She heard the tunnel being caved in behind them before she actually saw them, which meant she had time to rearrange herself into a more nonchalant pose before they could see the tension that had been vibrating throughout every muscle of her body for the past three hours. For all their talk of her remaining free for another attempt if something went wrong, if the White Lotus had managed to take Ghazan as well, they both knew she wouldn't have a chance of getting them out once the White Lotus was on alert as to their survival.

If the White Lotus hadn't seen them coming, no matter the numbers of metal and firebenders, there was no way they could hope to capture a lavabender in the bowels of a volcano, active or not. But if they had- if they were prepared, and managed to catch Ghazan unawares- well.

The idea of teaching herself bloodbending had never been terribly attractive- it was just a bit too creepy for her tastes. She had admittedly thought about it more than once in prison, but the guards had been careful to remain far out of her reach and only feed her during the day. No animals around, either, so she'd had no way of determining if she even possessed the basic capability.

That wasn't the case anymore. If she was the only one left, the idea of giving herself a crash course, waiting for a full moon, and then killing as many of the White Lotus bastards as possible before they managed to take her out sounded almost as appealing as it had during her darkest moments in her cell.

Fortunately she didn't have much time to go down that particularly morbid line of thought before it proved unnecessarily speculative, as it was then she caught sight of Ghazan—looking tired and grubby, but unharmed—walking towards her from the collapsed tunnel entrance, towing Zaheer in his wake.

Zaheer- did not look as unharmed as Ghazan. But he was walking, and based on the quiet sounds of talking he was cognizant, so it would have to do for now.

"Come on," she snapped, pushing open the right-side doors of the Satomobile at their approach. "Ghazan, throw Zaheer in the back and get in. The faster we're away from this place, the better."

"It's good to see you too, Ming-Hua." The rough timbre of Zaheer's voice made it painfully obvious he had not yet re-accustomed himself to talking, but there was a smile quirking his lips, and all of them remembered another, eerily similar volcanic prison, less than a year ago in a situation so very like this one.

Involuntarily, Ming-Hua found herself smiling back, before she shook herself and turned the ignition on the Satomobile. "Yeah, yeah. Just hurry it up."

Ghazan obliged, though he more guided than threw Zaheer into the back before moving to sit beside her in the front. "You remember the way to the lake?"

She put the Satomobile in gear and pressed on the gas pedal, guiding them carefully across the uneven ground before they made their way out of the woods, then turning right onto a long-neglected side road. "It's not hard to remember 'north.'" Her nose wrinkled at the smell wafting from the backseat. "Good thing we already built making him look less like an escaped felon into our schedule. They didn't give your prison a shower, Zaheer?" Not that she'd expected them to. Ideas like 'humane treatment of prisoners' seemed beyond the White Lotus.

"Unfortunately, no."

"Bastards."

The lake was only a half an hour drive away, but everyone was on edge enough that the sight of it—deserted and isolated from prying eyes—was enough to cause the tension in the Satomobile to noticeably ratchet down several notches. She stopped the Satomobile a few dozen feet from the lakeside before turning off the ignition, grabbing the bag of toiletries she'd stored in the foot well, and stepping out. "Ghazan, get the clothes and the hair dye. I'll see to Zaheer."

Zaheer had already gotten out of the car on his own by the time she made her way around to the right side of the Satomobile, but she still guided his hand to the sleeve of her robe and wrapped his fingers around the cloth before starting towards the lake. He still had his eyes clenched shut more often than not, and when they were open, they had a clouded look to them that worried her. The worry proved well-founded when Zaheer, unseeing of the terrain change, slipped on the wet rocks at the water's edge, forcing her to steady him with her bending. "Easy." He exhaled slowly in an obvious effort to control a flare of frustration before nodding.

They made their way into waist-deep water without further incident, which was where things necessarily became a little awkward. "Take off your clothes."

That caused Zaheer more than a moment's pause, but as a credit to his faith for her, he did so without question, though not without a wry smile in her direction. When he was done, she dropped the wet rags that were all that remained of his prison garb into the deepest part of the lake and started looking him over critically.

He stood there, unselfconscious of his nakedness even when wet and filthy, but that was just quintessential Zaheer. The fact that she could count his ribs wasn't great, but at least that way she could tell at a glance that none of them were broken. His skin had a pallor to it she didn't like, but she couldn't expect much else about half a year away from the sun. The scars encircling his wrists and ankles and cutting across the bridge of his nose where the blindfold had most heavily borne down made her grind her teeth, but not even a master healer could have done anything with injuries that old. She absently healed all the minor scrapes and bruises that dotted his frame as she circled him before concluding that the worst of it was definitely his eyes.

"Zaheer." He looked at her attentively, though his slight start when she pressed of a bar of soap into his hand made her painfully aware that he still couldn't really see what was going on. "Start washing up. I'm going to try fixing your eyes. They're taking longer to adjust than I'd like."

He obliged, starting by scrubbing the bar of soap through his hair, though he did say, "Ghazan mentioned something about new skills, but I will admit I'm impressed. Healing is supposed to be one of the most precise of the bending arts."

"You can be impressed if it works." It was like she'd thought; the energy paths to his eyes were really messed up, horribly atrophied and partially shredded. But they had not given way entirely, so there was still something for her to work with. "Brace yourself, and try not to blink. This might suck."

Even when she bended the lake water through the veins of his eyes to get at the nerves that had been damaged, Zaheer didn't make a sound, though from the purposeful evening out of his breathing she could tell that at the very least it felt strange and uncomfortable. She couldn't split her concentration enough to offer even the barest words of comfort; the effort required from realigning what had to be the most delicate energy paths in the entire human body was enough by itself to start a headache pulsing between her temples.

Needless to say, the next five minutes weren't great for either of them, but even through the glow of her healing she could see the cloudiness slowly fade from Zaheer's vision. By the time she was done, his former sharpness had returned to his gaze, and he was looking upon her with obvious fondness.

She let the water drop back into the lake. "Alright, now you can be impressed."

"That was amazing. Thank you, Ming-Hua."

It had always been rather difficult to face Zaheer at his most sincere, so she glanced away, knowing she was failing to completely suppress a blush. "You can thank me by cleaning up quick so we can get out of here."

He obliged, so it was only a few more minutes before they found themselves back at the edge of the lake, Zaheer sitting cross-legged and still naked to avoid getting dye and strands of hair on his new clothes while Ghazan cut away at the tangle on his head with a pair of scissors. They'd decided previous to the rescue attempt that Zaheer was best disguised with a closely cut beard and left with a few inches of hair to hide the scars on his scalp, dyed black in order to both increase his resemblance to Ghazan and decrease his resemblance to his soon-to-be-made wanted posters. Zaheer put up no protest to this plan as they discussed it over his head, though he might not have heard them at all, his thoughts obviously elsewhere.

The end result of their efforts was kind of uncanny, if only because Ghazan had—seemingly subconsciously, based on the perturbed look he shot Zaheer when he was done—given Zaheer a trim that closely mimicked how he had worn his hair and beard before their ill-fated attempt to kidnap the Avatar more than thirteen years before. It did make Zaheer look absolutely nothing like he had bald, which was what they had been going for, so Ming-Hua let it go without comment, even if the cut combined with the dye—the exact shade of jet black Zaheer's hair had been before his first stint in prison—gave her a severe case of déjà vu every time she saw him out of the corner of her eye.

If only it were that easy, to go back in time to before everything had gone so horribly wrong.

After the dye had set—a process speeded up with a judicious application of waterbending—they tossed the cut hair into the lake, Zaheer pulled on the robe they had brought him, and they jumped back in the car, this time Ghazan sliding into the driver's seat since they wanted to avoid attracting attention if they ran across anyone on their way out of the state. That left her out, and neither of them brought up the possibility of putting Zaheer behind the wheel; he was still too quiet to seem entirely all there, much less fit to operate heavy machinery.

This proved a wise decision. About ten minutes after they had gotten back in the car, Ming-Hua turned her head to address a comment to Zaheer, only to find him laid out across the length of the backseat, already out so cold that he had started to drool.

She turned back to the front with smirk that only with valiant effort didn't turn into a soft smile. She had known Zaheer for well over twenty years (even if they had spent over half of them in different prisons), but most of the time he was so self-contained it made every display of trust precious; no matter how much she derided herself as a sop, it never failed to touch her. "He is not the most graceful sleeper."

Ghazan didn't take his eyes from the road. "Can't blame him. I'm not sure he's had a good night's sleep since he was captured."

"Why do you say that?"

"He said he didn't dream."

With anyone else, that would have been a sign of a deep, restful sleep. But Zaheer had always dreamed. It was through his dreams that he had learned to project himself into the Spirit World. It was in his dreams, nearly as much as in his meditation, that he found peace. To have been without for six months…

"Do you think they messed with his connection to the Spirit World?"

Ghazan shook his head. "The prison plans had a note about the volcano being a spiritual void. The White Lotus doesn't know why, but it only exists on our side." His hands tightened on the wheel. "Which means he couldn't project, either."

Ming-Hua didn't reply. There was nothing she could say to that.

Their own prisons had been terrible, but at least the guards had been willing to talk to them. Zaheer had been kept more isolated in his prison in the mountains, the White Lotus afraid of his persuading one of the guards to let him escape, but there at least he had been able to project himself into the Spirit World and escape his earthly prison for a time.

To be stuck entirely within his own head, completely alone in the dark, thinking no one was coming for him. For months. Even with his nearly inhuman levels of self-discipline, Ming-Hua was honestly surprised that Zaheer was still sane.

It was likely that he wasn't, at least not entirely. No one could be, after that. The only question was whether Zaheer would ever let them notice. He had always had the best poker face of the four of them.

The four of them. By the spirits. She couldn't even imagine how Zaheer was dealing with the loss of P'Li. He had held it together well after they had captured the Avatar, but even she could tell that he had just shunted his emotions off to the side as something to deal with later.

Zaheer and P'Li hadn't been involved when she met them, though that had changed within just a couple of years (mostly at the instigation of P'Li). As far as she knew, they had never had anyone else, and all of them had assumed there never would be, with how deeply the two of them had been wrapped up in each other. But now P'Li—the kindest of them beneath her caustic wit, the little sister Ming-Hua had never known she wanted, who had fixed up Ming-Hua's hair whenever they had a night free and cooked them all curry so hot that it made even Zaheer cry—was dead.

One day that fact would stop hurting, but even as she thought it, Ming-Hua knew that to be a lie.

-*O*-

They made it out of Ho without incident, driving through the day and night with Zaheer sleeping the entire way. Only when they stopped at an inn the evening of the day after his rescue did Zaheer awaken for more than the few minutes it took to relieve himself or consume the box of vegetarian sweet buns Ghazan had bought for him to eat.

By the time they arrived at the inn, she hadn't slept more than six hours in the past forty, and those had been caught slumped against the door of the Satomobile while Ghazan drove. Ghazan hadn't slept at all and had done the bulk of the work for the rescue besides, so it wasn't much of a surprise that when he stepped out of the Satomobile, his legs almost immediately failed him. He would have fallen if Zaheer hadn't moved quickly to catch him, but even through his exhaustion, he managed to shoot her and Zaheer a grin. "Great job, team. Let's promise to never have to do this again."

Ming-Hua smiled back. "Sounds good to me." At Ghazan's side, Zaheer was more somber, his focus again having momentarily drifted elsewhere even as he kept his grip on the underside of Ghazan's arms. Later Ming-Hua would have time to worry about that, but that was later.

Ghazan found his footing after a minute or two, which was good because Ming-Hua didn't think that walking into the inn with Ghazan's arm thrown over Zaheer's shoulders like a drunk would leave the right kind of impression if they wanted to get by unnoticed.

Ming-Hua and Ghazan had reserved connecting rooms on their way past the inn towards Zaheer's prison, telling the innkeeper that they were heading to pick up Ghazan's—or rather, Gang's—brother, Zihao from a small shrine up in the mountains where he was paying his respects and would be back in four days. That meant their rooms were already set up and they could walk in past the front desk without more than nod at the innkeeper, which he seemed to appreciate based on how preoccupied he looked with his radio. They all heard the name 'Zaheer' clearly from the radio's speakers even as they slid the hallway doors closed behind them, but waited to speak until they had all gathered in Ming-Hua and Ghazan's room, Zaheer seated on a chair while Ming-Hua made herself comfortable perched on top of the dresser. Ghazan somehow found the energy to pace, every step jittery with fatigue. "I told you we should have bought a Satomobile with a radio. Or at least brought our radio instead of leaving it at the house."

Ming-Hua shrugged. "Whatever they're saying, it wouldn't change our plans."

"We could've stayed in the Satomobile instead of going to an inn. I feel exposed here. Why are all inns made of wood? Who thought that was a good idea?"

"Non-benders. Calm down, we've talked about this. Fugitives don't dress well and stay in nice inns. The more respectable our behavior, the less likely we are to be noticed."

"I overheard enough from the radio to know that your involvement isn't suspected," Zaheer said. "It is as the Guru Laghima said-" He cut himself abruptly, and because she and Ghazan were already looking at him, they both saw the stricken widening of his eyes before he quickly shuttered down his expression, his gaze becoming distant and withdrawn.

No one said anything for a long moment. It was with slow deliberation that Ming-Hua slid off the dresser and onto her feet, feeling oddly like she was approaching an injured polar bear dog as she made her way to Zaheer's side. Zaheer wasn't dangerous to them, she reminded herself. If he lashed out, it wouldn't be at them.

She was still careful not to touch him when she said, "Zaheer-" but didn't get any further than that before he pushed himself to his feet and walked towards the door that connected their rooms.

"I'll see the two of you in the morning." He hesitated for only a moment at the threshold, glancing over his shoulder at them while still managing to avoid meeting any of their eyes. "Goodnight." He slid the door shut behind him before Ming-Hua could think of a reply.

Ming-Hua turned her gaze to Ghazan. He was staring at the closed door, looking nearly as disturbed as Zaheer had in that one, awful moment.

"Ghazan. You alright?"

He shook his head before turning to look at her. "He isn't okay, is he."

Ming-Hua walked over to Ghazan and leaned her head against his shoulder. "Don't worry. He will be." That, at least, she had a chance of making true.

-*O*-

She and Ghazan agreed to let the matter slide unless Zaheer brought it up himself, and so they didn't say anything when he joined him for breakfast, acting as if nothing had happened.

Ghazan had explained to the innkeeper how far they had to travel the next day along with an explanation of how late they'd be arriving and a gold coin in thanks for how accommodating he'd been, so there were a few blankets and bags of food waiting for them outside their rooms when they left at dawn the next morning.

She spent the two weeks it took to get them to Paibao Village—sleeping at inns when they were available, setting up camp off the side of the road when they weren't—filling Zaheer in on their new backstories, even if she couldn't quite bring herself to bring up the whole dead wife thing. He had not said P'Li's name since his rescue, not even once.

For his part, Zaheer seemed amused at the idea of being Ghazan's brother, and as for her and Ghazan being husband and wife, well. "I am just sorry I missed the ceremony. I do not seem like a very supportive brother."

Ming-Hua rolled her eyes. "We're not actually married."

"We are having sex now, though," Ghazan added, grinning at them in the back from the driver's seat.

If he hadn't been the one driving, she would have smacked him, but Ming-Hua instead limited herself to rolling her eyes again.

Zaheer did not look terribly surprised, which considering she and Ghazan had shared a bed at every inn they had stopped at thus far was about to be expected. He wasn't blind. Well, anymore. "Then congratulations are still in order. An earthbender can move mountains, but only love can move the soul, and thus may be the greatest force in the universe." He sounded like he was quoting, but sometimes that was just the way Zaheer spoke.

She could only be glad that when he starting talking like that, long association had taught her that he didn't actually expect anything profound in return. "We'll still see if you feel like that after living with me and Ghazan for a few months." At Zaheer's blank look, she clarified, "The house is mostly slate and granite, and it turns out Ghazan has some trouble controlling his bending when-"

"Ming-Hua, he doesn't need to know that."

"He kind of does," she retorted, "Considering his room is just down the hall. Your bed frame's wood," she told Zaheer, whose expression had stoned over in the way it did when he didn't know whether to look horrified or laugh and was trying to stop himself from doing either, "So it shouldn't actually be a problem. I just don't want you to worry if you hear the house rumbling at night, because," this she addressed at Ghazan, "It would be way more embarrassing for him to run into our room at three in the morning expecting to see us getting attacked then telling him now."

"… good point."

Zaheer, always the most tactful of them, did his best to redirect the conversation back to where it started. "Is such a great amount of detail for our fabricated histories really necessary? If Ghazan and I were former conscripts of Ba Sing Se's army, we wouldn't want anyone to know."

At least the same question from Ghazan had given her time to come up with a reason for the intricacy of the backstories she had devised for them (that didn't come down to 'I had weeks to think about this and I hate plot holes'). "Paibao is pretty big, but it doesn't get a lot of traffic from outsiders. People are going to be curious about us, and we want our backstories to be consistent with each other and fit us well enough that once someone manages to scratch off the top layer, they won't go digging further. There is no avoiding attracting some attention, but if there is something juicy but irrelevant for them to find out, hopefully once it comes out it won't take long for people to lose interest."

"Fair enough."

-*O*-

"So there actually is a farm."

They were still getting their stuff inside the house when Zaheer stopped on the porch with two bags over one shoulder and looked over the fields, his face faintly bemused.

Ming-Hua dropped the satchel holding her spare clothes heavily inside the door before moving to join him. "Well, yeah. What were you expecting?"

"I thought it was a metaphor. I didn't know either of you knew how to farm."

"We don't, but I figure a waterbender and an earthbender can't do too badly. Do you?"

"I read a book once." At her skeptical look, Zaheer relented. "Most of it was poetry. It was written by a Fire Sage, at any rate; I think Fire Nation crops are accustomed to a different kind of soil."

"We've got about nine months to figure it out," Ming-Hua said. "We've already missed the planting season this year."

"Do you actually expect us to be here that long?"

She couldn't quite read the tone of Zaheer's voice. "Do you have somewhere else you want to go?"

"No. But I feel like I should. The Avatar yet lives."

"I think we've proven pretty definitively that it's impossible to kill the Avatar in the Avatar State. Just killing Korra as she is won't do us any good. And if we try anything else big, we'll get the full force of the White Lotus down on us."

Zaheer shook his head stubbornly. "We can't just stay hidden away forever. We have a responsibility."

If she'd been born with (normal) arms, this would have been the point she put a hand on Zaheer's shoulder. She did her best to convey the same sentiment by moving further into his line of sight and trying to look sympathetic but resolute (though she was pretty sure she did better with the latter than the former). "I still believe in Xai Bau's mission as much as you do, but like it or not, we failed. We can't go back to the Red Lotus, and without their support, we don't have the resources to operate at a meaningful level that the White Lotus won't notice. If any petty tyrants crop up in the area, we'll take them out, but I think we deserve a chance to try living by Xai Bau's teachings instead of spending the rest of our lives trying to get everyone else to. I want my freedom, with you and Ghazan free alongside me. No more prisons…"

"No more running," Zaheer said, completing the quote. As well he should. It was him she was quoting. He looked slightly dazed. And… taller than he should have been.

Ming-Hua glanced down at his feet. Yep, definitely floating.

"You know Ghazan and I won't keep you here against your will. We didn't help you escape prison again just to hold you back. If you want to go, you can."

"But," Ghazan interrupted from beneath them at the foot of the stairs where he had apparently been sitting quietly, startling Ming-Hua, "That doesn't mean we don't want you to come back."

At that, Zaheer shuddered, his face again gaining that stricken cast that had so worried them before. He alighted soundlessly on the porch without ever having seemed to notice that he had left the ground. "I don't- I can't-" Then his face shut down—so cold and emotionless that Ming-Hua briefly wondered if she had imagined the way his eyes had looked just moments before—and he was again hovering in midair, the bags he'd been holding sliding silently off his shoulder to the balcony floor. "I'm going to go meditate. My apologies for leaving you to unpack." And then he was gone.

"Well," Ghazan said, levering himself to his feet and stretching with obviously affected indifference, "At least we know he won't be away long." When Ming-Hua stared at him, he elaborated, "He didn't take anything with him."

"Yeah," Ming-Hua sighed. "I'm just worried that was kind of the point."

-*O*-

Being back at their house—which had come with the property, albeit in enough disrepair it had taken Ghazan a few hours to get it back into shape—at least meant they had consistent access to a radio, which Ming-Hua made sure to switch on even before she and Ghazan finished putting their traveling clothes away and cleaning off the dust of the road. Word of Zaheer's escape had become old news by then, but seeing as the only certain information that had been released about it was that at least one metalbender had been involved, the newscasters were reduced to speculation about his current whereabouts and what he planned to do next. The White Lotus had apparently not seen fit to share the existence of the Red Lotus with the world, but they had let it be known that Zaheer could fly, so the actual substance of that speculation came down to "he could be anywhere, and he could be planning anything (but monarchs and despots might do well to hire a few more bodyguards)." The thought of him at a farm in the east of the Earth Kingdom wasn't even bandied about as a joke.

Zaheer was back by morning, which Ming-Hua found out when she walked into the kitchen after a sleepless night to find him taking congee off the stove. It smelled burnt, but only a little bit, so she took a bowl of it when he held it to her and nodded her thanks. "Find everything okay?" After all, it wasn't like he had let them give him a tour before he had run off.

He nodded, either purposefully ignoring or not noticing the implied jab. The circles under his eyes were impressive enough that it was possible he had gotten as little sleep as she had. "Yes, thank you. This house is… quite well-appointed."

Well, that was a loaded way of putting it. Ming-Hua took a bite of her congee before responding, pleased to notice there were chopped spring onions in it. And bamboo shoots. And garlic. And more than a little bit of white pepper.

It was, in fact, the exact way she liked her congee, minus the pork. Which made sense even if Zaheer wasn't vegetarian, seeing as they'd been gone several weeks and hadn't bought any meat before they left.

She just wished she could tell if it was just more thanks for breaking him out or an apology for his behavior the previous day.

He was still staring at her expectantly, so she replied, as nonchalantly as she could, "Yeah. I took some gold from the Earth Queen's treasury before we left Ba Sing Se. Things are cheap outside the big cities, so it's taken us pretty far."

She sort of expected censure, so the relief on his face was a bit of a surprise. "… oh. Good."

"You thought it was something worse?"

His silence was answer enough.

Well, that was insulting. "Oh, come on, Zaheer. Please tell me you have enough respect for us that you didn't think Ghazan and I were gallivanting all over the Earth Kingdom trying to find you with money robbed from travelers we came across on the road."

"... Desperation causes people to do many things they wouldn't otherwise do. I wouldn't have held it against you."

"Except that you totally would. You were doing it just a minute ago! You thought you were making congee with stolen vegetables and rice! I bet you weren't even planning to eat it!"

"By the ancestors," came Ghazan's voice from the doorway, "it's too early in the morning for you two to be arguing about utilitarianism."

Which meant, of course, that he was immediately dragged into the conversation; it was only when breakfast was over and Ming-Hua was washing the dishes while watching Ghazan give Zaheer a tour of their new fields through the window that she realized she had never gotten a chance to ask Zaheer what exactly had happened the night before.

-*O*-

There never really was a chance. Zaheer thanked them gravely for how they had set up his room, the mattress the softest one they could find to hopefully offset the memory of the metal bench he had been forced to sleep on in prison, all four walls covered with bookshelves and stuffed with bending scrolls alongside philosophy and poetry books they had come across in their travels, everything decorated in warm tones that reflected the sun in the early morning light. Ghazan had widened the window as much as he could without threatening the structural integrity of the house, and they'd even found a wind chime to hang from its frame. Of course Zaheer immediately moved the mattress to the floor—she would never understand asceticism—and even then spent most of his nights sleeping outside, if the weather was fine. More than once, Ming-Hua had wandered onto their porch steps for some cold night air after overheating from lying next to Ghazan (there was a reason they still maintained separate bedrooms; being too hot always gave her bad dreams these days), only to turn around after a few minutes to see Zaheer dozing on their roof.

That was actually one of the scenarios Ming-Hua preferred, because then at least she knew where he was. In general, Zaheer wasn't around a lot, disappearing off into the mountains to meditate, or train, or whatever he did when he wanted to get away from them. Even when he was technically present, there was often a distant look in his eyes with his thoughts obviously a million miles away, or maybe on a different plane of existence altogether; more than once she had called him for dinner, only to realize what had looked like meditation was him projecting into the Spirit World. Even she knew that was a bad idea without someone set to guard him, but either Zaheer had gotten in the habit of doing without in prison (likely), or he didn't care as much as he should have about the risks of leaving his body unattended (which was the more worrying possibility). Whichever it was (either, or both, or neither), he never asked her or Ghazan to watch over him, no matter how often they told him they were willing to do so. After a while, Ming-Hua stopped bothering to remind him; she knew from experience it was impossible to help someone who didn't want to be helped. Ghazan persisted, but maybe it was for the best he hadn't learned that lesson yet. Maybe they'd get lucky; maybe she was wrong.

She and Ghazan kept themselves occupied without Zaheer, trying to give him the space he so obviously craved. They went into Paibao Village—less than an hour away by foot—both together and separately, to buy food and get advice on farming. Ghazan made a few casual friends who he started meeting up with once a week at the village's biggest tavern to play Pai Sho, while she spent more than a few mornings at the local teahouse listening to gossip while the proprietor let her run through his library of tea, clearly fascinated by how she waterbended it into her mouth.

They were obvious objects of curiosity, but it all seemed benign enough. Ghazan wore clothes with long sleeves and a high neck to hide his tattoos in addition to keeping his face clean shaven and his hair short, which made his appearance more or less indistinguishable from every other Earth Kingdom citizen based on description alone. Her arms (or rather, the lack thereof) were harder to hide, but she also kept her sleeves long so only the locals she encountered regularly had any real occasion to notice, and they were all too polite to comment.

There were a smattering of questions about 'Gang's brother, Zihao,' who never seemed to come into town, but it wasn't difficult to get those conversations over with quickly. She just had to look sad—it wasn't hard when thinking about it actually made her so—and speak haltingly about his recent tragedy and his resulting grief. That tended to get murmurs of condolences, guilty looks, and no more questions, which suited her just perfectly. It was a convenient cover story, but it was also a true one and none of their goddamned business.

The townspeople weren't the problem. Neither was the money, which based on her current estimates would last them a few years even if they never did figure out the whole farming thing. She didn't even get sick of Ghazan, who had the sense to keep things low-key and the romantic gestures to a minimum, even if she did catch him staring at her soppily more than once when he thought she wasn't looking.

No, things were actually pretty great, on the surface. Which really just left Zaheer.

She couldn't even really call him a problem. The problem was that she couldn't really call him anything. He… existed. He ate. He slept. He meditated. He read. He did his part of the cleaning and the food preparation. But there was a void. He was in and out of the house often enough, but sometimes it felt like they hadn't managed to rescue Zaheer at all. That some part of him had been left buried under the volcano. Or, as posited by Ghazan one day, had died with P'Li. It had been months, and Zaheer still had yet to mention her name.

What happened on the anniversary of her death finally brought things to a head. Zaheer had been on one of his several-day jaunts into the mountains, so they hadn't really expected to see him that night when he walked in on them arguing over the spiciness of the curry.

"I'm telling you, I took a bite and can still feel the inside of my mouth. It isn't hot enough," said Ghazan.

"Yeah, well, if you haven't noticed, my eyes are watering just from smelling it. We're trying to honor her, not make ourselves sick."

"I told you, it wasn't nearly so bad if you dumped in some yoghurt when she wasn't looking-"

"What are you doing?"

Ming-Hua stiffened. Ghazan managed not to—or had sensed Zaheer landing outside and genuinely hadn't been surprised, the bastard—and just gave a nonchalant shrug. "Trying to remake P'Li's chili banana curry. We're having a difference of opinion over whether it's spicy enough." He held out a spoon in Zaheer's direction. "Thoughts?"

The way Zaheer stared at the spoon, it might as well have been a spider snake about to bite him. Except Zaheer wouldn't have panicked at the sight of a spider snake. "Why would you make this?" It was technically a question; questions just usually didn't come out so deeply cold that—had Zaheer been a waterbender—Ming-Hua wouldn't have been surprised to see frost emanating from his mouth.

She knew Ghazan noticed. She also knew Ghazan was as sick as the current state of affairs as she was. He did not lower the spoon. "P'Li died a year ago today. We're making it in her memory. Ming-Hua and I were planning on eating it, possibly destroying our stomach linings in the process, then getting uproariously drunk and telling stories about the most awesome things P'Li ever exploded. My personal favorite remains that one komodo rhino that charged us when we were trying to find a place to set up her eighteenth birthday picnic, since then we also got to have a barbeque for dinner." When Zaheer didn't move, Ghazan softened his tone. "You should join us. She would like that you remembered her."

"I-" For a moment, Zaheer looked torn, before the walls Ming-Hua had come to dread even more than the sight of his pain slammed down over the vulnerability in his eyes. "No. P'Li is beyond liking anything." He strode out of the room before either of them could stop him, but glancing at Ghazan, Ming-Hua knew that neither of them intended to let him get far.

-*O*-

He was already past the front porch and several feet into the air by the time they caught up with him.

Ming-Hua called out to him, "Zaheer!" But when he didn't even turn to glance at her, she gave up on talking and bended most of the water out of their well, tendriling it around Zaheer's ankles even as Ghazan ripped out the porch railings and threw them into the air above Zaheer's head.

Zaheer obviously hadn't been expecting an attack; he stared down at them for a long few seconds, confusion writ large on his face, which was long enough for her to freeze his feet in a block of ice and use it to slam him into the dirt. Not hard enough to do more than stun, but that still gave Ghazan enough time to bend the railings into makeshift shackles and secure Zaheer to the ground before he got his bearings.

It took approximately three seconds for Zaheer to realize that he wasn't going to be getting up anytime soon. It took less than thirty for Ming-Hua to realize that Zaheer had managed in less than half a minute to work himself up into a full-blown panic attack, already shaking hard enough that she noticed it even standing twenty feet away by only the light of the waxing moon. Shit.

"Drop the bending and just grapple him," she snapped at Ghazan, who nodded and quickly complied. She half-expected Zaheer to have been faking it and break Ghazan's nose as soon as one of his hands were free, but he didn't stop shaking, and it wasn't long before Ghazan sighed and his tight hold on Zaheer loosened, pulling Zaheer up from the dirt and into his arms.

The hug started one-sided but quickly became not as Zaheer grabbed onto Ghazan like he was drowning, still shaking when he buried his face into the crook of Ghazan's neck. Ming-Hua couldn't follow Ghazan's example, for obvious reasons, but she still allowed herself a loud sigh as well before walking over to sit down before Ghazan and leaning her back against Zaheer's, who by that point had stopped shaking but was still shuddering every time he took a breath.

The five minutes it took Zaheer's breathing to even out were not the longest of Ming-Hua's life, but they likely numbered among the most important.

Zaheer loosened his grip on Ghazan then, but he did not move away. He still managed to sound faintly accusatory when he said, "You promised me no more prisons."

"You promised us no more running," Ming-Hua snapped back, feeling oddly raw and in no mood to coddle him, but neither did she feel any inclination to stop using him as a backrest. "You broke your word first."

Then they didn't talk for a while, though Ghazan absently rubbed circles on Zaheer's back with one hand while the other reached over Zaheer and lay softly on Ming-Hua's shoulder.

It ended up being Zaheer who again broke the silence. This time his voice held no anger, though it sounded as raw as Ming-Hua felt. "I cannot think about her. She's been dead for a year, but even now the memory of her keeps me grounded. The pain of it is as fresh as the moment I watched her fall.

"It is no tradeoff for the sky."

"That sky you love so much has done nothing but take you away from us," Ming-Hua hissed, unable to contain her venom. "Do you think Ghazan and I didn't love her, that the memory of her doesn't hurt us? She was our sister. She was the only woman I've ever met who made me feel like I wasn't a crippled freak, the only one of us who laughed at even the stupidest of Ghazan's jokes. Don't be so selfish as to think you're the only one who has suffered.

"She's gone; we can't change that. But there is no way in hell we're going to lose you too. " She felt Ghazan tightening his grasp on both of them, a silent agreement.

At her back, she felt Zaheer still himself for a long moment, then slide out from Ghazan's grip and to his feet. Both she and Ghazan tensed, but he didn't go anywhere, just stood next to them and looked up at the moon for a time before exhaling sharply and reaching down to help her and Ghazan to their feet as well.

"Come on. Let's go back inside before P'Li's curry boils over."

-*O*-

A waterbending master, an earthbending master, and an airbending prodigy attempt to work a farm. What happens?

Well, if they have no prior agricultural experience and barely any idea of what they are doing, it turned out basically nothing. Not one of Ghazan's better punchlines.

"We are terrible farmers," Ming-Hua pronounced. It was early summer in the year 173 AG, and there was absolutely nothing growing. Admittedly they had decided that year to go with a test crop of cabbage and wheat that covered only three acres instead of the full thirty they owned, so they hadn't wasted that much money on seeds, but none of them were used to anything but near-effortless mastery of any skills they attempted to learn, and their lack of it here left all of them feeling grumpy.

Ghazan probably took it best, just giving a resigned shrug at the total lack of plant growth before them. "Well, fortunately I didn't quit that job tending bar at the tavern, and we still have some of the Earth Queen's gold. We're not going to starve."

"Not the point," snapped Zaheer, who somehow had managed to take it even worse than Ming-Hua. She had just realized that she hated farming; he had taken their failure as a personal affront. Neither she nor Ghazan had any idea why, though Ghazan had quipped that perhaps the farm had turned out to be a metaphor after all. "We have proven ourselves inadequate caretakers of this land. To let it just sit there unused is a waste."

He didn't mention the bandits. He didn't need to. They had done what they could to keep them away from Paibao, but that still left the roads leading up to the village unguarded, and these days hardly any shipments got through.

She knew he still felt guilty about that. For all his usual pragmatism, Zaheer had more than a few idealist blind spots, and for some reason he had thought that the death of the Earth Queen would lead to everyone minding their own business instead of just fucking over each other in a thousand petty ways, in comparison to the Earth Queen's two or three big ones. Not a net gain for the world, overall, but also not a big surprise. Not everyone thought the Air Nomads' way of life worth emulating, and the Red Lotus had not acted to deal with those most egregiously taking advantage of the chaos as originally planned. They either couldn't, because of the White Lotus, or simply didn't, because they no longer had to keep Zaheer pacified and didn't actually give a shit. Most of the Red Lotus had never even met Xai Bau, much less studied under the man as Zaheer had in the last years before the old man's death. A lot of them just wanted to see the world torn down; they didn't care what happened after.

Paibao was doing okay, or at least thanks to them had avoided getting raided, but Zaheer still wasn't wrong about their farm.

"We could just lend it out for cheap next year," she said. "There are actual farmers in the area who'd be glad for a chance to let a few of their own fields lay fallow for a season to help the soil recover."

That ended up being what they did the next spring, but no longer bothering with the farming meant they all suddenly had a lot more free time, and none of them dealt well with idleness.

The one side benefit to the bandits was that with the marked decrease in visitors, hardly anyone that they didn't already know ever came into Paibao, which meant Zaheer became a lot less paranoid about going into town. His wanted posters had long since been torn down in favor of criminals more recently on the public's mind and had never looked much like him anyway, so they had all agreed that for the most part, the time when any of them were likely to be recognized had passed. This led to all of them spending a lot more time in Paibao, and it did not take long before his constant presence at the public library and his talks with its librarian and Paibao's elders made most of the village aware that Zaheer was by far the most educated man any of them had ever met. The fact that he actually liked kids meant that when the old schoolteacher retired later that year, he soon found himself inundated with requests to take the job.

He at first refused, but when one of the cuter kid's mothers pointed out that there weren't a lot of options since no one from the cities dared to come out as far east as Paibao anymore, Ming-Hua could actually see the shift in Zaheer's expression as his guilt kicked in. "I see. Then I accept your most gracious offer, though I warn you I have no teaching experience. You will have to be patient with me."

It turned out that Zaheer was a natural teacher and the kids absolutely loved him. Of course.

Paibao's doctor died in the early winter. Upon hearing the news, Ming-Hua immediately regretted agreeing to Zaheer's request to heal the youngest Fu kid's broken arm when he had fallen off a tree two months before. "Just you wait. Mayor Huang is going to come by within the next day and beg me to take over for Sifu Lan. She didn't have any apprentices."

"That's what happens when you fall down some stairs and break your neck at forty-five," Ghazan agreed. "No one sees it coming. But you don't have to agree, you know."

What a lie that was. Mayor Huang's younger brother owned the teashop, and she'd never be able to drink there again without him bothering her if she refused. "You are so full of shit."

Her prediction proved correct, of course, though she made it clear that unless someone was actually dying, she would only be available for a few hours a day and only on weekdays; the times Zaheer was teaching, in fact, and covering most of Ghazan's shifts at the tavern. After all, they only had the one Satomobile, and walking back and forth between their house and the village was a nightmare in the winters for anyone but Ming-Hua. It was too close to the equator for much snow, but the torrential rains that froze over at night more than made up for it.

After that, things… kind of escalated.

"Why are we going to this wedding? Do we even know these people?"

"It's Master Carpenter Rong's youngest son marrying Little Shu's older sister," Zaheer said, straightening out his formal robes before looking them over critically in a mirror. "I believe Shu's mother invited me because she wanted to discuss adding traditional characters to the curriculum for the older students next year. You received an invitation because back in early spring you were dragged down to the village in the middle of the night because Rong's wife's fever had spiked, and he still feels like he owes you something. As for Ghazan-"

"Hey," said Ghazan, retying his belt for what was probably the fifth time (even though Ming-Hua thought it had looked fine after the first attempt), "you can't blame me for this; I'm just a bartender. They only included me on Ming-Hua's invitation because it would be rude to invite the village doctor to a wedding and not include her husband."

None of that actually answered Ming-Hua's first question. "So… we're going why?"

Zaheer and Ghazan glanced at each other.

"Well, it would be impolite to refuse at this point."

"Yin's restaurant is doing the catering, so the food should be good."

"… Right."

-*O*-

It wasn't actually that bad, but she still felt more than a little claustrophobic from the amount of people present at the temple and at the party after. Ghazan seemed fine—one of his friends was tending bar and seemed to have no problem with giving him all the sake he wanted on the house—but Zaheer apparently had similar sentiments, because he made no objection when she suggested making their excuses and leaving half an hour into the reception.

It had been an evening wedding and he'd definitely had at least one more cup of sake than he should have, so she wasn't terribly surprised that Ghazan fell asleep in the back of their Satomobile sometime in the first thirty seconds of the ten minutes it took them to drive back to their house.

She didn't really blame him. "At least he had a good time."

From the driver's seat, Zaheer shot her an amused look. "Did you not?"

"Nah. Too many people. Nice group, but very touch-y. I felt hemmed in, you know?"

"There are worse things."

Ming-Hua glanced at him out of the corner of her eye. "You agreed to leave; I thought you felt the same."

"You were unhappy. That was reason enough alone."

"Well, I didn't have to agree to attend. Neither did you. To be honest I'm kind of surprised you did."

He frowned at that, looking perplexed. "Why?"

"Well, it was a wedding. A celebration of 'earthly tethers' if I've ever seen one. Not really your deal."

They arrived at the house a few minutes later. Zaheer stopped the Satomobile but did not immediately get out, choosing instead to rest his forehead against the steering wheel. Ming-Hua stayed in the Satomobile as well, and waited.

It wasn't long before he raised his head and turned to her, looking her steadily in the eye. "I owe you and Ghazan an apology. I was a coward. I abandoned you when I should have been at your side, and I have no better excuse than being too afraid to face my own grief and too selfish to notice yours."

Zaheer hesitated for a long moment then, some internal struggle apparent in the tightening around his mouth and eyes. Ming-Hua took a breath in through her nose before wetting her own lips to speak, but despite knowing that she should have some response, she found herself as much at a loss for words as Zaheer seemed to be. She was therefore rather thankful when Zaheer quickly held up a hand and said, "Please be patient with me. This has proven more… difficult, than I thought it would be, but I have left some things unsaid for too long.

"Guru Laghima was a wise man. I thought I was following his example, but he was not able to attain weightlessness until his wife and children were long since dead. He tended to his earthly concerns before moving on to more worldly ones. I just gave mine up, and in so doing perverted his teachings.

"No matter how high I flew, it felt… empty. Fulfillment of a lifelong dream, and it might as well have been nothing. And that feeling extended to everything, even that which I knew mattered most. I cannot imagine Guru Laghima would have aspired to flight if it meant he had to strip himself of his care for the world he held so dear.

"I don't think I am still able to fly. I haven't tried in over a year. But I think that is as it should be. I think Guru Laghima would approve. Absent the mental component, weightlessness is just to become physically unbound from the earth. It is meaningless outside of the emotional state the accomplishment is supposed to represent. And I felt far more at peace lying in P'Li's arms than I ever did in the sky.

"So I wanted to apologize. And I wanted to thank you. It was only because of you and Ghazan that I realized before it was too late that I didn't need to let go of my earthly tethers in order to be free."

She remained silent. What was there to say to that? How could there be anything to say, in the face of such an admission? But she didn't look away, and neither did Zaheer.

The silence was seconds away from becoming uncomfortable when from the back seat, Ghazan drawled, "I really feel like we should be hugging right now."

She was startled into laughing, and it was not more than a few seconds before Zaheer's disgruntled expression gave way to him again resting his head against the steering wheel in an obvious attempt to hide a smirk. And that was when she knew that everything would be alright.

!-*-!

Author's Note: "But everything changed when the Earth Empire arrived."

But only if I get around to writing a sequel, otherwise everything will be awesome forever, the end.

Hi, everyone. I know it's been a while. Sorry about that. College and then work made me more a passive than active consumer of fandom for the past few years, but I've starting writing a bit again recently, though my most active platform has moved to Archive of Our Own. I'm sad to say I've almost entirely fallen out of the Naruto fandom even if I did finish the manga in an act of masochism, so "A Fox and a Shark Walk into a Bar" will remain uncompleted, but hopefully this isn't the last time you'll be seeing me in general. I hope you enjoy this; The Legend of Korra is definitely a show worth watching, though as usual I fell hardest for the villains. One day I'll stop doing that.

No I won't.