Regret
4 HOURS AGO
Mako could feel the battle coming. He could feel it in his bones and it made his stomach uneasy. Kai and he rest side by side on sturdy table tops. The home they sat in had been abandoned by a family.
Kai had commented on the image of a little girl's school photo, dated three years ago. She would have been in the fourth grade when this all happened. What had come of her?
"Don't think about it," Mako said, "it's a rabbit hole that leads to nowhere."
Still, lying across their dining room table, looking up at their deities on the walls, Kai couldn't rid himself of her innocence.
"You made four children orphans." Mako said coldly to him shortly some time later. Some time after Kai had tried to remove a tear without Mako seeing.
"I didn't mean to."
"But you did. And it sucks. You can hold on to that weight or you can choose to ignore it. Not forever. Just for now. Until this is over."
Kai looked at Mako. A rock. Focused. Even knowing he may never see his brother again.
"You're not a monster, Kai." Mako never stopped looking through the scope of his rifle, never lost focus, "You're impulsive, lazy even, but you are not a monster."
Kai wasn't sure if Mako was trying to nurture him. No definitely not. Mako wasn't the type, Bolin, Opal, even Korra sometimes could be nurturing. But not Mako; he relied on facts not feelings. And Mako was right. There was a battle coming.
As if his thought had queued them the sound of gunfire began swelling closer and closer.
Kai took a breath, pressed his eye to the scope of his sniper rifle and examined the streets.
Below Amon's military drove their vehicles towards the inner gate.
They were waiting for the last of the supplies to be delivered. Then they would close the gates and no one would be allowed to enter. Even with a thousand undead.
Selfish bastards wanted the resources to themselves.
Kai watched the car. It whipped around the building with three more behind it.
"You got it?" Mako asked.
Kai took a breath, his finger ready on the trigger and sweat sliding down the side of his face.
He went somewhere else for a moment. He went to that horse. To that night when he nock an arrow and sent it spiraling into Pema body. Jinora. Meelo. Ikki. Kohan. All of them made orphans in that one action alone. Despite the tattoos riddling his back, Kai had never taken a human life until that night.
"Kai, we can't let them get those supplies."
The sixteen wheeler would be in their sights for another twenty seconds then they would reach the inner wall.
Kai continued to hesitate.
"Kai!" Mako exclaimed with less than five seconds left to make the shot.
Four.
He remembered the man's face. His wide flat nose.
Three.
The broken glasses on the bridge of his nose and his protruding fat lips.
Two.
The sniper rifle hammered in Kai's hands, the recoil jammed into his shoulder.
One.
The bullet had hit the driver directly in the side of his ear. His head rocketed against the window, smashing spider webs into the glass as his brains drained onto his shoulder. The front tires of the truck yanked right and the vehicle swerved. Rocks kicked beneath the tires as the truck turned on its side and collided with the hard earth. The friction produced an ear splitting squeal as metal grate across the solid earth.
In the seconds that followed all hell broke loose.
A battle cry was pried from the parched throats of White Lotus members as they all raced from the safety of suburban homes. The desperate hundred carried knives tied to brooms and gardening tools sharpened to a point.
Amon's military mounted guns from the safety of the wall. On command, with little hesitation and even less compassion for the oppressed, they unleashed a smattering of gunfire that tore through the brave bodies below like warm bread.
In seconds the distance between the wall and the suburban homes soiled with blood. The dry earth absorbing the life that leaked from the broken bodies of the dead. With each desperate stride the White Lotus fighters took they trampled the bodies of the fallen ahead of them.
"We need to take out those shooters atop the wall," Mako said lining up a shot. He glanced to the boy on the table top beside him, his legs in bent leg position. His eyes locked straight ahead and removed from the world around him.
"Kai!" Mako shouted.
Aim. Fire. Repeat. Simple right? So why couldn't Kai bring himself to do it?
Taking an angered breath Mako lined up a shot and felt the rifle hammer in his hands. He watched his victim stumble to the side in surprise, his feet lost traction and he slipped over the side of the wall. His body carried, smoothly by gravity, trailing blood through the air as he sank into the callous hand of the cold earth below his body becoming little more than a speck of mangled blood and bone.
Mako moved on. He'd just lined up a decent shot when a bullet whipped through the glass of the window above his head. The glass puckered and gave way as the bullet rooted itself in the statue of a deity.
"Kai!" Mako exclaimed tackling the boy to the ground before two more bullets spit through the glass of the windows.
Glass exploded across their backs and Mako felt the young boy beneath him shaking uncontrollably.
He'd done it again. He's taken another human life. How could he live with himself after doing something like that? How could the world ask a fourteen year old boy to do something like that again?
Mako pulled Kai to the protection of nearby walls.
"We need to move. We need to take out those bastards atop the wall or we'll lose the inner wall." Kai did nothing but stare at his quivering hands.
Mako clenched his jaw and pinched the bridge of his nose, "You don't want to be a killer? Fine! Whatever!" Mako grabbed the boy by the shoulders, and growled his words ferociously, "But in case you haven't noticed the world has come to be all about kill or be killed. You want to wallow in your self pity?" A wail pitched somewhere in the distance. Someone cried out in agony, "You wait to wallow when there aren't hundreds of people losing their lives. You wallow on your own damned time. Now grab your rifle and get your shit together."
Mako waited. What would it be? Kill or be killed. The world had been asking every survivor that question for the last two years and now Kai had to give an answer.
Kai sat still. Frozen.
"Useless." Mako grumbled before beginning to make a move for the door.
Kai grabbed the tail of his shirt and yanked him back.
"You're going to get yourself killed," The shaken boy said, sweat falling over his dirty face. He moved past Mako, working to stay low. He grabbed the table leg and with a firm yank the table went cap side, covering the window.
They both lunged into action, taking their rifles and making a run for the doorway.
Bullets smashed through the windows, carving the air with high pitched whistles.
They dashed down the hall, the walls so thin that the bullets tore through them and the next. From atop the walls Kai could imagine how it looked. The two of them vanishing and reappearing as they passed windows.
Light holes began flickering behind their path. Wall paper flew, wood in the walls erupted, insulation singed from burning bullets, and glass puckered before falling to the floorboards in thick sheets.
Kai closed his eyes, whipping his head aside and lifting his hands to catch the lightning shards of glass and splinters that clipped and snipped his flesh to ribbons. He pressed behind Mako as they made their way to the nearest stairwell.
Mako reached the stairs first, free of the windows that allowed Amon's to hunt them so easily. He threw himself down a stairwell and Kai collapsed atop him.
Inertia caused the two to tumble halfway down the flight of stairs, before Kai managed to catch their teeth rattling fall. Heaving heavy breaths of exhilaration the boys recovered to their feet, with massive grins on their faces.
"Are you alright?" Mako asked. Kai assessed himself. Cuts and scrapes riddled him head to toe. But none of his countless wounds were life threatening.
"I'm fine." Kai said.
They had just begun to laugh when something registered on the older boys face. The older boy looked down, noticing the dripping sensation as it rushed down his pants. Then he dropped backwards down the next six stairs.
PRESENT
By time they reached the first inner wall Asami's leg had been scalded into submission. Her burning flesh had engrained itself in the hairs of Korra's nose and she knew she'd never be rid herself of the images. Of exposed flesh. Of sawed through bone. Of boiling blood.
She didn't hear when Bolin got in the helicopter. Only saw his shaken face when laid eyes on Asami's grisly mutilation.
He hesitated. His breath lodged in his throat and despair overcame his good-natured smile.
Korra said nothing. She knew that look in someone's eyes. It happened when their mind encrypted them with traumatizing memories. Memories that would playback as nightmares every time their eyes closed.
Bolin gave Iroh a radio that crackled with someone giving information, "The migration will be at the fences in thirty minutes..."
Korra stood then. She saw her father standing and watching his defeated daughter.
She looked down on Asami's body. Her arm on the floor. Her hair still dripping small puddles of blood and soot. Wordlessly she slid her hands beneath Asami's limp body and tucked her frame into her chest.
Pain registered in the far corner of her mind. She'd just had several pounds of rock removed from her leg. Her flesh still gaped exposed and damaged. She ignored the nerves that screamed at her to relive the weight she carried.
But Korra never got to put down the weights she carried. That was the price of calling herself a leader.
They'd touched down in the overgrown garden of a bombed out mansion. Half the home stood untouched, the other half a mix of charred wood and caved in roofing.
Nurses came rushing from the mansions overpass. They had a gurney between their hands. As they drew closer Korra held Asami tighter. A part of her wanting to never let the woman go. When the nurses came to a stop in front of her, she knew Asami needed their capable hands and with a heavy ache in her heart she lifted the woman onto the bed.
She leaned over then securing Asami's arms atop the thin bed and brushing the slightly singed raven hair from Asami's lovely face. Korra's hair matted in the rain and dripped onto Asami's pale dirty cheeks. Without thinking she ran her finger tips over the face. How could she still feel so soft? Her eyes took in that grace and beauty in pieces. She searched for aching green eyes that were consumed with kindness. For a resilient smile and graceful confidence.
She searched for the familiar woman she loved in the ambiguous ashes.
"Asami," She whispered, her thumb tracing across the smooth rise and falls of Asami's lips, "You're strong enough to beat this. You always have been. Please don't leave me."
Bolin had only known Asami for a few days, but he liked the woman. She was surprisingly kind, strikingly beautiful, and had an ambitious fierce streak.
He couldn't imagine having to cross the distance from the outer walls to the inner rings of Ba Sing Se. Being surrounded by hundreds of undead. He knew how that could make people so close they became family. Surviving life and death situations did that.
That's why he hesitated as he approached Korra. He wasn't yet sure what he could say to make her feel better. But he could sense his best friend's depression.
He leaned his weight against the balcony where Korra stood. They were only a few feet away Asami lay in bed. Iroh ran a damp cloth over her forehead and Korra watched longingly.
"Opal is doing better," he said to break the ice; "Suyin says she's not out of the woods just yet, but with each hour she gets a little stronger."
"How did they even manage to find you guys?" Korra asked.
"Suyin and Tonraq came in carrying a white flag." Bolin beamed a brilliant smile, "Opal was so glad to see her mom. So was Suyin. I'd never thought I'd see Suyin cry. Even Wing and Wei stopped bickering long enough to greet their sister. At first Iroh didn't want to help rescue you guys but then we got word that we'd lost the inner wall. And Tonraq said you were with Asami. Iroh was more than interested when Tonraq mentioned her." Bolin cast a glance to the man as he removed more grime from Asami's cheeks. "Now I guess I know why."
"They're married." Korra said with disbelief.
"Yeah…" He tried a smile out on his lips, but he couldn't even fake that joy.
The truth was that the undead were lining their walls at that very moment. That the second inner wall had been broken up in certain places from bomb raids and repaired with high fences. That sooner rather than later the fences would give out under the weight. And they had only a couple of hours before they were overrun.
"Korra, I know you feel guilty about not saving Asami's leg." He spoke slowly. He'd never been good with sad words. He preferred happy ones.
"I didn't hack it off." Korra glared daggers into Iroh's back.
"I know… but…"
Bolin trailed off, his eyes shifting between Korra and Asami. He gasped covering his mouth with his hands and his green eyes bulging with disbelief and awe, "You and Asami are together!"
Korra grabbed him roughly by the collar and hauled him into the hallway, praying Iroh hadn't heard Bolin's revelation.
Once they were outside Bolin's face broke into a smile from ear to ear, "I can't believe it you're…" He tried to find the right word. His eyebrows knit down, his lips screwed up to a corner of his face and he tapped his jaw, "Hmmmm… Well I know you and Mako were dating for a couple of weeks so you can't be a lesbian unless-,"
"Bolin," Korra groaned, "it doesn't matter. She's married. I wish she weren't, but…" She turned trailing off; watching Iroh as he stood up secured a machete on his hip then pad from the room. He glanced at Korra and Bolin as he went the opposite direction down a hallway, away from the people he led.
Moments passed and Iroh's body vanished down the darker end of the hallway. Finally Bolin spoke, "Remember last winter? We were being attacked by wolves every night, we were hungry and cold. We were ready to die. You told us we choose our own paths. We make the best decisions we can with what little information we have. And sometimes we come up just short of the things we want in life. But sometimes, we find something incredible. Sometimes we find mercy, peace, or even love." He smiled sadly when Korra's eyes turned to Asami. His friend loved his other friend. And he couldn't be happier for them, "You remember what you said next?"
Korra couldn't pry her eyes from the sleeping woman, "I told you not to lie down and die. Because doing so would take away our ability to choose better paths."
Bolin nodded. "So go choose a better path."
Korra shook her head, "It's not that simple."
Bolin looked down the haul where Iroh had gone.
"It is. You said so yourself."
Korra shook her head once more, "I didn't come up with that. Tenzin did. He said that to me a few weeks after I lost my mother. But Tenzin never fell in love with a married woman. He never crawled through hell only to find another hell on the other side."
Bolin's eyes glazed over with remembrance. Of Pema and his children, "Didn't he?"
Maybe it was instinct that made Korra follow Iroh to the collapsed portion of the mansion.
Moving to the side of the walls where the floorboards were less likely to creak and avoiding the puddles made from holes in the roof.
He ducked inside a room, and a few moments later the flickering light of a candle came to life.
Then she heard Iroh's voice.
He spoke.
She stepped closer to hear the conversation.
"…Should know what put humanity here," he amended with shame thick in his voice, "That I put us here on the edge of extinction."
She had words for this man, and with less than six hours to live she could fill them spilling out before she'd even rounded the corner and made her presence known.
He stopped mid sentence. His eyes flickered up and Korra moved forward.
Based on the soft colors, frilly curtains, and overturned chest of toys, Korra surmised they were in a child's bedroom. She looked Iroh up and down. He held a tape recorder in his hand.
"What do you mean you put us on the edge of extinction?" Korra asked.
Iroh stared at Korra. She could imagine how she looked. She'd cleaned up – or rather allowed her father to clean her up. Everything had been so unreal. Watching the nurses try and bring Asami back from the edge of death. Watching them pump blood into her veins. Treat her wounds, search for other bite marks, redo Iroh's half-educated attempt at a field amputation. It had all been so draining.
She could feel the bags under her eyes as if they were a ball and chain on her feet. Iroh could too. He took a few steps back and sat down in a rocking chair. He laid his semiautomatic over his lap and took a deep breath.
"I've never been good with words. But Asami…" He trailed off with nostalgia placing a smile on his lips, "She's magic with words. She'd have done this easy. She'd have known all the right things to say." Shame and regret laced his tone, "I should have left that magic alone. Now… she hates me."
"Of course she hates you!" Korra thundered, "You cut her leg off!" The moment the words left Korra's lips she knew she couldn't contain her rage. She raised her fist and mentally fought the desire to attack the man. She then jabbed a finger in his direction, "You ever consider maybe she didn't want that! Ever stop to ask her why she was screaming so loud at you to stop! And for what?" Korra demanded, "So she could wake up and do it all over again! One more time feeling herself be eaten alive? How can you be that cruel?" She stopped the words before they'd entered the space between them, how could Asami love someone so cruel?
Her voice echoed into the space, her breaths were labored out and just barely overshadowed by the sound of rain hammering against the roof.
Her hand had found her gun at some point. Maybe there was a point in killing someone a few hours before their set execution. Maybe at the end of the world, there was only vengeance.
"Taking her leg is the least of my sins."
Korra huffed breaths, "What are you talking about?"
"One month ago," Iroh began, "I took Asami's hand in marriage. That night, she and I lay in bed together. We'd never…" he trailed off, "I knew I couldn't make love to her without telling her the truth." His jaw tightened, "That I green lighted the nuclear bomb we dropped on Republic City."
"You what?"
"You remember two years ago. No one had ever seen anything like it except in horror movies. You have to understand, back then we didn't realize that simply being exposed to the blood of the undead was enough to make someone test positive for the infection. We thought that the positives were the telltale sign of someone in the process of turning. We knew so little about the infection as a whole, to be honest.
"We knew our ground zero was a sex slave. She and several other girls had been trafficked through Kyoshi Island. The Island is the first record of the infection we had and at that time was a hub stop for traffickers. We assume that's where she was exposed to the infection. They then got trafficked through the boarders even after they'd been shut down.
"We knew she'd transmitted the infection to all of the men she'd had relations with. The first few men who came to the hospital didn't tell us they'd solicited sex that's why it took us days to place a common link between them. And by then it was too late to slow the infection down. One of the men was a construction worker, a school teacher, an attorney, a pilot… The infection was spreading so fast through blood, urine, saliva, even scratches from the nails of the infected. When we finally managed to find patient zero and bring her in we had three hundred cases where individuals had died and turned.
"Varrick Pharmaceutics had doctors and scientists working around the clock trying to understand the infection. After several days with no fruitful results they attempted to treat tissue from patient zero with radiation. The infection seemed to be cured then. High percentage of the infection was eradicated from her body. I intended to pass the information along to higher ups. But then I found there were no higher ups.
"President Raiko had been moved out of Republic City days ago. We'd lost contact with him and his transport and he was assumed dead. If our military head and city councilmen weren't dead or missing they were testing positive for the infection. The Earth Queen had stopped returning our calls. The Fire Nation no interest in lending resources that could possibly result in infecting their people. Not to mention the civil war between the Northern and Southern Water Tribes."
Iroh reclined his head in the rocking chair. He laughed at himself, "One hundred and twenty seven men and women, with more rank than me and none of them were available. One hundred and twenty seven. And it all boiled down to me.
"We couldn't contain it. Our men were being infected, beaten by angry mobs, not to mention bitten by the undead. Health care workers organized a strike within days, demanding they not be forced to interact with highly infectious people they had no treatment for. Then we found an undead in the sewer system. We had to cut the water. And soon after the power. Everything went to hell after that.
"I had to make a decision before we lost all control of the city. Do I obliterate a city where an estimated eighty percent of its occupants were testing positive for infection? Or should I hope for a breakthrough that wasn't likely to come?"
Iroh shook his head, "Well…" he trailed off. "You know how that story goes. I chose, or at least thought I was choosing, to save the world by obliterating the city. No sooner than we had confirmed impact Kya, one of the few Southern Water Tribe scientists and doctors who had rushed to aid Republic City, came barreling in. She'd fought her way into the room. She'd gotten there with more than one bullet in her body. She was talking fast and was terrified of a rumor she'd heard. A rumor about a nuke being dropped on Republic City. She said she had a theory that the infection that so many tested positive for was not aggressive. She had a theory that it was only being bitten by fully turned infected that was lethal. She had a theory that if we did anything drastic - like nuking them - they would die, and reanimate as the undead. That we'd have more than a plague - we'd have en epidemic. We'd have an apocalypse.
"So you see. This is my fault," he gestured around them. To the stench of the undead hanging heavily in the room. "After that bomb was dropped under my orders whoever wasn't killed by initial impact and died in the fallout blast was reanimated. It took them all of seven hours before they turned. A city of millions wiped from the history books in a blink of the eye and in their place stood millions of undead. That day I damned us all."
Korra's legs had given out at some point. All of her anger had fizzled away leaving only the crushing depression that had brought her to her knees.
Her voice was just above a whisper, "All those people. They didn't need to die…"
Iroh nodded before he continued, "When I told Asami she was disgusted with me. What I hadn't known was that she'd been on a plane. That's she'd just cleared the fall out zone when she saw the mushroom cloud. That she'd witnessed me murder millions of innocent people. That the two jets I'd ordered chase down the commercial flight had almost killed her. And that the burns scars riddling her back had been put there by my haphazard course of action."
He reached inside his shirt and produced a chain. The chain held two silver dog tags. Between them was a silver ring, "She gave me back my ring. She left our tent and that was the last time I saw her before we were caught in a migration. I thought she'd died.
"I don't blame her for leaving. I had lived with so much self-loathing; I expected nothing less for her. I'd trapped her and fed her the lie of me being an honorable man. But where was my honor on that hellish day? To say we won't kill a million men, just to save our own skin?"
The rain fell harder. Lightning cracked the cricks in its neck and exhaled a howling wind. The draft picked up in the room, violently passing through the broken windows. Iroh's candle was extinguished in the strong gust and they were plummeted into a fitting darkness.
"It's funny." Korra spoke some time after the wind had settled down, "Two years ago our decisions were so simple. Noodles or dumplings? Flowers or chocolate? Now everything is life or death. Everything is unforgiving."
The first gunshot came unrepentantly. Iroh and Korra both stiffened.
Without a word they both lurched into motion. Korra took out her own gun and ran from the room. She heard Iroh's heavy footfalls right behind her. Together they made their way past Asami's room. Korra couldn't help but stop to look inside. Iroh hesitated behind her before continuing on towards the direction of the gun shot.
Lin stood over Asami. She had a machete in one hand, "Go. I'll watch the injured."
Korra nodded, and with a final glance at Asami she raced after Iroh.
She exited the mansion door just moments after Iroh. She couldn't see what the shot had been fired at.
"They broke down the fence that fast?" Korra asked. What if one of the little ones had wandered outside of the mansion gates? She'd seen them playing in the underpass of the mansion. Without a second thought Korra hurdled herself forward, her feet splashing in puddles as the rain made purchase with her swift moving body.
"Korra! Wait!" Iroh called after her, before gritting his teeth, "Hold fire! We don't want to hit Korra!"
It was a short run, past the parked helicopter, through the garden, through the gates, over a short hill, until stumbling over slick grass, her feet dug into the muddy hillside and she slid to a halt.
"Kai!" She smiled seeing the boy's bloodied face. She then saw the body he carried.
Her mouth formed his name, but her heart refused to believe the sight, "Mako."
Heavy feet broke the earth and Bolin let out a tormented cry of anguish as he enveloped his brother's limp body with his arms. He tugged him from Kai's shoulder and fell into the muddy hill. Dirt and blood stained him as his brother's head fell back limp over his arms. Bolin hunkered down then, pulling his brother's face close to his neck as he cradling the older man and let out a hoarse throated sob.
Two nurses dashed past Korra. As one of them attempted to find a pulse the other began inspecting the bullet hole in Mako's body.
"He has a faint pulse," reported one of them. Bolin's face set with determination then. He pulled his brother fully into his arms and began hauling his body up the hill. Each step was slowed by the weight of the two boys sinking into the muddy hillside.
Korra looked over at the younger boy. The tattoos on his back exposed. His shirt torn. His face bloodied and scraped with pieces of glass visibly being washed away by the hands of rain, "I came as fast as I could," Kai lamented.
Korra nodded. Mako weighed a time and a half the weight of the slender framed boy. She didn't doubt he'd had to drag the heavy body every inch of the way, "I know."
"I'm so sorry. I tried so hard." Korra moved to the boy then, pulling him into a tight embrace.
"You did good." She reassured him. And he dropped his head against her chest, letting the rain wash over his weary body.
Korra watched the boys shoulders begin to shake. And she felt Iroh come to her side. He stood there with a gun in one hand and the recording device in the other.
Korra spoke with rain water dribbling from her lips, "If Mako dies. If Asami never forgives you. If the undead break down those fences and kill us all. It won't be because the undead killed us. It'll be because we stopped fighting."
The boy in the mud looked up at his courageous leader, "We take the inner wall." She locked eyes with Iroh and the flames burning in them were almost terrifying, "We take the inner wall tonight."