I love this chapter.

ELEVEN

Everything snapped to order with the clarity of dread.

Amon was behind her, Lin close to Korra—flicking back and trying to make sense of it, Korra knew that Lin had knocked her to the floor, her reflexes quicker than Korra's—and Tenzin stood to the side suspiciously with his hands still outstretched in an airbending form. Whatever she'd seen out of the corner of her eye had altogether disappeared, and she didn't dare turn to see what it had been. Nobody moved for a second, and then Amon was running down the corridor with the easy lope of a sprinter.

Korra watched him go, actively panicking. As her friends rushed forward to meet the fight, she sat there, paralysed. She couldn't do this. She couldn't do this. Too many things had already gone wrong, would go wrong. What happened if somebody died? She couldn't do this. Of course you can, something whispered to her. Stand up straight. Fight. You're not just the Avatar. You're not a trophy wife. You're Korra. Gritting her teeth, Korra stumbled to her feet, and set off after the others.

Lin had managed to push Amon a significant way down the corridor, which was making worrying noises. The ceiling and the walls had been damaged already by the fighting, and Korra cast a dubious look up at the roof as she caught up. Tenzin was everywhere at once, moving so lightly that it seemed inhuman. Lin pushed forward solidly, keeping Amon on the defensive. He too was moving in a way that didn't seem human, managing to dodge every hit. Korra burst in with a torrent of flame to push him back.

Amon beat at his now aflame clothes with a hiss of displeasure, temporarily thrown off guard. "I'm going to destroy you," he growled, "and I'm going to make sure that this time, you lose your bending permanently." The momentary distraction meant that Lin landed a hit, however brief. One of her metal cables snaked across his face, and a section of the mask cracked and slid off altogether, revealing a mouth twisted in hateful anger. Then he was on the run again, pelting ferociously down the passageway. Altogether, the three of them gave chase, propelled forward by their respective bending. Korra knew that Amon was fleeing for a reason. He wasn't the type to run away.

True enough, they spilled into a small hall where Equalists were waiting. Lin cursed, panting, and launched herself into the fight with gusto. Korra looked about wildly for Amon, and found him in the middle of the crowd, lunging once more for her. She dodged, her breath shrieking in her throat, just managing to miss a blow that would have taken her to the floor.

Tenzin and Lin were busy fighting multiple people at once. She was on her own. She'd known that it would happen this way.

His every movement was precise and brutally channelled. She raised the ground against him, the delicate flagstone paving bucking like a live animal; he managed to regain his footing in worryingly little time—but she saw an Equalist fall and quickly become ensnared in Lin's metal cables, joining the growing bodies on the floor—and jabbed at her side. The blow connected, and she cried out before she could help it. Lashing out, her instinctive reaction was a wave of fire. It singed his hood once more and he hissed in irritation. "Give in," he snarled, "you could never defeat me." She remained silent, wrenching water from a nearby fountain—destroying the beautiful thing in the process—and unleashing a rain of icicles down upon him.

Arrest was forgotten. She was fighting for her life.

One icicle hit his shoulder and he faltered with a grunt of pain. Elated, she struck forward again with an arc of fire. Amon twisted just out of range and whirled back around to brutally, inelegantly hit her in the back. It wasn't a strike designed to incapacitate, but a thuggish hit intended to knock all the breath out of her. She gasped, trying to turn in time to avoid another strike, and he was somehow already behind her again. Only an unconscious reaction was quick enough to bring the floor shooting up to protect her. He hit his hand hard on the rock, growling, and still moving forward.

Korra felt a twinge of unease. He had the advantage, and she was tiring, and the sweat was starting to drip into her eyes and sting so that she couldn't see, and she had no idea if there were any other Equalists or if Lin and Tenzin had managed to deal with them, or if both of her friends had been taken out but she couldn't think about that right now. As she dodged again, barely enough time to spare—his good hand grazing her side almost intimately—this fight was all she could focus on or she was going to get herself killed.

She brought her knee up high, sending the water underneath his feet up to blind him momentarily, and knew that this room was not where she was going to fight her best—and then, to make things worse, she stumbled over a prone Equalist and fell hard. Dazed, she looked up again to see Amon ripping off his mask altogether and looking around for her. She scrambled desperately back to her feet, tripping again. Trying to remain calm, she choked back an agitated cry. What now? Oh, what now?

Run, that self-preserving voice said to her. Run.

So she ran, and he gave chase. Lin shouted something that whistled past her altogether, Tenzin joined his voice to the general cacophony, but all she could really make out was the coarse, deranged laughter of her enemy, her captor, echoing in her ears as if it would never leave. She ran faster than she ever had before, unconsciously registering the bodies in her path and leaping over them. In the few thoughts that she managed between the burning of her leg muscles and the vague plan she had, she hoped that meant that Lin and Tenzin had managed to take down the Equalist vanguard and might follow to help.

Korra was back in the corridor where they had been before. Part of it had collapsed, and she cleared the debris out of her way with desperate, beautiful earthbending, the best that she'd ever managed. She sent some of the rocks hurtling back to where Amon was charging along behind her. He had been gaining worryingly, but the mess hit him impressively and he went down heavily for key, helpful whole seconds.

She turned a corner, keeping her map of the building in her head. Blast! She'd taken a wrong turn somewhere in the confusion, and there wasn't the time to correct her mistake. He came barrelling out of the doors she'd just burst through, and she turned to face him. This hall was larger, there was no-one in it, and it had three fountains as opposed to the one in the previous room. It might do.

"Just you and me now," she panted. "You ready to face me?"

He laughed again, that nightmarish sound playing around the room. Good acoustics, some ridiculous part of her that was still functioning aesthetically noticed. Nice. "I'll take you to task this one last time," he said, not nearly as out of breath as she was. "I'll beat you until you beg me to stop, pride or no. Then I'll teach you how a proper wife should conduct herself." He stopped to compose himself, evidently aware that he was well and truly slipping. "You can't defeat me," he repeated, "and we both know it. Surrender now, and I'll be kinder."

"I'm not your wife," she said simply, and moved into a form to start the fight again. Everything burned with pain, but she couldn't be tired now or it would kill her. Amon didn't move from where he was standing, catching her as strange—and he was looking at something behind her, just behind her head. She was prepared to turn, because this didn't strike her as a ruse, that seemed oddly petty and underhanded, and then—

Her limbs locked to her sides against her will. "Tarrlok," she said, gritting her teeth. He swivelled her around to see—her back being to Amon felt awfully, awfully unsafe and she prickled all over with goose bumps—and he was dishevelled, his hair down around his face in a ragged curtain, with a scratch across his cheek.

"Hello," he said, sounding bizarrely at ease. His easy tone contrasted utterly with his appearance. "Not expecting me again, Korra? Your guards—if I can call them that, callow teenagers—got themselves into some trouble, you might be unsurprised to hear—"

"Your presence is not appreciated here," Amon interrupted, Korra would have laughed if it were at all funny. The moment of truth, the real fight, and Tarrlok had, of course, appeared to sell them out the second he got the chance. She'd had one thing to do in this. Take Amon down, that was her task, and it was proving impossible. To her surprise, she saw that Amon had drawn his hood over his head, shadowing his face—wondered why, briefly—and turned back to the matter at hand.

"But I'm here to offer you my services," Tarrlok said, a hint of a whine emerging. "The moment I found out about this I was trying to gather information for you—I tried to contact you, but I was turned away at the registry, so I thought I'd show you my loyalty now." He faltered. Perhaps this was not going the way that he had hoped. Korra tried to move her fingers while they were distracted. It just wasn't working. No wonder bloodbending was banned without any exceptions. Just one finger, or a toe, she thought desperately. Something needs to move.

"I have no need of you," Amon said shortly. "You're a remnant of exactly what the Equalists are dedicated to stamp out. How did you maintain your position in the new order? Through money, through corruption, through power that's rotten from the very core." Tarrlok's expression shifted almost imperceptibly. You misjudged, you snake weasel, she thought with some satisfaction. Nobody wants you. This did leave her with the significant problem of being held immobile with Amon right there, though. She couldn't even see what he was doing. Just one chance, she thought desperately, a chance to take him out. A little one.

Oh, she was going to lose. Lin and Tenzin didn't know the layout of this building—maybe Lin could find her with her earthbending detection, but if the cavalry did arrive it would probably be too late. She wasn't going to die here, but worse instead… right back into captivity, all alone and with absolutely no chance to escape. Distantly, she realised that she was silently crying. Tarrlok was still arguing with Amon, both tempers fraying, completely ignoring her. The rage that had been boiling since the very beginning began to spill over. She'd come so far. So goddamn far. This wasn't the end. It couldn't be. Steps echoed behind her, and she realised that Amon was walking over. Time was running out if she was going to do something. He was laughing. He was laughing at her.

Something in her snapped, and her eyes glowed blue.

She was only dimly aware of the shouts, the surprise, the calling—somebody called her name, but she shrugged it off, only aware of the rage. It was all consuming. With the ease of a hundred lives spent honing the skill, she threw Tarrlok back against the wall with a rain of flame, uncaring if he died or not. She wheeled around, hovering slightly off the ground, unseeing, and moved onwards.

The water rose out of the fountains, the ground collapsed and shivered like a living being, the air whipped into a furious tornado, and she stepped through the veil of fire to where he stood, frozen. She spoke with all the voices of her past lives. "Your reign has ended. Your rule has collapsed. Your regime burns. Will you surrender?"

He spat on the floor.

She ended him.

When Korra came to, the tear trails still remained on her cheeks. She couldn't figure out what had happened for a second, and stared at her blood-stained hands with wide eyes. Had she—had she killed him? Where was he? Where was the… body?

A groan near her startled her so badly that she yelped, and then turned to find him. The room couldn't help but catch her eye. It was destroyed. It was utterly ruined. She went cold all over. She'd done this. All this—she'd never meant to have this happen, she'd imagined bringing him into custody, not wrecking a building—with dread, she wondered if anyone else had been nearby when the walls had started to come down. Equalists or not, if she'd killed someone—

That brought her full circle, and she crawled feebly over to where the groans were coming from. She stumbled across Tarrlok's body on the way, and frantically went to check his pulse. He wasn't dead. She breathed deeply, so thankful. However awful he was, it wasn't her duty to unleash that judgement—killing him could never have been justified. She wondered if she should try and heal him, but that problem was solved when she discovered that she was all tapped out of her bending. A moment of panic subsided as she thought it through; she must just be exhausted. Her bending wasn't gone; it was just gone for a bit. It would come back with rest.

At last, after enough attempts at trying to put it off, she fell to Amon's side, unable to get up. Yes, it was his blood on her hands. He was half crushed underneath a boulder, and vomit rose in her throat at the sight. How was he still alive…? He was still moving as well, one arm restlessly creeping over the floor again and again.

Korra threw up, managing to pull herself onto elbows to do it away from the two of them, and collapsed back on the floor. "You're going to die," she said breathlessly.

He chuckled, and the sound travelled through her, they were so close. There was no joy in this. There was no joy in killing a man, even if he had—hurt her. "I'm not going to die," he replied, still arrogant, but she knew there was no real conviction in his voice or appearance. Then he coughed, and hissed, she guessed because of the pain. He was dying, horribly and slowly, and she'd done it. "Well, you've killed me, then," he said, lip curling. "I'm done for, does"—he stopped, winced, and started again—"that make you happy, Avatar?"

"No," she said, staring up at the ceiling. "If I had my way, you'd… go on trial, and we'd lock you up forever and ever."

"Locks can be picked," he said, forcing out each word with increasingly obvious effort, "I would have thought… it's obvious that it's—better—this way. No loose ends." He laughed, unhinged. It devolved into hacking and his nails dragging bodily across the stones in the floor to try and deal with the pain. "I should have killed you." He turned to look at her, and she refused to meet his eyes. "Look at me."

"No."

"I'm dying, Avatar. Look at me."

"I don't owe you anything because you're dying. I'm not looking at you." But she did, out of the guilt that was rising up through her. His eyes were too wide open, too intense, and they still frightened her. She sat up, looking down at him, and with one last moment that must have been excruciating, his free arm locked around her and pulled her bodily down on top of him. His lips clumsily met hers, slick and revolting with the blood running from his wounds, and he held her there, groaning. After one moment where she was too shocked to do anything, she pushed him away. He subsided, chuckling again. "Avatar… Korra. My wife. My… Korra…" Then he was silent, and some time later, he died. She didn't notice when it happened, and only realised when she saw his eyes staring blankly somewhere that she couldn't see. She closed his lids, the stare unbearable.

Korra turned her back on him and laid a few centimetres from his cooling body, unsure what to feel. There was no energy in her for tears. She wasn't sure that she wanted to waste tears on his death. Perhaps the senselessness of it all. Amon could have been brilliant, but he'd died with his achievements coming down around him, died horribly and slowly and painfully because of someone who hadn't even meant truly to kill him. He was revolting but vivid, bright and intense and warped and perverse and driven by a need to hurt and twist and she would never know why, never know what his real backstory was and who he had been and why.

Not knowing why was the most senseless thing of all. She'd never know if it was… her fault or not… Whether he made her dirty or if, as in her darkest fears, if she had driven him to act how he had—

She was too tired to think about that now. So, so tired.

They found her asleep in the destroyed hall next to the ruined body of her captor, his blood still on her lips.

This is not the end. I'll see you again for another update in three days.