A/N: My friends. I'm sorry. I am so very sorry. If you're brave enough to have clicked on this fic despite the summary and are now reading these notes, all I can say is…you're in for a RIDE. But out of my entire Kiriko backstory, this part is by far the most interesting and will bridge the gap between 'Kiriko' and 'Koko'. And! It ends on a hopeful note.
Just to be clear, the majority of this story is WHUMP and comes with the following content warnings (in no particular order): Implied/Off-screen Major Character Death, Depression, Explicit Language, PTSD, Violence, Torture, Violent Bending, Killing, Death, Murder, Non-sexual Rape-like Act, Manipulation, Genital Mutilation, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Dissociation, Child Murder, Drowning
The violence is moderately graphic but I wouldn't say it's gory enough to qualify as explicit.
If you want to know the plot without subjecting yourself to The Horrors, feel free to wait until it's fully posted. The final chapter will actually be a collection of chapter summaries.
Kiriko was on the verge of jumping up from her seat on the train, if only to pace around and expel some of the restless energy building up in her body. Still, she stayed put to watch the approaching comet and the lights of Republic City twinkling ahead.
An odd sensation overcame her as she stared with her nose pressed against the window with a contented smile on her face. It was like time refused to pass. The comet seemed to hang in the sky, moving so slowly that it may as well be frozen in place. The train sped across the landscape and yet the destination didn't get closer.
And then…the world changed. It didn't change in the blink of an eye, or in the space between two heartbeats. It began to shift and transform as one breath was inhaled, took a detour through eternity, and finally broke in half on the exhale.
An ugly plume of brown smoke rose up from the center of the city, higher and higher into the clouds, where it spread out into a massive mushroom shape. Kiriko caught only a glimpse before being flung to the floor amid metallic screeches.
There was only time for one cogent thought to pass through her mind:
I should've stayed in Zaofu.
BOOOOOOOM
The ear-splitting noise hit her only a fraction of a second before gravity became meaningless. There was no up or down, no floor or ceiling. Everything was ripping apart and she thought maybe she was screaming, eyes squeezed shut in abject terror while her hands scrabbled futilely to hold onto something.
When everything finally rumbled to a stop, Kiriko wondered if maybe it had all been a dream. Her eyes were still closed and she half-expected to find herself still in bed. The grogginess was so hard to shake.
Please be a nightmare.
She opened her eyes and saw wreckage, instead. Through a gash in the train's metal shell, the comet burned brightly in the sky. It was beautiful and horrible and she wanted to scream out of sheer frustration.
When she tried, all that happened was a sharp inhale that brought a puff of dust into her lungs, and she coughed with what little strength her body had at the moment. The pain from that was enough to bring tears to her eyes.
Shit, I'm hurt.
But how badly?
I've gotta…get…out of…here… Gotta get…to the…city…
The city. The city… Fuck. Are they okay? What happened? Was it an explosion?
Nothing made sense and the only thing to do was try and crawl out of the wreckage. But as soon as Kiriko tried to move, more pain stopped her.
No, she stubbornly told her body. I'm not gonna die here. I refuse.
A bit of careful experimentation got her to a sitting position. Her left arm was almost certainly broken. Definitely something wrong with a few ribs. The only good news was that her legs seemed alright, aside from some minor cuts and bruises.
Using her right arm for support, she pushed to her feet. It hurt like a bitch and she had to bite her lip to keep from screaming, but she was up and dizzy and stumbling through the twisted metal. She barely noticed the new cuts from scraping against jagged bits.
Solid ground finally appeared in the orange haze. Kiriko's strength failed her then and she fell to her knees. It didn't even hurt. She was numb. And so tired. So tired.
Just…a little rest. Then I'll go to the city and try to find some help. Try to find Mom and Anisa and Mako. They can't be dead. They can't be. The universe wouldn't do that to me.
"We've got a live one over here!"
The voice belonged to a woman, though Kiriko didn't recognize it. Someone grabbed her wrists to attach something heavy to them and her eyes popped open, the pain so sudden and so sharp that a strangled gasp was all she could manage.
Her bleary vision locked on the comet. It was further away than before. She couldn't make it make sense. Had time gone backward? But then why was she still hurt?
There were other people there—fearsome-looking men and women, all in rough clothes, digging through the wrecked train.
Bandits? Kiriko wondered. In any case, they were certainly trouble. They'd handcuffed her and probably caused the train crash, too.
Fight, a voice whispered, though it was way in the back of her head.
I'm hurt, she argued plaintively.
Forget the pain. You're a firebender and there's a comet.
It was enough. Kiriko looked up at the burning ball of fire, willing it to slow down and stay long enough to help her save herself. She searched for her chi and found it. The rush was… intoxicating. Pain faded. Fear dwindled into nothing.
She gripped the chain between the handcuffs and channeled her fury into the metal. Dull silver turned to orange, and then red, and then white. A small jerk broke the links and Kiriko flung herself to her feet.
"Hey!"
"What the fuck?!"
"Get her!"
The voices came from all around her and enemies began to close in.
Fight or die.
It was the mantra that kept her alive. This wasn't pro-bending. It wasn't a friendly sparring match. There was no fear, no anger, no thought or emotion at all. No control. Only muscle memory and white-hot fire.
It ended as quickly as it had begun. Several horrible moments of silence were broken by a strange noise behind her. What was it? Her ears couldn't make sense of it.
She turned, searching. Some deep part of her knew that her attention must focus on that noise and finding its source, rather than look around.
Don't look. Don't look.
"Fantastic," a man's voice said. A breath of wind cleared the dust and he stepped into view, clapping slowly.
That was the noise. Clapping.
He was tall and dressed in dark browns and grays, though not in any style Kiriko was familiar with. Down the side of his face, from temple to jaw, was a jagged scar. He looked to be around forty and his head was shaved bald like an air nomad, but the tattoo was…wrong. Instead of a blue arrow, there was only a thin black line that ended between his brows and a narrow shape reminiscent of an eye on his forehead.
Like a combustionbender, but horizontal…
"Just fantastic," he repeated. "I am very impressed. White fire? Oh, I like you."
"Who– Who are you?" Her voice felt wrong as it left her lungs. Unfamiliar.
"My name is Amrit."
Everything about him creeped Kiriko out. His smooth voice, his unsettling smile, his incongruently calm attitude…
"You did this," she choked out. "The train… The city…" Fighting had numbed her, but those thoughts were enough to bring all her anger and pain back. "If anything happened to my family, I'll kill you."
Amrit glanced around. "I don't doubt that you mean that with your whole heart." He came closer. His next words were no longer smooth, but slimy. Oily. "You won't kill me. You can't. You're not strong enough." The words echoed oddly. Distorted.
Kiriko couldn't move. I…can't kill him. I'm not strong enough.
A few steps closer. He leaned in to whisper in her ear. "Everyone you know, everyone you love, is dead. You will never, ever see them again."
She didn't want to believe him, but she did. It was impossible not to. All of the defiance—all the rage and power and stubborn will—left her body with the next exhale. She sank to her knees and screamed at the sky while the heat from the comet coursed through her body, impotent.
The outburst couldn't last, unfortunately. Kiriko wanted to scream forever until her voice had blasted everyone away and she could find her feet and run and run. Run to the city and find everyone still alive. Waiting for her. This whole awful experience would just be a story. A bad memory.
When her breath ran out, she gasped a few times and prepared to keep yelling, but her eyes came down and fell on a burned, mangled body. The scream got stuck in her throat, strangled by horror.
"Oh, yes," Amrit said gleefully. She'd forgotten he was even there. "Your handiwork. How does it feel? Look at them. Look at them all." His voice was horrible again, sliding through her ears like rancid oil. "Look at the fruits of your power and rage."
"No," she mumbled, though not in disobedience. It was a denial of what her eyes told her as they scanned the scattered bodies. "No, they're just resting. Tired."
"They're gone." He paused and looked at one, whose legs twitched fitfully. "Well…that one isn't, but she will be soon. No matter. These…animals were merely foot soldiers. Scavengers to dig through the corpse of the world."
The corpse…of the world?
What could that mean? It was bone chilling, but such a far-away thought. There was only here and now—the horrors before her. The smell of burned flesh and flowing blood. The soft gasp of a final breath.
"Not like you," Amrit continued, his tone now sweet and gentle. "You're special. You will have a much higher purpose. Feared. Revered. And that face. Oh! That lovely face. I'll make you…irresistible. Won't that be fun?" he added with an amicable laugh.
Kiriko couldn't reconcile the disturbing words with his almost pleasant tone. But she did know one thing: Too many men had leered at her, catcalled her, for any trace of ignorance to remain. She knew exactly what he meant.
"No," she managed, but her defiance was fading. The pile of charred and broken bodies around her had destroyed it. "Please."
"Oh, no, dear." He clucked his tongue in reproval. "No, no, no, that won't do at all. You don't beg—not even for me. You weren't made for that. I want the anger." His calm face transformed into wide-eyed passion and he lifted his hands in the air, arms spread wide. "Show me your anger!"
Kiriko was still on her knees and cradling her injured arm, which was now throbbing, but awareness of the pain helped her. Roused her.
Or was it only his voice?
She struggled to her feet and looked him in the eye. "You won't fucking touch me! No one will!"
Amrit's eyes twinkled in the fading glow of the comet and he pressed his palms together. "That's more like it."
Night lingered when Kiriko woke from a fitful sleep. It was fully dark except for the glow of several lanterns. The comet was gone, along with everything else. It had given her incredible power, and then stolen her life as it left.
Its echoes remained as memories of the nightmares. One after the other. She remembered them all—every detail. Twisted metal. The sharp tang of blood and burned flesh. The crash and the explosion and the fight all meshed into one and she was no longer sure of who was the villain and who was the victim.
Finally, the tears came. With every gasp, every sob, pain shot through her side. It was almost a welcome sensation. But even as she reveled in it, she realized it wasn't quite as bad as before. Someone had wrapped her torso in a tight bandage and splinted her arm.
Both injuries would heal. The physical pain would fade and all that would be left was the expanding pain in her mind and heart.
For how long Kiriko lay there and tried to stay quiet while despair flooded from her eyes, she wasn't sure. Eventually, footsteps approached and someone lifted her head and held a cup of water to her mouth. It wasn't Amrit—just some woman who said nothing.
Only then did Kiriko become aware of the chains on her wrists and ankles. They seemed to weigh her down, pressing her into the dusty earth. Her chi was barely tangible; nothing but a weak flame sprung from her palm.
Even that was enough to make her shudder. Her fire had killed. She didn't want to look at it. Didn't want to create it.
Her gaze falls on a bruise-colored cloud off in the distance. Republic City, but no familiar skyline. The rumble of thunder preceded every flash of lightning; there was almost no pause in between each one.
'Everyone you know, everyone you love, is dead.'
Those awful words ricocheted around her head—tiny, jagged bits of metal ripping sensitive flesh. Kiriko closed her eyes and faces appeared on the inside of her eyelids. Memories. Final conversations.
Kiriko walked through the high-ceilinged hallways of the police headquarters. They were bare and severe. Hard, unadorned lines of stone. It was a place of practicality and pragmatism. Solid and secure.
She hadn't been there in years—not since getting arrested at the club. It was easy to get lost. Was Mako's office to the left or right? A helpful officer pointed her in the right direction.
"Kiriko? What are you doing here?" Mako asked with a faint frown. "Did something happen?"
"No, I was just in the area. Thought I'd say hi." She sat down in one of the chairs that faced his desk. Everything was neat and orderly—a sharp contrast from what she knew his apartment looked like. Or had looked like, the last time she'd been there, more than a year ago. But Mako was a creature of habit; it was unlikely he'd changed.
"Oh. Okay. Uh…how are you?"
Kiriko sighed and leaned back in the chair. His question was answered with another. "Do you like your job?"
"Do I like–?" He seemed a little flustered. "Um. Yeah, sure. It's very fulfilling. Plus, well… What else would I do?"
"I dunno. Drive a taxi?" she joked. "You know the streets pretty well, I'm sure."
"That's true. But I think I'd be bored driving a taxi."
"Is it more boring than paperwork?"
Mako let out a little self-deprecating laugh. "Well, I don't do this all day. I do get to catch bad guys, on occasion." The light-hearted moment faded quickly and he looked at her with a sober expression. "What's up? You seem a little…"
"A little what?"
"Down. Is everything going well with the gym? At home? With your friends?"
Kiriko laughed at his noble attempt. "I get therapized twice a month, so you can relax. I'm fine. I was just going for a walk and started thinking about the city and crime and how it seems like this…never ending task. A pit where you pour resources and money and people and it never fills up. I was thinking about how, when I was a kid, your officers had to escort me and Anisa around everywhere. I thought it was normal then, that every kid had that."
"Most kids don't have targets painted on their backs."
"True…"
Mako looked at his watch and sighed before pushing to his feet. "I'm glad you stopped by. It's always nice to see you. Helps break up the monotony."
"But you have to go?" she guessed.
"I'm sorry. I have a meeting."
"No problem. Thanks for listening to my rambles. I guess I'll see you at the festival next week."
He smiled and gave her shoulder a friendly squeeze. "You bet."
Typical Mako. He wasn't a hugger, but that twinkle in his eyes—those amber eyes that matched Kiriko's perfectly—was pure affection. She held onto that small detail of visual memory as her thoughts pushed onward.
"Why are you being such a grouch today?" Kiriko asked Anisa over breakfast. It was just the two of them and the whole morning had been tense.
"You would be too if you'd gotten your period at three in the morning, had to change your sheets, couldn't find any painkillers, and then not slept the rest of the night."
"That's why I keep a bottle on my nightstand, just in case. Anyway, my period comes like clockwork so I can't really relate."
Anisa got up in a huff, quickly enough that her chair fell over with a crash. "Well thanks a lot for that. No wonder I couldn't find the painkillers, since you're hoarding them."
"I bought those–"
"And I'm so happy for you that your life is apparently so perfect." Her voice dripped with bitter sarcasm. "I'm gonna go for a walk. Not like I have anything better to do."
"Did you forget to take your meds or something?"
Anisa slammed the door on her way out and Kiriko sighed, abashed. They rarely discussed such things, as life had been relatively calm in the last year, but Anisa had been more prone to snapping ever since the gym opened. It didn't take a genius to figure out that some of the old jealousy still lurked. She clearly wanted to do something worthwhile with her life but couldn't quite find her 'thing'.
Tears of unquenchable regret streamed down Kiriko's cheeks and neck, only to get lost in the fabric of her shirt. Her lips formed the words she wished she'd said before leaving for Zaofu only an hour later. "You'll find your passion if you keep looking. You're only twenty. Life is long and you've got nothing but time."
Her thoughts slid forward again. Slipping away.
"Have a good trip," Asami said, covered in grease and oil from working in her shop. "Make sure to catch the four o'clock train tomorrow so you won't be late for the festival."
"I'll try. But I want to help as much as I can with the evacuation. Don't worry, though. I'll be here for all the fun and food."
Asami gave her a knowing smile—one that said, 'You're obviously going to do whatever you want, no matter what I say.' "If you're running late, meet us at Shin Shei's. We've got a reservation. Wear something nice."
"How am I supposed to play all the festival games in a dress?" Kiriko complained.
"You're taking an overnight bag to Zaofu, aren't you? Bring an extra change of clothes. Spirits, you sure do have a one-track mind sometimes."
Kiriko rolled her eyes. "I'm going now. Bye."
A musical laugh. "Bye, hun."
That laugh echoed in Kiriko's mind. She would never hear it again.
An unexpected noise of desperation ripped from her throat, carrying with it all the pain she wanted to purge from her body.
First Korra had left her. It had taken many months to begin to heal. To be able to think about her without crying. And now everyone else? All at once? It was impossible. Unbelievable. Unfathomable. It couldn't be true.
But it was. Amrit had told her. He'd said everyone was dead.
Everyone…
More memories. Raniq's smiling face. Saph's toddler giggles. Mara. Jojin. Bolin. Su. Lin. Kyori. Valen. Shein. All of them.
Kiriko sat up with a gasp. It hurt, but she didn't care. They're alive. They hid. They made it.
As if her thoughts could summon him, Amrit slunk from the shadows and into the lantern light. "Awake and chipper, I see. How are your injuries? Feeling better? I patched you up myself."
The thought of that filled her with indignant rage. She was seeing red. "You were wrong." The words spilled from her mouth without thought, without foresight. "I still have friends and family in Zaofu. They escaped before the comet. They knew. You can't hurt them." She stuck out her chin smugly. Defiant. I win.
A flicker of hesitancy appeared in Amrit's eyes, though it died quickly. He came closer and knelt down before her. "Naive child. Do you think we weren't paying attention? This plan has been in motion since before you were born." His voice had that slippery, distorted quality again, but Kiriko was so accustomed to it that it was barely noticeable anymore. "They didn't escape. None of them. We found them all. You are alone. All you have now…is me."