly and asked if there was any way they could bypass Zaofu until he felt more ready, but Asami said no.
They landed in Zaofu a couple short days thereafter, and the reunion was every bit as awkward as Korra believed it would be. Su met them on the landing pad and though she kept a straight face when the lot of them disembarked, Korra could tell she was elated. She hugged all of them, even Bolin who offered no response or reaction at all, informed them that there would be a fancy dinner that evening to welcome them all back home, and invited them to make themselves comfortable in their usual guest rooms until then.
Korra imagined at the time that Su would use those few hours to stalk Bolin. Maybe she would even be straightforward and approach him head on to catch up on things, evaluate his progress, and do all of the motherly things Korra imagined a mother would do if one of her children went away for so long without any notice. Maybe she would use that time to scold him for being such an idiot prior to his departure. To Korra's dismay, however, Su instead joined her and Asami on the walk back to their small guest house, and after Asami excused herself to go freshen up, Su followed Korra instead.
Unsure what to say, Korra entered her room, dropped onto the bed, and waited. Su didn't say anything, either, just stood by the door watching Korra scrutinizingly, and the quiet grew uncomfortably thick. "Well?" Korra uttered after a time. "Why did you follow me?"
"I figured I would check in with you."
"I figured you'd check in with Bolin first."
"I haven't seen him for almost a year, Korra, a few more hours won't hurt anything. Besides, I thought you might need the chance to decompress."
"Somehow you being here makes that a little hard."
"Decompress wasn't the right word," Su conceded, and she folded her arms casually, then leaned against the wall, "maybe the better word was yell."
"What do I have to yell about?"
"Oh, come on, Korra. Don't insist on being so aloof all the time."
"I'm not being aloof."
"Okay then, you're being stubborn. I could tell from the moment you stepped off that airship how uptight you were feeling, how angry, and I want to do whatever I can to make this transition easier for you."
"What transition?
"Bolin is going to be a part of your life again whether you want him to be or not. Unless you plan to cut Mako out entirely, that is."
"That's a little unfair, don't you think?"
"No," Su said. "I don't think it's unfair at all. You and Mako have been friends for a long time, but he's Bolin's brother. And trust me, as much as Mako might be angry at Bolin, he loves him, too, and is going to do anything he can to help Bolin integrate with you all again. Unless you cut Mako off, there's no way you can cut Bolin off. I'm sorry."
"You don't have to be sorry, Su," Korra said. "I've known all along that if Bolin came home I was going to have to deal with him sooner or later."
It wasn't a lie, either. Korra had known the whole time that if Bolin ever came home, she would have to reconcile what had happened between them, hard as it may have been and no matter the outcome. She'd entertained a great many thoughts, some more horrible than others, about how she might do that, but had never really drawn a conclusion. For all her thinking on the matter, the only thing Korra could come up with was that maybe she could sabotage his return somehow. Maybe she could use her secret against Bolin, because surely if she told the others what he'd done they would hate him as much as she did, and maybe then they wouldn't allow him back into their lives.
Of course, circumstances hadn't allowed that to happen. Her own cowardice over mentioning the ordeal prevented it from happening. She hadn't even told Asami, and if she couldn't tell someone as close to her as Asami, how in the world could she ever hope to tell Tenzin or Opal or anyone else?
Korra sighed.
"How was the reunion?" Su asked, a little tentative now. "How'd you take it?"
"I didn't break down, if that's what you're asking. I felt angry. I still feel angry."
"And you have every right to be angry." Su looked at the floor then, her brow furrowed as if in troubled thought, and when she looked up at Korra again the concern became obvious. "Can I offer you some unsolicited old lady advice?"
"You're going to even if I say no."
Su nodded. "You're right. I would."
"Well?"
With a deep breath, Su looked back at her feet and spoke slowly. "I can't imagine how you've felt over the last few months, Korra. I can guess, but I'll never know. Still, I've seen what it's done to you and, if I can say so, I don't like it. You're entitled to your anger for what happened but please, please don't hang on to that anger any longer than you have to. You don't ever have to forgive Bolin, and I'm sure if you want to avoid him you'll be able to, but please try to find some way to accept what happened so that you can move on with your life. You shouldn't sacrifice your happiness just because Bolin is nearby."
Korra looked at her hands. She fidgeted. In a roundabout kind of way, that had been the kindest thing that Su had ever said to her. There was an enormous part of Korra that hated Su for suggesting she might ever be able to let her anger go, but there was a part of her that knew Su was right. She understood the truth because she'd seen the truth in action years ago, the very first time she'd come to Zaofu and watched Su and Lin fight about grudges that they'd held for decades. That kind of resentment made people sick. It made people miserable. It took the worth out of life. Lin had been that way once, and for as much respect as Korra held for her, Korra didn't want to follow in Lin's footsteps.
She looked up to say something to Su that might indicate her understanding, but Su was gone.
Solid ground had never felt so strange, yet for the first time in months, Bolin was standing on it and its foreignness startled him more than anything he could ever remember. It was familiar, yes, but subtle and sensitive and alive. The influx of feeling it imparted overwhelmed him the moment his foot touched the landing pad, boot or no. It stunned him more than seeing the Future industries Airship in the middle of the desert had done, more than finding Su waiting to embrace him with open arms when he set foot into Zaofu.
He didn't understand until after he'd gotten back to the room he'd once occupied, the same room where he'd broken down and attacked Su's healing staff and experienced terrible, terrible things. He'd dragged his trunk from the airship and dropped it in the middle of the floor so that he could dig through it more thoroughly and find something that suited him to wear to dinner, but he didn't find anything but sand in the folds of the clothes that didn't fit him anymore, which trickled down onto his feet and reminded him that he'd spent the last half a year training his seismic sense on earth that had been so infirm that at first he couldn't bend it at all. He'd worked tirelessly to understand the sand and recognize the vibrations being sent through it, so tirelessly that he often wondered in the moment if it was worth it, if there was something wrong with him, but now he understood: The problem had never been him. The problem had been the ground.
The difference between the sand and stone was astounding. It was incredible. It was as though he'd been living in the dark his whole life, like he'd learned to walk and function in a pitch black world, and now someone had turned on the lights. Someone had turned on the sun. He could feel things with such intense clarity that for moments after he'd stepped onto the concrete he couldn't do anything but stand there, feeling it all and trying to sort it out. There had been Su, and she'd been excited and nervous and relieved. Opal had been happy, giddy, and full of a beautiful anticipation. Asami had been happy, too, but her happiness had been dampened by hesitation. And then there had been Korra, a jumble of negative emotions so wound up and tightly knotted that Bolin couldn't hope to untangle them at all.
He felt himself for the first time, too, and that was a new experience beyond the rest. For all the times he'd imagined what it would feel like to recognize himself through the earth, his imagination had never come close to reality. He was still and quiet. He was even. The feeling reminded him uncannily of Yan and of Sun, of the way that they always felt calm as still water even if they didn't appear that way from the outside. It reminded him of Su, too, because even though she kept a range of emotion the same as everyone else, her fluctuations were almost always well-controlled and often subtle.
The similarity ended there, though, because as much as he recognized likenesses in the vibrations of the earth, he felt uniquely himself in the obvious way that separated everyone else from everyone else. It was striking. He couldn't understand how he'd been unable to notice it before.
The dinner hour arrived sooner than Bolin felt it should. He'd fully expected some visitor to join him in his room at some point in the afternoon, Su or Opal, but nobody showed up until dusk, when Asami knocked gently on his door and offered to walk with him to the dining room. He'd known it was her before he even answered the door. He'd felt her coming.
Dinner was strained, though Bolin didn't know if it was because of him or in spite of him. He didn't even know if it was really strained or if it was just his imagination, if it was his reading too far into the signals sent by the earth. The Beifongs talked amongst themselves the same way as they did during most meals, cueing Korra or Asami to jump in with directed questions and prompts. Everyone played their part well enough, acting as Bolin might've expected them to act once upon a time before the world had gone crazy. Still, the show did no good. Perhaps they were fooling each other, but Bolin knew better. The earth told him better.
No one asked him any questions or gave him any prompts. From what he could tell, no one so much as looked like they wanted to invite him into the conversation. Occasionally he'd catch Opal or one of the twins glancing at him sidelong, but the second he caught their eye they'd avert their gaze almost too suddenly so that their curiosity became more than obvious and extremely uncomfortable.
Inevitably, the meal concluded and place settings were cleared away, and while a series of kitchen workers brought out desserts and teas typical of a formal Zaofu dinner, Bolin stood to excuse himself. He didn't much feel like eating dessert and didn't want to insult anyone by leaving it once it had been served. He'd already left enough of his dinner uneaten. Zaofu wasn't so far from water that getting fresh fish was out of the question, but Bolin couldn't remember a single time it had been served in all his visits to the city. Now was no exception. Considering the availability of cow pigs and pickens and buffalo yaks and all kinds of other terrestrial livestock, he couldn't be surprised that Su had served it.
A little hungry but more exhausted, Bolin wasted no time in settling down for sleep. He pulled off his shirt and stepped into his pajamas, reclined on the bed, and stared at the ceiling. He missed the open-air roof of his sandstone yurt, watching the clouds drift and a million stars sparkle and tracking the moon as it crept along on nights he couldn't drift off. Being inside a building like this made Bolin feel confined and claustrophobic. He'd noticed it on the airship and had hoped that maybe being in a city would be better, but it wasn't. All he wanted was fresh air and open sky, the ability to walk outside and see to the horizon in any direction without the need to step around buildings and other ugly man-made structures. He'd spent the last half a year under in the fresh air where he had all the room in the world to run and breathe and work to his heart's content. Zaofu made him feel small. The buildings made him feel cramped. And the domes, if they were there, would block out the night even if he went outside. If they were there, they would close him off from the world more than the building alone. But he hadn't looked to see if they'd been reconstructed. It hadn't been on his mind.
A short time later the bedroom door opened and Bolin sat up to see Su standing in the doorway, arms crossed with a contemplative look on her face, and while he'd thought that seeing her alone might bring on the panic, it didn't. In a way, seeing her there all impassive was relieving. She bore no evidence of judgment or negativity on her face or in her posture, there was no indication anywhere that she harbored any grudge against him at all. She was just Su, all full of motherly intent, and she had finally come to greet him.
"Go for a walk?" she asked gently.
Obediently, Bolin pushed himself up and retrieved his shirt from the floor beside his bed. As he pulled it on he paid careful attention to Su's expression, to the gradual shift from feigned detachment to genuine interest as she laid eyes on him to curiosity when her gaze came to rest on the honor marks on his ribs. The line Sun had etched there was on the north side of healing, to the point now where it had scabbed over and its dull sunburn-like ache had given over to itching, but it was obvious what they were when he didn't have on his shirt.
He ignored the look on her face.
"No shoes?"
Bolin shrugged.
He didn't ask to where Su was leading him, instead choosing to follow in silence, and Su didn't offer any explanation or destination either. Had it not been for the expectant, slightly restless quality in her feeling, Bolin might've thought she was taking him about aimlessly, like the outing was more for air than anything else, but that uneasy feeling told him elsewise. Su had come with a purpose, and Bolin supposed it was only a matter of time before one of them would have to speak in order to break the tense silence and get started on what he assumed would be a difficult conversation.
"Did you find it?" Su asked after a time.
Bolin looked at her, confused, and Su nodded her understanding at him as she walked.
"I always imagined you left here to go out looking for something. Did you find whatever it was you were looking for?"
Su wasn't wrong. Yes, he'd gone out looking for something, for control or sanity or wholeness, and to a point he'd found those things with Hokki and with the sand benders. But there remained a deep and seemingly insatiable emptiness in him, something missing from his life that he couldn't put his finger on no matter how hard he tried. Bolin knew what that meant.
"No," he admitted quietly.
Su nodded again, and the silence resumed.
In short order, Bolin recognized the path upon which they were walking, the path that he'd walked almost every day he'd called Zaofu his home. They were walking to his quiet place, the peaceful grove of trees so far removed from the city where he'd trained and broken down and come to sit when he needed to think, the place he'd left in ruins before he ran away.
The grove had changed in his absence. A tree was missing, he knew, because he'd uprooted it in a fit of anger after Opal and everyone else admitted that they'd lied to him about Mako's death. Its desiccated trunk had been cleared away so that only a scar in the earth remained where it had once stood. The tree into which he'd thrown his first obsidian shards still stood strong and bore the slightest shadows on its trunk where the stone had connected and burned its flesh. There were still rocks that he remembered pulling from the ground not in blind rage but in carefully controlled training, a round plot of cooled rock which had once served as his practice pool where he'd worked so hard to learn how to manipulate the lava like a waterbender, though a patch of grass had begun growing out atop it. Nature had begun reclaiming this place, and Bolin didn't truly mind. This place had needed healing just as much as he had.
"I owe you an apology," Bolin said after a time, when Su had begun to settle on a rock she drew from the earth. He stood near the edge of the clearing, looking out into the dark and back toward the city lights, deliberately faced away from her so that she might not see the embarrassment on his face.
"Is that what you're going to do, then?" Su asked. There was a gentle teasing quality in her voice, but it was all good-natured. It sounded and felt that way at any rate. "You're going to go around apologizing to everyone?"
"No," Bolin replied. He leaned against one of the trees and cast his eyes on the ground. "But I think it's the right thing to do for now, between you and me. I'm sorry that I made you worry, and I'm sorry for making such a mess of things before I left. There's more to be sorry for, too, but that's where I'm going to start."
Su didn't say anything to indicate that she accepted his apology, but Bolin hadn't expected that she would. He did feel her shift around on her seat, however, though he didn't know exactly what that meant. With as masterful as Su was at keeping her emotions in check, the things Bolin felt in her sometimes meant little at all.
"What else do you think you've got to be sorry for?"
"Everything I did before I left, of course. I treated you so badly. And then when I was gone, I took for granted the clothes you gave me and sold them because I didn't want to be associated with Zaofu anymore. I pawned off one of the metal bands for a bag of rice and a shower."
"One of them?"
"I still have the other one."
A faint smile spread on Su's face, and the tiniest glimmer came to her eyes. She held Bolin's eye contact for a few seconds, then looked to the ground, and she spoke straightforwardly. "I forgive you. Don't think anything else of it. If you're healthy again, then I can settle for putting the past in the past."
Bolin nodded his appreciation. "I wish everyone else would accept my apology so easily," he said, downcast.
"The only person I can think of who wouldn't accept an apology from you is Korra, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't try."
Bolin should've known that Su knew. She knew everything, and Korra had always had a penchant for discussing personal matters with all the wrong people. But the fact that Su had accepted his apology so readily, even knowing what she knew, heartened him a bit. It was a feeling similar to that which Asami had given him when he'd confided the same information in her. It was a feeling that suggested there might be more hope here than he thought.
He sighed the emotion away. "You know," he said, as much a question as it was a statement of resignation.
"Yes," Su said, "I know. And Mako knows, too. Mako is the one who found out about it first, and he came to me to ask for help because he didn't know how to handle it and Korra was a basket case. Outside of the two of us, though, there's no one else."
"Asami knows," Bolin said curtly. "I told Asami before I came home."
Su nodded. "How'd she take it?"
"She was mad but she got over it pretty fast. I guess my coming home was important enough for her to put that feeling aside."
"That's Asami for you."
Bolin knew. She'd been most of what convinced him to come home. Had she not kept such a cool head about the whole ordeal he'd almost certainly still be with the sand benders. It was her acceptance and her willingness to try to understand that had brought him back, because if one person could try to work with him then maybe others would try, too. At least, that had been Bolin's hope and so far, it had proven true. The only person who'd seemed unwilling to speak with him was Korra, and even she had tried a little bit. It had been stilted, angry formalities, but it was something.
The warm, hopeful feeling spread in Bolin's stomach again, but he willed it away. There was no sense being overly optimistic now. If he set his expectations low, he wouldn't be disappointed when things didn't work out as he planned.
"Asami told me that she wants to be off to Republic City tomorrow afternoon," Su went on in a much welcome change of subject. "Mako will be over the moon to have you home."
"Will he?"
"Why are you so skeptical about everything?"
"I just know how I left things. If I was in anyone else's position and they had done to me the things I did to them, I wouldn't be so quick to welcome them home."
Su fell quiet and grew tense. Bolin felt the change in the earth, and he wondered if it had been because of the cynical tone in his voice. Cynicism or not, it had been the truth. In the time he'd been away he'd learned a lot about people, enough to know that if someone was deranged enough to manipulate, wound, and threaten the people they loved, that person should be cut off. That was how he viewed it, anyway.
Bolin recognized the conflict growing inside of him as the same conflict he'd entertained since the morning he'd marched out of Zaofu. Part of him had never wanted to return because no matter what he did or how much effort he put into his healing, he would never be the Bolin that all his friends had come to care about over the years, so there was no use trying to find him again. The other part of him, the admittedly smaller part, had clung to a scrap of hope that suggested it was possible to heal enough to return home and make amends. He'd always known it to be a recklessly optimistic thought, but he'd given in to it all the same. Now he was here, he just had to figure out what to do next. He had to figure out which part of him had been correct.
Su cleared her throat and dropped her chin onto her hand casually once Bolin's attention returned. "Either way, you're going to go back to the city, right? I can't imagine you want to stay here."
"I hope that's okay."
"Of course it is."
The clearing went quiet again, and Bolin hated it. After so long away he felt guilty that he didn't have more to discuss. Still, he didn't feel like his story was worthy enough to be told without an explicit invitation. No one wanted to hear about his crises.
"I know I don't have any room to ask you for a favor," Bolin said after a bit, "but I'm worried about going home. I'm worried that I'm going to be overwhelmed when I get back."
"How can I help?"
"What's been going on there? In Republic City? What has everyone been doing while I've been away? Where does everything stand with the whole firebending thing?"
Su's tenseness went away, and she reclined comfortably on her slab of stone, leaning heavily on her hands. "That's a big question," she said thoughtfully. "I don't know where to start. I guess I'll keep it simple. Mako has been working on the investigation since he got home. He and Lin had so much information piled up from all of your work that it's been his full time job. He's been promoted I think twice now because of all the progress he's been able to make, and he's been acting as an envoy between Raiko, the Firelord, and the Republic City Police. He's gotten a little important, I guess. Asami and Korra have been helping him when they can. Nothing has really changed with Tenzin or any of his family except that they've been involved in peacekeeping efforts between firebending citizens and everyone else."
"Is it really that bad?" Bolin asked. "Bad enough that they need peacekeepers?"
Su contemplated this for a moment before answering. "I don't think I'd call it bad, just different. See, with all the information Mako sorted out, Raiko mobilized the United Forces to track down and raid the Society's hideouts in the Earth Nation and the Fire Nation. And Lin pulled back a chunk of her force on Izumi's orders, because having so many police on the streets was making people uneasy in the city. Tenzin and the kids have been able to mediate when disputes come up."
"What does all that mean?" Bolin asked.
"For you? I'm not sure it means anything. As far as I know you're not involved and you won't be. No one planned for you to be around when they were working through any of this, so I don't think you'd be involved now."
"I'm not involved? With what?"
"Well, since the United Forces have been raiding larger camps the number of attacks on cities has dropped and it's had a ripple effect. Fewer attacks means more police available to use on the investigation. More manpower means more headway, and since they're making headway, Mako, Korra, and Asami are free to go check out leads on smaller encampments like the quarantines in order to get people out who are less of a threat. Raiko and Izumi asked them to go check a few places out because they can move more covertly than a regiment of United Forces soldiers. They leave less of a footprint and can get places that the United Forces can't."
Bolin understood the basics. Korra, Mako, and Asami would be acting the same as he and Mako had when they were kids, poking their noses into places they didn't necessarily belong because it was harder to notice them. The rest of the explanation hadn't made a lot of sense. He didn't know what Su meant by quarantines and he didn't know what Su meant by United Forces raiding. He didn't know what Su meant by a lot of things, but Bolin understood the implication.
"So, they put everything on hold to come find me," Bolin said in a tone of suggestion, and Su nodded. "And when we get back they're going to pick back up where they left off." Su nodded again. "And I'm assuming they're just going to leave me... Alone?"
"I'd have to guess so," Su said gently. "Like I said, they didn't really plan for you."
"No, I guess they wouldn't. What about Opal?"
"She never intended to go with them. She's been firmly planted in Zaofu since you all returned from..."
"From Baihe Island," Bolin prompted. "You can say it."
"She just went along with Korra and Asami to find you because she was invited."
Bolin heaved a sigh of resignation. Here he'd given up a life he'd enjoyed in a place where he'd finally found a modicum of happiness, only to return home and be all but abandoned. Here he'd come back to face the people he'd left behind, and they were going to leave him behind. It upset him a little, but all the same, he felt like he deserved it. He didn't want it, but he had it coming.
"I've got to go," Bolin said. He needed to talk to the others. He needed to ask some difficult questions and he didn't want to wait. He needed to understand what his role was going to be once he got back to Republic City and if Team Avatar had a place for him, or if he would just be a bystander watching while the good guys saved the day. He needed to know if he should just give up and head back to the commune.
When Bolin turned away, Su didn't follow. She continued sitting there, presumably to watch him go, to wonder why he'd cut their conversation off so suddenly.
"Can you answer one personal question for me?" Su asked, and Bolin stopped mid-step. He turned back and looked, puzzled, but he nodded and Su shifted. Bolin didn't miss her eyes darting to his middle. "Are those real?" She pointed. "Those marks? Are they real?"
"Yeah," Bolin said, "they're real."
It looked like Su was going to ask another question, like Bolin's very straightforward, very short answer hadn't satisfied her. But Bolin turned away before she could utter another word, and then he was gone.
After Bolin left the dinner table, the whole place seemed to lighten. The moment the door closed, the twins burst out in excited conversation and Opal turned to Su and started babbling so quickly as to be almost wholly incomprehensible. From the snippets Korra could hear, it seemed she was talking about going to speak to Bolin and whether she should think about rekindling their old relationship, if Bolin was stable enough and trustworthy enough. Unflappable, Su didn't so much as glance at Korra when the topic came up.
It was like Su served as the glue holding the company together, because once Opal had exhausted her line of conversation and Su had finished her after-dinner tea, she excused herself for the evening and everyone else began leaving in turn. When Korra stood, Asami rose beside her, and in a not wholly pleasant voice, Asami said, "Can you come to my room for a bit? I have something I want to talk about."
Korra followed her, tension building in her stomach with every step until Asami opened her guest room door and beckoned Korra inside toward the bed. For a fleeting moment Korra wondered if Asami had invited her back to the guest room under false pretense, perhaps because she was trying to be covert, because Korra couldn't imagine any reason why Asami would've extended the invitation beyond intimacy. But then Korra realized that such a roundabout initiation wasn't Asami's style; she'd always been straightforward and communicative when it came to bedroom activities, and she had to have understood that Korra just wasn't in the mood.
When she'd settled in at the foot of the bed and Asami had settled across from her, Korra drew a breath and asked as casually as she could, "What's up?"
"I wanted to talk to you about Bolin."
Korra's stomach cramped. Her mind went straight for the worst and it lingered there for a few terrible seconds that she spent working to talk herself down. The only person in the city who knew what had happened was Su, and Asami hadn't been alone with Su since they'd arrived earlier that day. Asami had never been alone with Su that Korra knew of. So what would she want to talk about?
Maybe Asami had recognized the weird change in Bolin the same way that Korra had and wanted to bounce ideas off of her. Maybe she wanted to discuss what would happen next and what Korra's thoughts were about Bolin accompanying them on their business once they returned to Republic City.
"Why didn't you tell me?"
Korra perked up and drew her eyes from the comforter. Asami had taken to eyeing her dangerously.
"What?"
"Why didn't you tell me what happened between the two of you?"
Korra couldn't even stammer. She couldn't believe her ears. Had Asami just said what Korra thought she'd said? She had to have said it, because nothing could put Korra's stomach in ropes the same way as the thought of anyone finding out what she had done.
"Bolin told me," Asami explained, her tone a bit gentler now, the deadly look in her eyes softened. "Bolin told me everything. He told me what happened when I went to talk with him the day after his ceremony. He was very forthcoming."
Korra wanted to say something but she could barely catch her breath. Her chest felt heavy. Of course he'd told her. He would tell her. He would be the one to ruin what relationship she'd been able to rebuild in his absence.
Korra regretted that she'd ever let Asami go off to talk with Bolin on her own, but at the time she'd been too bullheaded and angry to realize the risk. She'd known that some day she might have to have this conversation but she hadn't expected it to happen so suddenly. She'd wanted to do it on her own terms in a comfortable place when she wouldn't have to be stuck in a cramped airship with everyone involved for the next several days. Korra couldn't imagine how uncomfortable the flight back to Republic City was going to be now. She and Bolin couldn't both lock themselves in the bunks, but Korra wasn't sure that she could stand facing Asami's wrath, either.
"So, why didn't you tell me?"
There was nothing to say. Korra didn't know how to respond even if she could catch her breath. She didn't know what Asami was aiming for, what her angle was, how she really felt, what she wanted to hear. Asami's face had turned a blank slate. Was she really angry or had Korra misread her initial tone?
"I wish you would have, but that's easy for me to say, isn't it? It would've explained so much for me. It would've helped me understand."
"Are... You mad?"
They were the hardest three words Korra had ever uttered because they were the only three words she could think of that had the power to unravel every good thing she and Asami had established. If Asami felt betrayed, if she felt mistrusted, if she felt alienated, everything could be gone.
"No," Asami said, but then she paused and shook her head and said, "yes. I'm angry, at least a little bit. I'm angry because you let yourself suffer because of what happened, and if you had told me I could've helped you through it. I'm angry because you never gave me the chance to be the support you needed, and our relationship suffered right along with you."
Korra could have grunted an, "Oh," that would've been all the response she could muster. The breath caught in her throat.
"I'm mad at Bolin, don't misunderstand me. I'm furious with him. But I'm mad at you, too. When you and I got back together we promised each other that we wouldn't keep any more secrets. We promised that we'd tell each other everything, if not to be honest then to make sure the other had every chance to help when there was a problem. You made that promise to me after you and Bolin... You should have told me. I could have been there for you."
Korra nodded. Asami was right, but then, she usually was.
"I don't know what's going to happen once we get back to Republic City," Asami continued, contemplative now, "but I am sure of a couple things. First, I know that I'm willing to forgive both of you. I'm willing to forgive Bolin for all the stupid things he did because he was completely out of his mind at the time and he's clearly sorry about it now, at least from what I've seen of him, and I'm willing to forgive you for not trusting me enough to confide in me because you were obviously and understandably hurt. Second, I know that you and Bolin are going to have to talk to each other. I don't know if you'll ever be friends again and I don't know if you'll ever be civil with each other again, but I do know that you're going to have to talk. As awful as he was to all of us, I love Bolin and so does Mako. We're both going to be making an effort to reconnect with him, so you're going to have to see Bolin some time."
Korra still couldn't speak. She didn't know if she could be civil with Bolin, either. In fact, if Asami asked her to make call on the matter, Korra would've been certain that civility was off the menu entirely.
"Was it at least consensual?"
Korra nodded. As much as she hated Bolin, she couldn't accuse him of that. As much as she believed his intentions to have been cruel, she hadn't told him to stop even when given the opportunity.
"Do you want to tell me your side of it? I've heard Bolin's side, so it seems only fair that I give you the chance to explain yours."
"No," Korra said with little contemplation. "I'm not-"
Someone knocked on the door, and Korra's throat clamped shut at the same time Asami's brow furrowed. She recoiled in disbelief and confusion, and after uttering a quiet, "I still love you, you know," to Korra, Asami stood and made her way to the door.
As always, Korra should have known it was going to happen, and she should've expected it at the worst possible moment. The moment she heard Asami's surprised gasp Korra knew, and Asami verified the truth when she opened the door and Bolin was standing there in the hall. He'd appeared again as if from nowhere.
"Sit down," Asami said tersely, "we can talk."
Bolin glanced at Korra for a fleeting second before he entered the room, and in that fleeting second Korra recognized the look of unfettered fear that came over him. In that tiny moment his eyes went very wide and his body stiffened so that his discomfort couldn't be overlooked, and if Korra looked at him very, very closely she thought she could see the color draining from his face. But then the moment was gone, and Bolin cast his eyes submissively downward, walked in, and sat in the middle of the floor. He remained a respectful distance away, and came to rest with his fists on his knees. He bowed his head while Asami reclaimed her seat on the bed, and once Asami had settled, he spoke quietly and evenly.
"Can you tell me what I'm going home to, exactly?"
"What do you mean?" Asami asked, the confusion evident in her voice.
"I just got done talking with Su, and she said that you all have been working... On the firebender thing."
"We have been."
"She said that you were all going to be leaving or planning to leave or something as soon as we got back to Republic City. She said you were going to investigate," Bolin's voice grew quiet toward the end, and Korra thought he sounded ashamed. It was good, she thought, because he should be ashamed. He should be groveling.
"We won't be going anywhere for a while, no matter what," Asami explained, a clear but slightly irritated tone to her voice. Korra wondered if all of this was too much, even for Asami. "But we had just started discussing the idea with Lin and Raiko before we got the lead on you. There's still a lot of planning to be done."
Korra saw Bolin blink hard, squint his eyes as though a shot of pain had gone through him. He clasped his hands together and rubbed his thumb against his forefinger nervously, bowed his head deeper still. It was the same as it had been on the airship: Bolin was different and maybe more complicated now than he'd been before he'd left, because Bolin was confident in one way but timid in another, was bold in one way but doubtful in another. He was polar opposites crammed into one body.
Korra wondered if this was what he'd turned into. It made sense in a sick kind of way. Between the collapse and his running away he'd been gentle and cruel, quiet and loud, thoughtful and violent. He'd swung between extremes so often that it seemed only natural that he would settle some place in the middle, still off balance but perhaps less precariously perched. Both sides of psychopathic Bolin seemed to remain firmly entrenched inside of him, even if the swings between sides weren't so severe.
Bolin had become a walking, talking contradiction. He'd become perhaps even more paradoxical than he'd been before, and the need to unravel the puzzle that he'd become was what had drawn Korra in to begin with.
She wouldn't let it happen again. She'd die before she let it happen again.
"I know it's early still," Bolin said, a distinct sheepishness to him, "and I know that asking any of you to commit to anything with me right now wouldn't be fair and it wouldn't be right, but I still have to ask you: Is there any room for me anywhere in any of this? Or am I going to go home and be alone again?"
Asami looked at Korra, her brow all furrowed in concern, and Korra looked back stone faced. If he'd asked Korra the question, she knew what the answer would be: No. If Korra was the judge, there was no room anywhere in the whole of Republic City for Bolin, let alone on their missions into Democratic Society territory, because being anywhere remotely near him was too much for her to bear. For a second, she couldn't imagine what a fiasco it would be to have him along for such a sensitive operation as those they had been planning, but then she remembered Fire Fountain City and knew exactly what kind of fiasco it was likely to be. Yet Bolin hadn't asked Korra. He'd asked Asami, and it seemed like Asami couldn't decide on a response.
"I don't know," Asami said, a regretful but decisive edge in her tone. "I can tell you that we'll need to talk about it, Mako, Korra, and I, and we'll have to make a decision. I don't know what that decision is going to be."
Korra knew what the decision would be if she had any say in the matter.
"For what it's worth," Bolin uttered in the still sheepish, pitiful voice, "I want to try if you'll let me. I know I made a mess of things the last time we all..." He stopped, like he choked on the words, then he shook his head and got effortfully to his feet as if to leave. "I'm sorry I interrupted you two."
"Wait a minute," Asami said hotly, and the statement had come on so suddenly that it drew both Bolin and Korra's stunned attention. "Korra and I just talking about you. Maybe it's good that I've got both of you in the same room for once."
Without thinking, Korra looked at Bolin as if searching for some kind of answer only to find him looking back at her with the same lost, mildly frightened expression. Then she turned back to Asami but stayed silent.
"All three of us know the big scary secret," Asami went on, "so that's in the open, and I want to say my peace to both of you about it. I think you owe me that courtesy at the very least."
Korra felt afraid.
"Maybe it's not fair for me to say this right now, right here, in this situation, but I might never get another chance. You're both at fault in this mess. You're both equally at fault. Korra, I know you're putting all the blame on Bolin, and Bo, you're putting all the blame on yourself, but that's not the truth of it. You both should have known better. Bo, you should've stayed in your room and dealt with the fallout from Baihe Island and trusted all of us enough to let us help you. Maybe you were out of your mind, but I know there was enough of you left in that wreck to understand you needed help. I saw that. And Korra, you weren't out of your mind. You knew he wasn't in any position to be making those kinds of decisions at all but you still went along with it. And now you're blaming him for the whole thing like he came at you and tied you down. I'm ashamed of both of you. I'm mad at both of you and there's part of me that hates both of you so much that I can't even explain it. But I love both of you more than that, and I can't bear the idea of watching two people I care about so much ripping each other apart. So, you guys need to figure out your drama, deal with it, and move on with your lives so that we can be Team Avatar again."
The room went quiet. Korra found herself gaping, her mouth open ever slightly in disbelief, and when she looked at Bolin he'd assumed the same look, too. Then in the quiet Asami stood up and looked between them both with narrowed eyes.
"I'll leave you two to talk," she said, and her stride toward the door was so purposeful that Bolin stepped aside automatically, and he watched her the whole way out.
Even though she'd expected the interaction to be strained from the moment Bolin entered the room, this was in no way how Korra imagined things would end up, with Asami gone and the shroud which separated her from Bolin in tatters. But here they were now, face to face with an air of awkwardness between them, because Korra didn't know what to say and it seemed Bolin was no better off.
"What are you staring at?" Korra demanded. "Can't you see you've done enough here?"
Bolin opened his mouth as if to speak, but then he closed it again and bowed his head instead. He stood there in the quiet, and the longer he stood the more he deflated until at last he looked utterly defeated. "I know you hate me," he said gently, "and you're entitled to that. I won't ask you to let me try to make it up to you because I don't deserve the chance. I just want you to know that I get it. I know my place here, and I won't overstep."
"You told her," Korra growled. "You told Asami about what happened and look how it's ended up."
"I won't overstep again."
Again, Bolin fell quiet as if in thought, but then he moved. He straightened his posture but kept his eyes notably down, then he brought his hands forward in a gesture of utmost formality, bowed quickly but respectfully, and left the room.
Korra was alone and she felt alone. Asami was gone to who knew where and Bolin had gone and there was no one to whom Korra could turn for help except for Su, and no amount of feeling bad would ever make Korra go to her. Thus Korra stood and left Asami's room, walked the three feet to her own, and resigned herself to spending more time by herself. Maybe Asami wanted Team Avatar to be whole again, but Korra just couldn't see how it could happen.
