Very tired but I love you all lots, you are the best and here is your chapter (it is weirdly hot in England, I have sunburned my nose awfully, but sitting down and writing in the cool indoors is very nice and relaxing)

EIGHT

Korra meditated, alone in her cell. She tried to ignore the grumble of her stomach, the pain of the cold, and sink below that to something deeper. To her delight, she was largely succeeding in overcoming the physical realities of her situation. She could feel how disturbed and anxious she was all over now that she was trying to push past it to the Avatar State. Her chest was a swirling morass of anger, fear, blocked up breathlessly.

The first time she attempted to sink down to a lower level of consciousness, she spasmed with sudden pain.

It was the first night and he wasn't letting her go, she was weak and tired and he was on her like a ton of bricks and it hurt, it hurt and she was trying not to but she was sure that she was crying and he liked that, she was going to rip his face off his skull if he'd just stop—

Korra jerked back to the reality of her cold, empty cell, and stared emptily at the floor. If this was what it meant to get to the Avatar State… how could she? She couldn't—you couldn't—it wasn't something to step over and go, 'well, that's all right then'. There was no easy way out of this, out of how he made her skin crawl and her heart shrivel up the moment he touched her, how she'd given up trying to beat him off because it never worked and he only hurt her more instead. This fear wasn't an illusion, it was real and present and she didn't think it could be worked through—

She took a deep breath and drew her knees up to her chest. Her chin rested on her knees, arms going around her legs to hold on tightly. She didn't know much about getting over or through these things. For sure though, she definitely wanted to live. That's a start, she thought dubiously. The times that she'd wanted to die were back at the beginning, when she'd been determined to fight and every single time, and still now when she got her hopes up and it happened all over again and he'd overpower her as if she was nothing without her bending. That brought her full circle…

So she really did want to live. That is a start, she thought resolutely. If there had been times that she'd wanted to die but at the moment she definitely didn't want to, that was motivation. She wanted to live and be happy and heal, however long it took.

She also wanted her bending back. Without it, she was seriously unbalanced, and it made her feel powerless. Her bending was what she really excelled at, what she really loved. So she had motivation, powerful, genuine motivation. Was that enough to overcome the fear? In a weird way, it turned out that to overcome Amon, she had to… overcome Amon. In her head. Or maybe not overcome the fear completely. She doubted her ability to do that; he was the spectre in her nightmares, the monster under the bed—in the bed—and unfortunately, much more real than all of those. But she'd already thought that he was no longer absolutely overwhelming.

That had been when he wasn't touching her, though. When he was touching her all she wanted was for it to stop. She could handle talking; when he went over the edge, when he was frightening, talking at her and raving… it was when he touched her. She hadn't known that you could feel so revolting, so small and disgusting inside your own skin.

That was what she had to work through to get her bending back. Staring at the wall blankly, she nearly cried out of frustration. She couldn't. She really couldn't. If she had her bending back she could beat him into a pulp with all this anger but she couldn't move through that feeling that she got when he was on her, to get to her bending. It just wasn't as simple to dispel the illusions and the fear as Tenzin had made it seem.

However much later in the windowless cell, she rolled off her side and up to sitting again, looking about pensively. Maybe she was trying to look at it head on again, like she used to. None of her problems were ones that could be solved head on anymore, if they ever had been. Perhaps—and it was a hideous, unpleasant thought—the key was to endure. It wasn't possible to charge through her fear. She had to acknowledge it, experience it and come out of the other side, not get rid of it. Fear was never something that you could just get rid of.

The key in this situation was to endure and come out of the other side rather than "overcoming". It went totally against her grain. It wasn't right, and she shouldn't have to… perhaps it was similar to airbending as well, not hitting things head on but dodging, allowing the hits to come but not letting them knock you over…

Korra settled into the position again, and sank into that trance state with such ease that she nearly took herself out of it with surprised pleasure. Not letting herself stop to think and the fear gather, she found the chakra again and moved to try and clear it.

"You're mine"—nails raking down her back until she was ready to claw her own skin off to stop the pain—up and down, up and down dully, over and over again—hot hands moving, always moving across her—the obscene grunts—

Korra cried, but didn't turn anyway. This wouldn't fix everything. It couldn't. This couldn't be fixed, because she wasn't a machine, wasn't damaged goods or broken.

There was power in facing things on her terms. It wasn't her fault. Somewhere, deep down, the insidious thought had lingered that she'd brought this on herself. Every time he hit her, every time he hurt her, she'd provoked him and there was some hidden way that she was just missing that could make it stop. There wasn't, and that wasn't her fault. She cried harder, aware distantly of tears running down her cheeks. Her nose stopping up drew her out of the trance, and she switched carefully to breathing through her mouth.

She cried for a very long time, curled up on the floor of the cell. The scenes playing out in her head had finished, but she sobbed on for the only reason of the misery lodged physically in her chest. It was heavy, and it hurt, and her breath came in loud, hysterical shrieks until she was less breathing than hyperventilating, noisily and painfully—then the crying came back because of how she sounded, the real representation of how miserable and hurt and lonely she'd been all this time. Her nails dug into her own arms viciously, and she sawed back and forth as if she could bodily rip the pain out.

She didn't finish so much as subside over a long period of time. Her head hurt as if it would burst, and her nose had run right onto the floor, and at one point she thought she might have choked on her own snot, and her eyes ached, so tired. She didn't feel better. Just… kind of empty. Maybe that was better. The misery that had been carried along with her for so long had slowly and painfully been washed away for the moment. There was a calmness to her that hadn't been there before.

"Korra," he said, and she opened her eyes so quickly that they nearly started running again.

"Aang," she said, snuffling and swiping ineffectually at her still running nose. It was a lost cause, she thought dismally. She was going to be covered in snot until Asami came, hopefully with a cloth or a napkin or something. "Hi…"

"I am so proud of you—it was only when you had worked through your situation yourself, reached a state that nobody else could give you, one that required pain and work through your power, the power that's inside you, only then—" He cut himself off, with a self-deprecating grin. "Korra, do you choose to regain your bending?" he asked softly, and she nodded, unable to trust her voice. "I'm going to show you how to energybend so that you can restore what's been ripped from people back to them. In the time before the Avatar, they didn't bend the elements, but energy itself. You bend that energy…" He showed her how, and she waited patiently, on the edge for her bending. She was so close, so afraid that it wouldn't work—and then he laid his hands on her gently, and the room filled with a glow so intense that she closed her eyes.

When she opened them again, he was gone. She dared to hope. Reaching deep inside, she stood up. Her feet stood into the stance without any conscious order, her hands ready. Decisively, powerfully, she struck forward with a shout, hoping, hoping, hoping for the fire to come.

She wasn't cold in that cell any more.

"Hello," Asami sang, opening the door. "He's in a meeting, and he'll be there for a while, so we should be fine for ages." Korra met her eyes, a tiny smile growing, and breathed steam. Asami nearly dropped her packages, rushing forward to clasp Korra's hands exuberantly. "You did it!" she cried. "Well—of course I knew you'd do it, but—oh, Korra! This is good. This is so good." She rushed back again to where she'd set down the packages, and began to open them. The smell of hot food drifted out, and Korra's stomach rumbled accordingly. She ate very well, taking the time to savour her infrequent meals. "I got to see Lin," Asami went on, "it was a bit more difficult, she's in a different part of the building—seems to have been left alone for the most part, she's been left out of the loop but I filled her in—and she got it like Tenzin said she would. I suppose they're older, they're masters, so they're more in tune with their spiritual side." She took a smaller bowl of food for herself, and picked up her chopsticks delicately to eat.

"I mentioned the Dai Li to her briefly as well, because they're earthbenders and I wondered if she'd know anything about them. Did you know that her mother reformed them after the war?" Korra blinked, and shook her head, mouth full of food. "It's the only reason they're still in existence after their part in the fall of Ba Sing Se; Lin told me all about it, it's fascinating. They were founded by Avatar Kyoshi, and I guess all that history, all that talent, Toph didn't want to see it disappear. They're not allowed to get involved with politics any more, so Lin wasn't sure if they'd come, but I think this is less political than something that threatens all benders. And I thought if we had a team of elite earthbenders, maybe we could sink the mecha. They're impressive, but I don't think they could get out of being trapped in the earth. New bending forms come out of necessity anyway, don't they? If it gets desperate, someone might be able to bend platinum… what?" she asked, noticing Korra staring open mouthed at her.

Korra snapped her mouth shut, and quickly chewed on all the food so that she could speak without speaking morsels at Asami. She folded her hands into her lap, twiddling her thumbs. "It's just that… you're doing all this, so much, organising everything, organising everyone, and I just think—what would I have done without you—and when I first met you I didn't even like you that much for really pointless reasons and now you're—you're a… you're a really good friend, Asami," she finished, her voice tiny. She had no tears left after earlier, but she felt her eyes smart. She'd made a friend, in the middle of all this destruction and hurting and misery. She wasn't alone.

Asami took her into a hug, and patted her gently on the back. "I'm here for as long as you need me, when you need me," she said firmly. "What the Equalists are doing, it's not really equality and I know that. Even if I agreed with them, what he's done to you personally, I could never go along with this." She hesitated, pulling back. "We haven't really talked about it, Korra, and I understand if that's because you don't want to. Would you like to talk about Amon?" Korra thought about it for a long time, her throat closing up. Thinking about it to herself was one thing. Discussing it aloud was another thing entirely.

"I'm not ready for that yet," she said, staring at her lap again. "Maybe… maybe in the future. But not now. But thanks."

"Okay," Asami said gently, giving her hand a squeeze. "If you're ready to move onto strategy then, I think it's time we developed a game plan. We've been setting it up for a while, but now that you've regained your bending, Tenzin has his and Lin's getting hers, we need to focus on a date that the counter-revolution will take place. The underground needs a timescale to get organised for, locations, that sort of thing. Are you up to discussing that now?"

"Oh, yes," Korra told her, cracking a tentative smile.

They needed to co-ordinate an astonishing number of things. Asami deliberated for a long time over writing things down; it would be disastrous if they were discovered, but it would also be seriously problematic if they forgot something crucial, and she didn't have a code on hand that she was sure that she'd remember. They decided to try and remember. Asami thought she could trust her memory to remember the big things, and the underground was a big organisation. People would spot the cracks in plans, point out details they'd neglected and think from a different perspective that they wouldn't have had if it were just the two of them.

Evacuating all the prisoners was key and would be ferociously difficult. They'd deliberated long and difficult over Mako and Bolin being filled in on the plan; Asami had seen the both of them, and Mako in particular was in awful shape. She wasn't sure that he was entirely lucid, she said, pained, so it was a matter of whether he'd understand, or whether he might blurt it out. They couldn't leave the boys out entirely, though, leaving them without hope, so it was decided that they'd be visited, updated, but not given any incriminating details. Korra had a natural bias towards the people she loved, but she knew they were prisons here and those people needed rescuing if the house, the Equalist headquarters, was going to become a crucial battleground. That needed to happen before any fighting occurred. The uprising needed to be organised; it needed to be in so many places that the Equalists were spread too thin and could be taken out. Until now, riots had been sporadic, isolated; Korra and Asami planned to have a good portion of the city in revolt.

With the city in full scale rebellion, the troops would be dispatched. However competent the Equalists were, they couldn't subdue a whole city. The Dai Li would be amongst the people, hopefully working alongside the underground to co-ordinate attacks on the mecha and the Equalists. Amon himself would have to emerge, and Korra would take him on. She was resolute about that, no matter how hard Asami tried to sway her. She would fight Amon. She wasn't averse to other people helping—he was very, very able, after all—but she would have a part in it.

The bones of their plan established, Asami disappeared to send out the necessary information to the people who needed it. Euphoric, Asami popped back not much later to tell her that Lin had regained her bending; their plan was gathering steam already.

"Good afternoon," drawled a familiar voice, and Korra was startled out of fitful dozing by someone who didn't belong, something that wasn't quite right. She rubbed the sleep from her eyes, and squinted blearily at the man stood to the right of the doorway.

"What the…?" she said, stifling a yawn. "What? You—what are you doing here, you traitor—" Without thinking, she bodily threw herself at Tarrlok, remembering in a moment of horror that she couldn't, shouldn't use her bending, nobody could know—and then immediately freezing up when he raised his arms to put his hands on her shoulders, enclosing her. Her mind flashed back automatically to Amon—they were even about the same height, of builds close enough to make her heart palpitate in panic—and she slapped his hands before she'd even registered the action. "Get off me," she hissed poisonously.

Chuckling, with a great show of holding up his hands mockingly in the air, he stepped away. "You were the one who attacked me," he reminded her superciliously. "I come here to try and help you, and this is what I get… maybe I'll change my mind, and report you to Amon instead." That got her clear-headed attention and stomped out the urge to break him in two.

"What?" she said suspiciously. Her skin prickled. Just as things had started to go well… She'd dealt with the reality of her fear about—about—him, but the reality of the actual situation still frightened her more than she liked. Could Tarrlok tell? Was he playing off that? He'd always seemed slimy, but never actually evil until he'd joined his power to the revolution… but if he knew about the counter-revolution then he was a serious problem. He must have had his bending taken away, though, and she had hers back, so if push came to shove then she would have the upper hand. That definitely wasn't best case scenario, though, someone finding out beforehand.

"I'm here to offer my services," he said easily, maintaining uncomfortable eye contact with her. "I'm aware that you and Asami Sato are planning something big. I'd like to be part of it." She swallowed the massive, sickening lump in her throat. He could just be fishing, but—no, he was sure. She was no good at lying anyway; there was no point to playing coy. "I've been on your side all along," he added, slightly too earnest. "I allied with the Equalists when I saw that it was going their way so that I'd be in a position of power when need arose, Korra."

"Don't call me that," she spat. She was so tired of hearing her name come out of these men's mouths. Amon used it as a weapon, and now Tarrlok too. "I don't believe you. You just went with the side that would keep you in power."

He shrugged. "I don't deny it. But I'm here now, aren't I? I'm not above threatening you, Korra. I could report you and get this whole brave adventure shut down right now, but instead I've come to join you. If you're disagreeable to that, then I'm sure I could persuade you." Korra scowled. He was so cocky. So sure of himself. Most of the benders that had had their bending taken away crumpled, understandably so, but he went on like this, swaggering and pushing everyone out of the way in order to get to the top. When she didn't reply, he sighed. "Still making up your mind? In the meantime, how is married life? As blissful as it gets, it seems, if you're plotting to overthrow your husband."

"Shut up," she snapped. "You shut up."

He rubbed at his chin, shrugging. "I seem to have touched a nerve. My apologies. The two of you seemed quite cosy at the wedding, standing so close together with his hands all over you. How does it feel to share a bed with your enemy, Korra?"

She trembled all over with anger, going hot and then cold. How dare he. "You are doing a very bad job of convincing me to have you as an ally," she said, tightly controlling her rage. She couldn't afford to ruin the beautiful plans that they'd been working on before they'd even started.

"You don't have a choice. You have to take me as an ally or I'll reveal your half-baked plot to your husband. And you were the one who ruined everything here—I could have fought Amon with the council, with the taskforce, we could have won and I would have been the saviour of Republic City, but then you arrived and Amon accelerated his plans. This whole situation is all your fault, and I want you to know it. You're not the only one whose life went to shit after the takeover." Korra could have nearly laughed, long and loud and bitterly at that. Poor Tarrlok. She was sure that he'd suffered unbearably. "But I managed something you didn't," he added, smug as a snake. "Something even the precious Avatar couldn't." When she didn't ask, which he clearly wanted, he went ahead anyway. "I kept my bending."

Her surprise at that was genuine. "Yes, you weren't expecting that, were you? I have friends in high places, Korra, I've been telling you. You're not too bright… but you are young," he said in a way that made her skin crawl. "I managed to keep my bending; I'm on the registry as having lost it, and the Equalists are so proud and sure of their incredible system that they don't doubt for a second that I'm powerless. They're keeping me around as a relic of the old power, but the joke's on them… I'm a valuable asset, Korra. I can still bend, and I have powerful contacts. How can you say no?"

She thought. There was no easy way out of this, no real way out at all but to give him what he wanted. He was already massively creeping her out just by being there. But he was a total loose cannon; he just wanted to be in charge, to have power, and there was the very real danger that he'd just betray them anyway. While she thought, he began talking again. Didn't he ever shut up?

"If you're having trouble making up your mind," he said, losing the greasy, sleazy edge and becoming more serious, "I have a skill that you might consider a powerful strength for your side."

"What is it?" she asked, trying to sound bored. He'd turned threatening all of a sudden, and she did not like threatening from the tall, strong man alone with her in an isolated cell.

"Perhaps I should demonstrate."

"No, I don't think so, maybe you should just tell me—" He ignored her totally, raising his arms into a waterbending stance. "Hey! You're not listening to me—" Korra was abruptly cut off by her own frightened yelp as her own body stilled and then refused to move according to her. "What are you doing? Tarrlok!" Abruptly, he made a sharp movement and she slammed to the floor, onto one knee, unable to move. "You're a bloodbender," she breathed.

"Very observant," he said.

"Let me go." He didn't reply. She started to panic. "Let me go, Tarrlok!" No matter how hard she struggled, nothing happened. Her own blood was holding her prisoner. To her dismay, she began to tear up. Oh, she was not going to cry in front of him, she was not going to. The fear rose all the same; he'd subdued her, if he touched her, if he so much as reached for she would—she would—He took a step forward, and her breath shrieked in her throat. "Don't you dare," she cried, blinking very rapidly. "Don't you dare." He stopped, and watched her thoughtfully instead.

"Where's all your defiance?" he asked. "You're making a stab at it, but I can tell a lot of that fire's gone. Amon is as ruthless as they say if he's got you so afraid. I'm not going to hurt you, Korra," he continued, pushing back a strand of her hair impersonally, "as long as you give me what I want. Will you give me what I want?" She spat in his face. Producing a hanky embroidered in an elaborate water tribe pattern, he wiped his face with an air of dealing with a badly behaved child. "I could turn you over to him," he said poisonously, switching tack again, "but I came here and offered you a deal personally.

"Make a decision."