Broaching the subject while they were both in bed probably isn't going to be her best decision. If anyone ever asks—though they'd know better than to do so—Kuvira is going to blame exhaustion and painkillers. But the words from Aarif's report are swimming in front of her eyes, and every breath still drags up the choking taste of ash in her mouth. At least she can breathe without pain now, though the carefully dressed burn on her arm still throbs despite the medication.

"We need a plan, should I ever be killed."

"What?" Baatar turns so fast she swears she can hear his neck crick. She winces in sympathy, and at the giant ink scar he'd scratched across his careful schematic of an ore refinery in his alarm.

"It's only reasonable, Baatar." Kuvira caps her pen and closes the cover on her earmarked report. She sets them aside on the collapsible chair she has commandeered as a second bedside table, seeing as the built-in shelf next to the bed is already overflowing with papers and reports. At some point, probably soon, she'll have to find the time to move them to another location before they fall on her in her sleep. "After today's close call, I realised I should have done this sooner."

Baatar rubs his neck, scowling down at his marred diagram. "Well, as second-in-command—" he begins, in a matter-of-fact tone that she can tell is very much notmatter-of-fact.

Kuvira inhales deeply, then flinches as something grates inside her. "No."

"What do you mean, no?" The roll of paper and his pen slide off his lap as he throws his hands up in the air.

She resists the urge to put her head in her hands. Displaying exasperation isn't going to make things any better. It's a sign of weakness, if anything. And Baatar can recognize them better than most. Spirits, is it frustrating to work around his ego. Especially when he can generally be rather reasonable—with her anyway—about his work. Sometimes she wonders if this knee-jerk defensiveness about his abilities is some kind of complex he's developed from working under his father for so long.

"With all due respect, Baatar, and I really mean it," And she does, with every fibre of her being, when he's not being a complete ox-ass. "Everything you have done during campaign so far, your work on the mechas and the train, your help with the rebuilding—"

Baatar crosses his arms. His brows caterpillar together over his glasses as he scowls. "Get to the point, Kuvira."

He is right. She's rambling, and that's not something she's prone to doing. Bringing this up with Baatar has been a mistake. But the subject has to be broached, and she doesn't trust herself to address it in the morning, after she sleeps away the shock and wakes up, alive and breathing, ready to fight another day. It's getting easier to forget now, the losses and the pain. After all, what use is it to linger? Grief and pain only serve to hinder her efficiency, but no matter what others may think, she's not yet so arrogant as to believe that the responsibilities of the empire can rest on her alone. So she goes on. "You lack the skill, experience, and quite frankly the interest for leadership."

It's her honest opinion, not meant as an insult. Everyone has their strengths and weaknesses, everyone has their place in the machinery of the state. But of course Baatar can't see it that way, has to take it all personally. "Is that what you think?" he asks, pushing off his side of the blanket and rising to his knees. "That I'm content to remain in the shadows? That's why I left Zaofu in the first place, because I was never allowed to lead."

"Don't twist my words, Baatar!" Kuvira snaps. Irritation nags at her like an itch and she digs her fingers into her thighs to resist the urge to warp metal. This is Baatar's dirtiest weapon against her; that she's behaving like his mother, stifling his creativity, restricting his output. This is the accusation he brings up when he wants a fight. It's the bit of him that's Suyin rearing its ugly head: stubborn, hypocritical, self-obsessed. Turning him against her when she'd been the one to set him free. It wasn't as though he'd had the backbone to leave on his own.

Irritation turns to anger and sudden burst of adrenaline rushes through her. "This is nothing like leading an engineering project," Kuvira shouts, "Nothing! Negotiating terms, military strategy, distributing resources, sending our people into battle to die!" She throws back her blanket and climbs out of bed. It feels ridiculous to keep sitting in it anyway, pretending like it's a perfectly normal night. And she appreciates the height and authority standing gives her, especially when Baatar's being an irrational idiot.

"Can you do that? Can you, Baatar?" She pushes on, hands unconsciously curling into fists. "Can you fight next to our people, can you die next to our people?"

"You know damn well I can fight!" Baatar snarls, and now he's on his feet too, his discarded diagram crunching under his feet. "But if I'm not good enough for you, then who?" He throws his hands up in the air. "Bolin? I know you've been looking to promote him."

Kuvira snorts. Any satisfaction at his concession is marred by the deliberately ridiculous suggestion. Bolin's a good kid, but no leadership material. And he doesn't deserve to be dragged into this argument. She's not going to play Baatar's stupid game. "No, he's too young, too naive. I'm thinking someone along the lines of Sergeant Liu."

"Sergeant Liu." Baatar's eyes bug. "That ancient—"

So maybe she is being a little petty, but she does have the prerogative. And Liu, for all his old-fashioned beliefs and habits, is an effective leader. "This is not the time to let your ridiculous grudge get in the way, Baatar."

"My what?" An angry flush has started crawling up his neck. He crosses his arms. "My ridiculous grudge?"

"Yes." She stabs a finger at him. "Sergeant Liu has proven to be an excellent tactician, he is brave, charismatic and the troops love him."

However much he resembles his father, the disdainful look that crosses Baatar's face is entirely Beifong. "His reticence to use technology to our advantage will not help our cause." He sweeps his hand at the various diagrams and plans that litter his side of the bed and the floor. "Your goal is to modernise the Earth Empire as we unite all the states. How will putting a technophobe at the head of the army help with that cause?"

"Fine, do you have any suggestions?" Kuvira starts pacing. Anger and adrenaline demand that she move, even if the narrow strip of space between the foot of the bed and the wall of their cabin is barely a few paces long.

"Captain Aarif—"

"He's half Water Tribe. The people would never accept him as their leader." This kingdom, this empire, is still too new. Captain Aarif is a good man and a loyal soldier, but the people need familiarity. The stability of earth.

"What about Sergeant Li?"

"After today?" When bandits had somehow broken past his guard and blown up a refinery, killing two of her troops, as well as three civilians, and wounding eight others including herself. Her mouth tastes of ash again and her anger is momentarily clouded by the scent-memory of burnt flesh. "No way." The only thing she can see in Sergeant Li's future after an inquiry is a discharge, if not a stint at one of the reeducation camps. He's lucky she hadn't dropped him on the tracks.

"Arrgh," Baatar groans at the ceiling as her runs his hands through his hair. Without pomade to slick it back, it spreads out limply over the top of his head like a dead spider-rat, a thoroughly unattractive look. "Fine! Varrick!"

"Dammit Baatar!" snaps Kuvira, and slams her fist into the side of the cabin. It leaves a sizeable dent that she'll have to fix later. She's tired of this stupid argument, and maybe it's her fault for bringing it up, for letting it devolve into this petty disagreement. "Take this seriously!"

"I am taking this seriously!" he roars. For just a second, Kuvira's frightened by his vehemence. He's never taken this tone of voice with her before, and after the day she's had, it puts her on edge. It takes her several moments to realize she has unconsciously slipped into a defensive position, the disassembled components of her pen and Baatar's hovering around her hands like metal insects.

"Shit," Baatar mutters. His eyes flick back and forth between her face, the pieces of metal and the door. She wonders if he thinks she's going to use them against him, if he's considering making a break for it. For a brief second, she does have the tempting idea of clapping a piece of metal over his mouth and shutting him up for the night. The thought immediately fills her with shame and disgust, and she releases her control over the metal pieces. They fall to the floor with little pings.

"I'm sorry," she says, the exact moment the same words blurt from his mouth. "I—"

She pauses and gestures at him. "Go ahead."

Baatar shakes his head. "You first."

"Of for the love of—" She rolls her eyes in irritation. "Say what you have to say."

"Fine!" he snaps. Then his anger seems to evaporate entirely. Like a brief drizzle in the Si Wong desert, like it's never been. "Just don't die," he says. His voice cracks on the last word and he slides his hand under his glasses to cover his eyes. She hopes he's not crying, hopes that he just can't stand to look at her. "Don't die. We need you. I need you."

The feeling those words invoke in Kuvira is a familiar one. It's that moment of freefall in a dance, when she fails to grab onto the rope, and her only option is to land as well as she can on the firm padding below. Helpless. Su swinging past gracefully above her, a rueful smile on her face.

She pushes away the feeling. It's already bad enough that Baatar's falling to pieces; her leaking emotions all over the place isn't going to make anything any better. "Please tell me you don't actually mean that," she says flatly.

Baatar inhales deeply and removes his hand. He's thankfully dry-eyed, though he looks as pathetic as a kicked fire ferret. "I don't expect any promises," he says. "I know we don't have the luxury. But I just want you to know that I'm scared—"

"And you think I'm not?" she interrupts him angrily. His sudden shift towards sadness is frustrating when a part of her still wants to rage. Besides, his moping is ridiculous considering she'd been the one almost killed today. "Screw you, Baatar. Do you think you're the only one who's scared? I've almost died many times over the past year, some you don't even know about!"

"I—"

She cuts him off. "No. You listen to me! You have no right to demand this of me. This thing that we're doing, uniting the Earth Kingdom, helping our people, building a stable, sustainable empire—it demands sacrifice. From all of us. And you know I would never ask anything of my people that I'm not willing to do myself."

"Yes, yes, I know," Baatar says heatedly. "You'd throw yourself on the tracks if it served the empire. Which it wouldn't. You dying serves no one. And as you've so astutely pointed out," his tone turns dry, "I'm hardly leadership material. So what good will it do anyone if you're dead?"

Kuvira closes her eyes. They're arguing in circles. Why had she brought this up again? The chain-of-command. Their lack of it. And now they're back to her dying because it seems she hasn't been reminded of her mortality enough today.

What little is left of her anger drains out of her, leaving her tired and shivery. Breathing too deeply has started to hurt again, which means the painkillers are wearing off. She sits down heavily at the edge of her bed and puts her head in hands, refusing to look up even when Baatar nears and sits down next to her. She doesn't want to open her eyes and see the look on his face.

She feels his hand on her leg. His thumb rubs small concentric circles that dip into her inner thigh. "I love you," he says, and his other hand pushes the hair away from her face so that he can press his warm, dry lips to the skin beneath her ear. Day-old stubble brushes her hand as he turns away. Then he gets up and walks out of the room.

Inhaling deeply, Kuvira falls back against the mattress. It makes her ribs twinge, but the pain's a good distraction against the tears that prickle the corners of her eyes. It's ridiculous. Sometimes it feels like she's the only one of the two of them who can see sense. For all Baatar's scientific reason, beyond the realm of mathematics and physics, he's as over-emotional and irrational as everyone else.

Kuvira taps her heel against the floor. Lightly, just enough and just in time to feel a door slide shut. She pinpoints the reverberations to Baatar's old cabin—looks like he's decided not to sleep here tonight. Now that they've made their relationship official and there's no more need for sneaking around, he uses it more as office and a workshop, but it still has a bunk and all the amenities. That's where she goes looking for him sometimes, when he doesn't show up to bed.

Seeing that she's sleeping alone tonight, she might as well make full use of having the bed all to herself. Yet Kuvira finds herself rooted in place. It's the adrenaline crash, she thinks, on top of the crazy day she's had. Exhaustion weighs down her limbs. Turning off the light, even though it would only require moving the metal components in the switch, feels like too much work, so she keeps her arms draped over her face. Her feet still hang off the bed. Despite the chill of the floor radiating through her bare feet, the faint hum of the engine is soothing.

She dozes off then, or something like it. Thoughts keep churning in her head, ideas, strategies, but they feel like they're being formulated by someone else, like she's half-listening to a lecture. Varrick disturbingly features in a number of them, always trailed by an efficient, stone-faced Zhu Li. Baatar is there too, floating in and out of these scenarios. Sometimes Suyin appears, looking on with disappointment.

Kuvira's partway through a treaty with Raiko and Suyin—who in a horrifying twist has stolen the Avatar's body and put her own head on it—when the bed shifts beneath her. She sits up, instantly alert, and narrowly avoids smashing her head into—

"Baatar!"

"Hey," he says quietly. It's hard to see him in the dark; he must have turned off the lights coming in. The stabbing pain in her chest from her sudden movement drags her further into wakefulness and she squints up at him.

"I thought you went back to your own cabin," she mumbles.

"I did," Baatar says, and despite the dark she catches a hint of his rueful smile. "But I missed you."

Kuvira groans. "You know it's annoying when you're mushy and sentimental."

"That's why I do it," Baatar says, and she lets him push her hair away from her face and kiss her.

Their reconciliation is a relief, and the intimacy is comforting. She hates that she has become so needy for his affection of late, but she puts it down to the stresses of her position. If she wasn't feeling half dead with exhaustion, she'd try to push the kiss into something more, something that would help her feel human again. Baatar must notice, because he pulls back and cups her face with his hands, brushing his thumbs across her cheeks. "You should sleep."

"Was sleeping," she grumbles, turning so that she can climb properly into bed. "You woke me."

"You were muttering in your sleep," he says, moving over to his side of the bed. She hears the shuffle of papers as he puts away his diagrams and drawings. "Nightmare?"

Kuvira tries to remember the dream and fails. "I guess," she says. She lies back, and unexpectedly finds herself subject to Baatar in full nursemaid mode. Plumping her pillows, giving her his second one for her ribs and offering her a glass of water he seems to have pulled out of nowhere.

"Stop it," she finally groans as he tries to tuck her blanket in around her. "I'm not a child, just get in."

There's a hint of a smug smile on Baatar's face as he slides in next to her, and she smacks him on his arm for it.

"What was that for?" he whines.

"Being a stubborn ox-ass." She wriggles over to him, using the extra pillow to prop up her back. Conveniently, her injury has corresponded to their respective sides of the bed, which means she can rest her head on his shoulder, though it requires some shifting on his part.

Baatar lets himself be maneuvered, though he gasps and squirms when she slides her feet between his calves. "Your feet are cold."

"Then warm them up."

He snorts, and turns so that he can press a kiss to her cheek. He misses.

"That was my eye." She leans over slightly so that she can kiss him back and scores the corner of his mouth.

"You know I can't see anything without my glasses."

"I know," she murmurs, sliding her hand down the side of his face. "You have no idea how it drives me crazy, it's such an easy way to incapacitate you."

Baatar lets out a gusty sigh. "Well, good thing then that I'm an engineer, and not a soldier."

"Death doesn't discriminate," Kuvira says quietly. She slides a hand under his shirt, tracing a raised scar in his side. There's a matching one in his back, where the rebar had gone through and through. Several inches of steel; the closest she's ever come to ending her campaign. Baatar doesn't know. It's not something she'll ever allow to happen again.

"Yeah," says Baatar. "I've...I've made a list. Of people." He drapes his arm over her waist and she feels his warm, work-roughed hand splay against the small of her back. "We can go over it in the morning. Once you've rested."

She presses a kiss to his shoulder. "Thank you."

"And Kuvira?" He pulls her a little closer, but gently enough as to not hurt her ribs.

"Mmmm."

"I just want you to know…" He sighs again, sending her hair fluttering across her face. "I don't ever want to lose you. I'm not asking for any promises. But I just want you to know that."

The dark is a relief, hiding the tears that make it past her closed eyes. "I love you too," she says, glad her voice doesn't break on the word. "To the ends of the empire, or something sappy like that. And I don't know what I'd do without you. That work for you?"

Baatar's low chuckle reverberates through them both. He's so warm. "Hmmm," he says, as she starts to drift off, "as long as I come second, that'll do."