Content warning: Off screen torture, depiction of wounds, character death.
Asami may have ordered Lee to drive Korra back to her mansion, but it was clear from the start of their drive that it was an order he didn't relish, resulting in an awkward silence. From time to time Korra could see Lee glancing sidelong at her but not saying anything. Eventually she conceded the waiting game and broke the silence. "All right I'll bite. What's the problem?"
"Problem? I- I don't know what you're talking about..." His voice trailed off as she raised an eyebrow at him. Lee sighed a bit as he focused his attention on the road again. "I've lived in Republic City all my life. Life in the big city isn't perfect but it's been pretty good for me. I got a good job, pretty wife, couple kids, what everyone comes here looking for. But then you showed up and things started getting weird. Equalists try to take over the city, six months later that spirit attacks and the city gets overrun by vines. Things seemed like they had settled down for a while after that but then Kuvira shows up in a giant robot and destroys nearly half the city. You're the Avatar and that means you attract trouble. My family got through all that stuff with just a few scratches but now..."
He looked away from the road at the Avatar sitting next to him in the passenger's seat of his car. "But now I'm a lot closer than I'd like to be. So begging your pardon but I just wanna drop you off and get away before the next crisis happens."
Korra blinked at the unexpectedly candid and blunt declaration from the engineer. "You can't blame me for that. It's not my fault all that stuff happened. Other people are responsible, not me."
Lee shrugged in response. "Maybe so Avatar Korra. But my point still stands, you're usually at the middle of stuff I'd just as soon avoid." He adjusted the gear stick as they pulled into the driveway leading to the Sato estate. "Be seeing you."
Korra lifted an eyebrow and Lee slowly looked the other way when he realized what he had just said. She suppressed a chuckle as she got out of the car. Lee's car backed up a few meters before he turned and took off down the driveway.
It would have been nice to come back to a quiet estate but that wasn't the case. In the distance a construction crew was busy at work repairing the hole created by those bombs. It was necessary but the sound of their power tools was loud enough that Korra could hear them even from the front stairs of the mansion. The noise wasn't as bad inside but still audible as she headed through the mansion towards the pool. Her book on healing was on the table where she had left it but one of the house staff had inserted a bookmark and closed it at some point. Korra settled down on the chair and grabbed the book picking up on where she had left off.
She had only gotten through a few pages when a polite cough interrupted her. Korra looked up to see the stylist Kaya wringing her hands nearby. "E-excuse the interruption Avatar Korra but I have instructions I have to follow." Kaya stammered.
Korra set the book down, a sense of disquiet overtaking her as she looked at the other woman. Kaya's knuckles were nearly white as she wrung her hands and there was a bead of sweat running down her forehead. "What's wrong?" Korra asked.
Kaya pulled a note from her pocket and held it out to Korra with trembling fingers. "I got a call this morning from a voice I didn't recognize. He has my sister and he said I have to give you this phone number when you arrived. You're supposed to call it. I don't know why."
"Where's the nearest phone?"
Kaya led Korra out of the pool and to a room roughly the same of a closet nearby. Inside was nothing more than a table with a phone on top of it. The Avatar glanced at the note Kaya had given her repeatedly as she spun the rotary dial multiple times. A clicking sound came through the line and then it was ringing as the connection was established. The rings soon came to a halt. "Hello Korra. It's so nice of you to call."
Her fingers tightened on the handset as Ginger's voice addressed her. "What is this? Why am I calling you?"
Ginger chuckled at Korra's brusque questions. "My, my, my. They really don't teach people manners in the South do they? But to answer your question I'm calling to show you how grateful I am to you for destroying my toys and the makeover you gave me."
A thump came across the line and then silence for a few seconds. After that a single high pitched anguished scream from the owner of the mansion she was currently standing in. Korra froze in place as the sound tore at her innards with frigid talons that hurt more than any wound she had ever received in battle. Ginger picked the phone up once more, a cruel chuckle preceding her words. "These gloves that her father invented are so very interesting. Tell me, how long do you think it'll take before she goes off to join him? I have no idea myself but I'll let you know."
The line went dead.
"No. No. No!" The phone left a dent in the wall and fell to the ground in pieces from Korra hurling it before falling to her knees as she screamed. Asami was gone. Taken.
An all too familiar sensation of wrath began bubbling in that place deep down where Raava skulked, ever ready to emerge. Korra had always warded that rage away when it had crept upon her in the past but not this time. She closed her eyes embracing that burning rage, letting it consume her until it was all that she felt. Asami was suffering.
One hand slapped palm down upon the floor. Was this Korra's doing or was it Raava? Was there any separating the two at this moment? Their thoughts raced outwards in her every direction all at once as they searched. The first to appear were the servants and construction crew present at the mansion but they weren't the target. They pushed further, past the forest surrounding the mansion and into the city itself. First dozens, then thousands and quickly millions as they scoured the metropolis from its sewers to the peaks of its towering skyscrapers. Asami was dying.
There.
Korra launched herself forward, the wall giving way before her as she headed towards her target in the shortest path possible. A straight line, fixed, unwavering and visible to anyone who looked up to see the Avatar racing through the sky on jets of crimson torches. How fast she was moving was anyone's guess but kilometers that now seemed impossibly long lay between the Sato estate and downtown.
The Four Elements hotel had once been the most luxurious hotel in Republic City and one of the grandest in the world. At one time or another it had counted all of the nation's leaders as its guests and had even served as a home for Prince Wu before the ceremony where he was to have been crowned as the Earth King. But now it was the world's poshest looking husk, abandoned like so much of the city had been.
She thrust one fist forward, forming a sharply pointed cone of air about her while the building drew ever closer until she was smashing through the wall and into the suite behind it. Two women were already present inside but Korra only had eyes for the redhead wielding an electric gauntlet at the moment.
Ginger's gloved hand reached towards Asami, perhaps intending to finish the job while she still could but Korra's out-thrust palm was faster. A torrent of air flooded forwards lifting the Fire Nation woman off her feet and hurled her away from Asami. Ginger let out a sharp cry as her back smashed into the wall behind her. After making impact, the water pipes hidden behind the wall burst free and latched themselves around Ginger's limbs and neck, trapping her in place. Korra's feet slowly descended to the floor and the water leaking from the broken pipes rose up, forming itself into spikes of ice aimed at the Fire Nation woman.
"Kor...ra"
It was almost too quiet to be heard but somehow Asami's hoarse whisper was loud enough to cut through the tempest raging within the Avatar. Korra turned around to see Asami's head dropping back towards the floor, the mere act of speaking sapping what little of her strength that had remained.
Asami had been stripped down to her underwear while her hands and feet had been lashed to the posts of the bed with bands of silk. Small rivulets of red were staining the white skin of her arms and her wrists were chafed raw around the ropes tying her down. The worst part however was the malicious and meticulously inflicted pattern of fiery crimson and black burns covering Asami from her ankles all the way up to her shoulders.
The white light radiating from Korra's irises vanished and she hurried to her lover's side, Ginger instantly forgotten. She knelt down undoing the knots on the ankles before starting to loose the ones holding Asami's wrists. Asami collapsed almost immediately when her last limb was free but Korra's arms were waiting, gently easing her to the carpeted floor. Korra crooked her fingers and the water pooling on the floor by Gingers feet flowed to her and floated up to surround her hands. As she held her hands above Asami's figure the lessons Katara had sought to impress upon her with that manual came to the front of her mind. The most important thing was diagnosing what was wrong with your patient.
Korra closed her eyes to block out the sight of all those burns and she began to delve past them, seeing what had happened within. Asami's skin may have been pockmarked all over but it paled when set against the damage to her insides. Tears began welling at the corners of her eyes as she saw the myriad of paths the electricity had burned through her, they started from all over her body but every single one descended through her legs as the current inexorably sought its way to ground. "How are you still alive?" asked Korra as she frantically began healing, desperate to fix something – anything before it was too late.
By the time Korra had finished night had fully settled over the city and the room was noticeably chillier from cold air seeping in through the shattered window. Strands of her hair were plastered to her forehead and the back of her shirt was damp with sweat but it was done. Asami would live but there was still a lengthy and difficult road waiting for her. Asami's eyelids fluttered open and her eyes were quick to find their way to Korra. "Hey... you. Come here... often?"
Korra half laughed half sobbed as she resisted the impulse to hug Asami right there and then, instead settling for putting a hand on the woman's cheek. "How are you doing? Think you can handle me getting us out of here?"
A sound of disgust came from nearby reminding the Avatar that there was a third woman in the room. Ginger was staring at the two of them, unfettered enmity writ all over the half of her face that was visible. The other half was hidden underneath a thick white bandage speckled with circles of red wrapped about her head. Korra slowly stood, the anger that had possessed her hours earlier beginning to writhe once more.
"You. All of this was you. The bombs, Chou, nearly starting a war, hurting Asami. You're the one responsible for everything and for what? Ozai's been dead for decades. Why would you try to bring his ghost back?"
Ginger burst out laughing and the look she fixed Korra with made the Avatar feel like she was the one lashed to a wall. "You still don't get it do you? Ozai's just a red herring I used on those dimwitted fools back home. Nations rise and fall, it's the way of the world. What matters is humanity and defeating the real enemy. You might not remember but I was there when you asked Raiko to help you stop Unalaq and he refused. At first I thought you were full of shit but then a few days later the sky changed color and that thing attacked the city. That night changed my life, everything I had done up until then was pointless. The Fire Nation doesn't matter, Republic City doesn't matter. The only that does is stopping the Spirits before they kill us all."
"Then why..."
Ginger cut Korra off mid-sentence. "Varrick created the answer. I saw what happened when that cannon exploded. All I had to do was get my hands on a spirit energy bomb and set it off in the Spirit World. Spirits can't be a threat if there aren't any left."
Korra's mouth fell open as the actual intent and motives behind Ginger's actions were laid out on the table. Izumi had been wrong, Iroh had been wrong, she had been wrong. This whole time they had thought they were fighting against people loyal to Ozai but even those houses had been dupes. The actual reason for everything was more horrendous than any of them had ever believed. "You're insane! Our worlds are connected together! What affects one affects the other!" Korra shook her head pressing her fingers into her temples, the idea being almost too much for her to even comprehend. "I'll give Iroh a call to let him know where you are. You're his problem now.
She turned away putting Ginger out of her mind while stripping the bed of its sheet. Korra gently wrapped it around the barely clothed woman before carrying her to the window as gently as she could, taking the fastest route away from this place. Then she was gone, descending to the ground on a pair of small flames beneath her feet.
Ginger sneered at Korra's back as the Avatar departed before testing her bonds again. It was a futile effort but one she had persisted in trying periodically in the hours since Korra had restrained her here. The metal pipes weren't tight enough to cut off her circulation but there wasn't any she was getting out of here. At least not on her own. Ginger turned her head towards the doors that people normally used to get into this room. "Any time now."
One of the doors swung open and a man dressed in the uniform of a United Republic general entered the room, an almost bemused expression on his face. "Quite the predicament you've found yourself in isn't it?"
"Shut up. I know you heard everything I said and I know you understand how to do your duty. Get me out of here and help me save our race." She tilted her head towards one of the metal pipes pinning her in place.
Iroh slowly shook his head as he placed his hand on the hilt of his sword. "You're right about one thing. I know how to do my duty even if I don't like it. All this skulking about and world of half truths you live in... it's disgusting. I keep washing my hands but they still reek no matter what kind of soap I use. I'll take the battlefield and an honest enemy to stand on the other side of it any day over this."
The general took a deep breath and hardened his face as he sternly glared at the woman trapped by bonds of metal she couldn't free herself from. "You have shamed yourself, your House and the entire Fire Nation by your actions. As Crown Prince I sentence you to death."
The prince drew his sword.
