Volume I

A Retrospect

Chapter IV

Suyin and Her Haven, Zaofu

The isolated city-state of Zaofu was the dreamland of every citizen of the Earth nation. There was public transportation all around, clean land, a multitude of opportunities for every resident, and the city itself shined radiantly. As I approached this new land at Suyin's side, I watched with awe as the mountain ranges towering above us fell back and surrendered their supremacy to the metal city; Zaofu was the star, the mighty symbol, the impossible personified. As a young girl seeing Zaofu for the first time, I was amazed by the very concept of the metal city as well as its reality; to me, anywhere in the Earth Kingdom that seemed as perfect and beautiful as Zaofu had to be a lie. The knowledge that I was not dreaming then had never given me so much relief.

The night I came to Zaofu, the domes had closed without Suyin and her husband. They twinkled with reflected starlight, the tram lines between lotuses lit with lamplight. In the seclusion of the enclave, Zaofu appeared to me as a midnight city made of stars and darkness. Such ethereal beauty belonging to the tumultuous nation in which I lived filled me with a hopeful joy for the first time in too long; the path to making my dreamlike aspiration of three years a reality had already begun.

In many ways, despite my differences with Suyin and the finer details of Zaofu society, I believe that Zaofu was where I was meant to be. Fate had brought me there for the sole purpose of equipping me with the tools I would need to effectively care for my nation in the future. And as I set foot on Zaofu's metal for the very first time, I knew this.

The great petals of the central town opened only for the matriarch of the society that late at night. We were escorted in with a group of the formal guard to the Beifong estate. I can't remember much of the experience, it's mostly youth-beautifed images of tall, elegant buildings, iron pathways, and pale jade streetlights, but I do remember the curious looks I received from Suyin and Baatar Sr's customs officers who greeted us at the in-between of two metal lotus petals. They let us in, and I can remember Suyin taking my hand to lead me along to the tram that would take us all to her home further up the range. The trip was brief. Once we arrived to the estate, which resided in a smaller lotus of its own, the guard was dismissed and I was given an empty bedroom and a private washroom to myself, as well as clean clothes to wear to bed.

Despite the hospitality I received, I wasn't allowed much time to grow accustomed to my new living conditions. Suyin was a very busy woman, and her husband was no less occupied with overseeing the physical integrity of their state. I was given three days. I got glimpses of Suyin's other children, including being woken in the night by an infantile Opal's screams on occasion, but I did not meet them until after those three days had passed.

My first day in Zaofu, I was under Suyin's watchful eye from morning to evening. She talked with me and most of our (albeit one-sided) conversation involved bending to some capacity. Suyin was clearly enthusiastic about the prospect of being able to hone my abilities; I think she was more invested than even me.

She asked me if I had a connection with the earth yet, a question to which I could only respond with confusion at the time. It was decided that I would simply have to show her what I could not communicate. Suyin did not observe me for long, my knowledge was limited due to the events of the past year. I demonstrated what little I could do at that age: topple cans, bend wire, wrinkle plates- small and subtle things. All that I needed to be unbelievably good at pick-pocketing and fleeing, but far from what I needed to qualify as an actual metalbender.

When I reflect, I can vaguely recall when I first discovered metalbending for myself. The discovery came completely on accident. I was being chased for committing another of many small crimes in Gaoling, and my pursuer cornered me when I tried to hide behind some sort of contraption. As I went to defend myself, there was nothing for me to use but the metal around me. By some miracle, I took ahold of the metal as if it were like any other bit of earth at my whim and propelled it at my attacker. They were so shocked that they were convinced I had done some kind of witchcraft, and they fled.

I was still young, only old enough to be in elementary classes, so I hadn't even known that metalbending was an actual practice that had existed for some years now and was not something of my own creation. But I kept quiet about my ability, of course, unwilling to attract unsavory attention in my situation. Once Suyin revealed the truth of my abilities to me, I was very simply shocked.

After asking me about my bending and fruitlessly inquiring about my life before we'd met, Suyin sought to put me in school. She gave me a short test to get a scope for my knowledge, and it was determined from the assessment that I would be held back two years. Even though I was the same age as her eldest son, I had lost a year in my wandering, and Zaofu had a different education structure than Ji Qiang. I was educated at the same level as Huan, Suyin's second eldest. The two of us didn't talk much, but we got along well enough.

Before my classes started, I was given to another family to be cared for. Understandably. Suyin personally saw to my placement in a pleasant foster home. The couple I was given to were kind, generous people who had the love and desire for a child painted in their expressions. I had never felt so welcomed before. It was strange that in Zaofu, a place I hardly even knew, I was given more true care and consideration in a few days than my parents had given me in seven years.

(Even so, as I would come to accept many years later, Zaofu was not where I hailed from and these people could not fill the hole in my heart that my parents had left.)

The fosters I lived with were close to the Beifong estate, just a short tram-ride away, so that I could visit the head family often. Suyin had made it clear that she desired to take me on as her protegé, so nothing any less convenient would do.

As I officially started my new life in Zaofu, I began to come across the Beifong children regularly. The eldest of us commuted to school together: Baatar Jr., Huan, and me. The twins and Opal remained at home with their parents for their pre-school educations, as I assume so did the brothers I travelled with at a time.

Fast-forward several years after that and I was a 14 year-old metalbender, the youngest since Toph Beifong's time. Suyin had introduced me to her dance troupe and planned on incorporating me into the most meticulous routine she had conjured yet. Throughout the next several years, being one of her ballerinas served as a hobby but also as a fine-tuner; as I danced, I gained. My bending, especially, improved as I maneuvered with metal through the air. My times with the troupe were some of my favorites. I admit that I miss them.

At 16, I had honed my skills enough to be qualified as an official Zaofu guard. I took the admittance test, passed adequately, and was given my station within the week. My time with the troupe continued despite my increased load, as I felt that there was still a lot of room for me to improve. The times in between were mostly spent in Suyin's metal gardens with Baatar Jr., in training, or at home resting.

When I was 18, I parted from my foster family and moved closer to the Beifongs in a home of my own. A higher education was in order for me as soon as I settled in, and I proceeded to attend the same secondary school as Baatar Jr.

I continued to train and serve with the guard, and dance in Suyin's troupe, juggling them with my advanced studies. I pursued an informal, specialized education in philosophy, physics, and government, subjects I felt would help me accomplish my admittedly evolved but unforgotten goals of revolution within the Earth Kingdom.

During this time, my relationship with the Beifong family began to evolve again. Of course, naturally, I grew closer to them all, but Baatar Jr. is the only of the Beifongs I truly bonded with.

Baatar and I, once divided as children by an unspoken respect for the other's desire for solitude, grew close. We were good friends by the time our secondary classes ended and I took up the position of Captain as he took on being Chief Engineer. We were busy, but we kept in touch and managed to see each other often enough. Of all the Beifongs, Baatar became my favorite to be around.

But even though we were doing well, there was a common sense of longing between us; we believed there was more we could do, things that we could improve, if only given the chance. While I was Captain and Baatar was Chief, I still answered to Suyin and he still answered to his father. Suyin controlled everything in Zaofu, from the agriculture to her children, which meant I could only command the guard so long as she approved my commands. Baatar was required to run all of his ideas by his parents first, which stifled his creative genius. We weren't satisfied with the way things were, and I sought a way to shift the tides without conflict, as I had been learning to do under Suyin's tutelage.

Nothing changed until the death of Huo-Ting.

The market suffered as trade with other states abruptly stopped. For the first time in Zaofu's history, there were bandits sneaking into the domes from beyond Gaoling. And refugees from the turmoil in Ba Sing Se came to our borders seeking asylum from a frenzy of their own creation, bringing a slew of other issues with them including a strain on Zaofu's resources as we attempted to do what little we could for them. News of the anarchy ensuing in the capital reached us by radio, and everyday it was the same dismal story. Something had to be done.

Perhaps two weeks after the Queen's assassination, the URN hosted a gathering between representatives from each of the four nations. They came to a consensus, then arrived in Zaofu three days later. I was summoned, along with a few other members of the guard, to Suyin's meeting room as security detail. I was the only one admitted inside for confidentiality.

The meeting itself was brief and not all that important. Everyone sat, there were some frivolities, then the request of Suyin was made. I held my breath once I heard the proposal, but the response the matriarch gave was disappointing.

Suyin refused to do what was asked of her.

Despite popular opinion, I do not fault her completely for the decision she made that day, I understand why Suyin refused. But I disagree with the notion that her reasoning was sound. While a concern, a non-royal leader in position to rule would not have been a true issue in light of recent events, especially if they were someone of Suyin's caliber and name. The Beifong family, even before Toph Beifong's time, had a rich history of aiding the nation economically and politically. In addition to that, Suyin herself had developed the most advanced society in the Earth Nation almost all on her own. Put simply, Suyin was in a prime place to aid the Kingdom, and her intervention would surely have been worth the few hundred voices of opposition.

She had the opportunity to change the entire nation for the better laid at her feet, and she refused.

I've never forgiven her for that. I would have worked endlessly for such a chance. I would have given my all towards correcting the madness that had befallen our country. I would have taken advantage of the situation to improve countless lives. I would have stepped up.

These were my thoughts. I stewed on this for several days after the decision was made. Suyin's refusal to help the Kingdom while she stayed in Zaofu struck me as an abandonment of the rest our country. I could not accept it. I lamented to Baatar about what happened, and how I felt. We agreed that something could and should be done.

So we began to talk about a plan for action that could sway Suyin. Though with time and many failed simulations, we gave up on that course of action. More and more, it seemed like we would have to execute the plan ourselves. So we did. Tiptoeing around Suyin and Baatar Sr., Baatar and I secretly met with investors we believed would be inclined to give us their anonymous support. We pooled all of our resources, then I pulled those from the guard who I knew to be exceptionally loyal, who would willingly follow me across the nation, and Baatar gathered his designs from over the years. His brilliant ideas would prove pivotal to our success later down the line.

In just over a year, we were ready to leave. I departed from Zaofu for the first time since I'd arrived there 13 years ago with less than I knew I needed, and more than I could have ever dreamed I would have.

IIII IIII IIII

Kuvira stares out the window with hooded eyes, tired but unrelenting. Even out of the suffocating, empty cavern that is Feicuì prison she doesn't feel comfortable sleeping. It's the nightmares; they plague her still, maybe even worse than before. She takes to talking to Baatar more and more often as a result, aware that she shouldn't but unwilling to be driven wolfbat insane by nightmares and residual thoughts of a ruined empire.

Kuvira contemplates crying to alleviate some of the stress, but doesn't like the idea of feeling weak or helpless. She remembers when she'd cried during her first nights trapped in Feicuì, and the memory still makes her an indescribable kind of angry.

It had started as a few tears, but they wouldn't stop coming. For every one she wiped away, another returned. She'd cried quietly and stone-faced for a number of quiet nights, her breath shaky with every inhale as she curled into herself against the cold stone walls. Kuvira eventually calmed, writing the moment of depression off as nothing more than a tryst-- and perhaps it had been-- but things still got worse as the darkness persisted.

Baatar showed up, for one thing. Kuvira recognized that entertaining her feverish imagination was a mistake; dwelling on regrets and memories was only subjecting herself to torture. But she had done it anyway to escape the all-consuming alternative. And even though the worst has passed now and she's constantly being watched by Korra or is talking with Bolin (in short: she isn't alone anymore), Kuvira can't seem to give him up. He'd always been by her side, the only one she could ever trust. His presence was a comfort that had killed part of her to lose and she wasn't sure if she could go through that again.

If only she had something to do, something else to think about-- a life to live. Maybe he wouldn't haunt her like this if she wasn't thrown into the dark alone to grieve. Maybe she'd be haunted by other bad decisions instead.

But she doesn't have anything to do, and she hadn't been given the luxury of properly sorting through the baggage.

Kuvira rolls onto her other side so that the moonlight filtering in washes the length of her back in a delicate white-blue. She loathes that her room has such a large window in it with no curtains to soften the light, but she can't exactly complain; it staves off some of the worse memories- dreams of bloody battles fought in the dark where anyone and anything could suddenly lurch forward and grab ahold of her in an instant- and if she dares to bring it up with the others, Kuvira is fairly certain that Sato would instead elect to bash her head in to save herself the trouble.

As is typical at this point, Baatar comes to comfort her-- or she imagines him to comfort herself, whichever-- and distract her from the things she seems unable to escape.

Unlike most of the other times Baatar has appeared, she notices that he's wearing something different from his Earth Empire uniform. And that his glasses are off. Kuvira focuses on these little things as she's learned to do. The chill from her morbid nightmares begins to recede as her mind is occupied by familiar sweet nothings.

His touch ghosts over the height of her shoulder, warmth washing from the point of contact down her side, and Kuvira is too eager to remember a time when Baatar would kiss her on the neck at night and whisper words of endearment into her ear before bed.

Eyelids fluttering, Kuvira glances over her shoulder to look at him. As it turns out, Baatar is actually sitting on the edge of the bed in his old night clothes-- the ones from Zaofu-- with a comforting hand on her shoulder, not laying behind her in the bed with his chest against her back, his legs intertwined with hers and his chin tucked into the crook between her neck and shoulder, warm hips pressed firmly against her backside--

"What was it this time?" he asks, as if he doesn't already know.

Kuvira is wrenched from her heated reverie at the question. She sits up with a huff and turns her body to face Baatar. He lets his hand fall from her shoulder as she does, and she can't decide whether or not she rathers it that way. Given her embarrassing arousal, it's probably for the best.

"The Beifongs and the hellish war effort," she answers insipidly, bringing her knees to her chest and her arms round her knees. "The usual."

Baatar's brows raise at the mention of his family. "Was I there?"

"No," says Kuvira quickly, almost reassuring him, "No."

She thinks about Baatar to distract herself from the nightmares and the anger and the guilt; he's a remedy, the only thing she doesn't regret, not a plague. Never a plague.

(she ignores the fact that she's betrayed him and that that plagues her, down in the depths she's banished her shame to; that she refuses to cast him away. she ignores how he's become her answer to almost every instance of discomfort, making Baatar probably the worst of her plagues, a painkilling drug to overdose on)

As if on que, Baatar's eyes soften with affection. He tilts his head towards her, a soft, somewhat meek smile on his face, the moonlight hitting his eyes so that they shine a ghostly limestone green. With an eerie sense of recognition, Kuvira realizes this is a younger Baatar she's talking to.

(a Baatar from before the Empire, before the fall of Huo-Ting, and before she had had the courage to embrace what she felt for him)

"There's something else on your mind," Baatar says knowingly, pulling Kuvira from her thoughts. One of his lithe hands raises to brush her bangs aside so that their eyes meet.

Kuvira sighs, heart aching at his gentleness. "I'm supposed to confront Guan in a few days. The others expect me to make him concede."

"Can't you?"

"I can," Kuvira says firmly, "I just. . . I need some direction. I don't know what I'm going to do."

And if she doesn't figure it out soon, she'll quickly go back to being useless, which means quickly going back to her cold, dark prison. She is almost certain that the Avatar and her team won't lose any sleep over that decision.

"You know Guan. You know his interests, his priorities, his personality," Baatar's hand glides softly over the cool skin of her cheek, an idle gesture of comfort, but Kuvira is almost frightened by how real his heat feels. "Just use them to your advantage." he tells her.

Kuvira blinks at him, taken aback by his. . . realness. Her mind is sure he's fake, but somehow her body is receiving Baatar's touches like he's actually here and there's just a thin sheet of plastic over her body keeping the feeling of his skin from her. And his face. She's sure that she couldn't pull the image of him from four years ago from the dredges of her memory if she tried. He's been different for so long. . . she'd be fooled if she didn't know better.

Kuvira actually almost forgot how gentle he could be. It wasn't common anymore-- not like this-- after the unification effort had gone long. Even though he was primarily an engineer, Baatar had seen and done his fair share of things during what was essentially just a pretty war (which is never actually pretty). When the effort had just begun and there were only so many to do the heavy things, it was for the better that his tenderness be left behind. But being reminded of it makes Kuvira's heart burn with a strange longing.

Baatar, entreated by her prolonged silence, roots through her thoughts like the mental manifestation of desire that he is. His eyes make show of searching hers as he does. The action imitates a lover's insight, but Kuvira understands that that is all it is: an imitation. This Baatar, linked to her brain, will always know what she knows, and she laments this as his thumb brushes over the high of her cheek. "It's not your fault," he says, "I did what I needed to."

Kuvira's hand comes up to touch his. "I don't regret anything." she insists.

"You're shaking."

Kuvira looks down at herself. The hand touching his is indeed trembling, the fingers on her other hand twitching with some inexplicable emotion. Kuvira grits her teeth; she's confused, she doesn't like this.

"I don't know what I'm doing," she finally confesses. Her hand falls from her face. "Ever since my imprisonment, nothing has made sense." Kuvira's talking about the Guan situation, but she's talking about Baatar too. And the tome she's writing that seems to be more of an autobiography than anything else, far from what she'd actually planned.

"You're just doing what you need to do." Baatar reassures as he moves nearer to her. Kuvira looks up at him, feeling inexplicably childish, unable to look away from his eyes. With his glasses off, it's easier to see them. Baatar has never believed her when she's said that she's actually partial to his eyes, to their shape and the mysterious undercurrents of darker green in his irises. Kuvira remains drawn to them as the space between her and this fabrication dwindles to almost nothing. Baatar moves his hand from her face to the small of her back.

"You're on the right path, Kuvira, and you must see it through." he whispers.

The right path. Was she really on the right path? It seemed more like the only other path besides idly rotting in the core of a mountain. What if she was just on the path that delayed the torture?

Baatar is close now, his body warm and welcoming, and Kuvira slowly lowers her head to rest against his shoulder. Her eyes close as she does, savoring this lucid illusion, then squeeze tight at the feeling of his arms circling around her. It's a heartbreaking sensation. Kuvira lets Baatar in even further in her moment of long needed solace.

And then he kisses her forehead.

Kuvira feels her insides freeze over in fear and disgust as soon as it happens. The negative emotions grip her so suddenly that she doesn't know what to do with them. Her moment of perturbation doesn't seem to reach Baatar, in all its irony, or perhaps it's just her own cruelty backfiring. Kuvira flinches as Baatar goes for another kiss, this time on her lips.

"No," she says, backing away slightly. The pads of her fingers rest over his lips (that don't feel like anything at all). Baatar freezes, but his arms still encircle her. Kuvira swallows thickly and fights to find her voice as he stares at her like she's betrayed him (again). "Don't. I can't. . . I refuse. After what I did to you. . ."

"Kuvira--" he tries to reason, moves closer again.

"You're not real!" she erupts. She is speaking more to herself than to him-- if she's speaking to him at all. Kuvira backs away from him with her eyebrows pinched together in confusion. Her heart rate elevates against her will, her breaths coming quick and shallow. Baatar stares back at her with devastation on his face; it leaks into his very being.

"I'm sorry," she apologizes after the silence stretches on long enough, her voice soft and quiet. Her breathing evens out as Baatar's crestfallen expression morphs into one of displeasure (for him, displeased is just a stoic downturn of the lips and stony eyes, but the expression still makes her feel guilty of every crime). Hesitant, Kuvira inches back toward him.

Baatar receives her.

"I'm sorry." Kuvira says again, wrapped in his arms now. She buries her face in his chest and imagines heat between them to soothe her aches. The warmth persists like it had earlier, impossibly soothing against her skin. Now that she's calmer, Kuvira wonders-- faintly-- if anyone else in the ship heard her outburst. Probably. They must all think her mad at this point.

Baatar rubs a comforting line into her back with his thumb, his palm against her shoulder. He murmurs random words of comfort that Kuvira can't fully understand, probably because she can't supply her own mirage with more than a few loving things to say. Nonetheless, the caring attention helps.

"Go to sleep," he urges Kuvira just as her eyelids begin to feel especially heavy. His words are hushed. "You know they'll want to talk to you in the morning. You'll need as much energy as you can get."

"But. . ." Kuvira begins to drowsily protest.

Baatar coerces her with a chaste kiss to the temple. "Sleep."

Kuvira's eyes slowly slide shut, her breath coming slow and easy. She falls soundly asleep.

And then it's morning.


A/N:

First, sorry for the intense wait, I did some serious revision to this chapter. Hopefully my writing has improved. Second, this is the last chapter with basic domestic flashback type stuff, we'll get into the real meat of the book next chapter. Finally, thanks to those of you who have stuck around so far! I think you'll enjoy the next update.