Breaking News (Avatar: TLoK Post-"Revelation" Fan Fic)
The sudden banging on their attic-apartment’s trap door entrance was the second shock the brothers received in as many minutes that morning. They barely had time to shift instinctively to the guard position before a voice began shouting, “It’s Korra! Open up! Hurry!” When Mako unlocked and opened the door, he was greeted not by a face but by the newspaper she was waving over her head. “Have you seen the paper this morning?” They nodded. That had been the first shock.
A few short paragraphs on B-10 about an unexplained double suicide in the North Shore district, earning a raised eyebrow - a gasp and a “How tragic!” at the most - from most of its readers, not even worth a second glance to anyone but the three teenagers exchanging looks of grief and disgust as they absorbed the sequel to the horrific scene they witnessed the previous night.
It had started like a routine crime: an apothecary was wakened in the middle of the night by the sounds of someone banging and rummaging around his shop on the floor below. He was startled, at first (being a Waterbender meant that the city’s commonplace criminal Bending gangs, as a rule, left him alone) but soon gathered enough courage to go confront the intruder. Grabbing his sack of water, he crept down the stairs from his apartment and cracked open the door to the shop. He saw a man with his back to him, frantically tossing aside the herbs on some shelves, appearing to seek something he wanted badly, but when he ventured farther into the room, someone struck him hard on the back of the head, knocking him prostrate to the ground. He tried to struggle to his feet but his attacker threw aside his water pouch and held him face down against the floor with his arms pinned behind his back as his partner continued his desperate search. He finally shouted that he found it, and the two ran out the door they had apparently kicked in earlier.
After their victim overcame the shock that they actually left him alive and unharmed, he began combing through the mess of scattered herbs, broken bottles, and collapsed shelves, trying to find what they had taken. He assumed it could only be some drug whose craving had driven them crazy. To his dismay, the first thing he found missing was a bottle of poison - intended for use against termite-roaches but equally fatal to humans. He hurried to fetch the police, hoping they could find the would-be murderers before they accomplished their crime.
The Metalbender who found the bodies of two men in an alley a few blocks away by Central Station at first feared they were too late. The witness’ quick recognition of them as none other than the two thieves themselves, however, put everything in a different light. The remnants of the lethal powder crushed in their hands, the telltale signs of the poisoning on their bodies, confirmed it; the robbery had been the prelude not to an assassination but a suicide.
The men were easily identified as a certain Waterbender and Earthbender suspected of belonging to the infamous Bending gang the Triple Threat Triad, each with a record of various counts of robbery, vandalism, assault, and extortion. Chief Bei Fong’s theory was that their guilty consciences had finally been too much to bear. The reporter who broke the story suspected the police must have been unknowingly on the verge of discovering some horrible crime that would have cost them their freedom forever. What no one could understand was why they hadn’t used their Bending during the break-in.
Tenzin had been stunned when Korra abruptly reached across the breakfast table and wrenched the paper out of his hands that morning. The mugshots on the back page… she had seen them before, kneeling in terror as they waited helplessly for their turn to have part of their soul ripped away. She could never forget them.
Mako remembered them just as vividly. He wondered why he felt so stunned; if anything, the most confusing part of the case from their privileged point of view should be that there hadn’t been four bodies. Would it be long before Amon’s other two victims sought the merciful release of death from their waking nightmare - living with a part of you gone, with a process that seemed as natural and necessary as breathing and eating stopped? What bender wouldn’t choose death over a half-life cut off from their element?
Bolin was the most strongly affected by the news; his brother and friend struggled to discuss it, to comfort each other, to wonder what their enemy’s next move would be, what (if anything) they could do, but he could only sit in silence and relive the horror of last night, the memory almost more vivid than the experience itself.
He remembered the slow hours of imprisonment in a solitary metal cell, when he had the comfort of the full confidence that his brother would come for him. A disinterested bystander might have logically examined the long odds against such a hope, but the possibility of his brother letting him down just didn’t exist for Bolin, no matter what the obstacles or mysteries or dangers that stood in his way.
He remembered Amon telling the crowd he was about to remove someone’s Bending permanently, making him actually think that the whole thing must be some elaborate prank; the thought was so unbearable… so impossible, it had to be a trick.
He remembered watching the second Firebender shake all over with dread after his leader collapsed, his inner fire extinguished forever. Why had Amon’s soldiers skipped him and taken the next prisoner in line instead? To prolong his evident anguish? To give the crowd some variety in the show?
He remembered the eyes of the other Earthbender staring at him as they waited alone for seconds that felt like ages. They had never met, never spoken before, but they had connected somehow as they held each other’s gaze: reflecting the other’s fear-stricken face, silently begging him to say this was all a dream he would wake up from soon, regretting every foolish decision that had led them to this spot, wondering if they deserved it, hoping the roof would fall in and save them from the nightmarish fate approaching closer and closer.
Underneath the maddening horror, Bolin thought he saw something else in the man’s eyes. Was it pity? For him? Why? Because he was so young? Because he wasn’t one of them, who were responsible for making Benders so hated? He would never know.
How close he had come to the same doom… Would he have done the same? Bolin tried to imagine life without his connection to the Earth. It was like trying to imagine life without one of his limbs, without his eyes or ears, without his memories, without the ability to move.
No, Mako was right; there was nothing the least bit surprising about the story at all.