disclaimer: even in the wackiest timeline we find ourselves in, it still ain't mine

author's notes: a really heartfelt thank you to everyone who's been kind enough to read and leave such thoughtful comments. writing is supposed to be escapist, but recently it's been challenging to separate fiction from reality, especially during this extraordinary global flashpoint of the civil rights movements. so, for what little it's worth, thank you for making a world of difference in mustering the resolve to continue writing this. kudos as always to aangsslut for beta-reading.

since it's been a while, i would recommend a re-read of chapters 10, 14, 23, 28 and 32 to get the most out of this one.

warnings for some adult content and a bit of mindfuckery that may be disturbing.

i give you…

southern lights

chapter xxxvi. whispers in the dark

i watched, i waited here
i feel you as you disappeared
beneath the ash you'll find my blood
buried in the corner of this room

"we never asked for this" / crywolf

In his dreams, he is always running.

He runs through darkness, through water, through snow. He runs without considering his path or destination, without any thought for what he has left behind.

In his dreams, they chase after him, wraiths of shadows and half-formed memories snatching at him with razor-sharp claws. He dodges and weaves ahead of their pursuit, both longing and dreading to be caught in their grips, to remember.

The ground beneath his feet sucks at his shoes and he sinks into it, swallowed as though by a swamp. A living swamp that reads his entire existence and spits it out before him in visions he can barely understand, people he can no longer recognize except for the searing wrench in his gut that tells him that he should.

And in his dreams, they speak to him in whispered commands and broken promises still weighing heavy on his soul with long-forgotten guilt.

He sinks further, struggling against the gravity of what lies behind him, an unseen terror, an unrealized yearning. His footfalls flag as he strains, sinking into the depths of a watery blackness that seems to consume him from the inside out. Struggling with limbs bound by invisible shackles.

He screams futilely, the air in his lungs, the very blood in his veins all dissolving to water, drifting away in liquid darkness like the shadows that pursue him.

And the nearer they get, the clearer their voices become, so close he can almost hear them whispering to him, a reminder for some part of him buried far below the surface.

I'll come back for you.

I'll always be with you.

I promise.

For a moment, he hovers, suspended in some invisible prison lurking far beneath the water's surface. He is neither drowning nor swimming, neither running nor following. Only trapped and waiting for something he cannot remember or describe, except for the fact that it is missing.

The shadows intertwine behind him, nebulous shapes as insubstantial as smoke, stretching toward him with voices whispering secrets to him that he cannot understand. But his entire body is frozen, and only the hypnotic pulse of his blood can answer back, jerky and erratic, beating in time to a rhythm not entirely his own.

In the end, all a man is, and all he will ever be, is written in his blood.

Then the shadows are upon him, coalescing into rows and rows of solid dark terror in identical shapes of flesh, bone and rock, sinister green light glinting off flowing cloth and sloping metal hats. They reach out with liquid hands that threaten to clamp around his heart and squeeze the very last part of him out into the still silent water surrounding him.

Part of him, the part weary of the tireless cycle of escape and rebirth, longs to stand and fight. To surrender to the agents of chaos that pursue him relentlessly, if only to hear the voices in his head more clearly.

To see their faces, to remember.

But in his dreams, all he can do is run. Run as though his very existence depends on it.

"Lee! Wake up!"

His eyes snap open. He bolts upright, hand halfway to his belt before he realizes his boomerang is safely stowed in his pack and he is dressed for sleep, safe in the bounty hunter's cramped apartment in the lower ring.

In the sleeping bag next to his, the Kyoshi warrior, Suki, peers curiously at him. "Were you having a nightmare or something?"

His breathing slows gradually as his hands drop back to his sides. He glances at the sliver of sky visible from the window, still pitch black and quiet as night.

"We have an important job ahead of us," he wheezes, the inside of his skull starting to pound with an immense headache. "You should be resting."

Suki doesn't even blink, propping her head up on her hands. "So should you."

Groaning, he presses his fingers into his throbbing temples. If he listens hard enough, he can still hear them whispering to him, the ghosts living in his dreams.

Her smooth forehead furrows in concern. "Do you always talk in your sleep?"

"What?"

She shrugs nonchalantly. "I can hear you, you know."

He gapes at her, his fingers momentarily relieving the pressure on his aching head. "What do I say?"

She snorts. "How am I supposed to know? You barely make any sense as it is."

He lets out a huff before falling aimlessly back onto his pillow, staring resolutely at the darkened ceiling. "Suit yourself."

He closes his eyes, willing the darkness to take him again and confront the faceless demons that pursue him relentlessly. In the faded space between wakefulness and dreams, some are shadowy and nondescript, fleeting like smoke on a breeze the moment he tries to think of them. Other details linger, disembodied fragments coalescing into a mass submerged deep within his skull. Like the smell of fire. Bloodstained snow. The sound of a knife whittling away at stone warm in his fingers. They pervade the edge of his senses, filling him with inexplicable terror with the unknown weight of their familiarity.

And at the tip of the iceberg stands a girl with a long dark braid, skin the same shade as his, and anguished blue eyes matching the colour of her garb. The strange waterbender from the Sun Warriors battle, whose face he does not recognize. His sister, if it could be believed. A sister he had left behind, abandoned, forgotten entirely.

Why?

"You keep apologizing."

Suki's voice cuts through his thoughts. He rolls over to face her. "What?"

Her faint blush somehow still manages to be visible in the low light. "You keep apologizing," she repeats patiently, her fingers drumming against the side of her face. "Over and over again."

He grunts. "If you say so."

"What are you apologizing for?" she asks curiously.

"How'm I supposed to know?"

"You don't remember." From the way she says it, he isn't sure if she's asking or telling him.

He shrugs uncomfortably. "Does it matter?"

"I think it's sad." Suki's voice rises quietly out of the darkness. "To remember feeling sorry, but not why. You're stuck in some endless cycle, never atoning, never being forgiven. Just...stuck."

You're him. You have to be, the mysterious girl choked out through poorly disguised tears. Before turning and helping him escape without another word. A gesture that would be bizarre if not for the deep familial bond it betrayed.

And he remembers none of it, except whispers in the dark.

His heart throbs a long-forgotten lament, fit to burst.

Instead, he says nothing and closes his eyes, the darkness behind his lids feeling more like home than anything he remembers.

A small distance away, Suki sighs and rolls over, her sleeping bag rustling secret whispers of its own.

At first, the only thing in sight are clouds, a never-ending expanse of opaque chilly white stinging their cheeks in cold pinpricks and blanketing everything in damp misery, matched only by the torrential downpour of rain emptying far below them.

Katara's teeth chatter together unconsciously as she wraps her cloak around her more tightly, layers of crimson velvets still not enough to ward off the chill of the night sky as somewhere below the northbound horde of flying sky bison, the land grows jagged and stark cold.

Somewhere through the air whistling against her ears, Toph manages to complain audibly. "How much more of this? I'm sick of not being able to see with my feet!"

Aang swivels back to toss an apologetic smile at her from where he sits atop the bison's head, clutching the reins. "Sorry," he answers, barely more than a silhouette in the thick cloudy haze. "We're almost at the Northern Air Temple! We'll stop there and rest for a bit before continuing north with the rest of the Air Nomads."

"Oh thank the badgermoles," Toph sighs with a loud soft thump. "How far away is the Northern Water Tribe now?"

"About a week."

"A week?"

The sound of rushing air swallows their bickering. Katara says nothing, curling up under her cloak and wrapped in silence. Her fingers are bone cold, and any urges to waterbend the dampness out of the air are tempered by the sheer weariness aching deep in her muscles.

"There it is." Zuko's soft voice interrupts Toph's complaints, making her start. A flare of orange light spills across the sodden saddle. "The Northern Air Temple."

With a sound of delight, Aang tugs on the sky bison's reins and a rumbling roar echoes around them. The world seems to slow, sway, and then pitch downward abruptly, the air gaining speed as Appa hurtles earthward.

Grudgingly, Katara sneaks a peek at the firebender hunched at the far side of the saddle. His focus is fixed on the gaps in the clouds where spiralling stone spires grow out of the mountaintops and pierce the sky, illuminated by the warm glow of fire burning in his open palm. The wind rakes through his dark hair as insistently as a lover's fingers and she clenches her own clammy hands in response.

It would be easy. So easy.

But she remains stubbornly in her cold, damp corner of the saddle, the rain suddenly pelting them mercilessly as they drop beneath the cloud cover, circling around the summit before finally landing with a resounding thump.

"Finally!" Toph leaps off the saddle without a second thought, a pillar of earth rising to lower her to the ground. She flops onto her back, breathing heavily and even in the dusky gloom, her face already seems less grey. "I never get sick of this feeling."

Katara wipes rain from her face. Pushing saturated hair out of her eyes, she accidentally catches Zuko's gaze before he averts his abruptly. The orange glow and curling steam of dying firelight dusts his cold white face with what looks like a blush.

She turns away too, sparing a glance at Aang. "I'm going to find some water," she says quickly, instantly feeling stupid as the rain drums down harder, soaking them all to the bone.

Without waiting for an answer, she stalks off purposefully.

The rain lashes the ground fitfully in her wake.

Overhead, the greying night sky is alive with the rumbling of flying sky bison arriving from seemingly every direction. Some are laden with uniformed Empire officers, others still with saffron-robed Air Nomads from every corner of the world.

A pang strikes in her chest at the thought of more innocents caught up in this battle, that this struggle between two brothers had somehow engulfed the world yet again with its violence. And now it was only a matter of time before it was brought before the doors of her people.

Well, someone else can fight their battles, Katara thinks vehemently, pushing her wet hair out of her face for the umpteenth time. Her drenched velvets lie heavy on her shoulders, weighing on her like a cold dead thing.

She veers off the well-worn pathway winding down the mountainside, away from the tamed temple gardens and into the overgrown forest lining the slopes, where the sound of running water rages against the rain slamming into the thick canopy overhead. No one else should have to die for them. We've done enough.

And if Zuko can't understand that, well -

It is only as the ground gives way sharply before her feet that she looks up in alarm, and then sighs with relief. The cramped growth of trees opens up to the banks of a river, swiftly flowing from the waterfall cascading down the steep rock face opposing her, already swollen from the torrential downpour opening up from above. For a moment, the sound of its roar distracts her from the ugly black cloud of her thoughts, the fine pinpricks of mist a welcome change from the rain and the chill dampness that had all but swallowed her during the long flight over.

A twig snaps behind her and her back stiffens at the sudden sound.

"Look," says Zuko's weary voice from somewhere behind her, "I'm sick of this. Can't we just talk?"

She exhales slowly through her teeth before crossing her arms and glancing at him out of the corner of her eye. To her surprise, he doesn't seem angry anymore, only wary. His hands are already upraised in a gesture of surrender.

"What do you want to talk about?" she grates, turning slowly to face him. Her arms fold across her chest protectively, the water pelleting all around her suddenly feeling as dense as armour.

Across from her, he shifts his weight uncomfortably. His wet hair, no longer pinned in place by his little flame crown, tumbles over his downcast eyes. "Are you still angry with me?"

Katara falters, barely able to hear him over the din of the water. "I thought you were still mad at me," she counters, fighting to keep her voice from shaking.

"I'm not mad," Zuko mumbles, still staring at his feet.

A huff of scornful laughter rises in Katara's throat. "You barely looked at me the whole flight over here!"

"Well, you were avoiding me too," Zuko points out, kicking aimlessly at the muddy ground with the scuffed heel of his boot.

"Well, I didn't want a repeat of our last little conversation in front of the others, obviously!" Katara snaps.

She expects him to flare up like he had the last time they argued, so when he only kicks the ground again dejectedly, she blinks in surprise. "Yeah," he agrees tonelessly. "Probably not a good idea. There isn't much privacy on a sky bison's back."

Katara scowls even as her face heats up. "So...what -?"

"I spoke to my uncle about what you said," Zuko says in a rushed voice and Katara is so surprised she nearly trips back into the river. "And - uh...even though I grew up idolizing him, it turns out there was a lot I didn't know about him. Things he did - or didn't do - I wish they weren't true. But they are." His bright gold eyes rise to meet hers and her mouth goes dry. "I was so mad when I found out. I was mad at him for what he did. Mad at myself for defending him. Mad at you for ripping back the curtain in the first place." He sighs. "I didn't want to feel that way, but I did."

The sound of the rain battering the treetops overhead grows deafening. Katara's mouth works wordlessly before she manages to get anything out at all. "I don't believe you. You're blaming me?"

"Not anymore," Zuko admits haplessly and the old fury gnawing at the pit of Katara's stomach suddenly surges anew before he continues haltingly, "but I told him he needed to do better."

To Katara it feels like the turn of the world itself screeches to a grinding halt. "You did what?"

"That's what you wanted, isn't it?" To her chagrin, Zuko has the audacity to look her in the eyes again.

Now it's her turn to sputter. "It's not your place to assume what I want! Couldn't you just listen instead of running off to your uncle and telling him what you think I need?"

"I don't know what you want me to do!" Zuko bursts out, grabbing at his hair in frustration. "Back on the ships, you said you didn't want me to do nothing, and now you're angry at me because I did something?"

"I'm perfectly capable of taking care of myself, I don't need anyone's charity!" she exclaims, alarmed to find tears burning in the corners of her eyes. "I'm not weak and I'm not a monster. I can't be both and neither at the same time."

Zuko unconsciously takes a step toward her, his hand reaching for her before freezing and then dropping to his side.

Rain dribbles down the sides of her face. "Back at the capital...everyone had so many things to say about me, about people like me. But when everything went wrong, I was the one who stayed behind and fought."

"I know."

"I was the one who took down your sister. Your father." She breathes heavily, the memories moonlit and bloodstained and crushing her aching shoulders with the weight of the world. "Nobody helped me. Nobody gave me that. There isn't anything left for me to prove that I haven't already done. And it still isn't enough." Air rushes out her nostrils viciously. "After all that, people will still say that the only thing I have left in this world is charity."

"Who said that?" Zuko asks, his face splitting into a ferocious scowl.

A harsh smile breaks across her face as she glances at him over her shoulder. "Your dad, actually."

Zuko flinches visibly, his gaze dropping to the ground between his feet. "Of course he did," he mutters vehemently.

"He said that the only thing I had left was charity," Katara continues, the words gushing out of her like poison from a long-festering wound. "That he could be gracious to those who followed him."

Zuko stares at the ground for so long, she wonders if he has heard her at all. "You made him eat those words."

Something like fire swells inside her at that. "Yes. I did," she chokes out, pride whipping through her in a fierce wave. "And now I'm supposed to just, what, step back in line, grateful for what I'm given?" Her hands ball into fists, fingernails digging into her palms at the seething thought. "No. Whatever I did, I did on my own, without permission. I can't be quiet anymore. I can't just blindly accept things the way they are, not now, not when I know I have the power to fight for what I want!"

"And what do you want?" Zuko asks her bluntly.

It nearly overwhelms her all at once, the weight of all her desires unleashed from the long, lonely prison of her fear and self-doubt. She gapes at him, caught off guard even as the flame of her pride blazes through her, threatening to consume her from the inside out.

It takes a while before she can remember how to speak. "I want my life back. I want my destiny." Unconsciously, she steps forward, until the waves of the river lap at her ankles. "I want my home, my family, my friends. I want to be seen." The water ripples around her feet, agitated. "I want more...so much more than this."

Sympathy softens the hard lines of his face. "You can't have everything, Katara."

"But you can?"

He shakes his head, stepping forward to reach for her hands. "All I want is you."

But she steps further out of reach, holding his gaze fiercely even as the rain patters down along her skin and water soaks the hem of her tunic. "But only in a way that you find acceptable. Have you ever thought about what I want? That maybe I might want more from life than to just be content in your shadow?" She laughs bitterly. "That what we have is nice, but it's not a way forward?"

"Only because you're afraid," he says softly.

The water splashes around her in annoyance. "It's not enough to make up for everything else that's missing."

"So you'd rather leave us instead." Zuko's jaw tightens.

She crosses her arms across her chest, avoiding his accusing gaze. "I just need to find my place."

"Katara, your place is with us."

She clenches her teeth. The rain slaps the river, churning its surface. "Well, I need to be the one who decides that."

Out of the corner of her eye, she catches him shaking his head. "There is such a thing as wanting too much, you know."

She stares instead at the cascade of water gushing down the rugged mountainside to empty into the river surrounding her, trickling constantly on the edge of her senses. A humble, unstoppable force. "We'll see about that."

Only his silence rises in answer, leaving her to wonder whether he had conceded or abandoned the conversation altogether. The chill evening breeze picks up, the mists of the nearby waterfall filming into a cold wet sheen upon her skin. The smell of wet green earth and mossy rocks blooms thick in her nostrils.

"You could have what you wanted though. Most of it, anyway," Zuko says at length, venturing closer to the river's edge. "You don't have to give up on me. Or Uncle. If you talk to him, he could try -"

Her irritation strikes like a hammer against a forge, white-hot and instant. Closing her eyes, she grits through her teeth, "I have talked to him."

"And he heard you!" he insists, his voice getting louder and closer. "I see it with my own eyes, Katara. He's changing!"

"Not enough."

"But he's the best option we have! Between him and my father -"

She whirls on him, the water surrounding her splashing outward in a boiling hiss. "How is your uncle's charity any better than your father's?"

"At least Uncle respects you," Zuko points out pleadingly.

"Only when there's use in it."

"Katara," Zuko tries again in a pained voice, "he's not a killer."

"No, but he might as well be!" she snarls. The rain falling around her positively crackles with the electricity of her cold fury.

Zuko stares at her so levelly, for a moment she thinks he could have been carved from stone. Only his hair moves, rustled this way and that in the stirring evening breeze, before he speaks again, more delicately. "There's a difference between a killer and an enabler -"

"Tell that to my dead parents," she hisses, recoiling away from him. In her mind's eye, her parents' faces smile at her before the memory of soot-stained snow swallows them whole.

His fault.

Zuko flinches again, trying to mask the hurt fracturing across his face. "Fine," he croaks hoarsely, shaking his head. "Fine. I don't think we can see eye to eye here, so maybe we should just drop it."

"Maybe we should," she snaps back, her spite swelling heavy and black in the back of her throat. "Because from where I stand, evil is evil!"

He hunches away from her and part of her, the part wholly absorbed in the tangle of her wrath and hurt, blazes victoriously. "I know he's upset you, and his mistakes cost you a lot," he pleads, pinching the bridge of his nose wearily, "but he's my family. He's the only family I have left. Please..."

He trails off, but his unspoken request hangs between them, punctuated by the gurgle of falling water and the mist swelling between them until it was nearly impossible to see anything at all but the dense clouds hanging thick in the air.

Katara inhales and the cold wet air brings her hurtling back to the silence hanging thick like cotton in her ears and the growing part of her that only feels sick with shame and regret. "Fine," she breathes, holding the storm of her fury back, wondering how much further she could stretch to keep it at bay.

But then at length, Zuko sighs deeply before wading into the shallows toward her. His warm callused hands reach tentatively for hers, and he appears so sodden and miserable to her eyes that she doesn't pull away again.

"I'm sorry I got so mad at you when you said you wanted to leave us." His voice drops to barely a whisper as his hair shadows his downcast eyes from her view. "I was just - I was so scared of losing what we have -" His hands tighten around hers as his voice breaks off.

Katara feels herself soften even as she tries to extricate her hands from his grasp. "Zuko," she says as gently as she can, "you have to know this can't go anywhere."

She doesn't see the wince that flashes across his face but his shoulders go suddenly rigid.

"You don't think it's possible for us to be together," he says bluntly. His eyes blaze as they rise up to pierce her own and her skin burns with his touch.

Katara swallows carefully around the knot in her throat. "For years, all I wanted was to get to the Northern Water Tribe and find my brother there. Even in New Ozai during the polar wars, we kept hearing about how the Northern Tribe was still a safe place for our people," she whispers, hanging her head and feeling the warm velvet of Zuko's overtunic graze her forehead. She doesn't pull away and neither does he. "But he's long gone from there and now I'm about to return. At the head of an army that once tried to destroy us. Can you imagine what it would look like to my people if they also found out about you and me? How am I supposed to face them without looking like a traitor?" Or a whore?

Zuko's chest thuds uncomfortably against her skin with the steady pace of his heartbeat. "I guess it's more complicated than I thought," he mumbles, disheartened.

The hopelessness in his voice seems to match the confusing dark cloud that had been hovering over her ever since departing the capital, and strangely enough, it makes her feel better. Because if the path of her life didn't lead anywhere except for a tangled knot of missed opportunities and wasted potential, at least she wasn't alone. Zuko didn't make it any better, he couldn't, but at least he wasn't pretending anymore. At least she knew he could see the impossible twists and turns lying in wait for them, and in spite of all that...

He's still here. He still wants to be here.

Surely, in spite of everything else, that still had to mean something.

And in spite of the twin guards of her anger and resentment lashing out at everything she held dear, the warmth of affection still manages to surge in her chest.

She inhales deeply, breathing in the smell of the sweat and grime covering his skin and pulls him closer.

He gasps sharply, taken aback. "Katara, what - ?"

She presses her mouth against his still-moving lips without another thought, his protest evaporating as her fingers burrow and twine into the silk of his hair, the way they'd longed to throughout the entire journey north.

"I'm sorry," she whispers as he breaks away, gasping for breath.

Then Zuko's hands are wrapping around her waist and his lips part against her own. "I'm sorry too," he breathes, and something like steam seems to rush into every corner of her body and fill it with molten gold.

The logical part of her brain urges her to pull away before everything became too complicated again, but then Zuko's hot mouth trails along the line of her neck, making logical thought unimportant by comparison.

It blazes through her in a way the fierce glow of her anger and her pride hadn't, as she takes him by the hand and leads him knee-deep into the raging river, foaming where the waterfall cascades down the sloping rock face. It drenches them down to the last layer of their travel-stained clothes as they peel off and pool in a sodden heap by their feet.

Teeth chattering from the chill of the air, Katara runs her hands down the hard wet planes of Zuko's body. He is so warm that the jets of pressurized water drenching them turn to clouds of vapour, swirling all around them. She closes her eyes as he runs his fingers through the heavy fall of dark wet hair and pushes her flush against the steep rock face, her legs wrapped around his waist.

The falling water that tumbles all around them is ice cold to the touch, but when he presses the weight of his body against her, it turns warm in an instant. He braces his weight against the wall using one hand, and tongues of orange flame flicker from his fingertips. His other hand grabs her by the waist. All of the hesitance from earlier is gone as he moves in her urgently, until the mists surrounding them match the haze of pleasure fogging her mind and she begins to see stars. By the time he lowers her, she is gasping for breath and her entire line of vision is filled with steam.

"Not that I'm complaining," Zuko says hoarsely, disentangling from her one limb at a time, "but didn't you just say this wasn't going to last?"

Katara kicks aimlessly at a pebble rolling around at the bottom of the river as they slowly wade back through the shallows, saturated clothes dripping heavily in their hands. "I didn't say it was over," she answers, carefully avoiding the weight of his gaze. "I don't want it to be over." And then, because his answering sigh of relief makes her head swim, she groans and pushes her wet hair out of her eyes. "Come on, get dressed. We'd better head back before everyone notices we're gone."

The light of day had a way of making everything seem clearer.

Even in the perpetual gloom of Jun's lower ring apartment, the outstretched claws of his nightmares had receded into the back of his mind with the coming of daybreak. Instead, Lee preoccupies himself with the steel of his sword laid across his lap, polishing it to an oily, gleaming finish.

Today's the big day, he tells himself, winking at his distorted reflection. Today we crack Lake Laogai and expose the Dai Li as the brainwashing frauds that they all really are.

Heartened, he slides the sword into its sheath with a decisive click. The sound seems to slice through the anxious flurry of activity gripping everyone else in the apartment. Haru in the middle of practicing earthbending forms. Ty Lee stretching her leg over her head with the ease of a gymnast. Suki daubing warrior's paint thickly over her face, tucking her fans into their pockets sewn along her bodice and sleeves.

He glances out the window, where the thick shadows cast by the high walls nearly blot out

the burgeoning daylight so that only a narrow band of glowing clouds remains. A faint breeze rattles the windowpanes, whistling shrilly through the cracks in the sealing.

Then he slides to his feet in a smooth motion, holstering his sword across his back. "It's daybreak, people," he announces cheerfully, his fingers checking for the small boomerang tucked reassuringly into his belt. "Time to get going! Even for a group as well matched as us, the Dai Li won't exactly make it easy."

Before he knows it, Jun is saddling up the shirshu. The others clamber onto the creature's back, appearing somewhat skeptical of his confidence - Suki tight-lipped as Ty Lee closes her hand around hers with a reassuring smile. "It'll be fine," she whispers, her usual exuberance nearly concealing the nerves quaking her voice. "We survived the Sun Warriors...we'll be okay!"

Lee scoffs. "Guys, this isn't like that at all! The Dai Li aren't at their base, they don't even know we're coming! Seriously, relax a little, okay? You're cramping my style."

The girls roll their eyes at him but don't say anything more.

Lee grins as he vaults onto Nyla's back. Annoying the nerves out of his teammates was a specialty of his honed over the years. Angry people are predictable, nervous people aren't. "On your mark, Jun."

Jun digs her knees into Nyla's haunches, her makeup not quite concealing the odd blankness weighing on her face as though it were carved of stone.

The narrow streets and flickering lantern-posts of the lower ring whir by, seeming to melt into each other with the speed of the shirshu's footfalls. Only the great city walls remain constant, looming high above their heads like dark silent sentinels.

Then the cramped alleys and airless silence of the lower ring disappear as they pass through a gate in one of the thick walls and the air around them opens up. The glowing dawn sky wheels overhead, no longer obstructed by the walls and fully visible, reflected in the undisturbed glassy mirror of the lake below.

It feels like no time at all before Jun tugs on the reins and they all slide to a stop at the narrow band of rocky shore where the land abruptly drops away into the water's silent depths.

"There," Lee says, spotting the small glint in the water easily. "That's where the entrance is. Haru, if you could do the honours?"

But the young earthbender's face only frowns warily. "Are you sure?" he asks, springing off the shirshu's back. "This all seems familiar...but different, somehow."

Different. For an instant, the world turns dark before Lee's eyes. A starless night sky stretches over the silent black expanse of the lake, its waves bludgeoning the shore beneath his feet. Hungry, suffocating.

He tries to breathe but for a moment, he can't. His limbs are paralyzed encased in stone, the insides of his lungs submerged as he sinks helplessly, his blood beating in time to a pulse that is not his own. As though the prison of his nightmares had come alive to swallow him whole.

But then calm morning air rifles along his skin, and he blinks.

The rising sun in the blushing sky reflects harmlessly in the water's still surface.

"No, this is it," he assures Haru, mentally shaking his head of the unsettling image. He climbs out of the saddle to jump down next to him. "The Dai Li aren't exactly inventive, but this is where their operation is centred. Lake Laogai."

The insistent breeze seems to amplify his words and make it echo eerily, bouncing along the high wall towering behind them like a stark cliff face. To his annoyance, the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end, even though it wasn't particularly cold.

"Where?" Suki hisses through clenched teeth, her eyes darting everywhere suspiciously, as though expecting to be ambushed at any given moment. "I don't see anything, unless you expect us to start swimming."

Lee rolls his eyes. "The entrance is buried beneath the lake," he mutters, pointing at the glinting metal ring anchored amid the shallows. "But if Haru can pull it up and build us a bridge, we can follow it to get to the trapdoor that leads down into their base."

Haru bends down to plant a hand on the ground, his brow furrowing intently with concentration. "I feel it," he announces, cocking his head shrewdly. "No problem at all."

Suki opens her mouth to say something else, but then Haru leaps back onto his feet and lunges into a quick earthbending form.

A low rumble fills the suffocating silence blanketing the air outside the city walls. Haru grits his teeth as a thin rocky bridge breaks the surface of the lake. The water churns dark and foaming in its wake, a thousand gnashing teeth threatening to devour anything that entered its depths.

For an instant, Lee imagines something floating in the distance. Maybe a ship, maybe an ice floe, he isn't sure. The sky gleams coldly with unfamiliar stars, and snow the colour of soot flutters lazily in the air.

Viciously, he rubs at his eyes until the vision fades as unexpectedly as it came. Earth to Lee. You're on the most important mission of your life. This is no time for dreaming!

He doesn't realize he's spoken aloud until Suki narrows her eyes at him. "Are you sure you're okay?" she hisses into his ear.

The bruise to his pride makes him splutter. "Of course I'm okay! Come on, let's get moving, we don't have all day…"

Before she can get another word in, he squares his shoulders and sets off.

The five of them traipse across the bridge's slippery wet surface. Jun turns around where she brings up the rear and whistles at Nyla. The giant blind creature bounds out of sight, its heavy footfalls fading into the eerie silence wrapping around the lake.

"Thanks for coming with us, Jun," Haru says from somewhere behind him. "You didn't have to, you know."

Jun snorts. "What, and hang around town waiting for the Dai Li to find me again? No thanks. I'd sooner take my chances with you lot." She lets out a cynical huff. "Even if Lee's plan is definitely going to get us all killed."

"Thanks for the vote of confidence, Jun," Lee retorts sarcastically, without sparing her a glance.

In the distance, the morning sun peeks over the horizon, reflecting against the sparkling wave crests and illuminating the round door at the end of the bridge.

"There it is! The secret entryway into Lake Laogai," Lee announces, puffing out his chest as the five of them stand shoulder-to-shoulder around the round metal door set into the ground, its raised handles shiny and slippery with lake slime. "Am I awesome or what?"

Suki rolls her eyes again. "Actually, Haru did all the work. I don't know what you're bragging about."

Haru rubs the back of his neck bashfully, his cheeks flushing at the compliment. "Aw, thanks Suki -"

"We can thank each other once we're out of here," Jun interrupts harshly.

"Alright, alright," Lee complains, dropping to his knees and twisting at the metal handles with all his strength. "Gee, you're really turning into a real ray of sunshine, aren't you?"

A harsh screech dashes the air as the door slides against its hinges.

The sharp metallic smell permeates his nostrils, aquatic and decaying and reminding him faintly of blood. He chokes in surprise as the taste of it blooms brightly on his tongue. His wrists are clamped in stone, he struggles helplessly in a dark cavernous cell made of stone dripping with lake slime and lit by pulsating underground lanterns.

You're a tricky one, to hold out against us for so long.

"Hey!" A hand on his shoulder snaps him back to the bright light of day sparking along the waves. "Need a hand?"

Lee blinks stupidly as Haru kneels down across from him and also begins to tug. "What? No - it's okay - I've got it -"

Between their awkward combined effort, the door finally gives way with a loud clang.

"Good job, Haru!" Ty Lee says with a beam.

"Yeah, looks like Haru's the real heavy lifter around here," Jun supplies dryly, her painted mouth curling lazily at the corners. "You'd better start stepping up your game, Lee."

Lee huffs, annoyed with his own fickle nerves for betraying him. "Whatever." He peers down into the dark tunnel waiting silently below, yawning open like the mouth of some great beast waiting to swallow them down its gullet. Sunlight glimmers off the handholds studded at regular intervals down the sides of the tunnel walls.

Ty Lee shuffles uncomfortably. "Are you sure about this?" she asks anxiously. "I've never seen a blacker aura before."

Lee sighs loudly. "Come on. Just follow my lead. We'll be in and out before you even know it."

And without another word or thought, he plunges straight in.

The answering shuffle of movements are the only sign that the others have followed. Then someone swings the trapdoor shut and everything goes dark, except for the sound of water and the murky smell of the lake.

The hideout is as empty as it's ever going to get, he reminds himself, reviewing the plan in his head while steadily descending one step at a time. This is still going to work. Long Feng should be long gone from here. A smile works his way across his face at that last one and he files it away, mentally resolving to use it if he ever got the chance. He grins, thinking of how loudly everyone else would groan when they heard it.

By the time his feet find solid ground, he finds himself rather cheerful about it all. He ducks out of the way as the others jump down behind him.

The underground fortress opens up around him, a narrow tunnel hollowed through the lake bottom with ceilings rising dizzyingly high, protruding with glowing stalactites like sharp claws. A faint phosphorescence casts everything in a familiar green glow, while the sounds of their footsteps are muffled by the pressurized silence hanging in the air like a heavy blanket.

"Whoa," Ty Lee breathes, her voice echoing all around them. "I thought it would be a lot more claustrophobic down here!"

"How's the aura?" Suki quips, sidling up next to her and brushing off the front of her tunic with a grimace. "Any improvements?"

"No, it's still pretty black," Ty Lee admits, crestfallen.

Lee squints as he takes a step forward. Mud squelches loudly beneath his boot, threatening to suck him in whole like a sick swamp. The length of the corridor disappears into shadows curling along the rocky edges like soft black mist swirling toward him, until he swears he can hear it whispering to him, just out of earshot.

Those who you seek will never find you... those who you loved will feel only heartbreak and despair when they see your face...

Fear shrivels the insides of his chest, chilling his blood and urging every instinct of his to run away.

He runs a hand absently along his sleeve, under which goosebumps crawl along his flesh. A strange trembling sensation grips his fingers, his limbs, even his teeth begin to chatter, as though glimpsing an impending doom in the whispering shadows. It roots him to the spot in dread.

But the others pass by him, walking toward its clutches as though they don't see it. A cry wells in his throat, and he opens his mouth in alarm, to warn them -

"Hey Lee," Jun snarks, glancing at him over her shoulder, "are you waiting for a tour guide or something? Let's go."

Lee shakes his head vigorously, his foreboding trickling down his skin as though someone had dashed him with a bucket of icewater. "S-Sure. Follow me."

Steeling himself, he manages to push past the brick wall of his nerves blocking his path forward. The narrow stone corridor snakes ahead, coiling and twisting and burrowing even deeper underground. The faint green glow persists, the black mist of shadows growing thicker, as though every step brings him hurtling closer to oblivion...

He is so preoccupied with the blind fear shivering through his impulses that he doesn't register until far too late the warning rumble of sliding rock reverberating along the corridor walls. Of soft footsteps in rhythmic unison, the uniformed silhouettes materializing along the darkened bend in the path ahead.

He freezes, gawking in surprise. The boomerang clutched absently in his fingers, that he doesn't even remember withdrawing, clatters loudly onto the ground.

To his relief, the patrol of uniformed agents standing directly in his path appear just as shocked by the presence of intruders. They halt, four identical statues frozen in place. As though waiting for a command to strike.

The mud beneath his feet bubbles in warning. Behind him, Haru slams a fist into the ground.

Out of the corner of his eye, a missile of rock and mud whizzes toward the enemy soldiers, spurring them from unnatural stillness to sudden motion. One of them raises a gloved hand. The missile deforms mid-air before disintegrating onto the ground in a harmless sprinkle.

Another raises their fists and the ground churns, propelling toward them in a rockslide.

Something pink catapults through the air. Before Lee finishes drawing his sword, Ty Lee pounces on the first enemy assailant. With a rapid succession of jabs, the soldier collapses into a puddle at her feet. The rippling in the ground slows.

"Dai Li scum," Haru taunts, somewhere behind him. "You're not so tough when you're only outnumbering me three to one!"

He plunges into another stance and the earth bursts open in a spray. Flying bits of rock and mud collide into another mass, suspended above the ground as it grows in size.

With a yell, Suki leaps onto the rocky mound, her brandished fans twin gleams of gold streaking through the darkness. Then Haru grunts and the suspended rocky mass charges back toward the enemy.

Suki tumbles off her mount before it crushes another agent under its massive weight. She slashes at one of only two agents remaining standing, parrying incoming punches with strong blocks of her own.

Behind her, Ty Lee resembles a flying pink ribbon twirling and looping through the air, effortlessly evading her opponent's strikes. With a flourish, she knocks her opponent off-balance before jabbing at his shoulder with ruthless efficiency.

Her enemy doubles over, clutching at his useless arm. The beads in the dark braided hair cascading out the back of the sloping metal hat clack together loudly, as he fumbles for the leather pouch strapped to his belt.

Then she lands squarely on his chest. He lets out a cry before she jabs him in a vicious flurry of movement. With a final gasp, he goes very still.

A sudden shout echoes through the underground corridor, as Suki lands a roundhouse kick to her enemy's nose. The last agent standing goes down with a nasty crack, head tilted at an awkward angle.

As suddenly as it had all started, silence descends once more, filling the air with its oppressive weight.

"That was something," Jun remarks, replacing her whip into her belt. "You kids make me look old."

"You're welcome," Suki declares, wiping off her fans before stowing them back into their pockets. "What do we do with these guys now?"

She nudges the nearest fallen soldier with the toe of her boot. Her face wrinkles with distaste.

"I say we move on," Jun urges. "The sooner we find what we're looking for, the sooner we can get out of here."

"We can't just leave all these bodies here," Suki argues, jamming her hands on her hips. She glances at Ty Lee for support. "How long before the next patrol notices them and clues into us being here?"

"The longer you spend sliding rocks around here, the more of them you'll attract in our direction!" Jun protests. "We can't waste any more time here!"

Here.

Their voices buzz angrily in the confining space like hungry buzzard-wasps hovering around Lee's head. Echoes ring through his ears, unbidden and somehow familiar, making his head hurt and teeth chatter.

Here we are safe, it hisses as he grabs at his pounding head, here we are free.

The dim green light shimmers hazily, the world around him seeming to sway unsettlingly. His entire body is paralyzed, pinned in place by stone manacles, his very blood frozen in place even as it thrums with urge to run -

A hand clamps around his wrist.

He nearly jumps out of his skin, swearing the stone manacles binding his limbs together were real.

"Up ahead!" Suki snaps quietly, her grip on his wrist already slackening as he shakes her off more harshly than he intends.

She points to the bend in the corridor where the echo of footsteps grows steadily louder. In the faint green glow, a pair of silhouettes stretch along the ground around the corner, clawing toward them like a dark, long-fingered hand.

Shit.

Heart hammering, he flattens himself against the wall, yanking Suki next to him. She makes a small surprised sound but thankfully doesn't protest further.

Ty Lee leaps through the air, landing on one of the stalactites hanging from the ceiling like a spider lying in wait. Jun and Haru duck behind an outcropping of stone creeping out along the wall opposite them. A tentative motion of the earthbender's hand brings up a large boulder directly in the middle of the pathway, its sudden presence crudely shielding the four downed agents from view.

Not a moment later, another Dai Li patrol stalks around the corner. A pair this time, Lee notices, his breathing quickening. Not so bad. We could maybe take them out too if it comes to it...and then that won't leave many left at all guarding this place.

They march past steadily, mud squeaking loudly under their boots in the close subterranean air. The wide flat brims of their metal hats cast their faces in shadow, but green light glimmers off the golden emblem sewn into their dark uniform, the beads woven through their long braided hair, the curving leather pouches strapped to their belts. Their tunics swish in their wake like the waves lapping at the lakeshore far overhead, and the thought of it makes him feel strangely sick.

Fighting it, Lee tenses, his hand closing instinctively around his boomerang. Next to him, Suki reaches for the first of her several concealed fans. He can feel the tension gripping her body like a coiled spring, her breathing a warmth against his shoulder.

His breath hitches as the agents slow to a stop, peering downward to study the large, irregular boulder sitting in the middle of the pathway that had certainly not been there before.

This is it, he thinks wildly, sliding the curving metal out of his belt and meeting Haru's panicked gaze from across the corridor. Any moment now, they're going to find the bodies. Three, two, one -

On cue, the pair of agents look at each other. Some unspoken communication flickers between them. One of them glances up at the corner of the ceiling where Ty Lee crouches in wait.

Then, to Lee's shock, they simply sidestep the boulder and continue their patrol, seemingly oblivious to the four poorly-hidden bodies and obvious signs of scuffle.

"What?" Suki hisses in his ear as the pair recede further away. "How did they not notice that?"

But Lee doesn't say anything. Only when the pair of agents turn around another bend in the corner and disappear from sight does he dare to breathe again.

"Something's going on," Haru insists, scrambling out from behind the outgrowth of stone he'd hidden behind. "There's no way the Dai Li could be that inept."

Ty Lee lands neatly from her perch. "I could have sworn that one guy saw me," she says breathlessly. "I was this close to dropping on him when he turned around and kept walking."

"I don't like this," Suki declares in a low voice. "They must know something's up. It could be a trap."

Four pairs of eyes land on him expectantly.

He flounders, weighing their options in his head. On one hand, Suki had a point. The Dai Li had no reason to avoid conflict with them unless they had something worse planned in store for them. They were evil like that.

But on the other hand, every moment they spent on damage control was a moment lost from their original purpose of being here in the first place.

"We're going to have to split up," he decides grimly. "Haru and Ty Lee, you guys come with me. Suki and Jun, follow those guys and take them out when you have a chance."

"Got it," Suki agrees, cracking her knuckles slowly. "Do you care what happens to the bodies? How will we find you?"

"Wait for us where we came in," he instructs her. "If we're not back in an hour, get yourselves out."

Jun shrugs noncommittally. "Getting out sounds good."

"We're on it!" Suki gives him a mock-salute, her big grey eyes gleaming fiercely. "Stay safe, all of you."

Lee opens his mouth to say something clever, but she turns on her heel and dashes off. The words knot clumsily on his tongue as he watches the two of them chase after the pair of agents. Just before she ducks out of sight, Suki glances back at them over her shoulder, her painted face all but glowing in the dark.

A strange feeling rises in his chest at the sight, the dread of familiarity. In the space of a blink, the Kyoshi warrior's face changes.

Lee finds himself staring at a warrior of a different sort. A man in blue, his face painted stark white and grey, contorted with pain. His hands clasp to his side, blooming red with blood. Run, he breathes as it spills and stains the pure white snow all around him. Run and don't look back.

He nearly yells, stumbling back and falling flat on his rear. Something rams against the inside of his skull with the force of a battering ram.

"Lee! Are you okay?" Haru's voice is asking in his ear, straining to keep quiet.

Who's Lee? For a moment he simply clutches at his head in confusion, before everything flickers back to reality.

"Fine," he croaks. "Just - a headache."

"It's your chi, it's all tangled up," Ty Lee informs him importantly, peering at him with her big grey eyes. Her face wrinkles in distaste. "Your aura's turning almost as black as this whole place!"

He groans loudly, heaving himself back onto his feet. "Look, if I wanted to hear some fortune teller nonsense, I'd ask for it."

Ty Lee shrugs innocently. "You were the one who asked me to come with you."

Lee grits his teeth in annoyance. "Well, your chi-blocking is our best bet to get out of here in a pinch if things get ugly."

She smiles at him, fluttering her eyelashes. "You're welcome."

He huffs loudly. "Come on, we're wasting time. We need to get to the lowest level of the hideout and find the black cells there."

"Black cells?" Haru echoes with a frown.

Lee nods shortly, even as prickles erupt down his spine. "Only really senior agents have access to them. I could never get in there during any of my missions. But whatever they do to turn people into sleepers, it happens there."

A sudden sound interrupts his train of thought. The telltale rumbling of rock sliding, the murmur of low voices filtering toward them, amplified by the echoes of the curving subterranean hallway. Boots sloshing against the soft mud, growing louder with each step.

Lee whirls on the others, wide-eyed. Gesturing wildly at the rock wall next to them, until understanding dawns across Haru's face.

Without a word, he plants a hand against the rock and it crumbles away to form a small hole. Lee leaps into the small space, Haru and Ty Lee cramming into it behind him.

The voices get louder and louder before the walls reform, sealing them in an airless pit of pure darkness. All sound snuffs out, leaving only the pounding of Lee's heart drumming wildly in his ears.

With a swift motion, the earth slides out from beneath them. Gravity hooks under his navel and he fights a yelp as they plummet deep underground. Lee blinks sightlessly in the unyielding black as Haru tunnels them into the foundations of the secret underwater fortress, the pressure popping loudly in his ears.

Then, as abruptly as the motion started, everything slams to a halt. Lee leans against the walls of the cramped pit, his knees suddenly trembling with the effort to keep him upright.

The wall in front of him cracks down the middle and slides open, revealing the deepest level of the Dai Li fortress.

"This must be it," Haru whispers, the weight of the air muffling his voice. "The black cells."

The sight of their goal so close within reach should have heartened Lee's spirits, so he does not yet understand the fear coiling around his heart like a gloved fist. Or the overwhelming urge to flee to safety, as though it was one of his dreams made real and he could only run for his life from the shadows reaching for him with outstretched fingers.

But then Ty Lee and Haru are climbing out of the pocket in the wall, clinging to the shadows along the walls of the lowermost corridor until it becomes clear to them that it is entirely deserted.

"Lee! Come on!"

Ty Lee's harsh whisper shatters the rigid silence gripping like a vice around his limbs. He resists the strange urge to call them back, the unrealized danger brimming in every empty, harmless corner, before shaking it off and resolutely following the others.

The lowest level of the fortress yawns open all around him. It is darker than the others, the ceiling disappearing into shadows where the dying green light doesn't pierce. The hallway is lined with barred iron doors and the air lies thick and close, as eerily still and imperturbable as the lake itself.

"This is it," he breathes quietly. "Now's our chance to find out what's going on inside those cells."

Even as he says it, a clammy hand clutches around his heart in an unspoken warning.

The others don't notice his sudden hesitation, already moving further down the hallway of barred doors, peering into one cell and then another, in search of an elusive, pervasive, terrible truth.

With a sigh, Lee is about to follow them when a flash in the corner of his eye makes him pause.

He wheels around, suddenly transfixed by the metal grille gleaming in the middle of one of the doors hewn into the rock face.

Lee blinks sightlessly in the creeping black, wondering if he imagines the murmurs barely audible to his ears. He staggers toward the door, gripped by a sudden morbid curiosity. His hands close around the cold iron bars and, his heart beating very painfully as though any moment would be its last, he dares to glance inside.

At first, all he can see is darkness. The dampness of the rock crawls down to the ground, a ceaseless, maddening sound.

Drip.

It transports him back inside, clamps around his wrists and ankles binding him to a stone chair in a small airless room, lit only by a single lantern that renders the uniformed benders standing before him to mere shadows, distinguishable only by the pointed metal slope of their hats and the hypnotic motions of their fingers.

Here we are safe, they intone as the stone bites into his skin and he tries to scream and fails as something dissolves him from the inside out, here we are free.

The lantern circles around him in a steady rhythm, like a glowing pulsing heart beating in time to the trickle of water droplets oozing down the walls.

It claws into him, bending his body, his blood, his very essence into its thrall.

Drip.

His breath hitches in his throat as the sound rips him back to awareness in the cryptlike corridor. Staring stupidly into a darkened chamber. Empty except for the large chair lined with restraints lit by faintly glimmering lanterns.

Not every day do we come across someone as strong-minded as you...

His heart cascades into his boots at the sight of it as he takes an uneasy step back, and then another.

Drip.

Then he turns on his heel and scrambles away from the empty, darkened room, desperately trying to escape its malevolent aura and the strange visions cramming his aching head.

He stumbles, catching up to the others lined up outside another cell, stone still and white-faced. Without saying a word, Ty Lee points to the door and the flickering green light casting strange shadows from within.

Voices, low and soft, hiss from inside the cell, murmuring like the whisperings that haunt Lee's nightmares.

So close. The truth rears its gargantuan head, close enough to shake the foundations of his world with its weight, but hiding just out of sight.

Haru slides back to the empty cell adjacent to the occupied one. Unperturbed by its locked door, he instead places a hand against the rock wall. It cracks open, and he slips inside, Ty Lee hard on his heels.

Mouth dry and dread pulsing a strange rhythm in his blood, he follows them into the darkness.

Behind him, the rock crumbles as it slides shut.

He blinks in the airless cell, cramped and barely lit by a single green stone lantern in the corner. In the darkness, the shadows feel alive. His skin roils in revulsion from the touch of their outstretched hands as water drips slowly down the walls.

The silhouette of a large chair nearly fills the far side of the room, propped against the supporting wall and bulging with restraints. If he stares at it long enough, he can almost feel the cold stone hard against his back, the restraints biting into his wrists and ankles, clamping around his forehead making it impossible to look away…

But the sound of more rock grinding redirects his attention back to where Haru and Ty Lee are huddled around a small hole carved into the wall adjoining the occupied cell next door. He sucks back a shaky breath and kneels behind them, squinting into the small spyhole. The cold ground, hard and slick with wet slime, presses into his knees with a damp chill.

At first, Lee can only hear fragments, floating disembodied syllables unintelligible to his confused ears. His blood runs cold in the suffocating air, even as the thrill of near discovery thrums through him.

The whisper of bootsoles treading lightly in the cell next door grows steadily louder. Lee's face scrunches in concentration as the voices grow suddenly clearer. A man and a woman, speaking low and fierce among themselves, the words foreign to his ears and yet, strangely familiar in a way he cannot place.

"...one more for the taking, this one will be ready soon…"

"And not a moment too quickly. So many were lost in battle, we must replenish their numbers quickly if we are to help our friends free their lands from tyranny."

"This one is ready. A full day must he rest undisturbed, so that our efforts take full effect. He will rise as one of them, loyal to those who seek to drive those Empire tyrants out of here and free their lands."

"What the hell are they saying?" Haru hisses in his ear, frustrated.

Lee gapes at him, his heart hammering inexplicably with dread. "You can't understand them?"

"You can?" Haru's voice rises with disbelief. Ty Lee nudges him in the ribs with her elbow and they fall silent, Lee transfixed by the conversation unfolding in the adjacent cell.

"What an honour it is to serve this cause."

"After everything those monsters did to us, this is the least we could do. To use our power to free this land, as we could not save our own."

"Finally, a place where we can be free. Where we can hold our heads high and proud."

Something like horrified understanding clicks in Lee's mind. He scrambles back, his heart racing, staring wildly at Haru and Ty Lee. "They're not from here," he stutters, even while wondering how he could know such a thing with such conviction. "They're helping the Dai Li, but they're not the Dai Li."

Haru and Ty Lee stare at him as though he's grown an extra head.

"What do you mean?"

"How can you know that when they've been speaking in whatever the hell language that is?"

The inside of Lee's skull drums a frenetic beat. He clamps his hands against his forehead, gasping in shock at the sudden pain.

In the end, all a man is, and all he will ever be, is written in his blood.

"Because…" he chokes, struggling to breathe, "because I -"

A sudden slamming sound shatters the air. The adjacent cell door bangs open, wood and metal scraping along the rock. The harsh staccato of boots march inside.

Lee freezes, heart hammering madly against his chest as everything goes deathly silent. The air around them is swollen with tension, everyone suddenly on high alert and too afraid to breathe. He swears that the sound of his wildly beating heart will betray them at any moment.

"Well, Atka, I must commend you on a job well done," declares a new voice, booming loud and clear as though the speaker intended for them to overhear. "Your work on this bounty hunter over here was exemplary."

Then more loud footsteps enter the cell, followed by the sound of a struggle. A girl struggling, shrieking, her voice horribly familiar -

"Jun, what are you doing, you're making a mistake, don't do this -"

Ty Lee gasps, her fingers flying to cover her mouth. "Suki," she breathes, her eyes wide and horror-struck.

Lee thinks he might be sick himself. But nothing prepares him for the sound of Jun's voice, flat and monotonous and utterly unlike herself. "The Kyoshi Warrior. As promised."

"Excellent work, Jun. And the others?"

"They're here somewhere," Jun intones, to Lee's mounting shock. "They will have found some place to watch your agents at work."

"So they're watching us right now, is he?" The speaker's voice grows satisfied. "Excellent."

The next thing he hears is the sound of Suki yelling, "Let go of me!" The piercing crack of a whip, the rumble of earth sliding, moving, crashing -

"We have to help her!" Ty Lee cries.

Haru slams a fist into the ground, his mouth a grim slash. The wall in front of them fissures open, revealing an unsettling scene. Three agents in Dai Li uniforms, a prisoner bound to the chair and slumped over unconscious.

Jun, standing by the door with glassy eyes and her whip in hand. And tangled in its shining coil, facedown on the ground, is a bloodied and disheveled Suki.

Then suddenly, chaos reigns. Boulders catapult through the air, smashing into the spots where the three Dai Li agents stand waiting.

Suki wrenches a hand free, fumbling frantically at her bodice. A glint of golden metal slices through the air. Bounces off the corner of a sloping hat, slashing an agent across the face with a hollow ringing sound.

The enemy agent staggers backwards in surprise, clapping a hand to his cheek. Then he lashes out with a fist of stone, so quickly Suki doesn't even see it coming.

It smashes into her abdomen with brutal force. Red dribbles out of her mouth, vivid as the paint lining her features.

She crumples to the ground under its weight, as silent and unmoving as the stone itself.

Somewhere very far away, a part of him is screaming.

A whir of pink flashes across his sight. He blinks and the scream is coming from Ty Lee as she jabs the Dai Li agent ferociously and repeatedly until he crumples at her feet like a limp rag.

She lifts her head to glare at the remaining two agents, her grey eyes blazing bright with unshed tears. One of her opponents shifts into a bending stance sinuously, gloved hands outstretched at the ready. From beneath the shadowy darkness of the sloping metal hat, the beads in his long braided hair clack together warningly.

Then Ty Lee charges, sailing through the air as though she had mastered the art of flying itself. She twists and somersaults, her fingers coming out to jab the opposing agent at the pressure points.

And then, as she arcs through the air mid-flight, her body abruptly freezes.

A sudden fear works its way across her face as she hovers, somehow suspended in mid-air and utterly incapable of movement. She struggles, trying to break free of her sudden paralysis but unable to, as though gripped in place by an invisible unyielding hand.

On the ground before her, the uniformed agent twists his gloved hands.

Ty Lee lets out a bloodcurdling shriek as her body somehow contorts in answer to the agent's twisting fingers, her limbs spreading and knotting as though her sinister opponent controlled their movements with invisible strings.

Then her opponent's hands chop downward and Ty Lee falls, collapsing beside Suki's crushed body. Only her face is capable of movement. Lee sees the tears spilling down her eyes, helpless and horror-struck.

"What the -" he hears Haru gasp from the other side of the small cell. "What did you do to her, you monsters?"

The ground beneath the young earthbender rises up and hurtles toward the agent doubled over and holding Ty Lee in place with cruelly twisted hands.

But the other remaining agent, the woman with the fierce low voice, whirls on him. With a motion of her knobbly fingers against the leather pouch strapped to her side, a jet of pressurized water appears as though out of nowhere and smashes into Haru. He yells, topping off his rolling mound of earth.

Then the woman approaches him, bending into the same unnatural stance as her partner. With a jerk of her fingers, Haru's body snaps straight and unmoving as a board, only his eyes roving around him in widening fear.

And then the two of them turn on Lee, who grabs blindly at the sword strapped to his back and points it at Jun with shaking hands. "You - you betrayed us!" he accuses, the ground beneath his feet seeming to turn to quicksand, threatening to suck him entirely under. "After everything we've been through? How could you?"

But Jun doesn't say anything, doesn't move, doesn't even blink. In fact, she appears scarcely aware of everything unfolding around her.

Fighting for his breath, he turns on the two Dai Li agents, who could not be Dai Li. "What did you do to her?" he demands, brandishing his sword at them.

The woman hunches toward him, her dark gloved fingers outstretched and clawed like the phantom terrors haunting the forbidden spaces inside his head. "The same thing we did to you, resistance spy," she grates, her low voice strange and accented. "The same fate that awaits all you Empire sympathizers."

Her fingers curl shut. Without warning, his breath suddenly chokes in his throat, as though they had squeezed around his neck instead.

Suddenly everything swims before his eyes. He floats upward in the liquid blackness under the lake, shackled and drifting away from himself as the woman reaches into his struggling body with watery fingers.

You'll think yourself free, but somewhere deeper than thought, the truth will fester…

White hot pain blazes through his temples and a strangled yelp of pain congeals in his throat. The sword drops from his hands, clattering to the ground heavily. He doubles over, falling to his knees, clutching desperately at his head as the pounding ache within his skull nearly threatens to split him apart.

That we reached into your body, your mind, your blood, and then…

His fingers clench tightly into fists, digging into his skin even as the liquid darkness pries his grip open, sweeping him away on wild currents until he is utterly lost, while the heartbeat of pulsing light fills his empty insides like a hollow puppet.

We broke you.

"What...what did you do to me?" he grits out.

But then an almighty grinding sound rips through the air as the very walls of the small cell slide downward. Dozens of uniformed agents pour through to surround them.

A balding man with a long braid stands at their head, surveying the agents' immediate brutal handiwork with satisfaction.

"So this is the elite task force that madman sent to learn our secrets?" he asks, stepping up to stand dispassionately next to Suki, Haru, and Ty Lee's motionless bodies. He glances down at them, nudging Suki's head with his foot. "Tsk. And a Kyoshi Warrior too, no less. What a waste. I hope my men weren't overzealous in their attempt to neutralize this one."

"She lives," the woman replies curtly, glancing over her shoulder. "But only barely. She will need to be healed if she is to be of any further value to you."

"No doubt one of your talented brethren can arrange that, Atka?" the man with the long braid returns, removing his foot from Suki's face. It lolls back toward the ground listlessly.

"Arrluk will heal her, my lord. Do you wish to send her for reconditioning as well?"

"That will depend on the cooperation of her co-conspirators." The man's mouth curves into a cruel, knowing smile. "As with everything else, you will find it possible to move mountains if you have the right leverage."

Two uniformed guards spring from behind him in unison and drag Suki's body out of sight.

Lee struggles upright and lets out a gasp as waves of pain pummel into the pit of his stomach. He retches uncontrollably, cold and dripping with sweat as bile rises into his mouth.

"And who but our tricky friend, Mr. Wang Fire, could we expect to find at the heart of it all?" The man with the braid kneels in front of Lee, his cruel smile dancing before his feverish eyes. "I would introduce myself. But we've met before, haven't we?"

Lee pushes past the nausea that threatens to overwhelm him as he meets the man's cold green eyes. "L-Long Feng," he mumbles through the sick dribbling from his mouth. "What do you mean, we've met before?"

Up close, the man is smaller than he seems, with a brutish face and green eyes so pale they might have belonged to a corpse. His moustache and goatee hang down the front of his tunic like thin black cords. "You mean you don't remember?" He laughs, baring sharp yellowing teeth and everything sways sickeningly.

Lee clamps his eyes shut again, feeling the shadows closing in around him, brandishing their sharpened claws, ready to tear him to shreds.

"Oh, look at him. He's falling apart." Long Feng's cold voice grows more distant as he rises to his feet and turns away. "Atka, it seems like whoever was responsible for reprogramming this one did a rather sloppy job."

"We tried. But the false persona never lasts," the woman, Atka, replies with an edge of perplexity in her low voice. "No matter how many times he comes back here, no matter how many times we try to fix it…"

"Never mind," Long Feng says with the softness of a cat-owl toying with a vole-mouse caught in its grasp, just before closing in for the kill. "He's just about outlived his usefulness. All we need from him is the whereabouts of that madman and his damned rebellion."

Something wedges under Lee's chin, tilting his head upward to meet Long Feng's cruel gaze. "And you're going to give it to us, or your pretty warrior friend will be the first to pay the price for your foolishness."

Suki. Her grim, painted face flashes through his mind, laced with instant regrets. This is all my fault. I led her straight into their trap.

"Now that we have you, it will be short work to stamp out your pathetic rebellion once and for all," Long Feng intones, contemptuously removing his foot. Lee's head slams back into the ground, and he grunts, blinking stars out of his eyes. "Face it, Mr. Lee. There's nowhere left to run."

His voice grows more distant, echoing in the deep silence in the black cells under the lake. The darkness swims across his vision, as his gaze darts helplessly from Haru and Ty Lee's paralyzed frozen bodies to the menacing uniformed woman bearing down on him.

With a motion of her hands, the lanterns in the walls begin to pulsate in a strange rhythm.

He lets out a cry as invisible manacles creep around his limbs, paralyzing him to the spot. His blood freezes ice-cold and still in his veins, entirely heedless of the desperate flail of his pulse.

Darkness shaped like demons, memories wearing strange faces all swirl around him, assaulting his fracturing mind in a cacophony of colour and sound.

It lumbers over him, growing larger in size until the foundations of his world collapse.

Lee unravels.