Hey everyone, I'm back with a new chapter! Some of you seemed to really like the first chapter so I'll do my best to keep the story entertaining and interesting for you all. As you can tell by the title this chapter will focus on Korra and Odyn.
As for the pairings on the polls, one reviewer brought up an interesting option for Bolin. This reviewer seem to like the possibility of Sarai and Bolin being a thing. Not sure if it'll end up that way, but I think I'll look into that possibly. As for Mako I have a couple of options in mind for him, along with keeping him with Asami. Mako and Asami work well together, so I may end up keeping them together, but we'll see.
Which option for Mako would you like to see?
1. Mako x Asami
2. Mako x Khanna
3. Mako x Sarai
4. Mako x Hailfire
Who should Bolin be with?
1. Sarai
2. Opal
3. Khanna
4. Hailfire
That's it for now, enjoy this second chapter!
P.s- I don't own DBS, Black Clover, or Legend of Korra those series and characters belong to their creators. The only thing I own is the oc's who appear in this story.
Chapter Two
Voice in the Night — Odyn's Grudge
♪ Opening Theme — Senjou no Valkyria
Before the chapter begins, before the first word of the story has been spoken, there is only black.
And then — brass. A single, low note that builds from nothing into something inevitable, climbing in slow steps until strings and percussion join it, until the whole theme is alive and moving and enormous, and the black gives way to the first image.
Korra.
Still. Centered. The camera finds her from below — looking up past the hem of her Water Tribe blues to the set of her jaw, the line of her shoulders, the fierce eyes that look at the world like a challenge they're deciding whether to accept. Republic City spreads behind her in a wash of amber light and steel towers, and she looks perfectly out of place in it, and perfectly at home in the same breath. The Avatar. Seventeen years old. Unbowed.
The image lingers for exactly one held note.
Odyn.
The cut is sharp — sudden, deliberate. Where Korra was warmth and motion, he is stillness and edge. He stands against a sky the color of fading embers, arms crossed, coat moving in a wind that doesn't seem to touch him. The scars on his face catch the light. Those burning eyes are open and direct, aimed at something just past the camera — something far away that hasn't arrived yet. He is not waiting for it. He is already watching it come.
The music lifts. The pace begins to find itself.
And then the rest of them — arriving quickly now, image to image in the rhythm of the rising theme:
Mako, fire spilling from his palms as he drops into a fighting stance, scarf trailing behind him like a flag.
Bolin, grinning mid-earth-bend, Paboo somehow balanced on his shoulder through the whole motion.
Sarai, twin blades drawn and angled, crimson hair loose around her face, mismatched eyes bright and ready.
Roy, sword raised in a clean arc, the blue-white colors of his armor catching light as he moves.
Khanna, standing slightly apart from the others, arms at her sides, an expression that is equal parts amusement and warning — the look of someone who knows more than she's letting on and has decided that's fine.
The theme hits its peak.
The images blur into motion — the full cast, together now, moving through the same space, the same fight. Equalists scatter before them. Chi-blockers are sent tumbling. The city burns orange behind them. Korra bends a column of water over her head and Odyn is at her flank, and the two of them move through the chaos together as if they have been doing this for years, as if something between them has already been decided even if neither of them has gotten the message yet.
The music begins its descent.
The final frame: Odyn and Korra, side by side, facing something ahead that the camera doesn't show. Then he turns his head — just slightly, just enough — and looks at her.
Something in his expression shifts.
Something that is very nearly a smile.
Korra turns to face him, and for one frame her eyes are wide and uncertain and open in a way they almost never are.
Then the title comes up:
The Forsaken and the Avatar Chapter Two — Voice in the Night
◈
It began the way the worst dreams always did: with the terrible illusion of normalcy.
She was in her room at Air Temple Island. The night breeze moved through the open window, stirring the curtain. Everything was quiet. Everything was still.
And then they came through the window.
Chi-blockers — four, five, more behind them — moving in the professional silence of people who had done this before and intended to be quick about it. Korra was on her feet before she had fully woken up, fire leaping to her hands, and she threw it.
It missed.
Of course it missed. They knew how she moved. They wove through her attacks with no wasted motion, reading every angle before she found it, and then one of them was behind her and the jabs came — precise, clinical — and she felt her connection to fire, to earth, to water, flicker and die like candles going out in a storm. Her knees hit the floor.
Footsteps.
She forced her head up.
Amon stood before her in the dark of her own room, the white mask catching moonlight, the dark hood framing it like a painting of something holy that had gone wrong somewhere along the way. He looked down at her with the patience of a man who had been waiting for this for a very long time.
"I will bring this world salvation," he said. His voice was even. Quiet. Certain in the way that only terrible things could be certain. "Once I take your bending from you, you will be nothing."
He reached for her.
Korra woke up screaming.
The sound tore out of her before she could stop it, raw and ugly, and she sat bolt upright in the dark with her heart hammering so hard she could feel it in her teeth. The room was real. The curtain moved in the same breeze. No chi-blockers. No masked man. No reaching hand.
Just darkness, and the sound of her own ragged breathing, and then —
A wet nose pressed against her cheek.
Naga.
The polar bear-dog had pressed her enormous head right up against Korra's face, her eyes dark and soft and steady, her breath warm against the side of Korra's neck. Not asking anything. Not doing anything except being there, which was, it turned out, exactly the right thing.
Korra wrapped both arms around the animal's neck and held on.
"It's okay, girl," she managed, after a moment. Her voice was still rough. "It was just a bad dream. I'll be alright."
Naga huffed gently and stayed exactly where she was.
Korra held on a little longer, then loosened her grip, and lay back down, and closed her eyes, and waited for her pulse to slow.
◈
When sleep found her again, it brought her somewhere else entirely.
The void. The same formless white space she had been returning to night after night, the one that had no floor and no ceiling and no walls but somehow managed to feel like a room. She stood in it and turned, and before the footsteps had even registered she already knew whose they were.
The three of them materialized from the light like photographs developing in the open air — the blue-haired boy, the crimson-haired girl, the black-haired boy. The same faces as before. The same burning eyes. The same posture that was somehow, in a way she still couldn't entirely account for, entirely familiar.
The blue-haired boy looked at her with warm, amused eyes.
"I see you've finally met Dad, haven't you... Mom?"
Korra opened her mouth to respond — and then something strange happened. Their names arrived in her head the way recalled memories did, not as new information but as things she had simply temporarily forgotten: as obvious and complete as her own face in a mirror.
She blinked.
"You never told me," she said slowly, testing the name in her mouth before she used it, "that he was from the Forsaken. Skyefang."
The blue-haired boy — Skyefang — had the grace to look apologetic. "I know. I couldn't, at the time. I'm sorry."
"Who are the Forsaken?" Korra asked. "What are they, actually? Your — what I can only assume is your father — hasn't exactly been chatty."
The crimson-haired girl — and now the name came for her too, arriving quietly: Sabyr — shook her head. "That's not something we can tell you right now, Avatar Korra. There are things that, if known too early, could change the shape of events in ways that—"
"Change things too drastically," Korra finished. She had heard this before. She was starting to understand the edges of it, even if the center was still opaque. "To protect me."
"Partly," Sabyr said.
Korra raised an eyebrow. "Partly?"
Sabyr hesitated, choosing her words. "While it was to protect you... it was also to protect our own existences. If things changed too drastically—if you never met our father because events unfolded differently—then Skyefang and I would simply... cease to be."
The silence that followed had weight to it.
"What?" Korra said.
"History would have changed," Sabyr said carefully. "You'd have had no reason to meet him. And so—" She gestured at herself. At Skyefang. The gesture was oddly casual for something so enormous.
Korra stared at them for a long, full moment.
"I see," she said. And then, because the alternative was standing in a white void being quietly overwhelmed: "Actually, hold on — how do I know your names all of a sudden? You wouldn't tell me last time."
Skyefang smiled. "Why wouldn't you know us? You're the one who gave us our names, after all."
That landed. It landed squarely and sank deep and Korra had no answer for it for a full, stretching minute. She stood very still and absorbed the reality of that — that somewhere in a future she hadn't lived yet, she had looked at these two people and chosen the sounds that would belong to them for the rest of their lives — and then she shook her head and refocused.
"Speaking of..." She looked at Skyefang. "Odyn seemed... cold. Distant. Not just with me — with people in general. Is there a reason for that?"
Sabyr was the one who answered, and she did so carefully. "Yes. There is a reason. But that's something you'll have to ask him yourself." A brief pause. "And — your husband, in our time."
"I understand." Korra blew out a breath. "It still feels strange, by the way. All of you calling me Mom."
"And calling you anything else would be disrespectful," Sabyr said, immediately and firmly.
Korra tried to form an argument and found she didn't have one. They were right, and they both knew she knew it. She sighed.
"How about a compromise. Call me Avatar Korra. At least until..."
She trailed off. Until what, exactly, she didn't finish.
The three of them exchanged a look — the quick, wordless negotiation of people who had known each other all their lives — and then nodded.
"As you wish, Avatar Korra," Sabyr said.
"You're about to wake up," Skyefang said, and his voice had shifted, become more careful. "Please — keep our warning in mind. Whatever comes next, be careful."
Korra looked at them. At the two who were hers, and the one who was someone else's but who had called her Aunt with the ease of long familiarity. Something moved through her chest that didn't have a name yet.
"I should be the one thanking you," she said. "Ember. Sabyr. Skyefang."
The black-haired boy — Ember, and that name arrived softest of all — smiled at her. "That's all we can ask of you right now, Aunt Korra."
The light behind them intensified.
I'll be careful, she thought, as the dream let her go. I promise I'll be careful.
◈
Morning came gray and cool, the bay mist still heavy against the windows when Korra opened her eyes the second time. She lay still for a moment, oriented herself, and noticed that her hands were trembling.
Not from the second dream. From the first one.
She pressed her palms flat against the sleeping bag and breathed until they stopped.
Just a nightmare. She sat up. That's all it was. Just a nightmare, no big deal.
She was already reaching for her jacket, already deciding: training. There was nothing in the world that cleared her head the way moving did, and her head needed clearing badly. She dressed quickly, went out back, and stopped when she realized she wasn't alone.
Odyn and Sarai were already in the yard.
She hadn't seen them there when she first stepped out — she'd been looking at the ground, focused on the cool morning air and the sensation of her feet on the grass. But when she looked up, they were already mid-motion: Sarai's palm driving forward in a strike, Odyn's hand catching it at the wrist, his body pivoting in a single fluid arc as he redirected her momentum and returned a hard blow to her midsection. Sarai absorbed it, flipped backward, landed cleanly, and smiled.
Then they came together again.
Korra stood and watched.
She had seen fighting before. She had done fighting before, practically her entire life — the compound had started her training when she was four years old and never really stopped. She knew what skilled looked like. She knew what fast looked like. She knew the difference between technique and instinct, between a person who had been taught to fight and a person who had become it.
These two were the second kind.
There was no announcement in their movements, no pause before impact, no visual preview of what was coming. Each strike arrived from a place of complete commitment, and each defense was the next strike already beginning. Watching them was like watching a conversation that had no pauses between words — fluid and continuous and with a rhythm that wasn't imposed from outside but generated entirely from within.
And somehow, Korra thought, it's almost calm. It's almost smooth.
"Impressive, isn't it?"
She startled.
The young man beside her had arrived so quietly that she genuinely hadn't noticed him, which said something, because Korra's spatial awareness was normally excellent. He was leaning against the wall with the ease of someone who had been there for a while — dark-skinned, flame-eyed, with hair the same deep crimson as Sarai's, cropped shorter and held back by a blue-and-white headband beneath a thin gold crown. His armor was deep ocean blue and silver-white, and the sword at his hip sat like it belonged there the way a hand belonged to a wrist.
He looked at her with warm eyes that held a specific kind of knowing amusement.
"Are you interested in martial arts, Avatar?"
"Uh — yeah," Korra said, recovering. "And... who are you?"
He pushed off the wall, dipping his head in a brief bow. "Forgive me for not introducing myself sooner. My name is Roy Albanar."
"Albanar." She looked at him more carefully. "So you're Odyn and Sarai's—"
"Brother, yes. The second eldest." He glanced toward the yard, where the sparring was winding down. "There are four of us total, but only three of us are here."
Odyn and Sarai were walking toward them now, both breathing harder than they'd looked — the exertion had been real, just efficiently managed. Odyn reached up and tugged at a loose strand of blue hair, and when he saw Roy, something in his posture shifted in a way Korra couldn't quite name. Less guarded. Just fractionally.
"You've gotten better," he told Sarai.
Sarai's expression flickered between pleased and wryly annoyed. "It's still not enough to beat you."
Odyn reached over and ruffled her hair with the easy authority of someone who had been doing that for years. "Hey. I'm your older brother. Watching out for you is the whole point." He smoothed her hair back when she swatted at his hand, and there was something gentle in the gesture, entirely at odds with the precision of what Korra had just watched him do. "You're more than a match for anyone who'd set their sights on you. Trust me on that."
Sarai huffed. Then caught sight of Korra and lifted a hand in a wave, her expression lightening immediately. "Korra! Good morning."
Korra waved back. She was smiling without having decided to — Sarai had that effect, some quality of immediate warmth that made the room feel slightly more inhabited. She was strong, clearly — Korra had seen that — but she carried it without weight.
The two brothers had fallen into a quieter exchange beside them, their voices dropping. Roy said something low and Odyn tilted his head, listening with full attention. Korra almost turned away to give them privacy.
Then Odyn chuckled.
It was a short sound. Soft. The kind of laugh that came from genuine, unguarded amusement rather than performance.
Korra stared.
Oh, she thought. He can do that.
She had categorized him, she realized — somewhere between the first meeting and now, she had filed him under angry and distant and difficult and left it at that. The laugh didn't fit the file. She found herself revising.
Odyn looked over and caught her staring. She looked away with great speed.
"Sarai," he said, turning back, "didn't you want to see more of the city? Properly this time, without the chi-blockers interrupting the tour?"
Sarai brightened. "I did, yes."
"Korra." His tone shifted — not unfriendly, but carrying the faint edge of someone who found being direct more efficient than being subtle. "Think the mighty Avatar can manage a city tour?"
Korra felt her eyebrow twitch.
The mighty Avatar. Was he—
She breathed. She smiled. It was a smile that required some structural support.
"Sure," she said, through teeth that were only slightly set. "I'd love to show your sister around, Odyn."
Sarai appeared beside her with the slightly panicked energy of someone trying to absorb a misfire before it escalated. "Ha, yes! Great, let's go!" She took Korra by the arm and steered her toward the gate with the practiced speed of a person experienced in removing people from their own brewing irritations.
Behind them, Roy watched them go and allowed himself a small smile.
The moment they were out of earshot, Korra let out a breath.
"Is your brother always like that?"
Sarai laughed — a real laugh, warm and unhurried. "No. Well. Sometimes." She glanced sideways. "He noticed something was bothering you. He wanted to give you something else to think about."
Korra blinked. "By being annoying at me?"
"He's not very good at the... softer approaches." Sarai's voice was gentle. "But he was genuinely concerned. He just—" She paused, choosing words with the care of someone who had described this person before. "He's been hurt by people. By humans, specifically. It's made him guarded. Hard to read. He shows concern in strange ways sometimes because he's not entirely sure it's safe to show it directly."
Korra was quiet for a moment. They walked along the waterfront, the morning light turning the bay silver and copper. Around them, the city was waking up — vendors rolling out stalls, the distant clatter of a trolley, someone arguing about the price of something two streets over.
"Is that why he doesn't trust people? The hurt?" Korra asked. "What happened to him?"
Sarai's expression shifted — the warmth stayed, but something heavier moved beneath it. She glanced around briefly, as if checking who might be in earshot, and then she said: "Brace yourself, Korra. Because what I'm about to tell you is not easy for any of us to talk about."
She took a breath.
"The reason we don't trust humans — the reason Odyn doesn't trust anyone outside a very small circle — is..."
◈
Across the island, in a quieter corner of the courtyard just outside Tenzin's home, Roy and Odyn had found their own kind of privacy.
Or so they thought.
Behind the corner of the house, tucked into the gap between a decorative column and a potted plant that was somewhat less concealing than they'd hoped, Jinora and Ikki had flattened themselves against the wall with the focused determination of two people who had not yet been caught and were committed to keeping it that way.
"—heard from our contacts," Roy was saying quietly. "Amon and his people are planning something at the pro-bending tournament. When exactly, we couldn't confirm. But the intent is clear."
"He wants to silence the Avatar," Odyn said. There was no heat in his voice — just the flat, certain quality of a man organizing facts. "She's the most visible symbol of bending. Publicly taking her down would do more for his cause than a dozen raids."
"So what do we do?"
A pause. Behind the column, Jinora held her breath.
"That girl charges at everything like a battering ram," Odyn said. "No plan. No consideration of what could go wrong. Someone has to watch the angles she isn't watching." Another pause, shorter. "I'll stay close to her."
Roy's voice carried the particular quality of someone carefully not smiling. "You say that like it's an inconvenience."
"It is an inconvenience."
"Right."
"It is."
"Of course it is, brother."
Odyn made a sound that was either disagreement or the deliberate suppression of amusement — it was difficult to tell from behind a potted plant.
"You'll stay back with the others," Odyn said, redirecting. "I have a feeling Amon will use the tournament as cover to go after anyone close to Korra. Don't let anything happen to them."
"Understood." Roy paused. "Leave it to me."
The sound of footsteps — Odyn walking away, unhurried, in the direction of the sparring ground.
Roy stood alone for a moment.
"You can come out now," he said pleasantly, to the empty air.
Silence.
"Jinora. Ikki."
Two heads appeared from behind the column, both wearing expressions of exactly the same caliber of sheepish.
"How did you know?" Jinora asked, with the tone of someone academically curious about their own failure.
Roy pointed to his ears. The pointed tips caught the morning light.
"Oh," Jinora said. "Right. We did forget about that."
"Was there something you wanted to ask me?" Roy looked at them with an expression of patient, mild attention — the expression of someone who had younger siblings of his own and understood how these things went.
Ikki and Jinora looked at each other. Some kind of rapid, silent negotiation took place. Then Ikki turned back to him.
"Well," she said, "there is actually one thing..."
◈
The city opened up around them as Korra led Sarai through the streets she was still learning herself — past the canal markets and the trolley lines and the open plaza where she'd first gotten herself into trouble with the Triple Threat Triads. Republic City in full morning light was a different animal than Republic City at night: noisier, more human, the ambition of the architecture softened slightly by the mess of ordinary life happening at street level.
Sarai was entranced.
She had stopped walking three times in the first block to look at things — a neon sign only half-lit in daylight, the particular way a bridge arched over the canal, the organized chaos of a street vendor deploying his stall. Her expression had gone open and bright and genuinely, unpretentiously delighted in a way that made Korra feel oddly fond.
"Sarai, are you—"
"Sorry!" Sarai turned back, laughing. A faint flush on her cheeks. "I keep doing that, don't I?"
"You really like Republic City."
"I love it." She said it simply, without embarrassment. "Everything I've seen is extraordinary. The scale of it. The fact that ordinary people built this — chose what it would be — and then filled it with other ordinary people..." She shook her head. "That's remarkable to me. That people can do that."
Korra looked around at the city she had lived in for less than two weeks, trying to see it through those eyes. "I guess I've been taking it for granted," she admitted. "It lost its novelty pretty fast."
"That's understandable," Sarai said. "When you're in something it's always harder to see what it is from outside." She fell into step beside Korra again. "Back where we come from, a city like this would be... it would be something people dreamed about. Something they would tell stories about."
"Where do you come from?" Korra asked.
Sarai was quiet for a moment. Not evasively — more like she was arranging an answer that had many pieces and not all of them were light.
"Somewhere that doesn't look like this anymore," she said at last. "Somewhere we can't go back to." And then, before the weight of that could settle too heavily: "Tell me about the pro-bending. Odyn says it's a sport you're competing in."
Korra let her redirect, and they walked on, and the city kept unfolding around them.
◈
On the other side of the city, at more or less the same moment, a motorcycle came around a corner at a speed that was technically legal but practically optimistic, and Mako stepped off the curb without looking.
The impact was not catastrophic. It was also not nothing.
He went down. The cyclist braked hard. And before either of them had fully processed what had just happened, a hand was already in his field of vision — offered without flourish, steady, waiting.
He took it and was pulled to his feet with a grip that was startlingly firm.
"Are you all right?"
The young woman who had helped him up was looking at him with an expression of direct, practical assessment — not alarmed, not apologetic, just... checking. She was around his age, maybe slightly older. Dark skin. Jet-black hair. And those eyes — orange, actually orange, with a quality to them that he couldn't look directly at for too long without feeling like he was getting something wrong about the experience.
She had scars on her face. A jagged one tracing her jawline. A bolt-shaped one beside her left eye. And her ears—
He blinked. He looked again.
Pointed.
"Hey," she said. "You're bleeding."
He touched his face and his fingers came away red. The fall had caught the edge of his cheekbone on something.
The young woman had already reached into the bag at her side and was pulling out a small first aid kit with the efficiency of someone who kept it there on purpose and used it regularly. She removed her hood, pushed her hair back, and set to work before he could say anything.
"I can do that," he said.
"You can do it badly," she said, without inflection. "Hold still."
He held still.
When she was done she helped him to his feet again, and he found himself looking at her face from closer range than before. The scars, the eyes, the ears. She looked at him looking.
"Is there something about my face you're finding interesting?" she asked, with the tone of someone asking it genuinely rather than as an accusation.
"I—" He cleared his throat. "You're a woman, right?"
A beat.
"Last time I checked."
"Good." He exhaled. "I just wanted to confirm that before I embarrassed myself."
Something in her expression shifted — not quite a smile, but something adjacent to one, like the weather changing direction. "Khanna," she said. "Khanna Albanar."
"Mako." He paused. "Just Mako."
"Just Mako," she repeated. "No surname?"
"Rare for benders who aren't from prestigious families."
"Interesting." She tilted her head. "You should—"
The motorcyclist finally reached them, pulling off her helmet, and Mako turned and was struck, again, by the particular unkindness of the universe in deploying two extremely beautiful women at him within about thirty seconds of each other.
Khanna glanced sideways and made a sound that was very quietly exasperated.
"Earth to—" she said.
"I'm aware you're still here," Mako said.
"Your face says otherwise."
The motorcyclist — Asami, she said; she was embarrassed and genuinely apologetic and had the kind of composure that came from being raised to handle unexpected situations gracefully — was already fixing things with the smooth efficiency of someone for whom fixing things was a natural reflex. She looked at the cut on his face, at his scratched arm, and then reached toward her own bag before realizing Khanna had already dressed the wounds.
"Oh," she said. "Thank you." She looked at Khanna. "That was quick."
"I travel with a kit," Khanna said simply.
"Well—" Asami turned back to Mako. "Let me make this up to you. Dinner. Tomorrow night. Quong's Cuisine."
Mako opened his mouth.
"I'll cover the clothes," she added, before he could bring up the obvious problem.
"...All right," he said. He looked toward Khanna. "Would you—"
"Get in the way of your dinner date?" Khanna said. "No."
"That's not—"
"You two enjoy yourselves."
"Khanna." Asami's voice was warm and direct and had a quality that suggested she made friends easily because she meant it when she decided to. "Come. I'd like to talk to you. And from what I can tell, Mako would like you there."
Khanna looked at Asami. Something moved across her face — a brief assessment, and then something slightly softer.
"I'll think about it," she said.
"That means yes," Mako said.
Khanna pointed at him. "Don't push it."
Asami smiled and pulled her helmet back on. "Tomorrow at eight, then. Both of you." She glanced at Mako's arm — the wound that Khanna had dressed. "Oh. And—"
Khanna had already stepped forward. She held her hand about an inch from Mako's forearm, and the scratches along his skin simply closed — smoothly, cleanly, like a seam being drawn together — and were gone.
Mako stared.
Khanna held one finger to her lips.
"Not yet," she said quietly. "Telling anyone right now would cause more trouble than it's worth."
"You're a—"
"Something like that," she said. "I'll explain someday. For now, just—" She gestured at his face to indicate the general direction of stop making that expression.
Mako closed his mouth. Opened it. Closed it again. And then, because there was apparently nothing else to do, he produced a slightly goofy smile.
"I'll see you tomorrow," he said.
"Sure," Khanna said. "Later, lover boy."
She turned and walked away, and Mako stood on the pavement for a moment with no particular expression and a great many thoughts happening behind it.
◈
The sparring between Odyn and Roy had, by the time Pema came outside to investigate the disturbance, progressed to the point where the water in the bay was visibly affected.
She stood in the doorway with a cooking spoon in one hand and watched the two young men blur through the air above the courtyard, trading strikes at speeds that should not have been possible, each impact sending shockwaves outward that rippled across the water's surface in concentric rings.
Jinora appeared at her elbow.
"It's normal for them," she said, anticipating the question.
"They call this normal?"
"Well—" Jinora laughed nervously. "They're just messing around right now."
Roy had just woven under Odyn's fist by a hair's breadth and driven a knee into his brother's midsection, then spun and delivered a kick that caught Odyn across the shoulder and sent him moving backward through the air toward the water. Odyn arrested his own momentum with a quiet, contained flexion of power that stilled him above the surface — and then a flaming blue aura expanded outward from his body in a wide corona, turning the surrounding air warm, and he simply appeared in front of Roy between one blink and the next.
Roy got his guard up.
It wasn't enough.
The blow sent him backward across the courtyard, and he stopped himself with his feet dragging twin furrows along the grass, breathing hard, and then he looked up and laughed.
"Nine," he said.
Odyn descended back to the ground. His aura faded. "You had me at least three of those times," he said. "Don't undersell it. You're getting faster."
"Fast enough to beat you?"
"Not yet. But fast enough that I'll need to watch it if you keep going at this rate."
Roy bumped his brother's fist, and they turned together and descended, and Odyn looked up and saw Pema in the doorway.
"We apologize for the commotion," he said simply.
"Dinner will be ready shortly," Pema said, after a moment, with the tone of a woman filing the experience away for later contemplation. "If you'd like to wash up."
◈
Dinner that night had started promisingly and become complicated.
It had been going well — Tenzin at the head of the table, Pema beside him, Meelo in the process of dismantling a bread roll with focused determination, the meal distributed and the gratitude said and everyone in the particular comfortable quiet of people who have been moving all day and are glad to be still. Odyn, Roy, and Sarai sat across from Korra, which had taken some diplomatic maneuvering on Pema's part but had worked out. The food was good. The evening air was cool.
And then Tarlock arrived.
Tenzin's expression did not change. This was either testament to his extraordinary self-command or to the fact that he had already spent twenty years on the city council and had perfected the art of the controlled response to things he found deeply inconvenient.
"Wonderful! I'm famished," Tarlock announced. "Air benders never turn away a hungry guest, am I right?"
He sat down. He saw Korra. He saw the three teenagers beside her — their dark skin, their pointed ears, their burning eyes — and whatever register he had filed them under in his mind, he adjusted it with the quick, careful subtlety of a man who processed new information in real-time and rarely let it show on his face.
"The famous Avatar Korra," he said, turning the warmth up in his voice like a dial. "Truly an honor. I'm Councilman Tarlock, representative from the Northern Water Tribe."
Korra bowed slightly, smiling. "Nice to meet you."
He turned to the three beside her. "And your friends?"
"Sarai Albanar," Sarai said, with the cordial precision of someone who could read a room. "It's a pleasure to meet you, Councilman."
"Roy Albanar," Roy added. "Likewise."
Odyn looked at Tarlock for a moment that was slightly longer than comfortable.
"Odyn Albanar," he said. "I'll be honest — I don't trust you."
A brief silence. Tarlock's composure absorbed the hit without visible damage and continued operating.
"Thank you for saving the Avatar," he said. "Republic City owes you a debt of gratitude." He paused, and something moved behind his eyes — something quick and assessing. "Those eyes... could they possibly be..."
"Why," Ikki asked, with the relentless clarity of a ten-year-old, "do you have three ponytails? And why do you smell like a lady?"
"Ikki," Tenzin said.
"I'm just asking."
"Quite... precocious," Tarlock said, directing at Ikki a smile that had nothing to do with warmth. He turned back to Korra. "I've been following your exploits in the papers. Infiltrating Amon's rally — that took real initiative."
"I'm glad someone thinks so," Korra said, genuinely pleased.
Tenzin set down his cup. He had heard enough. He recognized the sequence of what was happening with the practiced recognition of a man who had sat across from Tarlock in council chambers for years and knew every phase of every approach.
"Enough with the flattery," he said. "What do you want from Korra?"
"Patience, Tenzin." Tarlock smiled. "I'm getting to it."
"Then get to it," Odyn said flatly. "Skip the setup and say what you came to say."
Tarlock looked at him. Something behind his eyes recalibrated.
He cleared his throat and made his pitch: a task force, a direct strike at the revolution's heart, a need for someone fearless to stand at the front of it.
The table waited.
Korra set down her tea.
"I can't," she said. "I came here to train with Tenzin. That's what I need to focus on right now."
Tenzin blinked. He had not expected that.
Tarlock pressed. Korra held. Odyn leaned forward slightly — not speaking, just making his presence felt in the particular way of someone whose patience for the current situation has a visible horizon.
"The Avatar gave you her answer," he said. "It's time to leave."
"Bye bye, ponytail man!" Ikki called, as the councilman made his exit.
The door closed behind him.
For a moment, no one spoke.
Then Meelo made an observation about the bread roll that had nothing to do with any of it, and the evening resumed.
◈
The restaurant occupied a building that Mako had walked past at least a dozen times without ever really looking at, which was perhaps inevitable given that it was the kind of establishment that operated on the polite assumption that you already knew what it was and didn't need to be told.
He stood outside it in his regular clothes and looked up and thought several things simultaneously, the foremost of which was this was a mistake.
The maitre d' at the door called him "Master Mako" before he had introduced himself, which told him that Asami had been thoughtful enough to call ahead, and within ten minutes he was dressed in something that still fit like someone else's life but fit well — clean lines, dark fabric, the collar sitting right.
He kept the scarf.
The man with the clothes had tried to take it. Mako's hand had moved before his brain caught up with the decision. The man had retreated. The scarf stayed.
The scarf always stays.
The dining room was everything he'd expected and several things he hadn't — the tables far enough apart for real privacy, the light warm and low, the quiet hum of many separate conversations somehow amounting to a soft collective murmur. At a table near the windows, Asami sat in something black and devastating, and beside her—
Khanna.
The blue dress had silver and gold at the hem and the collar and caught the candlelight the way good things did, like it was doing him a personal favor. She had done something to her hair that made it look like it had its own light source. The owl-feather earrings moved slightly when she turned her head toward him and smiled.
"Are you just going to stand there," she said, "or are you coming to sit down?"
He sat down.
The evening moved through its courses with the unhurried quality of good food and people who had, against the initial evidence, found they had things to say to each other. Asami talked about pro-bending with the specific enthusiasm of someone who had loved a sport long enough to know its history. Mako talked about the matches and meant it when he said there were ones he wished hadn't happened. Khanna listened with her chin in one hand, and when they asked about where she came from she told them about competitions that were more gladiatorial than sporting, about tests of strength and speed among her people, about winning her section of the bracket nearly every year until—
"War," she said.
The table went quiet.
"A long one." She looked at the space between her hands on the table. "Against people we underestimated. We lost. The ones who survived were scattered." She paused. "The Equalists made the rest worse. There aren't many of us left now."
"What brought you here?" Mako asked.
"I heard my cousins were in Republic City." She looked up. A very small smile. "So. Here I am."
She cleared her throat. "Sorry. Didn't mean to—" She gestured at the general atmosphere.
"Don't be," Asami said.
They let the subject change, as gently as possible. Mako brought up the tournament. The problem of the entry fee. The impossible arithmetic of their finances. Asami's hand moved to cover his.
Khanna picked up her water glass and studied the middle distance.
"I'm going to use the restroom," she said, with the diplomatic precision of someone who knew exactly what they were giving the other two.
When she came back, Mako was looking at Asami with the goofy energy of someone who had just received very good news, and Asami was smiling.
"You missed something," Mako said.
"Did I."
"Asami's father is Hiroshi Sato."
Khanna sat down slowly. "The Satomobile man."
"He wants to sponsor the Fire Ferrets."
She looked at him for a long moment. Then, because it was the right thing to say: "Don't let it go to your head. My people have a saying — be humble in all you do, for the pride of man is greatest just before a fall."
Mako grinned, a little nervously.
"Right," he said. "Good advice."
Khanna looked away, out the window at the lit street.
Something's wrong, she thought. I don't know what yet. But I will.
◈
Tenzin had not been expecting, upon returning home from a long day of council work, to find his courtyard being used as what appeared to be a personal arena by two young men who were moving fast enough to be genuinely difficult to follow.
He had also not been expecting the car.
The car was parked, gleaming, beside the main entrance. His children were orbiting it. Meelo had already claimed the driver's seat. Tenzin looked at it with the measured disapproval of a man who knew exactly what it was and what it was for and found neither thing acceptable.
Tarlock, he thought. You relentless man.
He found Korra out back, not training alone as he'd expected, but engaged in something that was — he paused, watching — sparring with Odyn. Or being systematically shown the distance between where she was and where he was, which was perhaps not the same thing. She was moving well. She was moving very well, by any normal standard. She was also, clearly, outmatched.
Odyn moved around her strikes with an unhurried precision that made it look less like defense and more like observation — as if he were cataloguing something, gathering data, occasionally redirecting one of her attacks to see what she did next. The wind generated by his heavier strikes moved her hair even when they didn't land.
Then her legs were swept. She went down.
Tenzin started forward.
Odyn's fist stopped an inch from her face. The displaced air moved past them, splitting the water behind them in a white line that closed a moment later.
"Wide open. Again." His voice was level. Not unkind — just stating a fact with the directness of someone for whom softening it would be doing her a disservice. "In a real fight, you would have been dead long before that moment. Learn to sense your opponent's movements before they begin. Not after." He pulled back and straightened, and then he turned his head toward Tenzin. "Someone wants to speak with you."
He looked back down at Korra.
"Get some rest. We'll pick up where we left off later."
He walked away.
Tenzin watched him go, and then looked at Korra, who was sitting on the grass looking approximately the way someone looked after they had just genuinely considered something alarming about their own mortality.
"Tarlock's gifts are getting more extravagant," he said.
"Yeah." Korra's voice was slightly unsteady. "Good thing Odyn's on our side. I think I'd be dead in about four seconds if he wasn't."
Tenzin sat down on the steps beside her. There was a particular quality of patience in how he did it — the deliberate unhurriedness of someone who had all the time in the world because this conversation was the most important thing happening right now.
"Are you all right, Korra?"
"I'm fine."
He waited.
She looked away. Pulled her knees up. "It's okay to be scared," she said, mimicking his tone slightly, then immediately looking like she regretted being glib about it. "I know that's what you were going to say."
"Was I wrong?"
"No." Quiet. "No, you weren't wrong."
He let the silence do its work.
"The whole city's scared," Korra said. "I know that. I know it's... reasonable. But I'm the Avatar. If people found out that even I'm—" She stopped.
"If you don't talk about fear," Tenzin said, "it doesn't go away. It just goes somewhere you can't reach it to deal with it. That throws everything else off balance." He got to his feet. "I'm always here. When you're ready."
He went inside.
Korra sat alone for a moment.
Then Odyn came back. She wasn't sure she'd expected him to, but he sat down beside her without preamble, and somehow the simple fact of his presence in the space next to her made the air feel slightly more manageable.
"Something on your mind, Avatar?" he asked.
"You could say that."
"I could guess at it," he said. "But it's a wall you'll have to climb on your own. I can help you find the first foothold, but the climbing is yours."
She thought about that. Then, because he had been more open with her in the last day than she'd expected from him, she asked: "What about you? Is there something on your mind?"
He was quiet for long enough that she thought he wasn't going to answer.
"All of this," he said finally. "The Equalists. The fear in the city. The criminals disappearing." A pause. "And him."
There was something in those last two words that she had not heard from him before — a specific weight, a quality of controlled intensity that had a personal origin. She had heard anger plenty of times in her life. This was not quite anger. It was older than anger.
"Amon," she said.
He exhaled slowly. "Yes."
"You have history with him."
"His movement publicly vilified my people." The words came steadily, each one placed with care, like stones being set rather than thrown. "His propaganda made us into enemies of the city. Made us things to be afraid of. And then—" He stopped. His hands, she noticed, had closed. "Over half of my people were killed. By benders and non-benders both, who believed what he said about us. My brothers. My cousins. I can still—" Another pause. Shorter this time. "I still hear them."
Korra said nothing. She was watching his face, and what she saw there was the expression of someone who had lived with something enormous for a very long time and had learned to carry it without letting it be seen, and was, right now, choosing to let it be seen.
"Amon labeled us Forsaken," he said, with quiet finality. "After everything — after everything that was done to us — that is the word he chose. As though what happened to my people was a judgment rather than a crime."
The silence that followed was the kind that asks nothing, offers nothing, just holds.
Korra reached out and put her hand on his arm.
"I'm sorry," she said. "What was done to you and your people is wrong. It was wrong then and it's wrong now and someone should say that clearly." She met his eyes when he turned to look at her. "So I'm saying it."
He looked at her for a moment.
"Well," he said, and something very slightly shifted in his expression — something around the eyes that was not quite open but was less closed than before. "You're the first person outside of my own family to say it like they meant it." He paused. "So. Work on fixing that. That's your job, isn't it? Balance."
"It is," she said.
"Then get better at it." A pause, and then — quiet enough that she almost missed it: "Thank you, Korra."
He stood.
She reached out and caught the corner of his shirt.
She didn't fully know why. The word had come from somewhere past the part of her that planned things, some more honest part that had decided something without consulting the rest of her. She looked down, her voice quieter than she intended.
"Can you stay? Just a little longer?"
He looked at her for a moment.
Then he sat back down.
"As long as you need," he said.
She leaned against him slightly, not quite a hug — something adjacent, something that didn't have a label but was warm and real — and said nothing more, and he said nothing more, and they sat there in the cooling evening while the bay light shifted from copper to silver to dark.
◈
Three days later, the gala invitation arrived.
Korra earthbent the first delivery man off his feet, was halfway through her prepared speech about Tarlock and task forces and where exactly he could put his political maneuvering, and then the man held up a card that said: This is not a gift. This is an invitation.
She read it. She looked at the card. She looked at Odyn, Roy, and Sarai, who were watching her with expressions of collective patience. All three of them nodded.
"Fine," she said. "Tell him I'll come."
The building was dressed for the occasion in banners bearing her face, which was an experience Korra had not had before and was not entirely sure she had been prepared for.
Citizens lined the entrance, applauding. Tenzin walked behind her with the expression of a man attending a thing he mistrusts under polite obligation. The Albanar siblings flanked them in various configurations, attracting their own share of curious looks from the assembled nobles and dignitaries — the pointed ears, the burning eyes, the armor that looked like it had been through more than a formal gala.
"I can't believe all this is for me," Korra said, looking around.
"It isn't," Tenzin said, pleasantly. "It's for what Tarlock can do with you. Keep your guard up."
Roy leaned close. "He's right. All this ceremony is a means to an end. Don't let it make you comfortable."
Tarlock materialized from the crowd with the practiced ease of a man who knew exactly how to move through his own event. He looked at Korra. He looked at Odyn. He looked at Odyn's siblings. He arranged his expression into something warm and welcoming.
"Avatar Korra, so glad you could make it. And your friends—"
"We met," Sarai said evenly, "three days ago."
"We're her support for the evening," Odyn said, before Tarlock could redirect. "Odyn Albanar. My siblings, Roy and Sarai. You know who we are."
He did not make it warm.
Tarlock smiled smoothly and led Korra into the crowd.
Sarai touched Odyn's arm. "Follow her."
"I was going to."
"I know, but — there's something wrong here and I don't want you distracted by us."
He looked at her. Nodded once. And slipped away into the crowd.
Roy watched him go. "He's more worried about her than he'd admit to himself."
"Obviously," Sarai said.
Across the room, Tenzin was prevented from going after Korra by the immediate and comprehensive problem of his son Meelo, who had located something that was emphatically not a toilet.
The reunion between Odyn and Khanna happened in the middle of Tarlock's introduction of Hiroshi Sato, which was probably not the intended significance of the moment but was perhaps fitting.
Khanna had spotted Odyn from across the room — she was standing with Mako and Asami, wearing the same blue dress from the restaurant dinner — and had gone absolutely still. The kind of still that happens when a person's body processes information that the brain hasn't caught up with yet.
Then she crossed the room.
"Odyn?"
He turned.
"Khanna." His voice changed — not the flat, controlled register he used with most people, but something quieter, more genuine. He stepped forward and let her embrace him, and he held on.
"I found you," she said, against his shoulder. "I looked for so long—"
"I know." He patted her back slowly. "I'm sorry I went silent. Things were... it's a long story."
She pulled back and looked at him — the scars on his face, the measured quality of his eyes, the way he stood as if he was always slightly braced for something. She was reading him with the fluency of someone who had grown up in the same language.
"I can see that," she said. Her voice was still rough at the edges, but she was smiling. "We have a lot of catching up to do, cousin."
"We do."
"Is he—" She glanced at Korra across the room. "Are you already—"
"No," he said.
"But you're watching her."
"I'm watching everyone."
Khanna looked at him for a moment longer and then smiled — a private, knowing smile — and let it go. For now.
The Sato introduction went smoothly. Hiroshi was gracious and warm and clearly meant it, the kind of man whose courtesy was built from genuine interest rather than social reflex. Mako shook his hand with a grin that kept threatening to become too large for a formal gala. Bolin materialized from somewhere to explain how Mako and Asami had met ("She hit him with her bike"), then disappeared again.
Lin Bei Fong arrived, and managed to deliver her verdict on Korra within about fifteen seconds with the economical brutality of a woman who had not become chief of police by worrying about how things landed.
"Don't think you're something special. You've done absolutely nothing to deserve this."
"At least she's trying," Odyn said. His voice was quiet and even and somehow, despite being quiet, managed to carry. "Which is more than the police have done for the people they're supposed to protect."
Lin turned. She saw his eyes. She saw Khanna's.
The realization of what they were moved across her face — a recognition, and then something more complex behind it. She looked at him for a moment that was longer than a dismissal should require.
Then she walked away.
Korra started to speak.
"It's all right," Odyn said, before she could. "We're used to it."
"That doesn't make it—"
"No." He agreed with her before she finished. "It doesn't." He looked at her. Something in his expression was direct and unguarded in a way that still surprised her when it appeared. "You're the first person outside my family who's been angry on our behalf. That matters more than you know." He put his hand briefly on her shoulder. "Go do what you came to do. I'll be close."
She nodded, and followed Tarlock, and did not see the way he watched her walk away with an expression she hadn't learned to read yet.
◈
The press conference happened the way a trap happens: so smoothly that you were already inside it before the shape of the thing became apparent.
Odyn stood at the edge of the gathered reporters and watched with the focused stillness of someone tracking weather patterns — not the storm itself, but the signals, the pressure changes, the specific quality of the air before something breaks. He saw Tarlock arrange the angle. He saw where the reporters were positioned, where the cameras were aimed. He understood, a full thirty seconds before it happened, exactly where this was going.
He did not intervene.
Later, Sarai would look at him with a question in her eyes — why — and he would answer honestly: Because I want to see how she handles it. And Khanna, who had been there and seen the expression on his face and knew him well enough to translate it more precisely, would elbow him and say nothing out loud.
The questions came in waves. Each one a little sharper than the last, each one aimed at a slightly different angle of the same wound: Why aren't you doing more? Why aren't you afraid? How would Aang have handled this? Are you afraid of Amon?
He watched Korra's hands. He watched the set of her jaw. He watched the bangs of her hair shift as her expression changed from patience to frustration to something that was, he recognized, the specific face of someone about to make a decision from the wrong place.
There it is, he thought.
"I'm not afraid of anybody!" She gestured at Tarlock, and the words came out like something that had been under pressure: "I'll join Tarlock's task force and help fight Amon!"
Tarlock's hand landed on her shoulder. The cameras exploded.
Odyn moved through the crowd toward her — not rushing, just moving with the direct purposefulness of someone who has somewhere to be — and reached Tarlock before anyone else did. He put his hand on the councilman's shoulder. Not gently.
"You may have fooled everyone else," he said, very quietly, close enough that no one nearby could hear it, "but don't think for a moment you've fooled me. I know what you're doing." He applied pressure — enough to make the point — and felt the man's composure flicker for the first time all evening. "Watch yourself."
He let go, and went to stand beside Korra.
They found a quiet corner outside City Hall, in the gap between two lamp posts where the light was soft and the noise from inside was muffled.
"Try not to carry it too heavily," Odyn said. "What's done is done."
"I walked right into it." She was looking at the ground. "Hook, line, and sinker. Like the world's most obvious trap."
"I've made mistakes I can't take back," he said, simply. "Everyone has. What matters is what you do from here." He paused. "And for what it's worth — I was watching. I could have stepped in and I didn't. That's as much on me as it is on you."
She looked up at him. "That's not true."
"It is." He met her eyes. "So we share it. And we go forward." A pause, and then something that was not quite a smile but lived in the same neighborhood: "You're the one human — aside from Tenzin's family and your friends — that I can actually trust right now. That's not nothing."
She reached out and put her hand on top of his.
"It's more than when we started," she said. "That's a start, right?"
He looked at her hand on his. He looked at her face.
"Right," he said, and they knocked knuckles, and something between them settled into a shape that neither of them had quite named yet.
◈
The task force raid was conducted with the specific efficiency of people who had prepared thoroughly and the specific chaos of a situation that had not consulted their preparation. Odyn stayed at Korra's shoulder throughout — not directing her, not taking over, just present, a second set of eyes watching the angles she was committed enough to not see.
Before they went in, he spoke quietly in her ear.
"Subtlety is a weapon. Use it until you've used it up, then let everything else out. Not before."
She nodded. She was breathing carefully, the way someone breathed when they were managing something.
The raid went: water, ice, earth, scattered chi-blockers, a grenade of green gas that Korra froze mid-arc in a smooth arc of waterbending that surprised even him slightly with its speed. Two chi-blockers broke for the back corridor and she went after them, and he followed without being asked.
She tripped on a wire and went down.
He had her back on her feet before the sound of the fall had finished.
A chi-blocker dropped from a space in the ceiling — reaching for her — and Odyn's fist of compressed light hit him in the chest and sent him sliding across the floor before he'd arrived.
"Nice timing," she said, catching the second chi-blocker in a wave of water and freezing him against the wall.
"I'm here to help," he said, and meant it in a way that was more than tactical.
◈
Three days later, Korra stood at a podium and challenged Amon to a duel.
"Midnight. Avatar Aang Memorial Island. Just the two of us." She stepped back from the microphone. "If you're man enough."
In the crowd, Odyn silently closed his eyes.
Idiot, he thought, with something that was equal parts exasperation and the very beginnings of resignation. Absolute, total idiot.
I'd better follow her.
The island was quiet at midnight. The statue of Avatar Aang rose above it, enormous and still, the memorial torches throwing long shadows across the stone. Korra stood at the center of it with her weight balanced forward and her senses reaching outward, and after a very long while of nothing, she stretched, and yawned, and stood up.
"Guess you're a no-show, Amon. Who's scared now—"
The snare caught her ankles.
She came back to consciousness already trying to bend, and the chi-blockers holding her arms had expected that, had been trained for it, and she was being walked forward toward the masked man at the center of the room before she'd fully finished waking up.
Amon looked at her without hurry.
"I received your invitation," he said. "Our showdown — while inevitable — is premature. I could take your bending right now." He paused. "But you'd only become a martyr. I have a plan, Avatar. I'm saving you for last. And when that time comes—"
The first equalist hit the wall without warning.
Then three more.
Then a dozen, swept sideways in a cascade as something moved through their formation with a speed that didn't allow for tracking.
The crowd parted, and Odyn was standing in the gap.
His aura was up — the full thing, the blazing corona that turned the air warm and made the torchlight flicker — and he was looking at Amon with an expression that had nothing diplomatic in it, nothing measured, nothing held back for context or audience.
"You," he said.
Amon looked at him across the space between them.
"I seem to have underestimated your guard dog." His voice was still even. "Until next time, Avatar."
The smoke bomb hit the floor.
When the air cleared, Amon and his people were gone.
Odyn was already at Korra's side, working at the ropes, hands moving quickly and efficiently, checking her over with the focus of someone running a diagnostic.
"Are you—"
"He didn't take it," she said, opening her palm to show him a small flame. She closed her fist. "He left it." She paused. "Odyn. I was so—"
And then she was crying, and she had not planned to cry, and the specific misery of crying when you hadn't planned to was nothing compared to the fact that she couldn't stop it once it started. She reached forward and held onto him because he was there, because he had come, because she had been so afraid and there was no one else—
"I was terrified," she said into his jacket. "I felt so helpless."
His arms came around her. His hand moved in slow circles on her back.
"I know," he said. "I know. It's over now."
"I've never felt like this before. Like I had no idea what I should—"
"Admitting it," he said, "is the first step. Even I have to do it sometimes."
She looked up at him. Her eyes were red at the edges. "Even you? You're so—"
"Strong people feel fear too, Korra." His voice was the steadiest thing in the room. "No one is immune to it. We just learn to be afraid and move anyway. That's not the absence of fear. That's what courage actually is."
She wiped her face, slowly. Stayed close.
"Can we stay like this?" she asked. Quietly. Not entirely steady. "Just a little longer?"
He looked at her.
"As long as you need," he said.
She nodded, and leaned in again, and he held on, and the island was quiet around them, and somewhere across the water Republic City went on being enormous and relentless and full of everything that was coming — and none of that mattered, right now, in this moment, in the circle of warmth that was the only real thing in the world until it wasn't.
They stayed there until she felt like herself again.
When she finally pulled back, there was color in her cheeks that might have been embarrassment, or might have been something else. She didn't entirely know.
"Come on," Odyn said. "Tenzin will start sending search parties."
She fell into step beside him, and they walked back out into the dark together, and though neither of them said anything for a while, neither of them moved apart.
It was only the beginning, though neither of them knew it yet — of what it was becoming, of the shape it would eventually take, of everything that was quietly and irrevocably being built between them in the spaces where words weren't used.*
The kind of thing that doesn't announce itself.
The kind that is simply, one day, already there.
◈
End of Chapter Two.
♪ Ending Theme — Haruka Kanata
The screen dims.
The same guitar note that ended Chapter One returns — the clean, solitary sound of it hanging in the air just long enough to feel like recognition, like coming back to something you'd left open. Then the full melody comes in, and the black gives way.
Korra.
But not the Korra we opened with in Chapter One's ending — the one alone at the shore, carrying her weight outward. This Korra is in motion: mid-bend, water rising in a wide arc over her head, her face lit from below by the shimmer of it. She is focused. She is a little afraid. She is bending anyway.
She is becoming something.
Odyn.
Sitting. Not standing, not braced, not watchful — actually sitting, on the steps of Air Temple Island with his elbows on his knees and his hands loosely folded between them. Looking at the water. Not at some horizon beyond it, not past it at some approaching thing. Just at the water.
It is the most at rest the camera has ever found him.
Mako.
At the factory floor — his real face, the one he doesn't show in the arena. Mask off, sweat on his forehead, doing the work that nobody sees. He looks down at his hands after a long moment, and something that might be hope and might be doubt crosses his face, and then he puts the mask back on and goes back to work.
The scarf is around his neck.
Khanna.
A window. Night. She is sitting on the sill with her feet up against the frame, looking out over the city with an expression that is doing a great deal of work: wry and sad and careful and oddly bright all at once, the expression of someone who has been looking for something for a long time and is beginning to understand exactly how close it is.
She leans her head against the glass.
She smiles, briefly, at something only she can see.
Bolin.
He is trying to get Paboo to perform a trick, and Paboo is categorically refusing, and Bolin is negotiating with the ferret with the complete seriousness of someone who has made this argument before and knows it's a losing battle and intends to make it anyway.
He looks up, mid-argument, at something off-screen.
His expression changes.
It goes warm and wondering and very slightly terrified all at once.
The camera doesn't show what he's looking at.
Sarai.
She is practicing alone, in the early morning, before anyone else is awake. Her blades move through patterns that are too fast to track individually, but the shapes they leave in the air are clean and certain and hers entirely. She stops. She holds the final position.
Looks at her hands.
Something moves across her face — memory, maybe, or grief, or both at once.
She takes a breath.
She begins again.
Roy.
He is talking to Jinora and Ikki, and they are clearly mid-conversation about something that has made both of them laugh, and he is looking between them with the expression of an older sibling who is fond and slightly long-suffering and wouldn't trade it. He says something, and Ikki laughs harder, and Jinora covers her mouth, and Roy shakes his head.
He's grinning.
It transforms his face entirely.
The seven images come together now — each one drifting in from its corner of the screen to assemble into a single frame, all of them present, all of them separate, all of them already woven into each other's stories in ways they are still in the process of discovering.
Korra's water-arc catches the light.
Odyn looks up from the water.
For a moment — just a frame, just a breath — their eyes meet across the assembled image, and the camera holds it.
Then the melody reaches its end.
And the images go out one by one, soft and unhurried, like lamps being dimmed at the close of a long day.
Until there is only the guitar.
Until there is only the dark.
Until there is only:
Flame Eyed Bender
◈
To be continued...
Next chapter — Chapter Three: The Spirit of Competition — And Something Like Romance?
Hey guys hopefully you enjoyed the chapter! I know it followed the original episode alot, but this was moreso to set up the bonding for Odyn and Korra. True Korra was a bit ooc in this chapter, but it is necessary for later on in the story. Also i figure it'd be better to have Mako and Asami have their little fling first before I set up who Mako will ultimately end up with, though I've done a little foreshadowing of that already.
If you're wondering who Asami will be with... i haven't decided that yet, but i do have someone in mind.
Beside the main pairing which two characters would you like to see end up together?
A. Bolin x Sarai
B. Mako x Khanna
C. Roy x Ikki
I'll have more pairings later. For now those are the ones I could immediately think of. Anyways, that's all for now. See ya in the next one!