Kuvira sat there stunned for a while, listening to the radio by Bataar's side. One by one the station's announcers signed off for the night until she was left listening to the late hour until even that gave way to static and she fell asleep a foot away from her bed, rocked to sleep by the unusual metronome of a Bataar's beeping life support.
When the door opened, a small draft crept over Kuvira, who awoke feeling more tired than when she had fallen asleep. Her entire back was a battlefield of pinched nerves and knotted muscles. Her eyes were heavy as she struggled to pull herself upright out of the warm hazy fug of a plush armchair.
"Kuvira." Opal said harshly as she entered the room. "My mom said to get you, your interview's in an hour." She said tersely. She stood in the opening, keeping the door back against the wall as a sign for Kuvira to leave.
Eventually the former Great Uniter slinked out of the room to try and ready herself for a hostile interview.
Opal slid into the same chair Kuvira had occupied. It smelt of her perfume and it had the uncomfortable, clammy warmth of another person's trapped body-heat. She leaned over to her brother, held onto his larger, softer hands and began to cry. "I'm sorry." She choked out. "I know I should've come to you sooner Junior but I just didn't know what to say." Vainly she had hoped that Bataar might awaken or at least mutter something in his torpor but instead he just kept up the same rasping breath as ever, accompanied by a slow metronomic beep.
A guard showed Kuvira into Bataar's old quarters, given to her to shower and change. When they made the exodus from Zaofu Bataar had taken most of his belongings, all of the equipment and blueprints he thought useful had been picked away but he chose to leave behind the old models he built as a child and a desk-full of childhood photos grown over with dust by now. The robe Su Yin's staff had laid out was a size too large, with washed out fabrics and by the time she had showered and changed into them she found herself swallowed up by the ugly faded jade robe. Any positives to her figure were lost in the cheap material until she was a broad, featureless lump with a tired face poking out of a mop of limply dangling hair. She had managed to run out the hour trying to make herself more presentable and succeeded marginally by the time a guard came to escort her to the interview.
Su had leant them the use of her office, Kuvira hoped that was a small sign of solidarity on her part but this whole interview reeked of an attempt to throw her to the wolves. Kuvira's heart leapt as she caught sight of the equipment in motion. Heavy duty mics and thick cables connected to a portable radio booster fresh from the Future-Industries electronics division. This was to be a live radio interview. And it was already in motion. A few cameras captured the dumbfounded look of shock on her face, sure to be immortalised in the morning papers.
"Welcome listeners." An older man in sleek black and green robe said in an impossibly warm voice as soon as he saw Kuvira enter the room. "I'm Kifu-Lao and you're tuned in to what is sure to be the interview of the century, The former provisional-governor Kuvira is in the room with me now, and she is certainly not the Great uniter she used to be folks." Kifu's smile, nor the warmth of his voice never wavered.
Kuvira scowled, set her jaw and sat in the familiar couch with ownership, just as Kifu began to invite her to the seat. "Pleased to be here, Mister Kifu." Kuvira said as an ice-breaker.
"I think the last time we interviewed you it was for helping to break up the Red-Chrome Triad." The interviewer responded, he seemed slightly surprised as the younger woman sat and looked him straight in the eyes. She may have been a sleep deprived, barely washed convict but none of that showed in her gaze. "Better times, I suppose." He added wryly.
"Much better." Kuvira said with an entirely false smile. "Nice to remember old glories." She added.
"Kuvira, I did a lot research before coming here today and one of the things I found was that many of your benders are still being held in prison camps throughout the water tribes." He began presenting a series of photographs of her former soldiers, huddled up in cheaply made parkas and random scraps of hide, of them living out of thrown together wooden huts and surviving on half frozen scraps. "Does it seem fair to you that they are still being held in those conditions whilst you enjoy relative comfort under house arrest?"
"I am here because I want to help Zaofu, and I'm sure a lot of them are idealistic young men and women who would have done the same under better cirumstances…." Kuvira paused for a moment and tried to gage the keen grin on Kifu's face. "Hopefully they'll be given the chance one day."
Kifu's face divulged nothing as he took a measured, silent sip of his water. "I understand Bataar Junior is still with you, although after the events at Republic City I can't say I understand why?"
"I thought I was saving the entire continent when I fired on that warehouse." Kuvira retorted hastily. "If you had to choose between saving someone you loved or helping millions of people….well I decided I wanted to help the many."
"So you're saying fifty four billion yuans worth of damage to Republic City was helping." Kifu pounced. A camera over his shoulder snapped the exact look of shock on her face as he asked the question.
"No-no-no-no." Kuvira excalaimed immediately. If the smile on Kifu's face was false before it was very, very real now. He sensed weakness and leaned forwards, silently forcing her to recoil back into her chair. "I just believed that I was making a sacrifice for the greater good. Looking back that's the moment I should have realised I was out of balance." She added, attempting to regain control.
"Really, that was when you realised you were out of balance?" Kifu had changed his tone now, switching to a veneer of moral indignation. "What about the labour camps Kuvira, what about thousands of people being sent to your government's labour camps just because of their ancestry? You didn't feel out of balance then?"
"I didn't mean it like that!" Kuvira hissed back, again, Kifu's cameramen were in the right spot to capture the look of anger on her face, and no doubt Kifu had all number of ideas for how to capture the Great Uniter snarling. "Don't put words in my mouth." She demanded.
"Then answer the question." Kifu said gently, almost meekly, a poor interviewer being tongue-lashed by a raving dictator. "What were the labour camps for." He said with some 'difficulty' as he regained the confidence of his regular speaking voice.
"Of course the labour camps were a mistake." Kuvira snapped. "When I went into a village I needed the support for the majority from day one, and most of them wanted foreigners and their descendants out, so I caved." She explained quickly and angrily. "The other nations wouldn't take them back so I did what I was ordered and I tried to get the Earth Kingdom back together."
"I find it hard to believe a citizen of Zaofu would bow to something that reactionary." Kifu-Lao said condescendingly.
"Really!" Kuvira yelled, any attempts to mask her anger had all but dissipated by now and she was just a bellowing mad woman, exactly as Kifu had intended. "Because right now we have thousands of refugees being kept in conditions just as difficult as the labor camps just because we don't want any more on our streets, so if you want someone to blame they can look at themselves."
"It seems to me like all of these….severe measures have only come into effect since you came back to the city." Kifu answered gently before he took a sip of his tea. "Am I supposed to believe that's a coincidence and not your influence?" He asked over the rim of his teacup. Behind the angular silver cup she could see his lips crease up into a closed smile.
"Yes, yes it is." Kuvira answered sharply. "Most of the time I've been here Su Yin wouldn't talk to me, she only takes my advice on military matters." She continued.
"So you're saying that you blame our matriarch for this state of affairs." Kifu said. In that moment Kuvira knew that what little good will she had earned with Su had just been vaporised in a single question.
Floors below in the medical chamber Opal was still at her brother's bedside. He hadn't moved, or even breathed slightly more rapidly in the time since she last attempted to speak to him. That was why it came as such a surprise when he said "I'm sorry did you say something?" Bataar asked.
"Junior!" Opal exclaimed as she leapt out of her chair. "Guards! Get whoever you can!" She commanded in between bouts of nervous laughter.
"Where am I?" He said quietly. If he was concerned he didn't show it. "What happened to Hamone, is everyone alright."
"Everyone's fine." Opal said as she half lifted her brother out of his hospital bed, a bad habit of Bolin's that had, apparently rubbed off on her.
It was hardly a whole minute until Su Yin burst into the room Bataar senior and the rest of the Beifong family ran in hurried in after her. By the time they reached him Bataar had adjusted his bed to a sitting position.
"There's my boy." Su said as she clamped her arms around him.
"How you doing bro?" Wing asked, almost immediately.
"You got hit pretty hard, Junior." Said Wei.
"We were so worried about you, son." The elder Bataar said as he took hold of his namesake's hand. "Huan even made you a get well present."
"It's a bit smaller than most of my art." He said as he pulled a small, intricately folded piece of metal out of the folds of his robes. Unlike most of Huan's work it was not all sharp angles and harsh edges but instead it was made up of thick, broad curves and gentle twists, terminating in blunted tips. "But dad wouldn't let me put the full sized piece in here." He said as he held it up for Bataar to grab.
"Thanks." Bataar slurred as he reached a single palsied hand out for the sculpture. His numb fingers grasped dumbly for it and succeed only in knocking it out of Huan's hands. The heavy lump of metal plummeted into Bataar's knee hard enough to bruise it. "Sorry, guess I was hit pretty hard after all." He said, his voice was garbled as if he were trying to speak under water.
Su pulled back for a look at her son. Half his face had dropped and his left eye was glassy and unfocussed. "Someone get the doctors." She said, her voice rising into a worried half-shout. "Quickly."
The doors opened slowly but they didn't produce the doctors requested, instead Kuvira slinked in, her face was still red from the interview. "Bataar!" She exclaimed as she locked eyes with her fiancé.
"Ku-Ku." He answered in turn and tried to pull himself out of his bed, though the most he had accomplished was pulling himself forwards.
"What were you doing out there!?" Su snapped.
"Honey, shouldn't we leave this 'til later." Bataar Senior suggested, he attempted to put a pair of calming hands on his wife's shoulders only to have them shrugged off in an angry hush.
"No, might as well do this quickly."
"Mom…" Bataar Junior slurred. "What are you doing?"
Su stood up slowly perhaps even slightly hesitantly. "You were supposed to look like a prisoner, well leashed and under my control." She said, with a steel hard voice that slowly built like a rising storm into an angry growl. "Instead you picked a fight with one of the city's most influential journalists, and implied that I was a ruthless dictator!" Her voice lost any of its remaining delicacy and transformed into a full yell before it reached its apex and returned to a low bitter whisper. "Go back to the Villa, you're to stay there until I call for you."
"Mother please!" Bataar Junior asked desperately.
"No." She answered in a breath. "I need to reassert my control to the city, it's high time the people of Zaofu understand that we contain our prisoners. Guards!"
In a split second one of the house guards appeared through the door.
"Is this really what you want Su?" Kuvira begged. The former warlord's pride was nowhere near enough to keep deep the beginnings of tears from welling up in the corners of her eyes.
"Mom." Wing said as he gathered behind her.
"You're upsetting Bataar." Wei whispered gently.
"He's got his family that's all he needs." Su said coldly, in the back of her head she felt a liar but she could afford nothing less.
"Sergeant Raiden, escort her back to her quarters."
As commanded Raiden took a grasp of her she rolled him off of her shoulder. "Get off me!" Kuvira gnashed instinctually.
With a nod of Su Yin's approval Raiden extended his cables and bound Kuvira at the the end Kuvira made her exit without her usual boldness, whispering hushed confessions of love straight at Bataar between the barricades of his family.
It was a short march but a bitter one back to the Villa until she reached the front door. Raiden walked back through the compound gates and left her to herself. As she pulled open the front door she thought of her polar home. It was shivering cold despite the foul greay fires they always burnt and the roof leaked and the toilet was just a crack in the ice. Yet every time she pushed open the door to that lonely hut it felt much less like a prison with Bataar there than this desolate compound.
Kuvira returned to see the house they had left it on the day of the Red Lotus attack. It felt like a lifetime ago, it seemed inconceivable that her life could have gone wrong so swiftly that there had not been time for dust to accumulate or cobwebs to gather. She moved to the kitchen area, poured a glass of cucumber water and slumped into the puffs of an armchair. She leaned over to the radio and flicked it on.
In time the radio news came on. "We are reciving reports from Air Nation Rangers that the warlord Rhee is conquering villages to the west and east of here and labourers on the monorail reconstruction project are still being harassed by refugees. In other news the in the wake of Kifu-Lao's interview we are receiving dozens of calls every minute folks, our switchboard girls are working to the bone and we hear you Zaofu. What in the world are we going to do with the Great Uniter?"