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“The Avatar is our enemy. She's arrogant. Ruthless. Careless. Cruel. She has to be taken down. By any means necessary.”
Any means necessary.
The boy is just a route to her. And it's easy enough, getting his attention. You try not to feel bad about it (“there is no room for your soft-heartedness here, Miss Sato”) and you almost succeed, because when you see the way he looks at her, you know he's playing you too. You pretend you don't notice, because Asami Sato (Mako's girlfriend) is sickeningly sweet and charming and good, even if Asami Sato (Equalist spy, her father's daughter) isn't.
It's not hard to get to the Avatar (“not Korra, the Avatar, she's your enemy, remember what she is, not who”) but when you meet her, you know you're going to need to be something different, something less of Mako's sweet girlfriend and something a little closer to who you are. (You're fierce, you're a fighter, you're valuable, you're expendable.) This girl won't fall for that sweet prissy rich kid bullshit. She brushes you off and it sets your teeth on edge because arrogant, careless, they were all right about her.
So you watch her and how she is with the people around her and you set yourself up to be the kind of person she might want you to be. And if that person feels a little too close to who you really are, you tell yourself it will be worth it.
It's a simple plan: Befriend her. Entrap her. Spy on her. Then deliver her to them.
Any means necessary.
“She'll try to get in your head, persuade you she's not who we know she is. She'll talk about honour and doing what's right. Don't listen. You know what happens if you fail.”
“You know, Asami, I was wrong about you.”
You have no idea how wrong you were, you think, but you smile and you nod and you raise your eyebrows a little and you ask her “how d'you mean?”
You've taken her out for a night in the City because you think the girl she wants you to be is intense, and cool, and a little reckless, a little rebellious. Now you're in some club and you can tell that she's definitely not used to alcohol, and she's got all weird and emotional and open with you, and you remind yourself “she'll try to get in your head. Don't listen.”
“You're...” she gestures vaguely in the air. “You're cool. You're not just some prissy rich girl, like I thought. You're... fiery.” She starts giggling at her own description and you swallow back the strange feeling that rises in your throat at that truth.
Because you're fiery, all right. You were forged in flames the day your mother died, the day your father told you what you had to do, the day you first faced Amon and learnt what the price would be if you ever went astray. The day you did it anyway and the scar on your side where you learnt that threat was not empty.
You're all fire and no fear (fear is not useful) because you refuse to ever be afraid again. And when the feeling bubbles up inside you anyway you trace the scar on your side (“electricity can burn marks that never go away. If you ever step out of line again...”) and you remind yourself. You do not get to feel fear. You are a weapon that Amon and your father created. You do not get to feel anything beyond passion for the cause and enough anger and hatred to see you through.
You do not get to wonder about the alternate universes you see in a pretty girl's smile.
You are already stepping out of line by wondering. And “if you ever step out of line again...”
She's your enemy. So you smile at her, because that's the contradictory line you're walking.
“Fiery?”
“Yeah, you're like... fire...” Korra (“the Avatar. She must always be only the Avatar to you”) laughs and trails off. “Like... hot, or something. I... don't mean like that...” she trails off and traces your body with her eyes, like she's puzzling something out. “Not not like that, though.”
Like a lightning strike (a bolt of electricity, from weapons you created) you realise perhaps there is another angle you can take here, another way to play this. It was always flirt with the boy to befriend the girl, but maybe plan A will work for both of them.
After all, it's one thing to get close to someone as a friend, it's another thing to get close as a lover.
Everything about that idea is wrong.
It's not their voices this time, it's yours. The conscience you've spent so long trying to silence. You crush it now, and you trace the scar on your side through the silk of your dress, and you remember how your mother died, in flames and agony. “That was wrong. This is just levelling the playing field.”
So you swallow down the sick feeling and you lean in close to her, close and closer, till you hear the catch in her breath, and you say, “I have no idea what you mean,” low and warm and careful, your tone in direct contradiction to your words, and she blushes and stumbles and then backs away and says she thinks she needs to clear her head.
You don't follow her straight away, you leave it a minute, and then you go out into the street after her, ready with your mask of concern and caring (“Whatever you do, you must never let yourself care. Or...”).
She's walked a little way off and is sitting on a bench by the water, staring down at it, drinking in breaths of the cool night air. She looks thoughtful and a little dazed at the same time, and you wonder if it's a good idea, for her to be alone out here like this. And then you remember the greatest danger in her life is you.
“She's the enemy.”
You cross over to her, and sit on the bench beside her, and she looks over at you with a sheepish smile, something confused in her eyes. “You didn't have to follow me out, y'know, I'm fine... just a little hot in there and... I don't drink much,” she confesses, and you smile and it scares you, because you didn't script it this time, you didn't plan the kind of smile you needed, it just slipped out, and it shouldn't, and you're not meant to ever be scared.
You're not meant to be scared of her, but if you were, it should be because she holds in herself the power that took your mother, it should be because of what she is (“the Avatar, your enemy”) not because she made you smile.
But you push that down and away and you forge a new kind of grin, carefully constructed for the moment, fond and amused and just a little flirtatious, and you tell her it's okay, you weren't about to leave her alone.
She smiles at you tiredly and mumbles something unintelligible and you shift a little closer to her, because the rules of this game are changing.
Dazzle her. Entrap her. Spy on her. Then deliver her to them.
And whatever you do, don't let yourself feel.
“You must get her to trust you without once letting yourself trust in her in return. Show her enough of yourself to allow her to believe she knows you, but never let her suspect the truth.”
You're sitting out on the cliffs of the Island, staring toward the City. She's unsure of herself, she thinks she's doing something wrong. She thinks she's not handling the Equalist problem right.
You don't tell her, I am the Equalist problem.
You don't tell her, You're so close to danger.
You don't say, has it ever occurred to you they might be right?
You don't say, this is so much harder than I thought it would be.
You don't say, you're not the only one who's unsure.
You tell her that she's amazing, that she'll figure it out, that she'll have her friends to help her. And you let her words, her casual, careless words, how easily she brands them (brands you, you're one of them) as villains, how she doesn't even stop to consider that they could be right because she's so terrified of losing the power she was born with (you do not get the luxury of fear), you let it all fill you with renewed purpose, because they were right about her, weren't they? Arrogant, ruthless, careless, cruel.
(I have never seen her be cruel.)
But you have never had a reason to.
When you've finished telling her all those empty words, offering reassurance like you're not holding a knife at her back ready to stab her, she turns to you and she says “thank you.” She puts her hand on your shoulder and she smiles and she says, “You're pretty amazing yourself, you know that? I know we haven't known each other long but I... I don't know what I'd do without you.”
Your heart does something funny in your chest, and for a moment you forget yourself and smile and cover her hand with yours instinctively.
”Your heart can betray you. Do not trust your heart. Your mind is your greatest asset. Your mind will not lie.”
(Won't it?)
You ignore your heart, the way you've been taught to do, and you ignore your lungs too because her words made it harder to draw oxygen, and you cover your real smile with a mask and you tell her, “well then, I guess it's lucky I'm not going anywhere,” and the way she grins in that moment could light up the whole fucking world, not with fire and cruelty but with sunshine and sincerity, and you smile back and you hate yourself for telling all these lies.
“Don't let hatred cloud your judgment, but don't forget why you're doing this. These people took away your mother. How could you not hate them?”
Hating yourself is not useful. (She wasn't the one who took your mother.)
They are all the same. (She wasn't.)
“I'm glad,” she says softly, says it on a breath, and then she's leaning in towards you, her eyes big and blue and staring right into yours, and when she's close enough to share your breath she whispers, “can I kiss you?”
You tell yourself later that you said yes because this was the plan, wasn't it? Dazzle her, entrap her, and what better way is there than this?
You tell yourself later it was all part of the game.
“You have made an art of lying.”
(Including to yourself.)
You tell yourself a million different things when it's over. And in that moment, you tell her yes like you're not a liar and a fake and a spy, like you're not enemies, like she knows the truth of you. You tell her yes like you're just two teenage girls stumbling through a crush.
And she smiles at you and blushes a little and leans in and you're supposed to be planning this, you're supposed to be putting on your mask and kissing her to dazzle her and daze her because that's how you can win. Not because you want to dazzle her for your own sakes. Not because you're dazzled by her too.
But her kiss is soft and her lips are chapped and she's a little tentative and inexperienced but she kisses you like she wants it more than anything, and you kiss her back like this isn't a game (right now, it isn't.)
You kiss her back and you guess this is what people mean when they say first kisses feel like fireworks or stardust or glitter or the end of the world, and you're happy for the first time in... (How long has it been since you were happy?)
You're happy until you're not, until the drumbeat of your heart rings liar, liar, liar and you think maybe she's right. Maybe you are the villain, not for wanting life to be better for people like you, but for lying to the world and her and yourself. Maybe you're the villain because you've seen the collateral damage in the name of justice and you haven't weighed up the costs.
Maybe you're the villain, but you don't know who else you can be. So for just a moment, you tell another lie. You tell it to yourself, and you weave a careful mask, not to hide you from her but to hide you from your own truths, and you're a teenage girl kissing a girl on a cliff looking out at the sea, and you're tangling your hands in her hair and breathing her in and you're young and you're not a spy and you're not a liar and you're not a traitor.
You're not Asami Sato, prissy beautiful elegant rich girl, Mako's girlfriend, sickeningly sweet and absolutely powerless.
You're not Asami Sato, Equalist spy, her father's daughter, the Avatar's enemy, dangerous and fiery and steel wrapped in lies.
For a moment, you're Asami, the girl Korra is kissing, and you're something new and broken and fragile and bold, and you know that you've miscalculated badly, because you came here to undo her, and you're the one who's come undone.
“No matter what happens, stick to the plan. You will gather all the necessary information about her and all those she's close to, and then you will lead her to us, and you will help us take her down.”
By any means necessary.
You wonder if this is what they meant when they said 'means', because it's been happening for a couple of weeks now, you kissing Korra, her hands in your hair, on your skin, on the clasp of your dress. Your name on her lips, your gasp in her ear, your bodies tangled up together. It hasn't gone as far as it can go, but it's gone far enough to be the thing that gets her hooked. Only it's got you hooked too, because you did it with the truth of yourself. You're a patchwork broken mess, shards of glass and hurt, fire and burning fury, but you've always had too much of a conscience, a hindrance, a burden, and it kills you endlessly, the way you're lying.
It would have killed you anyway, you think. You think you would have found another way to draw her in, because there's betrayal and betrayal, lies and lies, and there's still some moral compass in your soul, even if your father has tried his hardest to take it away.
But you're lying to yourself pretending like you didn't kiss her once and now you don't ever want to stop.
You tell yourself this will all help with your goal, but you're kissing her because you want to. And that's the trap you're in, because you hate yourself for lying, but the way you're kissing her is not a lie.
And you're trying to pretend like you're not screwed, but you're a dead girl walking, because you know already, deep in your soul where you hide those fragments of the person you could have been, that you're not going to be able to give her up.
“After you've worked your way in, you will meet with us and relay everything you've learnt. If I find out you've held anything back, things will not end well for you.”
You leave her sleeping. She mumbles as you slip out of bed, reaching out for you, her hair messy from the way you kissed before she fell asleep whispering to you, and your heart squeezes in your chest like it's caught in a vice, but you leave her, because you don't have any other choice.
You've spent so long being one thing, you don't know how to be someone better. You don't know how to walk the line between the convictions you still hold true (“we are not equal, society is built for benders and it's dangerous for us”) and the way that the method being used to drive them home is making you sick (because you care for her, you did the worst thing you could ever have done: you fell.)
The man you meet is masked, and you don't recognise his voice. But you recognise the way he holds himself (“you are the weak link, I am more powerful than you”) and you recognise the threat he carries (“you know what happens if you fail”).
You tell him what you can, keeping it vague, telling him she doesn't trust you, telling him she doesn't trust anyone, really, like you're not hiding the marks she left on your neck, or the ones she's scored into your heart, so much harder to conceal. Like she doesn't trust you implicitly, like she doesn't brush off any hint you try to give her (“what if I weren't a good person, Korra?”), like she doesn't see you for who you are and yet not, sees a truth no-one else does and yet doesn't see the other side, the sharp edges and cut glass and scars and ruthlessness.
You don't lie, but you craft a story out of omission and careful pauses, talk like you can't feel the ghost of her lips against yours.
And when you leave (because he swallows it, they all know what you are – a soldier, a weapon, a puppet) you don't get far away before you find yourself falling to your knees and stifling your tears, because now you don't know where to turn, because you've drawn enough of a line in the sand that it could turn deadly if you're not careful, but not enough to sever you from who you were (are?). Because you've taken a step towards choosing her, but once she finds out the truth of you, you know she will not be there for you to choose.
“You know what you will lose if you betray us. Your father, the only family you have left. All the chance you have for glory. You know what happens to the ones who turn their backs.”
You can't go back to her. You don't know how. You know there's no solution, that you haven't even chosen firmly enough for the pathway to be clear, but every visceral instinct of your body is telling you not to go back to her, because your heart wants nothing more than to be by her side.
So you go home. You've been there on and off, sometimes staying at the Island, other times coming home to sleep. Your father has not been there often. He's part of other plans, plans you know nothing about. When he is there, you barely speak of real things. Your location is not secure enough to talk about what matters. You keep up the illusion of being nothing more than what you seem, between these walls of your home.
But tonight you are not meant to be there. And when you stumble in through the door, your hair dripping rain onto the carpet because the skies opened halfway here, he is there, and his mask slips.
He grabs your wrist and pulls you into his office and shuts the door behind you both and asks you what you're doing here. And you can't lie, you don't know how to right now, so you stay silent, and he looks from your eyes to your hair to the marks on your neck, because you forgot that the make-up would be washed off by the rain, and he doesn't read the truth but he sees something, he sees enough.
“You're not having second thoughts, are you? You wouldn't betray us. These people, these benders, they took away your mother. The love of my life. Don't you remember, Asami? You know what you have to do. You know what we owe.”
You nod because you don't know what else to do, and you try to hide the fact that you can't stop your tears.
“If you betray us, you know what will happen. No daughter of mine is a traitor. We're family, Asami. That girl is an enemy. You would never choose an enemy over your own father, would you?”
His eyes are dangerous and you remember how he knew, how last time you messed it up he knew what would happen and he stood by and did nothing, you know it in the shape of the scar on your side and the careful box of fear you locked away in your heart. He will not protect you. He wouldn't hesitate to be a threat to you.
But. He's your father. He's the only family you have left, and he's part of your life in far more ways than just the one that carries pain. He taught you to play Pai Sho and how to take apart an engine and rebuild it and he showed you how to beat anyone on the test-drive track and he sometimes tells you that you look like your mother. He hugged you when you used to wake up from nightmares and he was so proud when you first designed something that worked, and you can't throw all of that away just because some girl smiled at you and kissed you and tilted your world off its axis, can you?
If you choose her, you will lose him. You know that like you know your own name.
So you shake your head no, and you cry yourself to sleep, and you know you will follow the plan. Because you don't know who to be without it.
“When it comes to it, you will bring her to us. Bring her to your house, and we will be waiting. If she suspects you, if she starts trying to fight, take her down.”
You don't have to lure her, trick her, plead with her. All you have to do is ask and she follows, not because she's innocent and naïve and clueless, but because her heart is too big for her own good, and she trusts you.
And when you're inside, when you're alone, you want more than anything to stop it. You want to tell her to run, you want to push her away physically if you have to, you want to scream at her that she was wrong to trust you, that you wish more than anything that she didn't, but it's too late. Because they're there, masked and dangerous, their bodies turned into weapons just the way yours has been. And as they advance into the room on her, she launches into action, kicking swathes of fire through the air, slamming rocks at them, fighting, fighting, and she shouts your name. She doesn't ask for your help, she asks you to run, because even now, she still trusts you, and she cares about you enough to want to save you.
And she's so strong, and the space is small, and she's holding them at the entrances so they can't get close enough, and the tears are streaming down your face, but you can feel the electricity burning you, burning (“you know what happens if you step out of line”) and you can hear your father's voice (“no daughter of mine is a traitor”), and the tears are blurring your vision, and you telegraph your moves with your body because you're not in control the way you should be, and still she doesn't defend herself against you because she trusts you that much, and you've chi-blocked her before she even processes what's happening. And when she punches weakly forward and then collapses at your feet, she catches your eye, and the look on her face breaks you. All you want to do is fall down beside her and tell her you're sorry, you're so sorry.
And then they're coming at her with all their force and electricity sparking from their hands in the shapes of weapons you helped design, and a scar on your side burns in sympathy, and you're really going to let that happen to her, are you?
You know what they'll do. They'll hurt her, they'll knock her out, they'll lock her up. They'll take her bending in a way that telegraphs who they are to the whole world, and if she causes them too much trouble, they will kill her. And if she survives, she will come out of this scarred and scared and broken, and she will hate you forever, and you don't think this is the way that things get better. You don't think that's how it will go at all.
For a moment, it's like everything stops. And she struggles to stand with a body that doesn't want to obey her, as she punches the air desperately, trying to summon her fire, as they close in around her and one of them lights up the glove on his hand and you can't see him smiling but you know that he is, because for all the good people among you (and you believe there are some) the people in the room today are not them. Are not good.
And you are the worst of them, you think, because Korra turns to you again, on her knees, and there are tears in her eyes, and she looks at you like she wants to hate you, but she can't, and she looks at you the way you look at someone you love who has hurt you, and her eyes say why and they say please and they say I trusted you, and the people who are meant to be your allies are so close to her but not quite there yet, because the whole thing has taken a matter of seconds, and they laugh as she tries to dodge, and every instinct of your fearful body screams because you cannot let them touch her.
In that single glance you see a thousand traded, smiles and kisses and touches and laughter, a single truth more powerful than your carefully crafted web of a million lies.
Because despite everything you know and everything you should have done, despite the brokenness between you, you see it then, what you've been denying all this time.
You love her.
It breaks the ice around you. The glue holding you in place. And you throw yourself in front of her like you have no logic at all, and it throws them off for a second. A long second, long enough for you to lash out with everything you've learnt from them.
If they were prepared for you, you know you'd lose. If they were ready, you know you'd die. You know you still might.
But you're a blaze of fear and fire and desperate, reckless love, and you take two of them down before they even know what's coming, and then you have their weapons and you know them, you know the way they fight, you know the moves they'll make before they make them, and they're not the strongest or the best, because they're just meant to capture Korra, not enact some larger plan, and you're filled with a kind of fight you don't understand, because you cannot let them touch her.
And when there are six of them lying still around you, you fall to your knees. You know how this works. If they don't return with her in a matter of minutes, more will join them. It's carefully planned out, in waves to overwhelm her, backup in case she took them down in time.
You will not be able to fight them all. You don't think you even have the strength to stand. It's like everything inside you has been pulled out and torn into pieces and scattered around. And you're sobbing like the world is ending, because this line you've drawn in the sand is irreversible, and now there's nothing but hurt waiting on all sides.
“Asami...”
You can't look at her, you don't think you'll ever be able to look at her again.
“W-what, why...?” Korra says, and there are tears in her voice, too. “You're... one of them? Or you were... what did you do?”
You can't find the truth you need after so long lying, but you find another one instead, because finally, after so long suppressing it, you're afraid, you're so afraid it's like all the fear you've hidden has hit you at once, and you say it, a jumbled mess of words, tear-filled and small and broken. “I can't stop them. I can't... I can't save you, and they're going to kill me.”
“I don't understand,” Korra says helplessly, and you feel the exact same way. You don't understand any of this. “You betrayed me... and then you saved me? How can you... was it all just a lie?”
You shake your head, because it's all you know how to do, and you say, “I'm not who you think I am. I'm not good. I'm not strong. I'm a liar and a spy and I... I think I might be a monster,” and you're sobbing and you don't know how to stop the truth from spilling out, “and you should hate me. But I love you.”
She looks at you with a wealth of hurt in her eyes, but there's something else. Some blaze of determination. She fights her way to her feet and looks at you steadily, and there's fury and fear and grief and care in her eyes, but no hatred. She can't hate you, just like you never managed to hate her. “I don't know if I'll ever be able to trust you again. But you saved me, and I'm not going to let either of us die here.”
“You can't bend...” you say, and it's my fault, you add silently.
“Neither can you,” she says, like it's a real answer, and she studies the unconscious forms of the people who were supposed to be your allies. “There are more of them coming, right?”
“Soon,” you say. “They move in waves, to give them chances... to surprise you... wear you out...” You don't know how to find all the words you need.
“We can't fight them,” she says, and you recognise it in her, the suppression of everything she wants to be feeling, the sheer determination to carry on, to get herself out of this. “Can we trick them?”
“I don't know...” you say, because you're broken, and you don't know how to move on from this, and she turns to you with a fierce glare in her eyes and then she's reaching down and pulling you to your feet, not gently.
“Yeah, you do. Because you have to. Because you fucking lied to me, you lied to me and betrayed me and then decided to turn the tables, and you're not going to leave me with this now and fade out like some tragic semi-redeemed villain in a story, because if we don't get out of this, it's going to be worse for you than it is for me, isn't it? The traitors always get the worst of it. They have plans for me, right? They want something specific. But you? If they come back here, you're going to die, aren't you?”
“Why would you... care? After everything?” you ask, because you can't understand it. She's here because of you, and nothing you can do will ever make it up to her.
“Because even though I'm mad at you – no, I'm absolutely furious with you – even though I'm terrified because you're not at all who I thought you were... despite all of this, Asami, whoever the fuck you are, I love you too. Even though I wish I didn't. And I'm not leaving you here, and I'm not letting them take me, so we are going to get out of here, and we're going to have to work together.”
You can't breathe around that, you don't know how to process it, but you nod and you steel yourself and you wipe away the tears and you get ready to fight one more time, to get you both out of here.
“When it comes to betrayal, you have two choices. Forgiving, or not. That's simple. What choice you should make, though? That has no easy answer.”
It's three months after everything. After you got out of that house and that situation with nothing but your will, an Equalist disguise, and a few well-placed zaps with an electric glove. You know something was wrong with the whole thing. That couldn't have been the endgame plan. You think it was created to test you more than anything. You failed that test.
After you found your way out, Korra contacted Lin Beifong and the police, and they moved in on your home. You expected Korra to tell her what you did, too. She didn't. She said you both fought your way out. She said you didn't know about it. You don't know why she lied for you. You know you didn't deserve it.
She didn't speak to you for hours afterwards. Not until you were back on the Island. Not until she broke down and asked you why, why, why. Not until you broke even worse than she did, and all the truth came flooding out like blood from a mortal wound. Your mother, your father, the threats, the lies, the promises, the scar on your side from the time you stepped out of line, the scars on your heart from all the times you didn't. The plan you were supposed to follow, the way you fell for her, harder than you've ever fallen into anything, even deception, and the way you saw her fall for you and wished she wouldn't. The way you expected nothing, not her forgiveness or her love or anything at all, but you promised on everything you are that you would never betray her again. How you don't know who you are now, but you know you're afraid.
She looked at you like she was torn apart, like she was filled with compassion at everything you'd been through, like the shadow of the pain you caused her still wouldn't leave, like you'd broken her trust but it wasn't too shattered to rebuild again.
She told you that you hurt her, but she told you that she couldn't imagine what you'd been through. She told you that she needed time, but that she thought one day, she might find her way back to trusting you.
And then she did something you didn't expect. She put her arms around you tightly and held you, like you deserved a second chance, like you deserved safety and like despite it all, whoever the fuck you were, she loved you.
And over the next several weeks, as you helped her take their operation down for good, as she used the knowledge you had to her advantage, as she almost lost anyway but found her full strength again in the shape of her past lives, as you faced your father and almost broke into a million pieces but managed to survive, you found your way back to each other.
It's going to take a long time for you both to figure it all out, and there are still a million things you have to do and say, but for the first time in so long, you have some hope for tomorrow.
And when she kisses you again, for the first time since it all, there are no more lies in the space between you, only the truth of yourself, for the first time in your life.
You are a liar and a traitor and a spy, you are a villain and a victim and a daughter, you are messy and you are broken and you are trying hard to heal, you are a fighter and a lover and you're trying to be good, and you're building yourself anew this time on truths instead of lies.
All this because you made a plan that fell to pieces.
All this because you fell in love.