Only once the old order has burned, can the world be made anew.

Zaheer closed his eyes and slowed his breathing, feeling his heart rate drop to a familiar, steady pulse. His new cell, deep in the earth, was less spiritually connected than his mountaintop had been, but that didn't mean there was no way to access the spirit world, particularly not now the spirit and physical realms were so closely intertwined. There were places in the spirit world that had affinity with cages, and cells.

Slipping between the worlds, Zaheer felt the telltale brush of cobwebs against his face, and rose stiffly to his feet, the chains that had bound his limbs gone. He stood in the entrance to a cave, a lake at its centre and the rest of it strewn with cobwebs, all glowing with a soft yellow light. The place was near to the fog of lost souls, and it had a tendency to trap lost items, and sometimes travellers.

"Zaheer! You came back!" called a voice from above. Aruki, the lantern spider spirit, squeezed himself out from a narrow crevice in the ceiling, legs tipped with hands preceding his eyeless torso, and his wide mouth split into a grin. "I guess you're in jail again, huh. No way you'd let yourself get so scruffy if you weren't."

Zaheer frowned, but the spirit's observation was accurate. Even the metalbenders that guarded him were too wary of him to let a sharp object anywhere near him, and the fine fuzz of hair that now covered his head had followed him into the spirit world too.

Aruki crawled down the webs on the wall, stopping when his body hung little above Zaheer's face. The ball of light within him glowed a happy yellow. "You're my favourite human, you know that?"

Zaheer's expression was wry as he stepped inside, treading carefully round the deformations in the webbing. "You try to kill me every time I come here."

"Yeah, well-" Aruki rotated himself in his web, as he followed, his light ebbing a little with embarrassment. " That's just my nature. I can't really help it. And honestly, I would be very disappointed if I ever caught you."

"I'm sure you would," Zaheer agreed.

The lantern spider went still, his light taking on a cold white cast. The surface of the lake became blacker, the strange shapes in his webs more sinister. "What's wrong, Zaheer? You're not yourself."
"I'm not?" Zaheer raised an eyebrow. The spirit had never called attention to his state before, aside from lamenting his failure to entrap and eat his guards.

"Mm… you know what I mean." Aruki circled round him, trailing a filament of bright silk, as thick as a man's finger. "You usually talk back more than this." His body tilted thoughtfully. "It's probably dehydration- I'll make us some tea."

This was definitely unusual behaviour from the spider, observed Zaheer as Aruki vanished up into the web. Shaking his head, he brushed the silk from his sleeves. Left to harden, Aruki's thread could become stronger than steel, but the spirit hadn't even bothered with a strong anchor point for it. It was a murderous gesture, rather than a genuine attempt. Maybe the spirit was actually worried for him.
Aruki returned with a tea-set, a table, and a small portable stove, setting them out on the floor between them.

"Where did you get that?" Zaheer asked.

The spider shrugged with two spare arms as he arranged the tea set with the other four. "I have friends other than you, you know," he said. Reaching into his mouth, he plucked out a portion of his light and placed it in the stove, where it flickered into life as a flame. "So what happened? You'd been gone so long, and no-one has seen the Avatar. I figured maybe you'd won, maybe settled down with that nice lady you were always pining after."

P'Li. Zaheer breathed in. Hearing Aruki talk about her was like being back in the moment. Like watching her go again. An almost physical pain, as if his sternum were about to crack. She had died, and for what? So he could fail? It must have showed on his face, because Aruki stopped what he was doing.
"I… guess she didn't wait for you, huh." The spirit reached out, squeezing Zaheer's shoulder with a small, dark hand. "It'll be okay, buddy."

"She's dead," said Zaheer, quietly.

Aruki made a small noise of sympathy, and touched Zaheer's cheek. His hand was soft, and warmer than Zaheer would have expected. "Don't cry," he said. "I mean, you can if you wanna, but then I'd hafta eat you. You didn't come here for that, did you?"

Zaheer froze, staring at Aruki, at the ball of light that bobbed behind his half-open jaws. Oblivion. That was what Aruki was offering, half-joking. Darkness, and cold, with no more pain, no more chains. "No," Zaheer said, finally. Closing his eyes, he took Aruki's hand in his, and lifted it from his face. "Thank you for your concern, old friend, but this is something many humans must come to terms with."

"You do die a lot, dontcha," the spirit mused, going back to preparing the tea. His six hands worked in tandem, grinding the powder from the block and whisking it in the cup. "I was in Wan Shi Tong's library once, and there were whole books full of it. Just stories about humans, and how they died." He poured a cup for Zaheer, and handed it over before making one for himself. "Hardly any of them got eaten. So wasteful."

Zaheer took the cup from Aruki's hands. "Thank you," he said, his voice almost cracking, and the spirit dismissed his thanks with a free arm. They drank together, and Zaheer considered the tea. It tasted at least a decade stale, and Aruki had brewed it too strong, making it bitter, but tea was difficult to obtain in the spirit world. It was a gift, and a priceless one. "How has everyone been while I've been gone?"

"What?" Aruki's mouth quirked. "You're not going to tell me about your adventures first?"

"Why would I take away the only incentive you have to not eat me?"

The spider harrumphed. "Did you ever consider that I might enjoy your company?"

Zaheer felt himself smile for the first time in a long time. "How long have we known one another, Aruki?"

The spider's mouth was downturned as he slurped his tea. "And after I was so nice to you, too. The nerve."

His beard. His beard was the hardest part of being chained like this, his hands bound behind him. It grew out, and it itched like hell. It wouldn't have been so bad, save that he had nothing to distract him from it. Four walls, the floor, the ceiling, and the chains. Save for his daily gruel, Zaheer was alone in his cell with his thoughts and his itching beard. He wanted to tell himself his meditation served some higher purpose, but some days he found himself slipping into the meditative trance to stop himself scratching at his face.

Guru Laghima had said let go your earthly tethers. Enter the void. Empty, and become wind, and for a day he had understood it perfectly. He grasped at the sentiment, so obvious in the moment, and it slipped through his fingers like air. P'Li was dead, his allies were dead, his scheme in ruins. For the first few weeks of his imprisonment, he sat, cross-legged on the floor, afraid to try to fly again. The losses weighed him down, and he sorted through them, untangling them, and allowing himself to feel the grief that he had set aside in the moment. Everyone who had died, had died in vain, and thinking of them would bring the pain to the surface, like picking at a wound not yet healed. He had succeeded in toppling the Earth Queen, at least, but he had failed to change the world. His love for P'Li, the strongest thing he had felt for anyone, had been, in truth, an obstacle on his path to enlightenment, and that hurt almost more than losing her. He embraced the pain, letting it flow through him, replaying the moments in his mind, until watching no longer brought the lump to his throat and pain to his chest. He watched until it stained his aura and made the spirits shy from him. After that, he was numb.
It would be so easy to let go right now, to slip from his physical form, as Iroh had, and leave the White Lotus guarding his husk.

What kept him here, then? Why did he choose to stay in a cell, deep underground, with his hands bound and his beard itching? A man who is devoted to freedom, spends his life in a cage. It was almost an aphorism. He smiled at the thought that future acolytes might read the work of Guru Zaheer, a great airbender dedicated to solitary meditation. It was unlikely. Fire Lord Ozai had died in similar circumstances, and little record remained of his time confined, even among the ranks of the Lotus.

It was the draught that brought his reason back to him. It was cold and intermittent, mountain air, and if he bowed his head, he could feel it on the back of his neck. It came down from a hole in the ceiling of his cell, no larger than the palm of his hand. Enough to airbend with, just barely. Enough to breathe. They had denied Ghazan earth, Ming Hua water, and P'Li warmth, but they could not take the air from him, no matter how far from the sky they tried to hide him. Just as they could not rob him of his freedom, no matter how many chains they wrapped him in.

Zaheer turned his face to the draught, and focused. For a the first time in the months since his defeat, his body rose from the ground, only the physical chains around him holding him in place. He would have another chance to change the world.

He waited.

"Zaheer." The Avatar threw his name like an accusation as she stalked from the earthshaped elevator.

"Avatar," Zaheer opened his eyes. "I figured you would show up sooner or later." The events on the spires would have damaged her spiritually as they had damaged him, but she looked well physically, her brown shoulders square and her stride strong- a good showing for someone who had been poisoned so severely. How long has it been, he wondered. In his cell there were no days or nights, and he had stopped trying to count them a long time ago. One of the avatar's companions, Asami Sato, slipped out behind her, a box of wires and components held under one arm, and the stone door slammed closed, sealing the three of them in the cell. Zaheer looked between the two women. What did the Avatar want with him? They looked wary, both staying beyond the extent of his chains. "You must be really desperate if you're coming to me for help."

"Korra," Asami started, but the Avatar raised a hand and she stopped, eyes pleading.

"No. I can handle him." Korra looked up at him, her blue gaze steady, but her shoulders were tense, her breathing quicker than it should have been. Was she still afraid of him, after all this time? Zaheer felt a pang of regret. He had never wanted to make her suffer. "And he's right- we do need his help." He saw a flash of something in her eyes, as she turned back to him. Resentment? "No-one believes I can do anything anymore, but they still believe in you. We need you to speak to the people, like you did in Ba Sing Se."

Zaheer stared at her, speechless. He had expected her to be angry, to rail at him, maybe even hurt him, but the Avatar who stood before him was a different woman than the girl he had tried to kill.

"When you took out the Earth Queen, you created something worse," she said. "The worst dictator the Earth Kingdom has ever seen."

Kuvira. Zaheer paused. He had failed. In everything that he had done, even in liberating the earth kingdom, he had failed, and the sorrow hit him anew. "I'd heard rumours," he admitted. "But I didn't know how powerful she had become." He hadn't wanted to believe it. He looked to the Avatar, her sincere eyes, fear and resentment beneath the surface. How had he not seen it? It was the same face she had worn, when she had handed herself over him to secure the safety of the Air Nation. "I will help you depose her."

"You will?" Her face betrayed her surprise, and for a moment she was the girl he had killed again. She had expected him to refuse, he realised, or bargain for his freedom. How was she to know that there was nothing in the world that he wanted more than this?

Zaheer nodded, and lowered himself to the ground. His chains slacked around him, and he unfolded his legs, rising to his feet before the Avatar. The earthen floor of his cell felt alien between his toes. "It would be my pleasure."

On the mountaintop, Varrick hugged his furs around him, water dripping from his nose as the rain pelted him. This was no south pole, that was for sure, but Varrick Industries' work on metal fatigue in the extreme weather still seemed to be applicable. The transmitter swayed in the wind, and Bolin's surly older brother looked up at it doubtfully.

"I can't believe we're working with Zaheer," he said.

"Thirty years ago, no-one believed a panda bear dog could talk, and look at us now! Times change, kid." Varrick gave the thing a good pat, and it didn't collapse in on itself. That was a start.

The kid just shook his head, completely ignoring him. "I can't believe Korra asked us to," he said, frowning. His dark grimaces might have attracted women to him like spider-rats to fresh garbage, but they wouldn't get him anywhere with Varrick.

"That's your problem," said Varrick. "You don't have to believe in anything. You just gotta go with it. Be flexible."

A strong gust of wind hit, and Varrick clung to the mountain. The transmitter bent nearly double before springing back to shape.

"Is it meant to do that?" said the surly kid, shooting him a glance.

Had the study covered tall structures like this? Varrick sucked in air through his teeth. "Sure," he said. "Why not."

The kid just narrowed his eyes, settling down into a firebending stance as the stormclouds closed on them, close enough that he could feel the pressure change. The kid wasn't someone Varrick would have chosen as an assistant, but the list of lightning benders ready and able to help the avatar on a top secret mission was pretty damn short. There was a boom and the smell of ozone as the kid directed the juice, and Varrick glanced to check the control panel hadn't melted before he clicked his portable radio on. "All fired up and ready to go."

Asami Sato's voice crackled faintly through his earphone in reply. "Roger that."

The signal was all static at first, a hiss of white noise that built from a whisper to a roar in one ragged crescendo. It overrode all other transmissions, crackling over news and music alike before it coalesced into a voice. Not a smooth and articulate newscaster, but one hoarse from long disuse, and on the edge of fury.

"Attention, Citizens of the Earth Kingdom," Zaheer began, locking eyes with the Avatar as he hunched over the equipment. They were alone now, save for the thousands listening. "When last I spoke to you, it was to tell you that you were free of a tyrant. Now, I come to ask your help in overthrowing another."