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The verdict came down like a fist between her eyes. For a moment Kuvira could only sit and stare straight ahead, bare fingers twisting together in her lap.
I wish I had my gloves, she thought, and almost laughed aloud at the absurdity of it. Then the instant of shock-fueled hilarity gave way to the deep, cold fear she hadn't felt since she was a child realizing her parents were never coming back.
Words filled up every corner of the courtroom--vaguely she registered Avatar Korra's voice rising above the din--and her advocate was murmuring something next to her head, but she didn't hear. She took a deep breath and reached for her stony mask of indifference, all too aware of flashbulbs like a dozen lightning storms going off far too close to her face.
You said you would accept whatever punishment the world saw fit, she reminded herself. So accept it. Don't go back on your word now. It's all you have left.
"How will they do it?" she asked, the abrupt thrust of her words cutting off her advocate's rapid-fire mutters. "The method. What will they use?"
The attorney cleared his throat, tapping his pen on the table. "Well, there is very little precedent--"
"Please." She closed her eyes. "Just tell me."
He sighed. "Poison, most likely. There are a number of...relatively painless options."
"I'm not afraid of pain," she began, then stopped as she remembered the world had very little use for her fears, or her thoughts, or anything else about her. "Thank you," she said instead, and rose as the guards moved to flank her. The chi-blocker hovered in her peripheral vision, a shadow just behind her right elbow.
She stepped out from behind the table, and the voices crescendoed, joy and outrage blurring together into indistinct clamor. She could see the judges' impassive faces, their narrowed eyes weighing and measuring her and finding her beyond repair. Avatar Korra stood near the judges' bench, her forehead crinkled and blue eyes wide with dismay. Suyin and Baatar and the rest of the Beifongs sat on the other side of the room, but Kuvira didn't look at them.
She didn't dare.
Back in her cell, she danced and danced until sweat drenched her jumpsuit and her feet lost all feeling.
I'm going to die, she thought. The words repeated in time to the rhythm of her dance steps, the soles of her feet beating the floor like soldiers' drums heralding battle. Going to die, going to die, going to die--
The idea of it was nothing new. The Earth Kingdom's Interim President had quickly made enemies; the Great Uniter garnered even more. But meeting her end in battle, at the hands of an assassin, or even pitted against a well-coordinated bandit attack was different than sipping death from a cup, silent and passive as the world hovered over her with its greedy fingers clamped on her pulse.
I'll accept whatever punishment the world sees fit, her own voice reminded her again. She remembered standing in the crater that was the middle of Republic City, the spirit portal's otherworldly light gently rippling at her back, Su Beifong's scathing gaze all but stripping the flesh off her bones.
You're going to answer for everything you've done, hissed the voice that once cheered her on as she molded liquid metal above her stubby child fingers.
You were right, Su, she thought. She closed her eyes and danced harder, until the numbness crawled up her shins and brought her to her knees.
She woke hours later to stiff joints and an insistent banging on her cell door.
"You dead already?" the guard said, peering down at her through the bars, and looked almost disappointed when she blinked up at him. "Eh. Guess not. You got a visitor."
He walked off, and Kuvira pulled herself upright, unable to hide a wince as pain shot through her legs, the forgiving lack of sensation long since gone. Her jumpsuit twisted around her, and she grimaced as she tugged it down, hands brushing over patches of fabric stiff with dried sweat and grime.
"Kuvira?"
She froze, halfway through the motion of scraping her hair back into a bun.
Baatar stood beyond her cell, little more than a formless shape between the meager light and her sleep-dulled vision, his face half obscured by the cell's thick wood bars. It didn't matter. She would know his voice until the day she died.
Not very long, then. Her mouth wanted to twist in bitter irony at the thought, but she forbade it, keeping her face impassive.
"Hello, Baatar," she said, settling on the safest words she could find.
He stepped toward the bars, and she felt her breath quicken despite herself. Closer, she could begin to make out details: the musculature beneath his gray-green Zaofu clothing, the dark rectangular glasses frames she'd picked out for him (odd, she thought, that in almost two years he hadn't bought new ones), and beyond them, the olive-green Beifong eyes she knew as well as her own. He'd begun to grow out his undercut, his head now covered in thick dark tufts curling slightly above his ears. Kuvira blinked, startled at the sudden urge to reach through the bars and smooth them back.
Her hands settled into their familiar position at the small of her back, gripping her wrist tightly as though she could chase away the impulse with brute force. She glanced down to his hands instead, watching them fidget and pick at the seams on his tunic, and frowned as she recognized his nervous habit--the one she'd once seen when experiments were going poorly, or when she was suiting up to go into battle.
"Are you all right?" she asked without thinking.
He blinked at her, and she held his gaze, bracing herself for the avalanche. But he was the first to look away.
"Um," he said, and cleared his throat. Darkness slanted across his face, but she saw his eyes close, squeezing shut tight. "Not really."
She knew she shouldn't step toward him, but she did anyway. "What do you need from me?"
"Spirits," he hissed, and his head jerked back toward her, freezing her in place. "How can you be so calm? They sentenced you to death."
The fear lapped at the edge of her mind, and she tried to push it away, as though she could command the ocean's tide. "It's no more than I deserve," she said, willpower steeling her voice. "I killed people. The guards at the United Republic outpost. Asami Sato's father. And I almost killed many more, including you. You should hate me."
She hesitated, remembering the last time she'd seen him a year and a half ago, the way he'd paced in front of her cell with brokenness in his words and tears streaming down his face. "Don't you hate me?" she whispered.
He exhaled, long and shuddering.
"I thought I did." Hs voice was scarcely louder than hers. "Ever since Republic City, I told myself I did. Whenever you popped into my head, I focused on the anger. For a while, it worked. Sort of. I'm still mostly confined to house arrest in Zaofu, but I thought I'd been getting back to something close to normal, working on new projects." He paused a moment, clearing his throat. "I even started trying to date again."
She had no reason to feel surprised, less than no reason to feel hurt. But the heart cared little for reasons. "Did you?" she said, hoping he'd missed the widening of her eyes, already knowing it was a fool's hope. He'd always seen through her emotionless façade.
"Yes," he said softly. "A few times. But they never went far. I...I always kept thinking of you. I told myself I just needed more time."
"Still, it's a good first step," she heard herself say. Her hands clenched tighter behind her back, and her shoulders ached beneath her prison garb. "I'm glad you're living your life. I'm happy for you, Baatar."
"I haven't finished." He stepped closer to the bars, almost near enough to touch, and Kuvira felt her throat close up at the thought. It was hard to remember the last time she'd been touched, aside from chi-blockings and security searches.
"I thought I hated you," he went on, "until they read the verdict yesterday. And then I realized I've been lying to myself this whole time. When they sentenced you to death, it felt like..." His face contorted, and Kuvira forced herself not to look away. "It was the exact same thing I felt back in the warehouse that day, when the Avatar told me she would never let me see you again. Like I've never been so scared in my life."
"You'll be fine." Instinctively she lifted a hand to reach for his, her fingers freezing in midair before she let them drop to her side. "You said yourself, things were starting to get back to normal in Zaofu. You know you can live without me, now."
"Can I?" He made a sound like a laugh, but it was brittle and tinged with despair. "The only time I can stop thinking of you is when I'm neck-deep in a project. I work myself to the bone, pulling all-nighters so I don't have to lie awake in bed without you next to me. And like I said, the only way to cope with it is to focus on the anger, to tell myself you're a horrible person and I'm better off without you. Is that really living, being in state of constant anger, just because it's the only thing more bearable than being without you?"
He turned away, movements as abrupt and stiff as a mech in need of oiling. He lifted both hands to his face, dragging them slowly down his cheeks.
"Do you have any idea," he said, "how many reminders of you there are in Zaofu? It doesn't matter where I go; I still think of you. The studio where you used to dance, the routes you used to patrol, the pond where you used to feed turtleducks. Sometimes you're even there in the lab. The other day I went digging through my tools and found a few strands of your hair wrapped around one of my wrenches."
"Baatar, listen to me." She heard herself slipping back into the Great Uniter voice--it was almost terrifying how easy it was, like a well-worn glove nestled perfectly against her skin--and Baatar turned to face her.
"It'll get easier," she said, meeting and holding his gaze, willing gentleness back into her voice. "It will be easier once I'm gone. You'll have a long and prosperous career, you'll build amazing things that will make everyone forget about the colossus mech. You'll meet a wonderful girl and get married and give your mother lots of grandchildren to spoil."
He smiled, but it was equal parts wistful and resigned. "I don't think there'll be anyone else for me."
"Don't be ridiculous." Kuvira fought back the urge to reach through the bars and dig her fingers into his shoulder. "You're young. You still have decades ahead of you. Someday I'll be nothing but a distant memory." If my parents can do it, so can you.
But he was watching her with that expression he'd often worn when he didn't think she was looking, the one that filled his eyes with a quiet but brilliant light.
"I've loved you since I was twelve years old," he said softly. "You fired on me with the weapon I built for you, and somehow I'm still in love with you. I'm pretty sure there's no hope for me."
She opened her mouth to tell him to stop being so dramatic, but his eyes shifted, his thumb and forefinger rubbing together in rapid twitches, and the words dried up in her mouth.
"Kuvira," he said, and she could see the effort it took for him to meet her eyes. "We can still get married."
After three years of stabilizing a kingdom, fighting bandits, squaring off against stubborn governors, sacrificing her own happiness for the sake of her people, and staring a death sentence in the face, Kuvira was sure nothing she could possibly encounter would ever catch her off guard again. She'd been mistaken.
"What?" The word came out slowly, as though mired in a drunken stupor.
"If you want to," he added, the words tumbling out and tripping over themselves. He dug into his pocket and held out his hand. Two rings of rich auburn-colored wood nestled in his palm, delicately carved and shaped, soft light reflecting off their smooth polished surfaces.
"Baatar," she whispered. She closed her eyes, but the image of the rings lingered behind her eyelids. "In a few weeks I'll be dead."
"Avatar Korra is speaking with the judges on your behalf," Baatar said, and the glimmer of hope in his voice tore at her heart. "She's doing everything she can to try to change their minds. She was pretty adamant about it, actually."
"The Avatar is powerful, but she can't supersede the entire justice system," Kuvira said. "Don't make this harder on yourself than it has to be."
"Listen to me," he said. He reached through the bars with his free hand, and after a moment of hesitation Kuvira took it in both of hers, unable to keep her breath from hitching at the touch of his skin and the rush of memories along with it.
"My whole life," Baatar continued, "I've only really wanted two things. The first was to be the best engineer I possibly could be, free from my father's shadow and influence. The second was to be your husband. You helped me achieve the first one, but I still want the second." His throat bobbed as he swallowed, and his voice filled with quiet longing. "Even if it's only for a few weeks."
Kuvira lifted his hand to her face and pressed her lips to his knuckles, unable to speak.
"Do you still want it?" he whispered. "If not, just forget I ever--"
"I want it." Her fingers tightened around his. "I never stopped wanting it."
He stilled, watching her with a hawk's intensity. "Even when...?"
"Even then."
She felt him relax, shoulders dropping as he blew out a long breath, and even in the shadows she could catch a glimpse of his smile.
And for the first time in a long, long time, she could feel herself smiling back.