There was a knocking on the bedroom door. "Come in." Kuvira groaned.
"Well at least you answered." Bataar said, as he backpeedled through the door with a lunch tray in his hands
"You would have run in if I hadn't." She deadpanned, and then cracked a little smile.
"Oh, a smile, you are feeling better." Bataar teased as he sat down on the bed.
"Lunch makes everyone happier." She said, reaching over to the tray on Bataar's lap. She snatched a lunch roll off of a tray and nibbled it quickly as if she had stolen it.
"True." He said blankly, "Especially lunch in bed." Bataar huffed a moment.
"Is this where I'm supposed to ask how you're feeling." Kuvira teased, knocking him in the shoulder. Bataar just looked back at her with slightly sad eyes. "I suppose this isn't where you thought you'd be."
"I just….." Bataar took off his heavy framed glasses and pinched the bridge of his nose. He sighed deeply. "Is this all we're going to do the rest of our lives, sit in the same ten rooms and try to think of something to fill the next eighty years."
"Your father says he wants you to come back as his engineer. Maybe, somewhere down the line they'll ease up on you." She answered.
"What about you?" He asked gently.
"I presided over one of the most oppressive regimes in history, I doubt Su could ever really forgive me." She commented sadly, bowing her head. She gulped mightily as she attempted to force out something she had been meaning to say for a while. "You've given up enough for me, Bataar." She said, sadly as she grabbed him by the shoulders. "If you get the chance to get out of here, you take it and you never look back."
"Kuvira what are you saying?" Bataar gasped in reponse.
"I'm saying I've been your burden long enough and I'm not going to drag you down any further." She yelled at him, almost angry. "If you have to….just leave me behind, I'll be alright." She lied.
There was a long pause before Bataar could figure out what to say. "I'm not here out of pity." He managed more confidently, he gently took her hands off of his shoulders and clasped them gently in his own hands. "I'm here because I'd follow you anywhere, and we just happened to end up here."
"And you really aren't going anywhere?" She squeaked a weak surprised chuckle. "After all this?" she said, starry eyed.
"You and me against the world" He commented dryly. "I'd give us even odds." She leaned in for kiss and then Bataar dove in for more, trying to remember which side of Kuvira's robe had the fastenings on it. Then a doorbell went off.
"We have a doorbell?" Kuvira asked as she hopped off the bed and did up one of the cords Bataar had managed to unknot.
"Apparently." Bataar huffed. Reluctantly he too clambered off.
They were just into the living room when the door opened on its own, or rather a metalbender on the other side of the door opened it. Stood there was Su Yin in a hooded robe with a satchel over her shoulder and her Bataar in the doorframe. Kuvira's heart jumped and she almost instinctively froze in place.
"S-Su I'm so sorry, for what I said." Kuvira bowed deeply until she was staring at the floor, her hair hung over her face like a curtain.
"Good, sit down." Su said casually, pointing to the dining room table. She herself sat on one of the high, slightly curved-backed chairs with the sort of confidence that suggested she owned it. Technically speaking she did own it.
"Do you mind if I ask what this is about, mother." Bataar asked gently as he and his father sat down opposite each other.
"Your father wanted to talk with you about the domes." Su explained with a surprisingly warm tone as she fished a rolled up blueprint from out of her large bag. "Kuvira and I will be taking a walk."
"Anything you say, Su." Kuvira answered humbly. She stood up a second after Su and proceeded out the door. She had made no progress with the garden, it would have to wait for another day, it seemed. In the path, just in view of the gates Su stopped them and dropped her bag on the ground. She pulled out a wig, a large brown one with a sharp fringe long enough to cover her eyebrows and an integrated Fire Nation topknot from their adaption of 'Love Amongst The Dragons'.
"Tie you hair up." Su commanded. Kuvira silently obeyed, with a slightly dumbstruck look on her face she pulled her hair back into a tight knot on the crown of her head. Su plunked the wig down hard and heavy on Kuvira's head and adjusted it until it looked more or less right and precisely flicked a few hairpins in with her bending. Kuvira responded a second after with a gasp as she felt metal lodge in her scalp. The threat was clear enough; she tried not to look too frightened or too angered.
"Su, what is this about?" Kuvira asked as the older woman levitated a metal makeup case into her hands from out of the bag.
"You aren't exactly popular." Su said archly as she prepared a makeup brush. "If the Great Uniter showed up you would probably cause a riot." She explained as she peppered the flesh tone concealer over Kuvira's face, taken a keen interest in covering up her beauty spot.
Between Kuvira's weight gain and abandoning anything that even vaguely resembled a military uniform she had already done a good enough job of not looking much like herself. With Su's help she looked like an entirely different person. There was a clink of metal as a large, shield shaped necklace flanked by rib like flanges of metal and fitted with a heavy clasp fluttered out of the bag. It clinked like a wind chime. With a few forceful twists of the wrist Su attached it around Kuvira's neck.
"Um….thanks Su." Kuvira said politely as she tried to readjust to the weight of Metal Clan jewellery.
"I wouldn't be." She said coldly. All of a sudden it seemed to be getting heavier, pulling her down and forwards until she stumbled to within a hair's breadth of Su. "If you leave my sight, if you cause any sort of trouble, I will drag you back here by that collar." She seethed and then proceeded to walk down the path, rolling the circular gate in the estate walls out of her way with an almost incidental flick of her hands.
Su's private tram was a small, barebones affair, no different from any other tram in the city. However it was empty, entirely so aside from Su who stood at the front of it like a proud captain at the prow. She didn't look at Kuvira, and she didn't speak but in her reflection on the tram windows Su Yin's brow was furrowed in thought. They reached the downtown platform in a few minutes time. Even from the rail platform high off the ground the city looked more crowded than Kuvira remembered it, vastly so. Then she saw the first of them. Sat on the silvery streets between a newspaper stand and a food vendor was a man in hand-me-downs and the remains of some homespun robes. Propped up against the building next to him were a pair of crutches and one of his legs stopped at the knee. He looked off into the middle distance with a pained grimace and rattled a tin cup with a few coins in it.
"Where are we going, Su?" Kuvira asked as she was gently persuaded to follow after her by the tug of her necklace. The tram platform had been vandalized, repeatedly, and the maintenance crew had yet to find the time or funds to fix it.
"33rd Street." Su said sternly. She turned for a moment to see look on Kuvira's face. As predicted she looked appropriately mortified as the realisation dawned on her. In return all Kuvira could see on Su's face was a joyless downward pull of her lips and a slightly soft look in her eyes that said it was no easier for her. "There's something I need to show you."
The street was stiflingly hot and incredibly noisy. More vagrants than just the one legged man sat about, looking at nothing in particular. Some of Zaofu's citizens had formed charity stalls and soup kitchens that each teemed with a jostling line. The very few guardsmen that they had seen were either patrolling warily, with their hands at the ready or they were swinging through the skyline from one hotspot to another. Kuvira recognised one of the beat officers under his helmet. He was stony faced and he had a new scar on his lip. He locked eyes with her. Quickly she averted her gaze and hoped that he hadn't been able to recognize her.
"Still got it." He muttered to his partner as they passed by.
The disguises seemed a waste, no one bothered with two more women in a road packed full already. They crossed a few blocks of the city until they saw it. A high rise, narrow building of hard steel with stained glass windows. It sat small and shadowed by two high rise apartments, squeezed in like a weed. They climbed the stairs of the high rise's stoop, it didn't seem like the mountain it had been before. On a chevronned door there was a single knocker which Su rattled.
"Su, please, for spirit's sake." Kuvira begged. "No."
"The only way I can expect you to take responsibility for you actions is to see what you're actually responsible for." Su answered.
Through the door the sound of children laughing and children crying could be heard in equal measure. A pair of feet drew closer to the door. Finally it opened up on a young woman, dressed in simple, angular robes and a smeared apron. She kept her hair tied back and her glasses on chains.
"Su Yin, Lady Mika, We've been expecting you, not much we could do to make this mess presentable, but you know." She said as he opened the door behind her and led them in.
The foyer of the orphanage was packed. Some children were crying over something or another whilst a few others played with second hand toys, some of which Kuvira remembered. Wandering in between them other volunteers like the young girl were being swamped by the mess of children at their waists.
"As you can see we've had a bit of an influx since the war." She said as a knobbly-kneed little boy ran past her with a colander, his favourite colander. "The refugee centres are giving us kids from Omashu, Ba Sing Se, Makapu, we're even getting a few from the Foggy Swamp Tribe, you know the ones who made it out." She said, audibly exhausted. "So what are you here for, ma'am?" she added politely.
"Mika is a friend of mine from Republic City who's looking to make a few charitable investments, I'm just showing her around." Su improvised. "Would you mind giving us a moment alone."
"Oh yes, absolutely ma'am." She said a bit too quickly, then she bowed, again too quickly, she almost toppled over, and then she ran into another room, once again too quickly.
Kuvira could only stand there mutely and watch the children all around her. Some were happy, the older ones that had been here for years but the rest had obviously not gotten over their loss and no one had found the time to get to them.
"You told Korra you didn't want anyone else to live like you." Su said, before she took one last breath. "Well, here's the end result."
"I want to leave." Kuvira said a little bit too loudly, even over the children's din. Her eyes began to water slightly. "Su seriously, I'm sorry can we just go." She said more flustered, she grabbed the older woman by the wrist and tugged at her arm.
Su whirled around and put her hands on Kuvira's shoulders, hard, almost as if she were trying to hammer her into the ground. "I need to hear you say you made a mistake." She said sharply.
Kuvira squirmed for a moment as the words worked their way out of her. "What I wanted was wrong, my methods were wrong, what I ended up with was wrong." She said slowly and emptily with her head bowed. "And I knew that even as I carried on doing it…..I'm sorry, Su."
Su sighed deeply for a moment. "Good. Now you can learn how to make things better." Su said more warmly as she put her hands on Kuvira's face to dab away her tears.