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1.
Water filled P’Li’s lungs, and she tried to scream, but there was no air, no sound, no—
“What have we here,” said a voice. It was dark and sinuous and cold. Like an underground river, water rushing over stone that no light had ever touched. Like falling into a fissure in ice a mile deep. But she was not cold, or warm; she simply was. “Mortals so rarely come to call,” the voice continued. It was above her, and P’Li schooled her features. She wasn’t meant to have emotions; she wasn’t meant to have thoughts. She could fake one of those, if not the other.
“Tell me,” the voice said, and she looked up—up—up into the cold, flat eyes of a thing that was hanging above her, clinging to a spur of rock hanging from the ceiling. “What are you doing here?”
She blinked. “I don’t know,” she said. Her face perfectly neutral. Her uncle wouldn’t like the answer, but she couldn’t think of a better one. “I was just—” Where had she been? It was as though there was a wall between her and where she had just been. Had she been cold? She must have been, to notice a change.
“Let me see, let me see.” The thing shifted, and she saw a long, centipede body shining faintly in the dim light. Thousands of legs, rustling against one another. The eyes—the face dipped, came closer to her, and P’Li realized that it was in the middle of a membrane, red and glistening like a fresh burn. Two flaps of skin closed over the membrane, and opened to reveal a different face: an old woman, white hair tied in a knot at the top of her head. But the eyes remained the same, and the expression on the face was still curious.
“You are not meant to be here,” the thing said. “You did not come here by choice, and I can see that it is not your time.” Her time? What did that mean, she wondered? “Or… it does not have to be. There is life in you, still.” The flaps of skin closed, reopened. A woman’s face, long brown hair spilling over the membrane, red lips pursed in concern. “Do you want to live?”
Yes, P’Li thought, yes—
“Well then.” The thing dipped down, closer to her. Touched one long insectoid leg to her forehead. “You will see—”
The girl vomited, water forcing its way up from her lungs and stomach. Water glowed over her chest, and the pain of breathing eased somewhat.
“How many more times will we have to do this?” a man’s voice—uncle, a distant part of the girl thought.
“Until it’s done,” said the woman who was healing her.
The man scoffed, and turned away.
“Let’s try this again,” the woman said, raising a hand. Across the room, a target of ice appeared. The girl stared at it. “All you need to do is hit the target.”
The girl felt the touch of that thing’s pincer on her forehead. She looked at the target.
The girl opened her Eye.
Ice exploded into shards.
“Well done,” the woman said, a hand on the girl’s shoulder.
2.
The weapon was quiet. Weapons didn’t have thoughts; weapons didn’t have feelings. Weapons didn’t cry, at night, when it was cold and dark and the sky was too big above them.
“I can get you out of here,” the boy had said, and the weapon hadn’t believed him, because nobody could help her. But the boy had been telling the truth, because the weapon’s room was in splinters and the shackle over the weapon’s Eye was broken, and—and the girl wanted to scream, the girl wanted to rage, wanted to burn—and the weapon followed the boy silently, away from the burning wreckage of a previous life.
The girl’s memories fragmented. Wind like sandpaper on her face, air so dry it pulled the moisture from her throat, the sun burning above her. A voice on the wind: you will not die here. The girl was hot and cold by turns. The boy’s shirt was gone, and the girl’s side ached. The boy’s shirt was in tatters and there was blood on the girl’s hands. The boy was hovering over her, voice panicked. The world was tilting and rushing up to meet her.
The girl heard voices. We can try to help her, but if this is her time there is little we can do. Please save her I’ll do anything. Please you have to wake up. This can’t be for nothing. You will not die here.
The girl was in darkness. The darkness was not cold or warm; it simply was.
“Ah, you again.” The girl opened her eyes. A tall, tall figure was in front of her, body wide and segmented and shining like a bug’s carapace. (A long, insectoid leg reaching out—) Where the thing’s head should have been was a membrane, a red and damp looking thing, and in the middle of the membrane hung a woman’s face.
“You,” the girl said without thinking. “I recognize you.”
“And I you,” the thing in front of her said. The woman’s face smiled. A spirit, the girl thought. “What brings you to my domain, P’Li?”
It was as if a bell had been struck within her. P’Li. Her name, a long, long time ago.
“I,” she began. The girl whose name was P’Li. “I was hurt. I was… a weapon. I…”
“My domain is difficult to reach,” the spirit said, turning away from her. It began to circle the cave she was standing in, the clicking of its countless legs like waves against a shore. “So how have you managed it twice, in so short a life?”
The girl’s memories were still fragmented. P’Li, that was her name. P’Li’s memories. The girl tried to think.
“I was—in a desert. And…my side hurt.” She looked down to her side. She was wearing a tattered red dress. It sparked a memory, dim and blurry with age. Safety, security, home. Her parents, before her uncle came. “I…”
“Hm. Do you want to return?” The spirit continued to circle her as it spoke, and the girl found herself getting dizzy watching it. She closed her eyes. The spirit must not have liked this, because it seized her face in four smooth, hard pincers, the woman’s face gone, replaced by a white mask with gray eyes and blood-red lips, and snarled, “Do you?”
“Yes,” the girl P’Li said, not thinking again, because she wanted to live, damn it—
“You’re awake!”
The sun was high overhead. She hadn’t felt the sun in—she didn’t want to think about it. She closed her eyes, drinking it in. Her side ached and itched.
Next to her, the boy was rambling. His tone was anxious, but the girl didn’t think there was danger.
“And anyway I’m so so sorry but I didn’t know you were in there, otherwise I never would have—”
The girl opened her eyes, squinted up at him. He stopped, staring at her, wide-eyed.
“Thank you,” she said. The girl’s voice was a rasp. Weapons didn’t speak. But the girl was not a weapon. The girl was P’Li. “Thank you,” she said again. “My… my name is P’Li.” It didn’t quite feel true to her yet, but she would make it true.
“Zaheer,” the boy said, holding out his hand. She took it, and he helped her to her feet.
3.
P’Li was cold. That was the first thing she noticed when she woke. Zaheer had always been warm; you put off heat like a firebender, she’d told him once. She should have appreciated it—appreciated him—more when she had the chance.
Her cell was small. A slab of ice for a bed, a hole in the ice for a toilet. P’Li shivered. Prison was expected; she had been prepared for prison. This was—something else.
Her Eye ached.
She remembered—the girl remembered—
But no. She was P’Li; she was not a weapon. Her uncle hadn’t taken that from her. His torturers hadn’t taken that from her. She would be damned if she would let the White Lotus take it from her.
...
The days were long and slow. She could feel the sun rising and setting, but her inner fire burned low. She was deep beneath the ice, where no sun could reach. The north pole, she guessed; the south didn’t have ice sheets thick enough to drill into. The only reason Ghazan had—
The White Lotus guards ignored her if she was lucky. The others mocked her, called her a freak, called her a monster. P’Li kept her head high; she had been called worse, by people whose opinions she valued much more.
She thought about asking for books, or newspapers, or phonographs—anything to fill the endless, sunless hours. But she knew the White Lotus wouldn’t provide them.
...
The days grew shorter. Perilously short. She had heard horror stories, from the War and after, of firebenders trying to live in the unending night.
The sun vanished. P’Li’s fire dimmed nearly to coals. Her breathing grew shallow. She spent days in meditation; fire came from the stomach, from the sea of chi. Breathe from the core; hold, one, two, three, four, exhale. Repeat.
She thought of her family. Of Ming-Hua’s biting humor, Ghazan’s easy smile.
She thought of Zaheer: his arms, wrapping around her. His smile as he brushed her hair, and the way his eyes crinkled. His hands, surprisingly dexterous, braiding her hair away from her Eye. The rasp of his stubble against her cheek. The press of his crooked nose against her own. The warmth of him pressed against her.
She was cold. So cold.
I’m dying, she wanted to say, wanted to scream; you’re killing me; how can you monsters do this to me? How can you condemn me to die by inches? You call yourselves good, you call yourselves righteous, and you lock me up under a mile of ice where you know I’ll go mad? Where you know I’ll die in darkness? Is this what your Avatar wanted? Is this what your peace is worth?
But the girl had learned, long ago, that her captors cared little for her words.
...
P’Li could feel her fire dying. The darkness was consuming it, bit by bit. The cold was eating away at it. Eating away at her.
P’Li closed her eyes. She was so cold.
And then she was not.
Koh’s domain, she realized. Zaheer had described it to her. Far below her, water rushed around pillars of stone; above her, tree branches rattled. Before her, steps worn smooth with the millennia, stretching down into inky darkness.
“It is still not your time.” A deep, melodious voice that she had heard before, like the ice creaking around her cell. (One long, insectoid leg reaching out—) “Thrice now you’ve visited my domain.” Koh was coiled around the stalactite at the center of his cave. “I could almost begin to think you enjoy it.”
“I apologize, honored Face-Stealer,” she said, her tone level. Zaheer had taught her a few things, after all. “It was not my intention to trespass.”
Koh laughed, the membrane of his head closing on the noh mask. It reopened, a blue-nosed monkey grinning out at her. “No, it never is.” The membrane closed and opened again, like an enormous eye blinking. An old woman, kindly-faced but for the spirit’s cold, empty eyes. “But you did not come here under your own power.” The woman stared at her, long and hard. “What brings you here, little spark?”
Her Eye itched.
“I’m in a prison,” she said, “in the polar north. Under a mile of ice. My bending is—weak. My fire is nearly out. The solstice—”
“Oh, that,” Koh said, turning away from her. His massive, centipede body wavered back and forth. “If that is all…” Koh turned, his face the noh mask again, four claws gripping her face with surprising gentleness. “I can return you, and I can protect you in Agni’s absence.”
It seemed too simple.
The noh mask smiled, and Koh released her, stepped away. Resumed circling. “Other spirits would advise against dealing with me, true,” Koh said. “But I’m not unreasonable. All I would require is that you visit me each year on the solstice. It is dull, sometimes; this dreary cave, this dreary domain, no one to talk to…” Koh stopped, turned to face her once again, the noh mask looking serenely down at her. The lips, blood-red, stretched into—almost—a smile.
“But the real question is, do you want to live?”
Well, when you put it like that, P’Li thought.
“Yes,” she said, firmly.
The face’s smile widened, and he held out one long, insectoid leg as if to shake. “Then we have a deal.”
P’Li gripped the claw, and—
“Ha. Still breathing. I told you she was too stubborn.” One of her guards. She could see two of them, through the clear ice wall of her cell. One pocketing a handful of bills.
“Fine, you were right,” the other huffed. “Should’ve known she’d have some freaky trick to survive.”
+1.
P’Li knew, in some way she couldn’t quite pin down, that one of them wasn’t making it out of Republic City alive.
“We’ll give you four days,” Korra said. “Try to get it done before we get there. I don’t want Jinora… her mom already hates me. She doesn’t need more reasons.”
So they had slipped into the city with the rest of the refugees, Kamal driving the truck and Ghazan in the passenger seat. Ming-Hua, P’Li and Zaheer in the back, because she and Ming were distinctive and Zaheer refused to leave her side. Ghazan had knocked out their all-clear signal when the truck finally stopped, and they emerged in a run-down industrial neighborhood. Torn chain-link fences and empty lots sprouting with weeds and warehouse windows gone translucent with grime.
The kid’s crew—the Black Lotus, he called them, and she nearly rolled her eyes—were certainly impressive. Coordinated, efficient, and precise, just the sort of cell she liked to work with. They already had architectural diagrams for Sato Tower and Parliament and police HQ, and a half-dozen other buildings downtown besides; one of the members, the kid said, worked in the records office as a clerk and copied down plans whenever a new building was built. Zaheer and Ming-Hua and the group’s de facto leader, Liang, had spent hours discussing tactics, and materials, and goals. What buildings to hit, and where, and when. How to minimize casualties, and how to ensure success. How to make sure that they got Raiko and Beifong and the fattest leeches.
P’Li never had much interest in planning. She understood the importance of it, and she could do some planning if she needed to, but she was a woman of action. Point her at the problem and let her shoot. So she sat on the countertop and watched Zaheer work his magic.
The kid sidled up to her, held out a pack of cigarettes. One was already in his mouth, though he hadn’t lit it yet. She looked at the pack: green, with an outline of Omashu in gold. Double Happiness, the package read. Sure, she thought, I could use some happiness.
She took one with a nod, and lit it. It tasted foul, like all cigarettes did, but the gentle buzz of nicotine hitting her veins was welcome.
“What are you thinking?” he said, producing a silver lighter from his pocket. She raised an eyebrow. “Oh, uh.” He flicked the lighter open, sparked it, lit the cigarette. Flicked the lighter shut, and then open, sparked it to light, and then shut again. “Gives me something to do with my hands.” The rhythmic flick, snap, snick of it settled into the background. “But—what are you thinking about?”
P’Li took a deep drag of the cigarette, held the smoke in for a long minute. “One of us won’t make it out of here,” she said on the exhale.
Kamal frowned. “I—look, Ren and Naoki and Feng got captured during the last big job they—we—pulled, but we’ve all learned from that. What—what makes you think one of us is going to die?”
P’Li shrugged. It wasn’t anything she could pin down. It wasn’t even a certainty. But she had a feeling, buzzing under her skin (a long, insectoid leg reaching out—), that felt familiar, in the way only one thing did.
...
She made sure that she and Zaheer got a private room.
“I love you,” she told him, after they had worn each other out. Neither of them had the stamina they did before, when they were young and convinced of their invincibility. But they’d spent the last two months each re-learning what the other liked, and fifteen years apart had given them perspective. Perspective, and a sense of appreciation for each other’s company. She rubbed her cheek against the stubble on his scalp. “I still don’t love the shaved hair. But I love you anyway.”
Zaheer chuckled. “I love you too.” He wrapped his arm around her, his hand going instinctively to the starburst scar on her left side. “I don’t know how I’d do this without you.”
“You’d find a way,” P’Li said. “You always do. You rescued me, after all.”
“I’m still not sure how I managed that,” he said. He splayed his fingers over the scar tissue, as if he could cover it up and forget that it had happened. “I thought… when that arrow hit you…”
“I know,” she said. She wasn’t sure how she’d survived, either. (She wasn’t sure that she had.) “But—look. I want you to know.” She swallowed, the words suddenly too much. She felt dizzy with it, with the love she felt for him; which she knew he felt in return. Fifteen years apart hadn’t dimmed it. Nothing would. Not even death.
“I’m proud of you. Of us. Of everything we’ve done. And—” The words caught in her throat. (One long, insectoid leg—) “And… if anything happens to me,” she said, “I want you to know that I’ll be waiting for you. Whatever comes next. Wherever we go, we’ll go there together, even if one of us has to wait.”
“What—what are you talking about?” She looked away; he put his hand on her cheek, turned her head so she was looking at him again, brushed away her tear—oh, she was crying—with his thumb. “Nothing’s going to happen to you. I’ll make sure of it.”
She smiled at him. Eternally the optimist.
“If something happens,” she said, squeezing his hand where their fingers were still interlaced. “If something happens. You have to promise me that you won’t rush trying to get back to me, all right?” He looked confused. “If I die, don’t jump off a cliff to reunite with me,” she said, and watched the emotions flicker across his face: refusal to understand; denial that anything would happen to her; confusion at her request. “I want you to live. Live, and be happy, if you can.” Zaheer bit his lip, looking down at where she still held his hand, over the scar that had nearly killed her. “Promise me, all right?”
“I will if you do,” Zaheer said, meeting her gaze again. His eyes were shining with tears. “If anything happens to me, you’ll keep going, too.”
No, she almost said: her mind refused to entertain the thought of a world without Zaheer. And he wasn’t the one who’d come close to death so often that it had almost begun to feel like a friend.
But she wanted him to live and be happy. And she knew he wanted the same.
“Fine,” she said. She closed her eyes, pressed their foreheads together. “Fine, yes. If you die, I won’t pick a fight with the United Forces to get back to you faster.” Her attempt at humor was weak, but it made him chuckle regardless.
“And I won’t walk off a cliff to get back to you,” he said.
...
They were running late. Badly late. Korra was due in the city any moment. Zaheer had spoken to her, appraised her of the mission status, that had to set the charges manually, that they should wait a day to arrive, if they could. But Korra had said that it was too late—that they were already on their way—that Pepper wouldn’t be able to fly them over the mountains twice in one day. We’ll just have to deal with it, she said.
So they were dealing with it. The kid had gone with Ghazan and Ming-Hua to fix the detonator under Sato Tower. Some of his friends had gone to the one under Parliament. And she and Zaheer were fixing the one under police HQ. The bomb threat the kid insisted they call in had worked, and the police had evacuated the few workers that remained in the buildings during the lockdown the President had established. Lucky for them, there were tunnels connecting the buildings.
The charge was set. Beifong was escorting the President across the square outside. “We’ll never have a better shot,” she told Zaheer, who looked torn. They had found the command room Beifong had set up. She probably thought it was secure; who put a window that took up half the wall in a secure room, and left it with only two guards? They’d been easy to dispatch; she hadn’t needed to use her Eye at all.
She blew the window apart.
“I’ll take out Raiko, and then we jump,” she said, and he nodded, tightened his grip on his staff. They would have to be quick, to avoid being in the building when the bomb went off.
Beifong appeared, the President huddled behind her. Cold and imperious and sneering at both of them. And Zaheer couldn’t resist an argument. P’Li was prepared to ignore her, to arc her blast over and around her, until—
“Like you had no interest in abducting the airbenders from Ba Sing Se,” Beifong said, and P’Li couldn’t help herself.
“We freed those airbenders,” she snarled, because she could still remember it, the taste of blood in her mouth, the water and the light and (one long, insectoid leg—) “The queen was torturing them, turning them into weapons, and we let them go—”
“Then where are they? Why have none of them come forward?”
Come forward. Spoken like a cop. Spoken like a Princess, who had the world handed to her, who’d never known a sleepless night or day of hunger, who’d never been looked at like she was just an object, just a tool, just a weapon—
The first bomb went off.
They had to move. Theirs was the third and final—but there was only a minute between each.
Beifong had the same idea, forming two short swords of metal, and lunging. P’Li and Zaheer flowed into motion, as easy as breathing. Zaheer was a very good fighter, but he was evenly matched with Beifong, and he was trying to keep their back to the window and line up a shot for her—and P’Li was deadly, but she was keeping one eye on Beifong and one on Raiko, waiting for an opening—
Beifong snapped out a cable to tangle around Zaheer’s feet, and P’Li knew what earthbenders did with prone enemies—she opened her Eye—
Beifong hurled a boulder at her that took her full in the chest, sending her reeling back. Broken rib, she thought. Maybe more. She knew what those felt like, and this was worse.
The second bomb went off.
Not good. They were cutting it close.
Beifong’s lackeys had finally gotten their shit together enough to attack; Zaheer dealt with Beifong, hurling spinning blades of air through the plaster dust-choked room; she took the others out one at a time, not bothering to open her Eye, just—she saw Zaheer narrowly dodge Beifong’s sword, saw it tear open a hole in his tunic—the last metalbender took advantage of her distraction to hit her in the side—she opened her Eye to put him down—
The third bomb went off.
Her ears were ringing from the blast. She looked down: oh. The metalbender hadn’t just hit her. There was a jagged piece of metal sticking out of her stomach. She gripped the edges of it, pulled. Pain blurred the edges of her world.
Zaheer was at her side. “We need to leave,” he was saying, but P’Li knew she wasn’t going anywhere. Not like this.
“Go,” she said. Zaheer went deathly pale. “Go,” she said again, “I’ll distract her. I’ll take out Raiko. I’ll finish the mission.”
“Fuck the mission,” he said, tears gathering in his eyes, “fuck everything, I’m not losing you—”
She smiled at him. She could taste blood in the back of her throat. “I don’t think I’m lucky enough,” she said, “to survive this sort of thing twice.” He looked down at her stomach, his eyes wide, tears streaming down his face. “But I can make it worth it.”
“Nothing’s worth it.” He pulled her into an embrace, regardless of Beifong behind them, of the building’s rapidly degrading structure. “I can’t—I can’t leave you here—”
“You can.”
“She’ll kill you—”
“I’m dying anyway.” Even if she hadn’t pulled out the shrapnel, she knew, gut wounds were hard to come back from. Ming never had been much of a healer, but she had told them that much.
“We’ll find a healer,” he said desperately. “Korra can—”
“Not in time.” She laughed. Coughed, tasting blood again. “I’m not making it out of this building alive.” She could almost feel Koh’s presence. That absence-of-cold she only ever felt in his realm. “But you can. Get to Korra, get out of here.”
He kissed her, and it tasted like blood.
“I love you,” he said, and she thought of their conversation the night before.
“I know,” she said, smiling.
He stood, picked up his staff where it lay discarded by the window, forgotten in their fight. She wondered, briefly, if it would’ve made a difference. Not likely. He cast one desperate, pained look back at her.
“No,” P’Li heard Beifong say, shifting into an earthbending form. Trying to grab Zaheer.
She opened her Eye.
It was a low-powered shot, barely enough to stun, but P’Li was losing blood, and she had enough in her for one more real shot. She had to make it count.
Zaheer jumped, the glider unfurling with a snap.
Beifong looked at her from across the room. She knew what it looked like when someone was prepared to die.
She grinned. Opened her Eye—Beifong braced herself—and curved the shot, into the hallway, where she knew Raiko was. She felt the beam connect with a body. Fire bloomed in the doorway.
The world was going dim. The absence-of-cold was enveloping her. There was an odd sound in her ears, wet and rasping. Beifong was standing above her.
“Last words?”
Oh, P’Li thought, she was laughing. She bared her teeth. She wouldn’t call it a smile. “Do it, pig.”
Beifong’s sword came down—
“I don’t believe,” said that deep voice, that voice she knew almost as well as her own, “that I can let you go this time.”
P’Li looked at Koh, at her surroundings. The cave had changed: it was lighter, almost airy; the ceiling was higher, and the room was larger, no longer dominated by a single stalactite. He looked different, too, though it was a subtle change. He wasn’t quite as dark, somehow.
“No, I knew I wasn’t surviving that.”
Koh tilted his head, the membrane of his face blinking shut and opening on the long-haired woman. “Do you not fear death?”
She almost smiled at him. “I’ve come close to it too often for that, I think.”
Koh hummed. He turned away, began to pace the outline of the room; must have thought better of it, because he returned to stand in front of her, his many claws clicking together.
“But I do have a request, if I can,” P’Li added. Making deals with Koh was risky—but she already had. Koh gestured with two of his feelers. “Let me wait here, just for a while. For Zaheer.”
Koh’s membrane blinked shut, and reopened on the noh mask. It smiled.
“Of course,” he said.
And they settled in to wait.