Breaking the Wheel

Chapter 17

"What did you think you were doing?" Korra glared up at Tenzin. Zaheer's blood was still on her hands. It felt like it coated them, crusting round her nails.

Her former airbending teacher stared down at her, dark shadows under his eyes. He looked old. "Meelo and Ikki are gone," he said, a pained edge to his voice. "Kuvira took them prisoner when she took Republic City. I need to get them back."

"And that somehow gives you the right to go around hurting people?" asked Korra. Usually she would have sympathised with Tenzin. Meelo and Ikki had become like a little brother and sister to her in the time she had lived with their family. But usually she wasn't still covered with blood from trying to save a life that Tenzin and his brother had tried to take. Her chi pathways were still burning from the effort of it. Bumi hadn't even dared look her in the eye, but at least he'd been contrite. All Tenzin seemed to be doing was making excuses.

Tenzin made a disgusted face. "It was Zaheer!"

"And that somehow makes it more right?"

"In case you'd forgotten, that's the same man that took the whole air nation hostage, and nearly killed you! Bumi-" Tenzin shook his head. "Look, I don't condone what he had to do-"

"What he had to do?" Korra tilted her head to one side. Perhaps it was the light in the shrine, but Tenzin seemed a smaller man than she remembered, his airbender robes too big for him. "Are you sure you're not condoning it? Because it sounds a lot like you are."

"Korra," said Tenzin, a condescending edge to his voice. "Sometimes serious situations mean you take actions you wouldn't usually consider. And Zaheer is a very dangerous man."

He sounded like he was talking to Meelo or Ikki, explaining why they had to eat their sea-plums. Was that really all he thought of her as? A child? Tenzin might have been able to avoid this whole situation and instead he was stood there trying to patronise her, like he was in the right somehow. Anger rose in Korra like fire on brittle kindling, hot and violent.

"So what? Your convictions and beliefs matter, except when they don't?" she snarled, stepping into Tenzin's space. "Except when it's your brother doing it? You're the leader of the air nation! You don't get to make exceptions! You don't get to pick and choose when your beliefs apply!"

Tenzin turned red, visibly flustered. "You have no right-" he began.

"Oh yeah, because who am I to tell you what to do? Oh, that's right," said Korra. "I'm the Avatar!"

---

Consciousness came in bursts- pain, followed by blackness. Pain was a teacher, showing him the broken parts of himself, the parts that would tear and bleed at the slightest movement, and Zaheer stilled himself around them.

Zaheer opened his eyes a slit, holding himself as if he were made of glass. His mouth still tasted of blood, and his lips were dry. There was someone sat keeping watch over him, and he could hear the Avatar's voice nearby. She was angry. He was still in the astrolabe room, the tiles of the mosaic pressing cold against his back, and the man keeping watch over him was the same one who had stabbed him.

"They're fighting," he said, as he picked out the second voice as that of the airbending master, Tenzin.

"Yeah," said Bumi. "It's about this whole... sticky situation." He laughed, the sound hollow in the huge room.

"Shouldn't you be there?"

"Honestly?" said Bumi. "I wouldn't be all that much help. If you've seen my brother and the Avatar fight one time, you've seen them all. Tenzin gets angry, the Avatar gets angry, then they both go off in a huff and do whatever they were both going to do to start with." Bumi gave a lopsided grin. "If they weren't family they'd be at each other's throats even more."