You guys are amazing! Seven reviews, eleven favorites, and 28 alerts in just two nights—I am honestly feeling the love!
Thank you for all the support, especially the reviews. They help me figure out what I'm doing right and doing wrong, so the later chapters can be better. I'm going out of town for Fanime, so next update is probably going to be when I come back on Monday.
The first time Korra takes Tahno up on his offer is on a Wednesday, though really, it's not by her choice.
Republic City is still in the grip of a brutal winter. Reports of benders being ambushed are coming in bit by bit around the city. The Equalist movement has fallen back since their destruction of the Probending arena, but it's only gone underground for the moment. The peace is temporary, and it's made Korra cagey. She hates waiting.
Tarrlok, on the other hand, looks as if he's having the time of his life. The council has been giving into his every request, despite Tenzin's protests—"This is a time for action. Amon and his Equalist movement is a menace to Republic City and needs to be stopped for the safety of benders and non-benders alike," he cries for the nth time—but the strain is beginning to show in crumpled suits and too much face-powder. There have been no reports of Equalist uprisings outside the city, but the knowledge there could be soon has everyone on edge and Korra has spent the last two months in meetings with the council night after night. She's tired; she's burning out, and all she wants is to sleep.
Tarrlok has other plans.
"We need your help, Avatar Korra. Can I count on your help when I next address the council?" Korra mocks in a deep tenor as she repeats what she has heard unendingly for the past eight months. This is in addition to the raids she has helped orchestrate for the past few nights. As she nurses the drink in her hand, her hand unconsciously nurses the spot on her side where a chi-blocker got her two nights ago. In her mind, she recalls the two perfectly-circular bruises she saw on her ribs in the mirror this morning. She raises her glass to her lips.
"Korra?"
The voice has enough emotion to be Bolin, but it's too deep. It's too deep to be Mako too, but she snorts softly. Mako probably wouldn't care enough to find her, but she knows that's the heartbreak talking. Mako would search the world for her if he let himself.
Slowly, she turns her head and spots Tahno at the edge of the bar. He's about to head out the door, two gorgeous women at his side. They're not as pretty as Asami, but they're pretty enough to get the job done and she can't pry her envious gaze off of them while Tahno seems to have forgotten all about them. Instead, his eyes are on her and they are full of surprise and concern.
Slipping his arms off the two girls, he walks over to her and he seems genuinely worried. Then again, it wasn't often that a person found the under-aged Avatar drinking in the bar, but the bartender won't tell and everyone else is too engrossed in their own drinks to mind. Tahno is actually the only person to notice her in her troubles and the thought warms her in a way that the alcohol has failed to.
"Korra, are you okay…?"
But his hands are on her before she can even answer, pressing against her forehead and neck like a fretting mother Arctic hen. His hands are cold from whatever he had been drinking and she leans into it, smiling with fire-whisky-flushed cheeks before grabbing them and batting them away.
"I'm fine. Go enjoy your date!" she reassures as she tries to wave him away. Tries because the alcohol is doing funny things to her coordination—she swore she had more strength in her arms than that—and he's unwilling to leave her side no matter how hard she tries, which is a shame, she thinks, because those girls look beautiful—or at least, infinitely more beautiful than her—and he should have fun with them.
But apparently Tahno wouldn't know fun if it bit him in the butt. "I'm not leaving you, Uh-vatar. You're a mess and you've had enough."
Throwing a few bills to cover her tab, Tahno reaches down and slips her arm over his shoulder as he turns to the two women by the door. "Go on without me. I'm taking her home."
Korra's last memory of the bar was the heaviness of her lids and Tahno's heartbeat as he walked them out into the night.