Coming Home
Aug. 6th, 2012 02:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shinonFandom: The Legend of Korra
Characters: Tahno, Tahno's dad (OC), Korra
Word count: ~3200
Warnings: Some language, probably an overwhelming lack of canon compliance
Notes: I had Tahno headcanons. I wrote them down without actual reference to canon, like, ever. Disjointed, probably OOC and highly implausible, BUT MY HEADCANONS
His mother was descended from old Fire Nation nobility, and he inherited her thin, pale features and no small portion of her arrogance. She left when he was six – when she got bored, when she decided she could do better – and Tahno's father took him north. "We'll stay with my family," he said uncertainly. "You'll like the Tribe."
"I liked my mom," said Tahno, with what could have been a disdainful sneer, save for the fact that he was six.
The ship steamed out of the harbor, and he sulked below deck, not wanting to watch Republic City grow smaller behind them. He lay in his bunk all day feeling tiny and sick and hating everything, and underneath it all, feeling the tides. They lived in his blood; they pulsed in his head like a migraine. He didn't want them there. He didn't want the water all around him to call to him when he slept. But he didn't have a choice about that, either.
When they arrived in the north, he was a waterbender. A weak one, of course, having only discovered his ability three days earlier and only practiced when he was sure no one was around to see it, but he could call up small tendrils of water and strike targets with them, which is exactly what he did when his father was making introductions and a Water Tribe girl about his age asked him why he was so pale.
His father stared down at him in astonishment. "Did I know you could do that?"
"I guess not."
His father looked proud. Confused, but proud. It took him a few moments to remember to say, "Tahno, apologize to this young lady at once," and when he did, his heart wasn't really in it.
From then on, he had the best instruction his father could arrange. Sullen and snotty brat though he was, he was an apt pupil, and it wasn't long before every bending master in the north was fully cognizant of both facts. His father thought this meant Tahno was fitting in, and much better than expected. It was true the Tribe had accepted him, even if they weren't quite sure what to do with him, but outside of the thrill and athleticism of training and competing with fellow benders, he didn't really want to fit in. Relatively few members of the Northern Water Tribe had ever been to Republic City, and he leveraged that for years, even after his early memories of the sparkle of the city had started to dim. He was a figure of interest, a man of the world. He was above all the other kids, and if anyone failed to be impressed or intimidated, he made a special point of... teaching them.
Tahno was clever and resourceful, and this tended to manifest, early on, as a positive genius for fighting dirty. But that was other people's word for it, not his. You used what you had – nothing wrong about that. Anybody who couldn't keep up deserved to lose.
He was thirteen when they started getting radio broadcasts of pro bending matches. The rest of the world had been listening in for years, but his initial annoyance at how backward, how behind the curve people were here at the edge of the civilized world, couldn't hold out long against the excitement. He listened to every match, drew the outline of the arena in the snow outside their house, memorized the rulebook and searched out loopholes. It rapidly became an obsession.
"You hear that, Pops?" he said. "That's how I'm getting back to Republic City."
His father, whom the past seven years had not made more observant, seemed completely blindsided. "I thought you were happy here, Tahno."
"Yeah," said Tahno, snorting. He stood up and switched off the radio. "You would think that, wouldn't you?" He went outside in search of someone to spar with. He had some new ideas.
If an earth- or firebender ever visited from further south, he grilled them mercilessly. He would talk them into fighting him, or he'd talk them into fighting someone else he knew so he could watch. He came up with strategies for countering the other elements, and then, as he started to see himself in his head as the captain of a championship team, he started devising strategies for his imaginary teammates. If he had a team, and if they did exactly as he said, there was no opponent they couldn't beat. He knew it.
His father bought them tickets for the championship match the next year. He tried not to act excited. Getting excited wasn't cool, and he had a reputation. But he was. It was all he could think about for weeks beforehand. Now, he would ask himself, lying awake well into the small hours of the morning, how will I convince the league they need me? How am I going to impress the trainer, or the officials, or the players on a team that just conveniently lost their waterbender? Say you've got thirty seconds with someone important, Tahno: how are you gonna make them love you? But he never rehearsed how to tell Dad he wasn't coming back.
He returned home after eight years, and he stood out on the deck the whole time, watching the city swell and spread and overtake more and more of the horizon. His heart wasn't in his throat or anything.
They arrived three days before the match, and he spent them wandering, trying to remember what his haunts had been when he was a kid. He couldn't. He might never have actually had any. He'd been six, after all. He might have actually made his early childhood up out of whole cloth. Republic City had changed since he'd last seen it. It had gotten bigger, brighter, louder – smellier than he remembered – but he would look past that. This was where he belonged. He'd been telling everyone so for as long as he could remember. He couldn't admit now that it wasn't what he thought it had been. His memories of the place were scant, or defective, or had gone obsolete with the breakneck pace of progress – there sure as hell hadn't been this many Satomobiles when he was six – but he'd keep that, and his disorientation, to himself. He'd thought of this as his city for years, and he wouldn't give up on that now that he was finally here. He had picked out what neighborhood he wanted to live in when he got rich, and he pretended to be much more certain than he was that it was very near where he'd been born.
He wouldn't go back north. He wouldn't. He felt the cold there long before anyone else did – there were four months a year, tops, that he didn't spend shivering. Vegetables were lackluster and overpriced. If he wanted to do anything with his hair and have it stay there, he had to use melted fat, and it smelled, and the hunters asked him weird questions and tried to embarrass him when he asked if they could spare any, and then village pets decided his hair was delicious, and it was an affront to his dignity in general. He didn't belong there.
But he would make himself belong here, and it was his Water Tribe blood that would do it for him. That was kind of funny in its way.
Everyone was shocked when it all came out just the way he planned – everyone but Tahno, anyway. He'd always known it would. Republic City was like that. You impressed the right people and you scraped up enough cash, and the world was your oyster-crab. You had to be sixteen to join a pro bending team, but it wasn't like anyone was around to call him a liar. His father came by the gym once, and Tahno had a trainer show the old man out.
He shared an apartment above a noodle shop with the baby-faced firebender of the rookie team he'd joined as his first stepping stone to glory. That arrangement lasted two months. This team didn't do what he said. He was on to bigger and better things. By the time he was actually sixteen, he had the Wolfbats and the wherewithal to buy any referee he set his eyes on. You used what you had, after all. If what he had was heaps of money and bigger heaps of corrupt officials, it was everyone else's fault for not thinking of it first. Tahno played to win.
That was the spirit of the water, wasn't it? Slipping in wherever you could get a foothold and bursting that opening wide. A willingness to capitalize on change. "Flexibility," he put it, the year his father came down to see one of his matches (hadn't he realized no one wanted him around?) and had the nerve to call Tahno out for cheating afterward.
"Flexibility, yes!" his father said, appalled and disappointed. "Being adaptable to whatever comes – that's a fine virtue for a waterbender or for anyone. But that doesn't mean anything you want to do is all right! It isn't your ethics that should be so – so –"
Tahno smirked and gave him a condescending pat on the shoulder. "It's a game, old man. Relax." He turned and walked away, and the next week, the Wolfbats won the championship.
It wasn't all bullshit, what he said about "the spirit of water," although he didn't figure that out until a month or two after he said it. Inside the arena was one thing – that was all business. On his own time, it felt different. He went everywhere sensing the water all around him, in the air and in the ground, in people, plants, animals. He could feel Republic City's pulse, and he was a part of that pulse himself, and he swore sometimes he knew what was going to happen before it happened.
The water belonged to him as much as he to it, and he could be ready for anything. For three more years, he was.
Then matters changed.
A lot of people in Republic City had reasons not to like him very much, and without his bending, there was nothing stopping them trying to get a piece of him. He wasn't totally useless in a fistfight, but it was disorienting, knowing that his strength extended only as far as his own body, that even if he could feel the water in the air all around him, he couldn't bend it to his will. He still tried sometimes, reflexively. Those were the beatdowns he suffered worst.
He didn't know what he was. He had never realized that could even be a question.
His father invited him back north. Tahno carefully talked himself out of seeing any appeal. He told himself he was offended and disgusted at the very thought. The implication was that he couldn't take care of himself – like he didn't know what he was doing, like all the work he'd put into getting here didn't count anymore, like Amon had stolen his wits and his will along with the stories the water sang him. Maybe some of that felt true, but how dare anyone say so? He could still drag himself out of bed most days, he could still mop up the blood when some forgotten rival decided he needed his nose broken, and he was almost making rent.
And he belonged to the Water Tribe now less than ever. He would never return there. His father's people would never have the satisfaction.
But with his birthright gone, he had no claim on this city, either. He couldn't navigate it when he couldn't feel the ocean at his back. He was constantly disoriented, always assaulted by sights and sounds that had suddenly stopped making any sense. The air was filthy and too warm. He felt like he was six again, dragged against his will out of everything his life had been. This time he wouldn't be able to fight his way back.
The Avatar found him. It saved him the trouble of deciding whether or not he wanted her to. He already knew, from the moment he learned that she could restore what Amon had taken, that he wouldn't go to her himself. He wasn't a bender anymore, and if he stopped being an arrogant bastard, there wouldn't be anything left of himself that he could recognize.
"You can be a pretty hard guy to track down these days," she said, leaning in the doorway with her arms folded.
"Hey, Avatar." He unfolded himself from the couch, but made no move to approach her.
"Hey yourself, Tahno. Aren't you going to ask how I did it?" He didn't answer. She looked frustrated. "I had Naga sniff around for the smell of losers."
"Nice," he said, giving her a slow round of ironic applause. "You must have had all the monks help you come up with that one."
She huffed. "I know you've heard what I can do, so you know why I'm here. Do you want your bending back or not?"
Of course he did.
He said nothing.
"It's way more than a slimy jerk like you deserves," she said. "It's no skin off my nose if you don't want it. I can just go home." She straightened and took a few steps further into his apartment, watching him intently.
"What, you're gonna make me say it?"
"Oh, yeah." She smirked. "I am." She stepped a little closer.
"Why did you even come here if you think I don't deserve it?"
"I don't know." She stepped a little closer. "But watching you squirm is fun enough to make it worth the trip." And closer. "So. What's it gonna be?"
He stared down into her face, and she stared back. Finally he sighed and closed his eyes. "All right, Avatar. Since it means so much to you."
"Say it."
"Sure. I'll let you do your thing."
"You have to ask me. Nicely."
He opened his eyes, irritated. He was on the point of saying "don't push it" and shoving her away, showing her the door. How had she found him, anyway? She had no business barging in on him like this. A few weeks ago he could have had her thrown out by force, Avatar or no. He'd been that powerful. He'd earned it for himself.
But he wasn't that anymore. He was an unkempt loser with bags under his eyes who'd had to sell almost all his furniture just to keep living here. In light of how little he had left to be proud of, even if this didn't work, even if the Avatar was lying or incompetent or screwing with his head, swallowing his pride for a shot at being himself wasn't a bad deal.
Not that he'd do it gracefully. "Oh, please, Avatar, give back my bending," he said, perfectly deadpan, rolling his eyes heavenward.
"Do you promise you won't use it for evil?"
He scowled. "You never said there were conditions."
"Yeah, well, I'm the Avatar, so I make the rules. Do you promise?"
"Whatever. I promise."
"Good. On your knees."
"What?"
With one deft movement, she swept his legs out from under him and dumped him on the floor.
She ignored his spluttered protest, grinning at him until the moment her eyes started to glow and the Avatar State slammed an ageless, expressionless mask over her features. He fell silent, then, feeling the power pulsing through her fingertips.
Whatever else she was, she was a waterbender like him. She knew what it felt like, and, if the rumors were true, she had known what it felt like to lose it.
She stepped back and took her hands off him, and nothing felt any different. But she was smiling again.
"If this is a joke, Avatar –"
She shrugged and folded her arms again, all easy confidence. If it was a joke, she could mop the floor with him. After a moment, he admitted to himself that she probably could even if it weren't. "Find out for yourself."
He took a deep breath and stood up. Hesitantly – he hoped she couldn't see how hesitantly – he reached out his arms and began moving through the easiest, most familiar forms.
A snake of water rose from the pot of dying lilies by the window and coiled itself between his hands. Tahno stood motionless and stared.
"You oughtta see the look on your face," said the Avatar, punching him lightly in the arm and jolting him out of his reverie. The sphere of water spilled onto the floor. Dazed, Tahno called it up again.
It felt like the first time. He'd been stuck on that stinking ship and lost everything that mattered, and he'd found something new to care about. Even then, it had felt like rediscovering something he must always have known – like slipping his hand back into a glove. And here it was again. He felt almost like himself.
"Hey," she said, sounding a little uncomfortable. "You know a little healing, right? Now you can finally do something about your face." She touched one of the fading bruises under his eye – fading, but still just a little too visible. "Of course, with an ugly mug like yours, there's only so much you can do."
"You're trying so hard," he said. "It's almost cute."
Korra snorted and turned to leave. About halfway between him and the door, she stopped and looked back over her shoulder. "Don't make me regret this. If you go back to your old tricks, people will hold me responsible."
"Yeah? And what would you do about it?"
She pounded her fist into the opposite palm.
"Subtle," said Tahno. He faked a disappointed sigh. "Don't know what else I was expecting from a stupid rookie like you. You know, that offer for private lessons still stands."
"Oh, shut up." She laughed a little. "By the way? You're welcome." She moved toward the exit again.
"Why'd you do it?" he said. He hadn't meant to. "If you really think I don't deserve it –"
"Maybe you don't. But even a slimy jerk like you doesn't deserve to lose something that's such an important part of them. That's what I think." She paused. "I'll see you around, Tahno," she said, and then she left.
She left him the world he thought he'd lost. He trashed his apartment pretty thoroughly testing the limits of his newly-restored power. There were none. It was all back. All of it. He stood in the center of the room, breathing heavily, pushing his sweaty hair back from his face, and looked around at the mess. Puddles everywhere. Broken decorations. The couch was going to get moldy if he didn't bend it dry soon. He had no idea how he was going to afford to pay the landlord for the damage.
And it didn't even matter. He didn't know where he was going to go or what he was going to do now, and that didn't matter, either.
He was grinning like a little kid – like he never had when he was a little kid – and he couldn't stop. "Thanks," he said under his breath, and then crossed the floor to stare out the window at his city.
Characters: Tahno, Tahno's dad (OC), Korra
Word count: ~3200
Warnings: Some language, probably an overwhelming lack of canon compliance
Notes: I had Tahno headcanons. I wrote them down without actual reference to canon, like, ever. Disjointed, probably OOC and highly implausible, BUT MY HEADCANONS
His mother was descended from old Fire Nation nobility, and he inherited her thin, pale features and no small portion of her arrogance. She left when he was six – when she got bored, when she decided she could do better – and Tahno's father took him north. "We'll stay with my family," he said uncertainly. "You'll like the Tribe."
"I liked my mom," said Tahno, with what could have been a disdainful sneer, save for the fact that he was six.
The ship steamed out of the harbor, and he sulked below deck, not wanting to watch Republic City grow smaller behind them. He lay in his bunk all day feeling tiny and sick and hating everything, and underneath it all, feeling the tides. They lived in his blood; they pulsed in his head like a migraine. He didn't want them there. He didn't want the water all around him to call to him when he slept. But he didn't have a choice about that, either.
When they arrived in the north, he was a waterbender. A weak one, of course, having only discovered his ability three days earlier and only practiced when he was sure no one was around to see it, but he could call up small tendrils of water and strike targets with them, which is exactly what he did when his father was making introductions and a Water Tribe girl about his age asked him why he was so pale.
His father stared down at him in astonishment. "Did I know you could do that?"
"I guess not."
His father looked proud. Confused, but proud. It took him a few moments to remember to say, "Tahno, apologize to this young lady at once," and when he did, his heart wasn't really in it.
From then on, he had the best instruction his father could arrange. Sullen and snotty brat though he was, he was an apt pupil, and it wasn't long before every bending master in the north was fully cognizant of both facts. His father thought this meant Tahno was fitting in, and much better than expected. It was true the Tribe had accepted him, even if they weren't quite sure what to do with him, but outside of the thrill and athleticism of training and competing with fellow benders, he didn't really want to fit in. Relatively few members of the Northern Water Tribe had ever been to Republic City, and he leveraged that for years, even after his early memories of the sparkle of the city had started to dim. He was a figure of interest, a man of the world. He was above all the other kids, and if anyone failed to be impressed or intimidated, he made a special point of... teaching them.
Tahno was clever and resourceful, and this tended to manifest, early on, as a positive genius for fighting dirty. But that was other people's word for it, not his. You used what you had – nothing wrong about that. Anybody who couldn't keep up deserved to lose.
He was thirteen when they started getting radio broadcasts of pro bending matches. The rest of the world had been listening in for years, but his initial annoyance at how backward, how behind the curve people were here at the edge of the civilized world, couldn't hold out long against the excitement. He listened to every match, drew the outline of the arena in the snow outside their house, memorized the rulebook and searched out loopholes. It rapidly became an obsession.
"You hear that, Pops?" he said. "That's how I'm getting back to Republic City."
His father, whom the past seven years had not made more observant, seemed completely blindsided. "I thought you were happy here, Tahno."
"Yeah," said Tahno, snorting. He stood up and switched off the radio. "You would think that, wouldn't you?" He went outside in search of someone to spar with. He had some new ideas.
If an earth- or firebender ever visited from further south, he grilled them mercilessly. He would talk them into fighting him, or he'd talk them into fighting someone else he knew so he could watch. He came up with strategies for countering the other elements, and then, as he started to see himself in his head as the captain of a championship team, he started devising strategies for his imaginary teammates. If he had a team, and if they did exactly as he said, there was no opponent they couldn't beat. He knew it.
His father bought them tickets for the championship match the next year. He tried not to act excited. Getting excited wasn't cool, and he had a reputation. But he was. It was all he could think about for weeks beforehand. Now, he would ask himself, lying awake well into the small hours of the morning, how will I convince the league they need me? How am I going to impress the trainer, or the officials, or the players on a team that just conveniently lost their waterbender? Say you've got thirty seconds with someone important, Tahno: how are you gonna make them love you? But he never rehearsed how to tell Dad he wasn't coming back.
He returned home after eight years, and he stood out on the deck the whole time, watching the city swell and spread and overtake more and more of the horizon. His heart wasn't in his throat or anything.
They arrived three days before the match, and he spent them wandering, trying to remember what his haunts had been when he was a kid. He couldn't. He might never have actually had any. He'd been six, after all. He might have actually made his early childhood up out of whole cloth. Republic City had changed since he'd last seen it. It had gotten bigger, brighter, louder – smellier than he remembered – but he would look past that. This was where he belonged. He'd been telling everyone so for as long as he could remember. He couldn't admit now that it wasn't what he thought it had been. His memories of the place were scant, or defective, or had gone obsolete with the breakneck pace of progress – there sure as hell hadn't been this many Satomobiles when he was six – but he'd keep that, and his disorientation, to himself. He'd thought of this as his city for years, and he wouldn't give up on that now that he was finally here. He had picked out what neighborhood he wanted to live in when he got rich, and he pretended to be much more certain than he was that it was very near where he'd been born.
He wouldn't go back north. He wouldn't. He felt the cold there long before anyone else did – there were four months a year, tops, that he didn't spend shivering. Vegetables were lackluster and overpriced. If he wanted to do anything with his hair and have it stay there, he had to use melted fat, and it smelled, and the hunters asked him weird questions and tried to embarrass him when he asked if they could spare any, and then village pets decided his hair was delicious, and it was an affront to his dignity in general. He didn't belong there.
But he would make himself belong here, and it was his Water Tribe blood that would do it for him. That was kind of funny in its way.
Everyone was shocked when it all came out just the way he planned – everyone but Tahno, anyway. He'd always known it would. Republic City was like that. You impressed the right people and you scraped up enough cash, and the world was your oyster-crab. You had to be sixteen to join a pro bending team, but it wasn't like anyone was around to call him a liar. His father came by the gym once, and Tahno had a trainer show the old man out.
He shared an apartment above a noodle shop with the baby-faced firebender of the rookie team he'd joined as his first stepping stone to glory. That arrangement lasted two months. This team didn't do what he said. He was on to bigger and better things. By the time he was actually sixteen, he had the Wolfbats and the wherewithal to buy any referee he set his eyes on. You used what you had, after all. If what he had was heaps of money and bigger heaps of corrupt officials, it was everyone else's fault for not thinking of it first. Tahno played to win.
That was the spirit of the water, wasn't it? Slipping in wherever you could get a foothold and bursting that opening wide. A willingness to capitalize on change. "Flexibility," he put it, the year his father came down to see one of his matches (hadn't he realized no one wanted him around?) and had the nerve to call Tahno out for cheating afterward.
"Flexibility, yes!" his father said, appalled and disappointed. "Being adaptable to whatever comes – that's a fine virtue for a waterbender or for anyone. But that doesn't mean anything you want to do is all right! It isn't your ethics that should be so – so –"
Tahno smirked and gave him a condescending pat on the shoulder. "It's a game, old man. Relax." He turned and walked away, and the next week, the Wolfbats won the championship.
It wasn't all bullshit, what he said about "the spirit of water," although he didn't figure that out until a month or two after he said it. Inside the arena was one thing – that was all business. On his own time, it felt different. He went everywhere sensing the water all around him, in the air and in the ground, in people, plants, animals. He could feel Republic City's pulse, and he was a part of that pulse himself, and he swore sometimes he knew what was going to happen before it happened.
The water belonged to him as much as he to it, and he could be ready for anything. For three more years, he was.
Then matters changed.
A lot of people in Republic City had reasons not to like him very much, and without his bending, there was nothing stopping them trying to get a piece of him. He wasn't totally useless in a fistfight, but it was disorienting, knowing that his strength extended only as far as his own body, that even if he could feel the water in the air all around him, he couldn't bend it to his will. He still tried sometimes, reflexively. Those were the beatdowns he suffered worst.
He didn't know what he was. He had never realized that could even be a question.
His father invited him back north. Tahno carefully talked himself out of seeing any appeal. He told himself he was offended and disgusted at the very thought. The implication was that he couldn't take care of himself – like he didn't know what he was doing, like all the work he'd put into getting here didn't count anymore, like Amon had stolen his wits and his will along with the stories the water sang him. Maybe some of that felt true, but how dare anyone say so? He could still drag himself out of bed most days, he could still mop up the blood when some forgotten rival decided he needed his nose broken, and he was almost making rent.
And he belonged to the Water Tribe now less than ever. He would never return there. His father's people would never have the satisfaction.
But with his birthright gone, he had no claim on this city, either. He couldn't navigate it when he couldn't feel the ocean at his back. He was constantly disoriented, always assaulted by sights and sounds that had suddenly stopped making any sense. The air was filthy and too warm. He felt like he was six again, dragged against his will out of everything his life had been. This time he wouldn't be able to fight his way back.
The Avatar found him. It saved him the trouble of deciding whether or not he wanted her to. He already knew, from the moment he learned that she could restore what Amon had taken, that he wouldn't go to her himself. He wasn't a bender anymore, and if he stopped being an arrogant bastard, there wouldn't be anything left of himself that he could recognize.
"You can be a pretty hard guy to track down these days," she said, leaning in the doorway with her arms folded.
"Hey, Avatar." He unfolded himself from the couch, but made no move to approach her.
"Hey yourself, Tahno. Aren't you going to ask how I did it?" He didn't answer. She looked frustrated. "I had Naga sniff around for the smell of losers."
"Nice," he said, giving her a slow round of ironic applause. "You must have had all the monks help you come up with that one."
She huffed. "I know you've heard what I can do, so you know why I'm here. Do you want your bending back or not?"
Of course he did.
He said nothing.
"It's way more than a slimy jerk like you deserves," she said. "It's no skin off my nose if you don't want it. I can just go home." She straightened and took a few steps further into his apartment, watching him intently.
"What, you're gonna make me say it?"
"Oh, yeah." She smirked. "I am." She stepped a little closer.
"Why did you even come here if you think I don't deserve it?"
"I don't know." She stepped a little closer. "But watching you squirm is fun enough to make it worth the trip." And closer. "So. What's it gonna be?"
He stared down into her face, and she stared back. Finally he sighed and closed his eyes. "All right, Avatar. Since it means so much to you."
"Say it."
"Sure. I'll let you do your thing."
"You have to ask me. Nicely."
He opened his eyes, irritated. He was on the point of saying "don't push it" and shoving her away, showing her the door. How had she found him, anyway? She had no business barging in on him like this. A few weeks ago he could have had her thrown out by force, Avatar or no. He'd been that powerful. He'd earned it for himself.
But he wasn't that anymore. He was an unkempt loser with bags under his eyes who'd had to sell almost all his furniture just to keep living here. In light of how little he had left to be proud of, even if this didn't work, even if the Avatar was lying or incompetent or screwing with his head, swallowing his pride for a shot at being himself wasn't a bad deal.
Not that he'd do it gracefully. "Oh, please, Avatar, give back my bending," he said, perfectly deadpan, rolling his eyes heavenward.
"Do you promise you won't use it for evil?"
He scowled. "You never said there were conditions."
"Yeah, well, I'm the Avatar, so I make the rules. Do you promise?"
"Whatever. I promise."
"Good. On your knees."
"What?"
With one deft movement, she swept his legs out from under him and dumped him on the floor.
She ignored his spluttered protest, grinning at him until the moment her eyes started to glow and the Avatar State slammed an ageless, expressionless mask over her features. He fell silent, then, feeling the power pulsing through her fingertips.
Whatever else she was, she was a waterbender like him. She knew what it felt like, and, if the rumors were true, she had known what it felt like to lose it.
She stepped back and took her hands off him, and nothing felt any different. But she was smiling again.
"If this is a joke, Avatar –"
She shrugged and folded her arms again, all easy confidence. If it was a joke, she could mop the floor with him. After a moment, he admitted to himself that she probably could even if it weren't. "Find out for yourself."
He took a deep breath and stood up. Hesitantly – he hoped she couldn't see how hesitantly – he reached out his arms and began moving through the easiest, most familiar forms.
A snake of water rose from the pot of dying lilies by the window and coiled itself between his hands. Tahno stood motionless and stared.
"You oughtta see the look on your face," said the Avatar, punching him lightly in the arm and jolting him out of his reverie. The sphere of water spilled onto the floor. Dazed, Tahno called it up again.
It felt like the first time. He'd been stuck on that stinking ship and lost everything that mattered, and he'd found something new to care about. Even then, it had felt like rediscovering something he must always have known – like slipping his hand back into a glove. And here it was again. He felt almost like himself.
"Hey," she said, sounding a little uncomfortable. "You know a little healing, right? Now you can finally do something about your face." She touched one of the fading bruises under his eye – fading, but still just a little too visible. "Of course, with an ugly mug like yours, there's only so much you can do."
"You're trying so hard," he said. "It's almost cute."
Korra snorted and turned to leave. About halfway between him and the door, she stopped and looked back over her shoulder. "Don't make me regret this. If you go back to your old tricks, people will hold me responsible."
"Yeah? And what would you do about it?"
She pounded her fist into the opposite palm.
"Subtle," said Tahno. He faked a disappointed sigh. "Don't know what else I was expecting from a stupid rookie like you. You know, that offer for private lessons still stands."
"Oh, shut up." She laughed a little. "By the way? You're welcome." She moved toward the exit again.
"Why'd you do it?" he said. He hadn't meant to. "If you really think I don't deserve it –"
"Maybe you don't. But even a slimy jerk like you doesn't deserve to lose something that's such an important part of them. That's what I think." She paused. "I'll see you around, Tahno," she said, and then she left.
She left him the world he thought he'd lost. He trashed his apartment pretty thoroughly testing the limits of his newly-restored power. There were none. It was all back. All of it. He stood in the center of the room, breathing heavily, pushing his sweaty hair back from his face, and looked around at the mess. Puddles everywhere. Broken decorations. The couch was going to get moldy if he didn't bend it dry soon. He had no idea how he was going to afford to pay the landlord for the damage.
And it didn't even matter. He didn't know where he was going to go or what he was going to do now, and that didn't matter, either.
He was grinning like a little kid – like he never had when he was a little kid – and he couldn't stop. "Thanks," he said under his breath, and then crossed the floor to stare out the window at his city.
