Chapter Text
The Avatar has come to Republic City. We’re all listening as her voice crackles in over the radio, responding to the live questions from the press conference downtown. Her voice is bright and hopeful. I have never heard her speak, but I recognize her immediately somehow. The sound of her voice makes my skin prickle, the blood rush to my ears. Every nerve is suddenly on end. The Lieutenant snaps the radio off. I turn to look at Amon. He doesn’t move, arms clasped behind his back as he reviews the plans board.
The Avatar. We hadn’t expected her arrival so soon. The last we’d heard, Councilman Tenzin was scheduled to be in the Southern Water Tribe to assist with her training. It would have given us more time to destabilize Republic City before the Avatar was at full strength. But now she’s here, several years too early. There’s electricity in my veins. This could mean war. Perhaps this little game of attrition is at its end. Perhaps it's time to show this city what we’re truly capable of.
“Amon, how do you want to handle this?” the Lieutenant asks.
“So, the Avatar has arrived early,” Amon responds, his gravelly voice perfectly even. “It looks like we’ll have to accelerate our plans.”
He begins shifting the various markers on the board, illustrating the new timeline in a few deft moves. I follow his movements, taking in the information as a new plan unfolds. Not all out war, not yet. A revamped guerilla fight. The reveal of Amon’s powers is moved to three weeks from now. The pro-bending championship only two months down the road will be the new venue for his outright declaration of war.
Listening to him speak, it’s as if he knew this change was coming all along. He’s completely unflappable in the face of the unexpected. He is cool and unmoved and utterly terrifying. The energy in the room is surging like a wave. We are all raised hackles on the back of a slavering beast. We are all hungry, and our prey has just entered the hunting grounds.
Amon finishes his brief and dismisses the room, directing us all to disseminate the new plan to the various Equalist strongholds around the city. I rise to leave, but there’s a touch on my arm at the door. It’s the Lieutenant. He tilts his head toward Amon.
“He wants a word,” he says.
This is a surprise, but I don’t question it. I wait until the Lieutenant has closed the door behind him, then move to stand behind Amon.
“Sir?”
“I have a special mission for you, Asami. Are you ready to serve?”
When he says my name, it cuts through the thrill of the Avatar’s arrival like a punch in the gut. I shouldn’t be surprised - Amon seems to know everything somehow. There’s whispers in the Equalist ranks that he’s a psychic, a mind-reader, and that’s how he can take away people’s bending. I don’t buy it, but it’s undeniable how eerie and unnatural his reach seems to be. The fact that he’s able to recognize me under the uniform is particularly unnerving.
“Of course,” I respond.
“Good.” He turns, leveling his gaze toward me. Something about his look makes me feel pierced through. I know he can’t see past the reflective yellow lenses in the mask, but I force myself to keep eye contact with him anyway. “You and the young Avatar are approximately the same age. As a newcomer to the city, she’ll want friends. I want you to be one of them.”
I hear the words, but it takes me a moment to process them. I’ve imagined doing many things to the Avatar - fighting, maiming, and killing are at the top of the list - but befriending her? I had hoped he would ask me to be at his side at the moment he stole her bending, or to head an operation to kidnap her in the night and bring her in chains to face justice. I would leap at any chance to crush her beneath my heel, but becoming friends with my greatest enemy is unthinkable.
“I understand this is a strange request,” Amon says, as if reading my thoughts. “But I can assure you it is vital. We cannot trust a bender such as Councilman Tenzin to allow us any sort of insight into her schedule, bending prowess, etcetera. But a close friend, one who can invite her to one-on-one outings where she may be vulnerable, or who can gain a personal perspective on exactly how much training she has to do before she’s at her full power - that would prove truly invaluable at this crucial moment.”
I don’t answer. He’s right, of course he’s right, I know he’s right, but the thought of it makes me sick. I’ve had to be around benders my whole life, just like everyone else, and I’ve learned how to be cordial, how to keep them at arm’s length, how to stay aloof enough that none of them try to get close after a while. I’ve prided myself on my ability to, in a world swarming with benders, have no benders who would consider themselves my friend. And now I have to undo all of that hard work and buddy up to the bender of benders, the Avatar herself. I can feel my blood get hot. I want to refuse, I want to demand a different mission. Anything for the cause, anything but this.
My hesitation is a mistake. Amon whirls on me, closing the distance between us with a single step. It takes all of my strength of will not to take a step back, to put distance between myself and his imposing presence, but I still feel myself flinch.
“I understand your mother was killed by benders,” he says without preamble.
The reminder closes around my throat. I can still see her body, collapsed at the bottom of the stairs. I can still hear my father’s agonized screams.
“Yes,” is all I can say.
“Undermining the Avatar, being a key player in destroying the most powerful bender in the world, is the best way I can think of to avenge your mother’s death. Wouldn’t you agree?”
“Yes,” I say again. I try put my mother out of my mind. Her corpse still burns behind my eyes. “You can count on me.”
“Good,” he growls. “Report back to me once you’ve made contact with the Avatar. I’ll be interested in hearing your progress.”
I leave the hideout, my head buzzing as I strip off my uniform and steal into the darkened streets. Ordinarily I’d head home, but I can’t tonight. I know my father will want to know what news came out of the meeting, and I’m not ready to talk to him about what’s happened. He’ll try to interfere, tell me the best way to track the Avatar down, how I should conduct myself around her to make my lie more convincing, try to commandeer my mission for his own gain just as he’s done with every other aspect of my life ever since mom died. I’ll take solitude instead.
I start up my car, letting out a breath I didn’t know I was holding as the engine roars to life. The thoughts roll away like a mist before a sudden wind as I throw it into gear and peel out from the curb. The wind tears my hair away from my face, cooling where the uniform had left traces of sweat across my cheeks and neck. It’s late and the streets are empty, whipping past in shadowy streaks. The buildings shrink and vanish in the darkness. I drive far enough to leave the city behind, climbing winding roads up into the mountains that form the crescent around Republic City’s borders. I pull over on a gravel turn-out overlooking the city.
It stretches out below me in a blanket of glittering lights, reflecting in waving lines onto the water of the bay. Further out stands the statue of Avatar Aang, looking like a toy figurine at this distance. Beyond that sits Air Temple Island, softly lit and unassuming. I know the Avatar is there now, likely sleeping peacefully, resting for the next day’s training.
Does she know? Does she know the pain her kind have caused the rest of us? Does she know about the monster she has created? Does she know that every move she makes will be watched from the shadows? Does she know we’re coming for her? She sleeps under the watchful gaze of the Avatar who came before her, the one who ended the 100 Year War. He was hailed as a hero, but he was no different than the rest of them. If there had never been benders, there never would have been the 100 Year War.
My heart constricts painfully. If there had never been benders, I would still have a mother.
The Avatar is meant to bring balance. Balance. The concept is laughable. There is no balance in a world where benders exist. There is no balance in a world where the rest of us have to live in fear of angering the wrong bender and ending up dead. There is no balance in a world where non-benders have to work ten times as hard to protect themselves from the power of benders.
So many times I’ve thought of coming face-to-face with the Avatar, of blacking out her chi, rendering her just as powerless as I was the day my mother died, listening to her plead for her life, watching her lose that which is most precious to her. Even as I think of it now, my stomach twists in satisfaction.
I close my eyes, let the high, cool mountain air drape itself around my shoulders. I have a new job to do, one that will fail if I live on thoughts devoted to the Avatar’s suffering. I cannot fail. I won’t. The Avatar will never have a dearer, more trusted friend than me. I will make her understand the meaning of safety. And then. And then. When my work is done, and I have hand-delivered the Avatar into Amon’s waiting grasp, and he has taken away her bending and fulfilled his purpose, maybe he’ll let me kill her myself.
The thought puts a smile on my face.