a/n: OH MAN this went through like eight drafts, no joke. Thank you SO MUCH to everyone who reviewed, favorited, and followed! I really am so grateful. As for the reviewer who asked if Amon killed Korra's parents, because it was vague... yeah, it was vague, wasn't it? (I don't know. Maybe. I think so. Ask me again in a few chapters.)
Anywho, may I present chapter 2. Enjoy.
I. Combat
You're a bully.
No, it's not bullying to cleanse, to equalize, to gut Bolin of his bending, cleanly and bloodlessly. The only thing bending brings is suffering. So Korra takes a step towards Bolin, and then another. He winces widely, tapping the tips of his fingers together; he looks peaky, sweating under the spotlight. She's not sorry. Tenchu toys with her food before she eats it, stalking and predatory.
"Uhm… hello, Tenchu, miss? I still think there's been a… big… misunderstanding," he babbles.
She won't hesitate. She can't. She takes another step, rolling off her heel; she is dense with power, she is doing what needs to be done, for the sake of equality, freedom, herself –
There is a massive, curling whip of lightning from somewhere in the crowd, arcing and twisting through the air, and it slams into the stage lights with a furious, crackling BOOM. The lights explode, plunging the warehouse in deep pitch blackness, and the crowd shrieks and screams as smoke tumbles and rolls onto the stage. A thick howling arc of fire sweeps over them, casting everyone in reddish orange light, and as her fellow Equalists scatter, someone is grabbing Korra from behind, shielding her from the flames –
"You know what to do," Amon says, and he releases her, disappearing into the dark, rolling clouds of smoke.
Korra leaps off the stage, skidding on the warehouse floor, and swings her head around through the fleeing crowd – she saw the man, his face alight with the glow of fire, and he was wearing a red scarf, but most of all she had seen a familiar, worn-out color of impulsive, desperate action. There is a flash of yellow and orange on the far end of the floor, by the stage somewhere – he's fighting someone off – and she runs after him, legs pumping the floor, heart pounding, propelled on excitement.
She bursts through a door, finds herself in the same hallway as before, empty and full of yellow light. Someone disappears around the corner at the far end, a brief flare of red, and she hears a scuffling struggle behind her, loud protests and the muffled sound of heavy blows.
"Get your hands off me, you big – ungh!"
Korra doesn't hesitate.
She throws herself against the wall and slams a fist into the Equalist's temple as he comes through the door, frog-marching Bolin, bound again, before him. The Equalist staggers to the side and collapses with a grunt, out cold, and Korra spins Bolin around and does the first thing that comes to mind – she has to go find that firebender, now. She sets her hand on fire and it tears through her senses, releasing a sudden, delirious vertigo – fire is, fire is what? – and she slices through the ropes, burning them off. They flop to the floor, charred ends smoking, and he just stands there speechless.
"Don't just fucking stand there, run!" she yells, and shoves him away. He stumbles backwards, stares at her stop staring, just run, go, damnit, go! and he throws her a look over his shoulder as he starts running down the hallway. The firebender is the apex of her frenetic rage now… the firebender, who burned through her first chance to prove herself and made himself the second. It's easier this way. It's so simple to hate firebenders… she can't possibly hesitate now.
She swivels and sprints down the other way, down the hall; she flies past the place where Amon slapped her and swerves around the corner – and crumples with a coarse grunt over someone's outstretched arm. She lands hard on her back, organs shunting into each other, all the air forced out of her lungs.
The man makes a fist around the collar of her uniform and lifts her bodily to the wall. She kicks out and scrabbles at his grip, she can't reach anything on him: he's too tall and long-limbed. His eyes are flakes of gold in a fine-lined, angry face, and he's just edged out of childhood, he's young. He twists his hand and lifts her higher.
"Where's the last earthbender who was on stage?! Tell me!" he roars, and she snarls as he yanks her mask off and throws it aside, pulling back a hand tensed full of fire.
She can't block any of his chi points like this and he's looking for Bolin, Bolin the earthbender, and again she acts on impulse – it comes naturally, so naturally, she can't stop it – she hits the wall with her fist. A clump of plaster and bricks bursts out and catches him hard in the gut, and he drops her with a winded oomfgh, stumbling backwards, landing in a clumsy sprawl. She lands nimbly on all fours, fingers splayed on the ground, and grins. Now it's her turn.
Korra sends the bricks skittering across the floor as she takes him by the lapels and heaves him into the wall – she hits him once – twice – right in the sternum, blocking him from the pool of chi, punches into the curves of muscle on his upper arm and shoulder, numbing them, making them useless. His other arm shoots out and she takes his wrist, pulls him away from the wall, slides under and folds him to his knees with a forceful, triumphant twist.
Korra chi-blocks his other arm with three more firm, assertive hits and lets it dangle. She slips one hand under the scarf to the back of his neck and clenches the other around his face, dimpling his skin with the grip of her fingers.
They're alone in the hallway, and it yawns with a shallow silence. The overhead lights flicker and sputter bzzt bzzap, casting angular shards of shadows onto the walls, and she tilts his face up to meet hers. He struggles, trying to move his arms, but they're limp from the strength of her chi block and Korra holds him steady, pressing in closer.
"You're mine," she pants, her hair falling loose around her, damp with sweat, "deal with it."
His eyes are full of yellow, gleaming panic. She can see herself in their glossy shine – the huge swirls of black, the jagged curve of her mouth, teeth bared like a dog. So that's what Tenchu looks like, under her mask, the shining star child of the Equalists.
"Just wanna know – 'bout earthbender," he says, voice strangled and short. He wants Bolin. She let Bolin go… how easy would it be to just let this one go too, show him where Bolin went, I didn't find him, the firebender got away…? It's odd, to be trapped between sympathy and shame, and she only has the energy to carry one of them. The spot where Amon slapped her sears anew.
Shame, then.
"I'll tell you, if you tell me what's it like to firebend," she says, voice twisting into a hiss, inches over him, "why so many firebenders are thugs, and murderers. What's it like to be someone like you?"
He blanches, makes an incoherent noise, he's stricken with – with guilt – good. Someone like him killed her mother, hurt her father; she hates him so much. And she hates how fire feels – how it's like painting with the sun, swoops and arcs and billows of reds and yellows, how each hovering drop of fire over her palm starts from a spark that sings sharply through her nerves, a keen uncoiling of energy… How when it flickers and snaps and dances on her fingertips, she herself is breathlessly, unerringly alive and he can feel that power too, that singing surge of living… is he the one who told Bolin it was okay?
"Ts' terrible," he says suddenly, in a compressed rasp, and she opens her grip just a fraction; "like carrying death around… not supposed to be that way."
He cuts off. Korra stops hating him, almost; her ferocity is cut out from under her. She studies him, tracing the lines of his face, and he closes his eyes helplessly on her touch, a light tremor running through him. There is a sort of misshapen understanding written there, like all his tension, all the fear, the anger in his expression is spelled wrong, but it's there... maybe he wonders the same things she does. Can fire kill a man without burning him? How can fire leave a man so cold?
"That's why I'm going to equalize you," she says, bits of some old speech careening through her head, "so you'll finally be free of your bending.
She has no choice because this is the only way to please Amon, to make him proud - the hug on the roof is infinitely distant because Korra, you're a disgrace and she will do what needs to be done. Korra lifts her hand and tenses it over his forehead, knuckles aching with the strain. Do not hesitate.
"Relax," she mutters, as his eyes widen, irises quivering, "it'll only take a second."
"Mako!? NO!"
The yell comes barreling down the hallway and she looks up, hand suspended in the air. Bolin is standing a dozen yards away, shocked, mouth agape, and Mako shouts, "Do something!"
With a huge, swift effort, Bolin sweeps his fists into the air, and the floor beneath her ripples and buckles, tossing pieces of concrete into the air. She and Mako tumble apart, and she spills to the floor, his red scarf in hand, as a cluster of concrete smashes into her ribcage with a dull, dense crack– unnfgh! Mako springs to his feet and kicks out with a curve of fire; she flings her arms over her head – the heat gusts away and she squints through the gap between her wrists. Bolin and Mako are sprinting away; she tries to move but the pain in her ribs screams and stabs at her muscles and she has to hug the floor, gasping for air.
Their footsteps fade away and her heart loses all its form, turning to smoke in her breast, and a taut, aching soreness pools into her throat. The cracked concrete is cool under her skin, and the ceiling spins and tilts in the quiet. She fumbles out, dizzy with pain, and clutches the scarf just to hold on to something, because she's about to fall off the ground, and the reality that she failed make lazy loops around her throbbing head, she failed she failed she failed…
II. Hurt
She hasn't moved in almost an hour, lying on her side as despondence pools around her, listening to the sound of her own thin breathing. She coughs and the pain in her chest forces her insides apart, squelching the muscles and bones around with a heavy brick of agony. Something slides down the side of her mouth and she touches it, holds it into the light; the shiny red slime of blood on her fingers.
Korra has to get home somehow. But she doesn't want to go like this, stumbling over her own incompetence, a bruised and beaten mess, without her dignity. But she has to go home, explain herself – she rolls onto her back and tries to sit up but the pain bursts and spills again, rolling through her like a wave, swerving to the top of her head with a lightweight rush and she's just going to have to wait. And he'll just have to come find her… he won't like that…
She waits all night long and before she knows it,
Korra is somewhere else.
It's somewhere very different from the floor of an abandoned hallway, and she's not really even there because she's also someone else, maybe, someone she wears like finding an old coat that fits just like you remember, warm and worn and comforting, and she lets it wrap around her… these hands aren't hers, they have the sky on them. How do you trap the sky on your hands like this? And that girl, her smile, her eyes, they love her. They plant a sapling of slow-growing joy that creeps around Korra's soul, vine-like and green and full of promise. Korra knows who she is, somehow… that girl set her free from something…
…something cold. Set her free from… something dark and watery and unbreakable – a wall of ice? And now there is a leaf on the wind, flakes of pale color, fluttering around them, snowy and soft but there is warmth and a flower blossom in the hand that is not quite her hand, but it's as natural as her own breathing…
The sky on her hands begs the breeze and the breeze begs her hands, and then the air is cupped and spilling off her fingertips, and the flower blossom floats to the girl on nothing, nothing at all except a wide stream of sunlight and the current of the girl's laughter, bright with the color of joy and desire and Korra sees it now, the sky is not trapped in these hands. It moves through them. She is lilting in the wind but why is it so familiar? Why?
Who is holding me? She falls back into herself as someone carries her down the hallway and the pain throbs and pangs with each step. Stop, I need to know why! She is only vaguely aware of weak, shifting light playing on the edges of her vision, something rumbling and vibrating underneath her, a rumbling mechanical animal. Stop, stop, take me back… and she wants to stay, stay curled up in that somewhere else, a page torn from some old book she never read but somehow she knew all the words…
Take me back, I need to go back…
"Back to the warehouse? I'm taking you home, you stupid girl," says Amon, from somewhere inside of her. Korra is turned inside out, all the pain is outside and she is warm from some slow-burning coal.
"No, not there, take me back," she mumbles. Her teeth chatter together and he calms her with a touch to her forehead.
"Sir? Are you sure you shouldn't be taking her to a healer?" says the Lieutenant, from the driver's seat.
"I will deal with this myself, Lieutenant. Just drive."
The car rolls to a stop as dawn begins to break overhead, streetlights blinking out and going dark, spots of dirt on the cool blue canvas of an early morning sky. Korra groans as Amon shifts out from under her, laying her head on the leather seat, and she reaches for him through the open car door, through the aching sharp knot in her chest, her fingers catching only air.
"Dad," she gasps, "Dad… no, wait… "
Amon pulls her gently, firmly from the car and lifts her.
"Return the car to Sato, if you will, Lieutenant," he says, and she hears the doors slam shut and the turn of the engine through a hazy half-awareness. The air darkens and cools as Amon turns and walks down a side street, the dawn hours still and silent, drifting in the space between dreaming and waking. Korra's dangling fist is sore and she holds it up, bunched around something bright red and woolly. She's still clutching that damn scarf.
"You were adamant on keeping that," he says, and she just goes mmmfgh in reply and lets it drag on the asphalt. He shoulders his way through a wooden door, tucked down a narrow grey alleyway, and then he is climbing the stairs and Korra rocks slightly with each step. She feels childish, being carried like this; what a burden…
They're home. He takes her to her room, lays her on the bed; unbuckles the belt and folds the coat and black undershirt away, exposing the massive, mottled bloom of sickly green-yellow-blues on her brown skin. Amon thumbs the blood off her face and puts two fingers to her neck, feeling her pulse. He relaxes his palm lightly on her chest and she winces, sucking in air - there is an odd crackling gravel sound at the center of pain.
"Your ribs are broken," he says, "badly."
He takes his mask off, drops it onto the floor, and wipes his face with a weary, drawn hand, smearing make-up and sweat into thick lines and clumps. He leaves and she can hear the tap running into the basin in the kitchen: he's washing the scar off, blustering in the cold water. Noatak comes back a few minutes later, carrying a pot of water. He pulls a chair up to her bedside and puts his hands over the bruise, water snaking over them and glowing a clear light blue.
The pain, overheated and shrill, slows down and stops. The water washes over her and into her, clearing out the aching, the burning. It all flakes off and floats away.
"Dad – Dad, I'm sorry, I messed up, I'm sorry…" Korra says, in an undertone, and her breath hitches on a sharp tug of bones snapping back together, and then another.
"Be quiet," he says, and there is a different kind of pain now. She rolls her head away from him, her world skewing on its side, her bed sheets splitting themselves apart in double vision. She's nauseous, despite the healing. Her gut is hollow and all of her nerves are melting into sour bile that slides up her throat, and she is just waiting, waiting for the storm to break… the silence weighs heavily, muggy with a humid, sticky kind of dread. She can feel his disappointment, his anger, breaking across her again and again; a wave of grief closes over her.
"Dad, I'm sorry," she tries again, and his eyes are metallic and starry and full of the healing glow of the water. He cups a hand around her cheek, turns her face to him. The hot soreness in her neck coils behind her eyes and they mist over, blurring him. Noatak brushes her damp disarray of bangs to her ear, sweeps down her cheek with his fingertips.
"I told you not to disappoint me," he says smoothly; "did I not?"
His voice is sinuous, threading and spooling through her like cutting wire.
"Not only that - not only that, Korra, but you did something else."
He pulls something out from the breast of his uniform, and her heart plummets. The charred ropes, with their blackened, fire-cut ends, hang from his fist, and he drops them with disgust.
"That was the firebender, he – "
"We both know… it was not the firebender," he says, in a steady, ringing voice, and Korra stops the lie, hastily swallowing it down; "it was you. It was you and your own petty fears, your spinelessness. You shame me and you betray your mother's memory with your pathetic lack of conviction."
Each word guts her slowly. She is raw, and foolish.
He casts a glance towards the ropes and then fits her with a hard, fractured look, working something over in his mind.
"Just fire, I presume?"
"No," she moans, covering her eyes with one hand, "earth, too."
Several years' worth of silence passes between them.
Noatak sighs but he doesn't need to say anything, and he doesn't need to. Her misery laces through her mind, fine silk threads stitching together, closing the tears in the torn fabric of thought: the only thing bending brings is suffering. Why, why, why was she so weak?
"You're entirely useless, injured like this," he says, in a kind of afterthought, and Korra feels an animalistic anger steal into the rawness. He sent her after that firebender, after all.
"Maybe if you didn't treat me like some pawn – "
"Maybe if you would just do as I say, for once!" he snarls, and the water splashes onto her bare skin as his hands seize up suddenly, the pain snapping back into place, shuddering all over her – and for a split second, it tightens vice-like around her veins, hard, and cold, like ice forcing its way into her blood, flash-freezing through her muscles – she can't even flinch –
And everything relaxes, flooding with heat, as Noatak starts and releases the blood-bending hold. He bows his head, pulling on his face, and exhales, a long, drawn-out sigh of frustration and disappointment.
"I hate you," Korra wants to say, and doesn't. She just rolls onto her good side, away from him, and glowers into the pillow, a deep, heavy exhaustion settling in her from somewhere beyond a simple need to sleep. She wishes he would just be happy, for once; be happy with her, the child born to him, instead of the feral thing squirming in the space behind the Tenchu mask. She can't even bring herself to do it, to just be happy with Korra.
"Korra. I…"
"Don't touch me," she mutters flatly, and his hand vanishes from her shoulder.
And then, after a forested silence, he leaves, shutting the door behind him. There are too many things growing in the quiet untouched hollows of their shared earth.
III. Plans
In the colorless, restless hours of sleep that follow, Noatak wakes Korra up once, to ask her if she knows their names, the names of the earthbender and the firebender. She tells him, and before he leaves again, he detaches the scarf from her grip, taking it with him.
She knows what he's doing, even drifting in a current of half-sleep. Years of careful construction mean that the Equalist spy network is as unobtrusive and unnoticeable as a brick on a building façade, cemented into the institutions of the city. He is digging for them, for Mako and Bolin. They have to be found. They know her secret.
Noatak wakes her up again, much later, with a firm shake. The room is dark, and by the color of the light on the apartment building through the window, Korra can tell it's long into the afternoon. She slept all day.
"How are you feeling?"
"Like shit," she says, propping herself up on her forearms, and throwing back the blanket that wasn't there before, "but my ribs feel fine."
His face darkens and his eyes flutter, like he's trying to restrain something.
"I found your friends," he says, coolly, "we should go pay them a visit."
Korra rolls her legs off the bed and clasps her hands between her knees, staring at the carpet. Her mind is still a bit of a fog. Things rush to her, sinking their teeth into the hazy after-peace of sleep: that weird dream. Mako and Bolin both saw her bend. And the full moon isn't over yet… and he said…
"…'we'?" she asks, carefully.
"We."
She sits up straight now, narrowing her eyes, her mouth tight and small. He doesn't trust her.
"So… are you, or am I…?"
"You are," he says, a solid statement of fact.
Korra resists the urge to slouch, to collapse, to go right back to bed and find that dream and get out of this... this trap. She stares at him, completely still, blanking her face. Fine.
"Time to get ready."
He holds out a hand, palm up, and she takes it.
They leave the apartment not long after, sneaking down the fire escape and into the alleyway behind the building. She can feel the full moon, though she can't see it - a cool, feather touch through her skin and into her core. It refreshes her, relaxes her; and she looks at Noatak as he pulls the tarps off their motorcycles with a flourish and checks them over. Does he feel it too? Is it a waterbender thing? Or just her?
She fiddles with the sleeves of her grey and blue jacket, piped with white, picking at a stray thread. They're dressed in civilian clothing, for once, but he has their masks in his satchel. And she tugs absently on the wolftails in her hair, the only hairstyle he knew how to teach her way back when.
The trepidation from last night is coming back to her, slowly, rising like a tide, lapping at her feet. Korra swings a leg over her motorcycle and kicks her heels out, stiff and waiting; down the alleyway, the main street gapes wide, full of dim streetlight. She takes in the tinny chirp of crickets, ringing out from somewhere in the abandoned wooden crates and urban refuse; the distant hollow howl of Satomobiles on the broadways rustling in through the cables and wires overhead. Something lonely and old is limping into the borough, dragging its hoarse breaths.
She feels bad for Bolin, and Mako, sort of. They're on the breeze somewhere, thinking they're safe from the Equalists, from her… but Tenchu might not survive a rumor of bending abilities. She knows Noatak doesn't even want to take the risk. Korra feels worse for herself.
Noatak's presence is dense, drawing in all the sound and light, flattening them. He straddles his motorcycle and hands her a sheet of paper, covered in writing. She reads it over, squinting in the half-light. Narook's Seaweed Noodlery, Central City Plaza, Probending Arena, Fire Water Four Ball…
"We start with the restaurant and take each place after that, in order. We stay close together. If we don't find them by dawn, we come home and start again tomorrow. Do you understand?" he says, running his hands through his fine, jet-black hair.
Korra nods, buttoning the straps of her leather driving gloves across the back of her hands. She understands, of course; understands that they're going to be punished for her mistake – she corrects herself – no, the only thing bending brings is – they're going to be equalized. Korra closes her eyes, upturning her thoughts, searching for that animal, that thing that seethes on open wounds and weaknesses with hot, fetid breath, delirious and high on rage and hatred... slake its hunger for the oppressive and cruel. Bending scum. It's there, somewhere; she can sense it, but it's not quite awake.
Noatak tenses, broad shoulders rising rigidly, and tilts her chin up with a gloved hand.
"No hesitation," he says, holding her gaze, and his voice is somehow darker than the falling night sky. Korra bats his hand away and grabs the grips, locking her joints, allowing herself a few seconds of fuming. She fits her goggles to her face, feeling the leather snug and firm against her cheeks.
"I know, can we just go already?" she gripes, slouching over the motorcycle handlebars, and in response he slides his driving goggles down his face and kicks his own bike into gear, a muscle twitching in his jaw.
They roar through the streets, down the Kya Boulevard, wind whipping at their hair, breezing past trucks and automobiles like growling iron leopard-snakes. The city slides past her at high speed, blurring into streaks of gold light on a coarse brown canvas of bricked lines and shapes. The Avatar's city, built on a cheap, hopeless dream of harmony and balance, crumbling over its foundation of delusion. It is her city now.
They reach Narook's Noodlery and make a full loop around the block, quickly and efficiently, peering down alleyways and the emptying streets. They bring their motorbikes stuttering to a stop a dozen yards away from the entrance and kill the engines to lean over on stiff legs, pausing as the sound of vibrant jazz braids to the smell of savory meats and seafood. It all wafts out through the door curtains, light and full of flavor. At last the full moon is out, a fat, shining white coin gleaming on the navy blue sky, and Korra idly counts stars.
It was about this time last night that… that thing with the Avatar statue happened, where she felt someone there, and Korra holds herself in that memory for a moment. It had just been so… uncanny. But it was just a dumb statue of some irrelevant dead guy. What a great beacon of harmony, or whatever. He couldn't even bother to come back for another go at life. She snorts to herself, under her breath. Tch.
"Dad. What's the plan?" she asks, twisting in her seat, hands resting on her thighs, as he takes the goggles off, shaking his head.
"You tell me," he says, leaning forward, forearms draped over the handles, and she scowls down the street. He's loosening the hold, giving her a chance… and if her plan fails, it'll be her fault, again. Useless. Prove yourself. It's the same thing, over and over and over. Prove herself for what? She is tired of weathering his storm.
"Okay. You go around the back to that alleyway, and if they're here, I'll flush them out to you," she says. It's not the best idea, but he hums in agreement, twisting the throttle, the engine churning back to life - and she throws out a hand.
"Wait, do you have that scarf?"
Noatak wordlessly draws it out of the satchel and tosses it into her outstretched hand. She catches it and it's bundled around something, her mask. He swerves the bike in a tight curve around her, rumbling on low into the alleyway towards the back of Narook's, disappearing into the shadows.
Korra slings the scarf around her neck and tucks the mask down her jacket, fitting it to the curve of her side. She laces her fingers together, stretching; palms facing out, feeling muscles pull and joints crack in her back and shoulders. She can do this, she can totally do this, she's not afraid... She doesn't really have a choice, anyway, and Korra comes down on the kickstand with a bit more force than necessary, settling the motorbike under a lamppost. She looks down the street, towards the bay behind all the buildings, where she knows the Avatar statue is rising out of the sea, steadfast and faithful to his city… the symbol of bending, all four nations living in peace. Bending, in peace.
She strolls up to Narook's, deliberately casual, no funny business, no sir... and stops dead, right outside the doorway, staring through the curtains. Bolin and Mako are there, in the back of the restaurant. Right there. And they're eating noodles like it's no big fucking deal that she's going to waltz in and take their bending what the fuck are they doing
Korra wheels around and scoots out of sight, shrinking up against the paneled outer wall, closing her eyes.
She is going to do what her father wants her to do, to make him happy, to prove herself. She is going to take their bending. She wants to be useful. She is useful and he loves her and Tenchu is just a construct to sway the masses… She wants him to be proud of her. It's an opaque, heavy desire, swirling like an oil slick across the surface of everything... but there is another desire, deep down inside, buried and hibernating for some forbidden season of spring. Korra wants to learn bending. She feels it in her bones, in her blood, in the way water answers her call like an old friend and the way fire caresses her hands like a lover. She hides it, at the bottom of everything else; waiting for when she can coax it into life, rouse it…
A city of… harmony, was it? And balance.
Korra opens her eyes and smiles.
She has a plan.
Alright chapter 3 is 1.2k words in and going strong sooooo y'all can expect an update in less than two weeks.