Kuvira
There was no point in keeping track of where, or when, she was. Each day in the wooden cell was the same as the last. Platinum restraints choked her wrists, holding her to the floor. It weighed her down, and yet, that weight was nothing in comparison to the memories.
'What do you think you're doing?' Su hadn't spoken like a question. She'd spoken like a dare.
At the time, it was a dare Kuvira accepted without flinching. 'We're doing what you don't have the guts to do. We're going to Ba Sing Se to help bring order back to the Earth Kingdom'.
'No!'
'And who's going to stop me?'
'If you leave now, you will never be welcomed back,' Su warned.
It hadn't mattered. Kuvira knew it hadn't mattered. Because she knew, 'When I choose to return, it'll be on my own terms'.
In a way, she'd been right. Kuvira had set the terms. She had chosen to surrender, to end the war before it could spiral further into chaos.
The call of the memories was so consuming that sometimes, it was easy to forget that Kuvira's prison had a physical form. The silence always sounded like the voices of the people she'd wronged.
"Uniter."
A shadow cast across Kuvira's face. She didn't see it.
'This wasn't how I wanted things to end. If you had all just surrendered, none of this would've happened.'
'You brought this on yourself. Messing with the spirit vines, acting like a dictator over your people; you had to know what you were doing wasn't right.'
'I was trying to help my people. Su turned her back on the Earth Kingdom. You were gone. I had to do something.'
It wasn't the sound Kuvira was supposed to hear. It always went the same, after she'd defended herself. The voice was supposed to reply. 'I think I get it now.'
Instead, she heard a different voice. Simple, short, flat. "Uniter."
Kuvira opened her eyes, her stare fixing into a glare. The dark, greasy strands of hair hung in her face, obscuring her surroundings. Though her gaze was sharp, the rest of her stayed slack, lifeless.
"Where is the food?" Kuvira whispered, the words cracking and dry, as if her throat had been rusted.
There was only one reason Kuvira had visitors. A guard, without any metal on their person would cross the cell. They'd disrupt her silence with their pounding steps, as if sounding like a komodo rhino would give them more authority over her. Then, they'd watch her eat slop while she lay on the floor.
There weren't footsteps today. There was no unceremoniously dropped tray. There wasn't even a creaking from the doorframe. There was only the ever-stretching shadow cast straight over Kuvira, the presence of some willowy figure that was not supposed to be there.
"You've been summoned," the stranger whispered, their words somehow as gentle as they were severe. "You have a newfound reputation for cooperation. I expect it'll be upheld for me as well?"
Those weren't words Kuvira was used to hearing. The sensation was so strange, all Kuvira could bring to do was to look away.
"Where is the food?" Kuvira asked again.
"There's a delay in the kitchens. It's not coming."
Kuvira forced her voice a little loude, the most monotonous form of a plea possible. "I'm famished. Fix it. I need to eat."
"There's something else you need more."
It was then, something began to sink in. Kuvira's silence, it usually only lasted to what was kept in this room. Outside the doors, there was always something disruptive, something disturbing her. But now, here, nothing—no guards, no prisoners—only the contents of this cell.
A gleam past through Kuvira's peripheral vision. Something dangled at the corner of her eye. A silver key hung from a pale finger, swinging right in front of her face. Finally, she looked.
A lone woman standing before her—a spindly, almost overstretched figure with wildly curly hair cropped at her shoulders. IShe wore a waistcoat in place of the guard uniform, which wasn't normal. Even less so was the tattoo of a third silver eye was centered in her forehead, drawing Kuvira's gaze where she knew it shouldn't go.
"Answer." The willowy woman commanded. The key swayed in her grip, shining in the sunlight that shouldn't have invaded this space at all. "I know you've heard me."
The stranger's eyes fell to Kuvira's, the silver stare devoid of judgment, disdain, or, in fact, anything at all.
Another sound invaded the space, words that hadn't matched the stranger's calm. They weren't this woman's words at all. They were an echo.
'The state of Yai is now under—'
"Be quiet." The former Great Uniter pinched the bridge of her nose. It made her chains clank, almost violently so, as she gripped for control she didn't have.
The woman before her, the one who was there, spoke in monotone. "You aren't answering me."
"I have no need to answer," Kuvira dismissed. "What, exactly, am I 'summoned' to?"
The woman stood by through Kuvira's order and her movement, making no effort to intervene. The only thing that she did in return, she did as obviously as possible. She raised the fist holding the key higher, just enough that the key dangled back in sight.
"Freedom."
The key swayed, capturing Kuvira's gaze. "Freedom."
Kuvira had no sense of her own hand as she reached for the key. The chains at her wrist choked the movement, forcing her hand to stop inches from the lure.
The silver of the key lifted slowly, further out of her grasp. All that remained before her was the same metallic gleam in this stranger's eyes.
Anyone who truly believed in the threat of the Great Uniter, as she'd once been called, would have hesitated to get this close. They would have known what, and who, they were dealing with. Instead, this woman outstretched her hand.
Again, Kuvira heard the voice from nowhere, an echo on the walls. 'I knew you'd try a sneak attack'.
"She isn't going to attack. You're irrational. Stop that," Kuvira hissed beneath her breath.
In the stillness that muttering had forced Kuvira to take, the combustion bender had drawn closer. Her hands turned Kuvira's wrist, her fingers tracing the outline of the lock.
"There are those who think your vision correct," the woman whispered. Kuvira felt the shackle click as the lock turned against her skin. "I know where they are."
"As do I. My loyalists were imprisoned, just like me," Kuvira answered, the words curving with doubt. "Unless you're suggesting there are other people who support the Empire."
The first shackle dropped to the floor with a clank, reverberating across the emptiness. Kuvira felt herself straighten. She raised her other hand, offering the shackle directly until that, too, was released.
The woman stepped back from Kuvira, leaving her to sit alone. Her hands folded across her chest with a sort of composed indifference that was almost casual.
"I don't suggest. I know," the combustion bender whispered. "If you want to be a prisoner, keep your doubt. If you want to be a legend, then, come. My grandmother sent for you."
As cryptic as the answer was, it would have to be enough.
The door to the cell swung open. A sudden wave of light forced Kuvira's eyes to shut. Even with her eyelids set tight, she could see the orange and yellow of the outside pouring in. It was a warmth Kuvira could barely remember.
Kuvira's palms flattened against the base of the cell. She rose to her feet, feeling the weight of her own body for the first time in months. The first step staggered, her knee nearly giving way until she found solid ground. Earth.
The entire time, the combustion bender had stood leaning against the cell door, her arms crossed, head lowered, waiting. "Are you done?" she'd asked in monotone.
"Yes," Kuvira stepped forth, moving past the other woman. "No need to bow to me. I'm nothing but a fugitive, now."
The other woman's shoulders raised, too passively for it to even count as a shrug. "You are only nothing if you allow yourself to be. I know better."
Kuvira strode past the doors of her cell, into the hall. What she saw around the corner explained the calm. It also explained the lack of breakfast. There were no guards in this hallway alive.
Alive, in this case, was the key distinction. There were guards left behind in the rubble of what was left of the structure. They just weren't beating. Bodies in varying states of disarray were crumpled at their former posts along the corridor. There was no visible damage beyond the tainted smoke and ashes that had drifted across them, yet not a guard laying on the floor had the complexion of someone still breathing.
For the first time, something important crossed through Kuvira's mind. The walls, though they'd been inching up on her, had also been a refuge. Security. Safety. She was leaving something dependable, and stepping straight into a massacre.
Kuvira's attention pulled away from the wreckage, fixing over her shoulder on the stranger. "Are you a supporter?"
"Yes."
"And what exactly do you support? The Empire? Me? Something?"
"Of something." The woman answered dully. "Of you? That's yet to be seen."
The woman stopped moving in front of an open space. There was no door to the room, only the edges of crumbling stone where the structure had been destroyed. This specific space had appeared to be the laundry. The woman grabbed a fist full of cloth and shoved it towards Kuvira with one instruction. "Change."
In spite of herself and her dignity, Kuvira took the clothes. Her thumb ran over the rough fabric. The cloth was green—rich, deep green—a sort of depth of color her eyes hadn't seen in so long, it looked almost surreal. It reminded her of her old uniform, the one she'd worn as a conqueror, uniting her Kingdom to an Empire.
Kuvira could hear the voice, again, an echo off the walls.
'Bring the citizens of Zaofu to kneel before the-'.
"Great Uniter", Kuvira realized, looking past the fabric in epiphany. "You don't need me. You need the Great Uniter."
The silver shade of the combustion bender's eyes had tarnished with shadows, like a sword that had gone unpolished for decades. The unflinching nature of her stare was carried with a tone to match. "It's yet to be seen if I need either of you."
There was no other conclusion left but to nod. Kuvira raised the sleeve of the new tunic, the garment of a freed person. All she had left to say was simple.
"You will," she spoke with confidence, a tone she hadn't had in months. "Now, turn. I will not show myself to you."
The combustion bender clicked her tongue, a sort of huff of irritation. Still, she'd done as she was asked.
There was a sort of thrill to it that Kuvira hadn't realized how much she'd missed until it was right before her. Obedience.
While the combustion bender's back was turned, something else drifted to Kuvira's mind. Her attention lingered at the back of her hand, to the space where something was missing.
Kuvira lowered herself, steadying her stance with concentration. She visualized the object, calling it to her across the hall.
When she'd opened her eyes next, she'd expected to find it already there, summoned across the threshold to her palm. Instead, she'd turned to see a dagger at her side.
The reedy brunette of a combustion bender was holding a dulled blade. She ran her hand along the sharper edge before throwing it to Kuvira's feet. "It's not platinum."
"Yes," Kuvira said quietly. "I can feel that."
"You can use them as you wish before we go. It won't be so calm once we're in transit."
Kuvira stared at the metal blade, swallowing audibly. She should have tried to use her bending to pick it up, to call it to her that way. Instead, she bent over and scooped it off the floor, cradling it in silence.
"I need to find something. Before we go," she decided, speaking down to her reflection on the metal. "I lost the right to posses it a long time ago, but I cannot bring myself to leave it behind."
The combustion bender ran her boot across the ground, scattering some of the ash beneath. "Then find it. I don't need your biography."
The comment warped Kuvira's eyes into a sunken snarl. Beyond that, she didn't answer. Instead, she turned. Her way hadn't needed approval.
Kuvira felt it as the other woman followed her down the hall, yet she hadn't heard a thing. It was the imprint of a willowy shadow across her back that marked the path they'd both tread.
The hallways were winding, but not without cause. Kuvira had felt where this object was for so long, she hadn't needed directions. There was a hum to each metal, a familiar pull, and this one was stronger than most. She followed the path, stepping over the rubble of broken walls and broken people, all the way to the door closest to the exit. To the room where the 'personal affects' of prisoners were kept waiting for their release.
A joke, Kuvira had thought, back when it those possessions been taken from her. The people who had put her in this cell had no intention of letting her walk out. Now, when she could see the box with her name and pull it from the wall, that joke that fell on her captors.
Kuvira opened the box, ignoring the rest of her former things, and slipped her engagement ring back on her finger. She didn't like to think of the past, but this part—this, she needed. It was an anchor on her person, a promise that she would never make the same mistake again.
"I'm ready to leave." Kuvira twisted the ring, the turn of it soothing some part that had felt incomplete. "But I must ask, where? For all I know, this could be a trap. My escort to a guillotine."
From the looks of the total apathy that this woman gave back to Kuvira, it seemed she hadn't cared much. Shock of shocks, the kind of woman that was sent to break someone out of prison wasn't big on empathy. "You must ask. I don't have to answer." She raised a hand with a dismissive shrug, one far too composed for the situation. "For all I know, you could be mad."
Again, Kuvira's eyes pointed. "I assure you, my sanity is not your concern."
With a single breath, the woman cast a vibration across the closest wall. The center eye at her forehead began to emit a hazy glow, faint, but vibrating with intensity.
That mild hum had been the only warning before the blast. A pulse of energy knocked against the structure, slamming straight through the wall.
The sudden blast brought Kuvira to duck, quickly. Her arms raised to shield her from the wreckage. It kept the rubble from getting into her eyes, yet she'd still coughed in the aftermath.
The combustion bender cocked her head to the side, flipping a single stray curl from her forehead. "Republic City," she'd answered in a tone that sounded far too bored to match what she'd just done. "Then, the Fire Nation. If you want a guillotine, bend it yourself. That's a terrible way to execute you."
"There are quicker ways to form a door," Kuvira tried to scold, "More subtle."
"I'll keep it in mind. Although… perhaps builders of giant robots shouldn't judge for subtleties," the woman replied.
Somehow, the confirmed knowledge that this stranger bore a functional canon in the center of her forehead made it a little harder to talk back. Kuvira settled for a deep, slanted glower, and set her focus elsewhere. She climbed through the wreckage into the sunlight.
The voice from nowhere called as Kuvira's foot flattened on the ground.
'If you leave now, you will never be welcomed back.'
Kuvira turned away from the light, back to the stranger. "Will I be able to return?"
In her mind, Kuvira had meant to ask it towards the voice. Yet in reality, the only person staring back at her was the curly-haired combustion bender, covering a yawn. "To prison? Yeah, probably. Those invitations don't tend to expire."
Somehow, Kuvira's eyebrows found further to fall. She was starting to wonder if she preferred the guard.
Kuvira hands pulled behind her back, her posture straightening on instinct. She took a deep breath, savoring the illusion of freedom. It didn't matter that she could taste the smoke still lingering through the wreckage. She'd been in enough fights to dismiss the scent of a massacre.
Kuvira's footsteps fell in line, a pace behind the combustion bender. She followed her away from the ruins, circling past the side of the main roads.
"Where is our transport?" Kuvira asked. The combustion bender didn't reply.
Like most jails for those who were sufficient dangers to society, they were far from civilization. What they faced here were rows of scattered trees, rolling hills, and the worn streets that lead to them. The intensity of the color couldn't help but draw Kuvira's eyes again. Had things always been this green?
The pair didn't walk out straight into the road. Instead, the stranger had stepped around the side of the building, strolling along with her hands in her pockets. For having gone through a prison break, she had no rush to leave.
They kept up this casual strolling pace until she'd rounded the corner to the parking lot. A scattering of armored, covered cars—presumably how the employees drove to work out here—were waiting for people who wouldn't return. The windows of the vehicles were clouded with ash, but they were otherwise untouched.
Kuvira supposed this was one way to answer her question.
The combustion bender lengthened her considerable stride, allowing her to overtake Kuvira's pace. She hopped directly onto the hood of one of the trucks, creating a track of ash along the surface while she scaled the roof.
There had been Fire Benders in the Earth Empire territory, so the concepts weren't entirely foreign to her. Still, what Kuvira observed next was so strange that it couldn't help but draw her curiosity.
The combustion bender had leaned over the top of the hood. She curled over herself, extending in a pose that looked almost like a dancer's stretch. Both the woman's hands and one of her feet tapped along the glass of the window. A wave of warmth emanated from the side, intense enough that it created a slight, warm breeze against her face. As the warmth stretched out, the glass loosened. A crack formed through the glass, then another, until the panel shattered in the frame.
The combustion bender adjusted her hold on the roof, hooking her hands against the newly formed opening. She slipped inside the car through the gap where the window had been, "Bend the letters off the plate. Put something else there," she ordered as she ducked from sight. "That's in your scope, I assume. Metal license plate and all."
"Yes." Kuvira's shoulders tensed. Her voice quieted, enough that it shouldn't keep traveling into the vehicle. "It should be."
While the other woman was busy tending the car, presumably to do some literal hot-wiring, Kuvira knelt at the front. She stroked her thumb across the license plate, brushing the ash away. Only now could she see how dirty her hands had been, how jagged her nails were.
It was a simple form of bending, to mold existing metal. The kind of trick she did to occupy her hands if a meeting was too dull. It should have been easy, thoughtless.
Kuvira held her hands before the license plate. She twisted her fingers. The letters began to shake. Then, nothing.
'I knew you were weak', she heard someone call.
The former Great Uniter pulled away from her own hands, gaping at them in breathless horror. She rose to her feet. "It's done," she lied. "Start the car."
The engine roared to life, the headlights beaming against Kuvira's face. The door to the passenger's side popped open.
"Get in," the combustion bender spoke flatly," Before we both run out of orders."
There was, in fact, a choice in this scenario. Kuvira didn't have to listen. She could run. She could call for help. She could ignore the odds, find a dagger, fight to take this woman down.
Kuvira closed her eyes. She climbed into the car.
The combustion bender retracted her hand from the passenger's side. She kept one hand on the wheel. With the other, she turned the dial to the radio. The stations crackled through the dusty speakers, rotating through jingles, ballads and nonsense before settling on some unusually intense jazz.
"The sound of victory," the combustion bender sighed.
Kuvira didn't answer. She leaned back in her seat, her eyes closing. The tainted bursts of wind still pushed through the window, knotting her already tangled hair with the breeze. Every second, now, she was farther from where she was supposed to be.
If Kuvira was caught, the answer should have been simple. She'd had no part in this. She could say she was abducted, a victim just as much as the guards and other captives left lifelessly inside. If she really thought about what just occurred, with the threat of a combustion bender's mark in her face, this probably counted as kidnapping.
But would anyone believe her?