Contents

CHAPTER ONE: Broken Wings

CHAPTER TWO: Unsteady Ground

CHAPTER THREE: Higher Learning

CHAPTER FOUR: Good Help

CHAPTER FIVE: Sharp as a Knife

CHAPTER SIX: Home Is Where the Thing Is

CHAPTER SEVEN: Ferry

CHAPTER EIGHT: All's Fair

CHAPTER NINE: Errand Girl

CHAPTER TEN: Cultural Divides

CHAPTER ELEVEN: Tactical Retreat

CHAPTER TWELVE: Paper Moon

CHAPTER THIRTEEN: Gifted

CHAPTER FOURTEEN: Boys on Film

CHAPTER FIFTEEN: Wonders of Nature

CHAPTER SIXTEEN: Variables

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN: The Calm

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN: Straight Shooter

CHAPTER NINETEEN: Phase Two and a Half

CHAPTER TWENTY: Generational Divides

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE: Hero of the South

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO: Best Laid Plans

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE: Sleeping Arrangements

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR: Twenty Miles

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE: Old Friends

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX: Nostalgia

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN: The Girls from Ba Sing Se

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT: Magnetism

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE: Impartial Third Parties

CHAPTER THIRTY: Reunions

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE: Right and Wrong

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO: Changes

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE: Strenuous Exercise

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR: Master of Seduction

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE: Listening

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX: Upstanding Citizen

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN: Silence

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT: The Last Straw

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE: Partners

CHAPTER FORTY: Alone

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE: Unequal

CHAPTER FORTY-TWO: Deadlines

CHAPTER FORTY-THREE: Millionaire

CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR: New Routines

CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE: Dancing Queen

CHAPTER FORTY-SIX: Operation: Ball and Chain

CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN: Shindig

CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT: Epilogue

This is a transformative fanwork featuring characters from The Legend of Korra. The author does not receive, expect, or desire monetary compensation for this work. Share it, rehost it, print it out and eat it — just don't try to charge for it.

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@kittyunpretty

CHAPTER ONE

Broken Wings

Zhu Li Moon was on her way to the university when Varrick nearly killed her.

It all happened very fast, which she would later learn was how things tended to happen with Varrick. One moment she was walking, and the next there was a lot of yelling and she was on the ground with a man on top of her. It wasn't something she'd had to worry about much since leaving the Lower Ring, but old habits die hard, and so she'd used both legs to kick him off with enough force to send him sprawling into an adjacent building. Him, and the strange contraption on his back.

Only after did she notice that he'd smelled like peppermint and beeswax, wondered why she'd noticed at all.

"Well that didn't work!" said the upside-down pile of man, sounding very enthusiastic and not at all offput by their mutual near-death experience. He barely seemed to have noticed her, in fact. He was wearing finery all in green, but he wasn't from the Earth Kingdom. He looked like someone from the Water Tribe, though she'd never seen a picture of a Water Tribesman with quite that style of moustache. With a great deal of wiggling he detached himself from the thing of wood and paper he'd been wearing, and rolled into a generally upright position, dusting himself off.

She was still sitting on the cobblestones, glasses askew, staring.

Were they all that tall in the Water Tribe?

"More height," he said, and he didn't seem to be talking to her as much as to himself, bending at the waist to examine the mangled mess, "that's what I need." She found herself tilting her body to the side to see past his, to see what exactly he was looking at. They looked — if she didn't know better — like wings. Ruined, now, but wings.

Some people thought that Zhu Li was quiet because she was polite. Those people were incorrect. She was quiet because being quiet was easier than learning social graces. It was one thing when there were rules of etiquette that she could follow, and quite another when she was expected to make spur-of-the-moment interaction decisions.

It seemed like he had been trying to fly. She could ask him if that was what he'd been doing, but that would either be stating the obvious, or insulting his intelligence. So she said nothing, as she slowly brought herself to her feet, put her dress back into something resembling order.

"You!" he said, spinning on his heel with enough rapidity to send his robes in a sweeping circle, jabbing a finger in her direction. The widening of her eyes was her only concession to her alarm as she adjusted her glasses. "What's the tallest building in Ba Sing Se?"

Whatever it was, he was going to jump off of it. She was sure of this. "The Royal Palace," she said, "but you're better off using the Outer Walls."

He narrowed his eyes and came closer, which appeared strange when his hand remained exactly where it was, a fixed point as he came nearer. Uncomfortably near, in fact, face almost touching her own. She didn't try to get away from him, even though that was her instinct, because she hadn't made it to Ba Sing Se University by backing down when it was expected of her. It may not have even been intentional on his part. Maybe they didn't have the concept of personal space in the Water Tribe. "What makes you say that?" he asked, and she wondered what smelled like peppermints when his breath smelled like green tea.

"Less bureaucracy," she said, "and if that's not high enough then your design isn't practical." There was more she could have said, better explanations, more questions. But they were the only words that felt necessary.

His eyes narrowed further, that finger he'd been pointing at her finally moving as if he was going to poke her in the chin with it. "That," he said finally, "is a very good point. Let's do that."

Let's. Let us. Us. She had, inadvertently, become part of an us. This was not a thing that usually happened. Quite the opposite, in fact. Had her offering of information volunteered her?

"Come on," he said, suddenly withdrawing with such haste that she was practically drawn into the vacuum his absence created, "we're going to need to fix this before you can take me to the Outer Wall."

She had not agreed to any of these things. She had a lecture to attend. He was gathering his broken wings in his arms, and it felt like she'd been trapped in some strange bubble, no one else acting as if what was happening was strange. If she'd seen a man flying into a woman on the street, she liked to think she would have stopped to make sure everyone was okay.

Her back hurt. Her hipbones hurt. The cobblestones had scraped at the callouses on her hands, bruised her elbows. If he'd been injured similarly, he didn't show it. His clothes weren’t even out of order.

"Here," he said, handing her the mess, "carry this for me, wouldja?"

Strangely, inexplicably, she did. And she followed as he began to walk away, a long-legged stride that suggested he had not even considered the possibility of her not following. She was being swept up in something, pulled along by his gravity, and she was not a woman who was often swept.

Or ever.

"You're a student?" he said as much as asked, and it seemed like he liked the sound of his own voice more than he was actually curious.

"Yes," she said, and nothing more.

"That's great," he said, though not attentively. "What are you studying?"

"Engineering," she said, and she waited for the standard response.

"That's perfect!" he said, this time with genuine enthusiasm, which was not the standard response. "Oh, man, you might actually be useful!" He clapped his hands and rubbed them together, which was not a thing that made him look trustworthy by any means. "Why didn't you say so earlier? Kid, you've got great timing."

She didn't see how accidentally walking beneath a man experimenting with flight constituted great timing, but that didn't seem like something he would be able to explain. They were walking toward one of the nicer hotels in the Middle Ring, and she wondered if this was the roof he'd jumped from. He'd made it a surprising distance, if so. It might not have been entirely imbecilic, his dreams of flight.

It was the kind of building that made her palms itch. Nice, too nice for the likes of her, the guards would see it in her eyes and have her out on the street. She kept her eyes on the floor, on the shining backs of her companion's shoes, pressed her tongue to her teeth to scrape away the taste of her pulse. It was a relief to be in the elevator, but not by much. She started when the mustachioed man leaned sideways to put his face in her eyeline, his eyebrows a wave.

"You doing okay, kid?" he asked. "You're looking kind of pale." Then he snorted, standing upright. "Then again, who am I kidding? This is Ba Sing Se — everyone looks pale." He seemed to find this hilarious.

"I'm fine," she said, though without much conviction.

"If you're sure," he said, "but if you're going to vomit, try to keep it to yourself." The elevator stopped at a suite bigger than any home she'd ever lived in, and she began to worry that she actually would vomit. "Here, set it over here," he said, gesturing vaguely to a table. She gently set her burden into a pile of wood that she was not convinced could be rescued, even were its final form functional. Her limbs felt floaty without anything to hold, as if weighted down had become their natural state.

Stepping away, she watched as he began the process of unfolding the wreckage, like a puzzle. Her legs were starting to ache, some combination of the earlier incident and their more recent disuse. "Who are you?" she asked after a long stretch of silence, nothing but the sound of his hands at work.

He looked up with enough surprise that he may have forgotten she was there at all. She didn't blame him. She was good at that. "Do you not know?" he asked, which meant either that he was very important or only thought that he was. The opulence of his hotel room suggested the former. He came too close to her again, grabbed her hand and shook it with such force that her glasses were knocked to the tip of her nose again. "Varrick, head of Varrick Global Industries. Smartest and richest man in the world, not necessarily in that order. Geeze, why didn't you tell me you didn't know who I was? You must have thought I was some kind of weirdo! Do you always go following strange men back to their hotel rooms?"

This was the first time she showed the slightest hint of indignation, yanking her hand from his with a strength greater than her size suggested, a hard set to her jaw. "I do not."

"Whoa, hey," he said, holding up his hands in what was neither apology nor pacification, "don't take it so personal, kid. I don't know your name, either. That's a pretty big sign of trust, you know, letting you in here. For all I know, you could be an assassin!" This seemed very unlikely when she had taken none of the initiative in their short acquaintance, but she did not say so. "Speaking of which: what's your name?"

"… Zhu Li." She clasped her hands in front of her, but the stiffness in her spine remained.

"Joo Lee?"

"Zhu Li."

"Well, whatever," he said with a dismissive wave of his hand, turning back to the mess on the table. "I'll get it eventually." He tugged at a bit of wood that seemed like it was meant to be a hinge, and scowled. "I need the…" He snapped his fingers, wiggled them in a vague gesture while he searched for words. "The thing. The thing!"

It was a meaningless request. The hinge was held together with small hex screws, and so she made an assumption, grabbed a screwdriver that was nearer to her than to him and moved closer to place it in his hand. "Yes!" he said, triumphant, as if he had accomplished something. "The thing!" He immediately bent over the table to begin working at the hinge.

He didn't thank her. It didn't seem to occur to him that he should. She ought to have left right then.

She didn't.

CHAPTER TWO

Unsteady Ground

She was about to watch a man die. She was very certain of this. Zhu Li nonetheless continued to strap the wooden pack onto Varrick's back, as wall guards watched from a safe distance. It wasn't very interesting, being a wall guard, and so it wasn't difficult to convince them to let a man jump for science. They weren't allowed to let people jump for emotional reasons, but science was something else altogether.

At least she'd talked him into putting in a parachute.

Varrick snapped a pair of goggles over his eyes, and didn't look even half as nervous as she felt. It seemed patronizing to be nervous on his behalf, so she kept it to herself. She also didn't think he'd listen if she pointed out that this was suicidal, so she hadn't mentioned it. No point saying things just for the sake of saying them.

"Everything set back there Zhu Li?" he asked over his shoulder, fists poised on his hips. She didn't know who he was posing for. Maybe the guards.

She tightened the last strap around his waist, took her time getting the buckle fastened. This may have been a delaying tactic. When there was nothing else for her to do, no other reason for him to wait aside from the obvious thing that he was ignoring, she clasped her hands behind her back. "All set, sir."

She didn't know why she called him that. It wasn't deliberate. She had lived in Ba Sing Se long enough to know many men and women who preferred titles, and she had rarely honored that preference. He had not demanded her respect, had not even asked for it. It seemed counterintuitive that she would be deferential now, of all times. He seemed to hesitate when she said it, turned his head just slightly but stopped short of looking over his shoulder. "Then let's do this!" he said, and for a moment she feared that he planned to try and bring her along.

He jumped. One of the guards let out a high-pitched scream. She turned, and a man with a voluminous beard was covering his eyes in horror. She turned back, but Varrick was well out of their sight. For a moment, she waited for a thud. It didn't come. He came back into view.

Varrick was flying. The mad idiot was flying. He was airborne over the desert, and she realized that she'd moved to stand by the edge of the wall, as near the edge as she could be without falling over herself. He was laughing gleefully, the sound of it echoing off of sand and stone, and she realized — much to her horror — that he was a genius. Not a university genius, an on-paper genius, a perfect scores genius: a real, actual genius. This was a man who could say without shame that he was the smartest man in the world, and she no longer doubted it.

He was the most brilliant man she'd ever met in her life, and he was currently flying into the middle of the desert.

He wasn't going to be able to fly back.

"Shit."

☽❆☾

She found him in the twilight, just before the sun was setting. He'd used his wings to light a fire, and over it he was roasting slabs of cactus that she wasn't sure were edible. She'd had to rent a half-broken Cabbage Car on credit, and it smelled — bafflingly — like spinach.

"Zhu Li!" he said, waving her over as if he'd invited her to a bonfire. "What took you so long?" He held up a stick covered in half-charred green cactus. "I made dinner! We should find out what this is, it looks like green but it tastes like sort of a purple." Which, unfortunately, meant he'd already been eating it, and she couldn't tell him not to. She accepted the skewer just to keep him from eating any more of it, making a mental note to bring some kind of bag next time.

She didn't know why she was assuming there would be a next time.

"I'll make a note of it, sir," she said, holding the skewer at arm's length. For the blink of an eye he was motionless, again so brief that she might have imagined it, before rolling back and leaping to his feet. It was not, generally speaking, an efficient way to move. It was unsettling, in fact, but maybe that was what he was going for.

"Zhu Li, let's hit the road," he said, ignoring that there was no road, "I'm going to need at least twelve hours of sleep if we're going to rebuild that prototype tomorrow." He clambered into the passenger seat, his expression making clear how he felt about the rental. "Couldn't you get a better car than this? Why didn't you just take mine? You don't snore, do you?"

He was talking about ten different things at once. Zhu Li took her time getting into the car, mentally taking apart all the things he hadn't said. He considered her, now, after an acquaintance of a day, an employee. Or something like an employee. He expected her to go back to his suite with him so that she could help him again immediately upon waking.

She gently handed the skewer of cactus back to him, because she couldn't very well hold onto it while driving. She would, she already knew, ultimately end up regretting this. He was not a man whose mouth would stay still for very long.

There were other reasons why he might have expected her to go back to his hotel room. She did not bother with them, because she considered them implausible at best.

"I have class tomorrow," was all she said, as she started up the car and turned them back toward Ba Sing Se, following the tracks she'd made in the dirt coming out.

"Whaddaya need to go to class for?" he asked, as if he found the very idea somehow offensive. She didn't think that was the real question he was asking.

"For course credit," she said, giving only the most obvious answer to the most obvious question, "so that I can graduate."

"And do what?" he pressed. "Be an engineer? You're going to class to be an engineer someday instead of just being an engineer now?"

Varrick hadn't actually offered her a job. He hadn't offered her payment of any kind. He hadn't even offered an explanation, or an apology for literally landing on her. Only a very strange day — a magical day, a wonderful day, but ultimately very strange.

This was not sustainable. Every day could not be this day. It couldn't. Abandoning her goals for a man would leave her with nothing, in the end. Even if that man could fly, her feet would still be on the ground. She had worked too hard for the life she had to give it up for a promise that hadn't been made.

Zhu Li said none of these things, but her mouth had become a thin line cut across her face, hair pulled so tight that the wind couldn't touch it. "I'm sorry," she said finally, "but I can't afford to miss another day." She could. Her scores were all perfect. She was an on-paper genius. But she wouldn't, couldn't, let herself keep getting pulled along by his enthusiasm.

Varrick was silent for a long stretch. She checked out the corner of her eye, but he wasn't eating any more cactus. "Well, suit yourself," he said with a shrug. She found herself oddly disappointed. She tamped it down. If he'd actually wanted her to work for him, he would have found a way to convince her. That was the sort of man he was. Ergo, he did not actually want her to work for him. In which case… she shouldn't have wanted to work for him, either.

Shouldn't have.

She should have been so happy just to have seen a man fly. Not an airbender, not a bender at all, just a man and something he'd built with his brain and his own two hands. It never would have occurred to her to build such a thing, even if she could. She'd been so happy, in that moment, seeing him take flight. But her feet had still been on the ground, still were. Her back still hurt and she still hadn't figured out why he smelled like peppermints of all things, and she was tired, she was so very tired.

She hated that it couldn't be enough. She wanted it to be enough. Wanting didn't keep a woman out of the gutters, didn't keep a person fed.

It was a long ride back to his hotel. He didn't pay her for the rental.

CHAPTER THREE

Higher Learning

"Good news!" Zhu Li had made it all the way to campus and was about to enter her first lecture when Varrick threw an arm around her shoulders and steered her away from the door. She was too surprised to consider resisting his herding of her, absolutely flabbergasted by so much close contact so suddenly. She kept her distance from most people, and they from her; to be held with such familiarity was unsettling, to say the least. If she had not recognized his voice, she might have kicked him again as a reflex. "I talked to the Dean, and you should have your degree by next week."

"I — you what?" It was the first time she had actually expressed her incredulity, and he seemed surprised.

"Well, conditional on your working for me, obviously. It's a whole thing, college credit for work experience and all that jazz. We worked it all out, trust me, it'll be great." He had a very particular way of saying 'trust me' that had the exact opposite of its intended effect. Her day had just begun, and already she was being swept again.

She dug in her heels, dragged them to a stop on the cobblestones, and became an immovable object. He jerked to a stop beside her, but used the misplaced momentum to spin around as if that was what he'd meant to do all along. "I didn't earn it," she said, and Varrick snorted.

"Neither did that guy," he said, pointing to a notoriously awful professor who'd earned both his degree and his career by virtue of his family's standing. "But you don't see him complaining. Now are we going out to eat or what? I'm starving, and that cactus gave me some really good ideas last night."

A degree. She'd have her degree. All these years she'd been working for it, and he'd done it overnight. She wouldn't have earned it, but no one would know. How would they? Plenty of people bought their degrees. If this didn't work out — if he abandoned her—

He was pretending not to pay attention to her. She could see it, though, blue eyes narrowing as he watched her think. He was playing her like a pipa. She didn't mind being played, if it got her what she wanted in the end. She wasn't sure what she wanted.

Wings, maybe.

She didn't say anything, but she began to walk again. Varrick looked quite pleased, throwing that arm back around her as easy as anything.

☽❆☾

"Sho," he said around a mouthful of noodles before slurping noisily, "since you're going to be living with me now, I bought out your lease at that other place — that place was terrible, by the way — and I figured, hell, I might as well just buy the whole building, tear it all down and put something decent there. I think it'll be a great location for our first cactus bar. Cactus juice, it's gonna be the next big thing. Don't know why no one's ever thought of it before."

Probably because most people knew better than to eat strange cacti they found in the desert. "My things?" she asked, instead of commenting on his business acumen. His table manners were atrocious. She couldn't tell yet if that was one of those things that he did secretly-on-purpose. The more time she spent in his presence, the more of them she could detect. Little things, strange things, petty things. He made it very difficult to tell that he was brilliant.

"They're being moved," he said with a dismissive wave. Of course. They were only all of her worldly possessions. She didn't have many, but she treasured the few she had. It was too late to do anything about it now, so she said nothing. She wondered if that was the point, if he knew that she wouldn't complain as long as she didn't know until it was too late.

Honestly, it was all still very thrilling to consider as she took dainty sips of her soup. Living in an upscale hotel, working on flying machines. None of it, as of yet, had been intentional on her part. Varrick did as he pleased, and as long as she didn't object, he took it as given that she'd agreed to it.

It seemed like the kind of attitude with the potential to cause problems.

"Today's going to be kind of a wash," he continued, not waiting for any input from her, "since I forgot to sleep last night and the walls kept changing colors, so somewhere around lunchtime I'm just going to go into sort of a fugue state." He said this very matter-of-factly as he dug his pinky into his ear. She had never seen someone who put so much work into their appearance adopt so many unattractive habits. "You're going to have to make sure I stay close enough to a bed that I don't hurt myself when I fall over, once that's done you should have about sixteen hours or so to make yourself at home, maybe get a headstart on that new prototype."

There were a lot of things to unpack in that statement. "Does this happen often?" It seemed like something that required a doctor more than a… whatever he expected her to be.

"What, the wandering around thing?" He scoffed, wiped his hand on his pants before waving over a waitress for more tea. "No, no, my noggin just went into overdrive last night, now it's gonna fall asleep before the rest of me. You know how it is, flesh is willing but the spirit is weak and all that."

She was pretty sure that wasn't how the saying went. She also had serious doubts about the scientific veracity of his claims. Minds and bodies didn't seem like they ought to work that way. Was this why he wanted her to live with him? Because he walked in his sleep, because he was a danger to himself?

Well. She knew he was a danger to himself. She just didn't know if there was an involuntary component to that fact.

"What will I being doing tomorrow?" she asked cautiously; not we, although she was sure he would have said we. Zhu Li was not in a position to make assumptions, being at the mercy of his, instead.

"Assisting me, obviously," he said, sipping at his tea and then making a face. "They never add enough honey," he said with a scowl. "That's what an assistant does, right? It takes me about an hour to wake up, so that's how long you'll have to get breakfast ready. Then we'll — well, I think we'll be working on the prototype, but I might change my mind by then. You've gotta learn to be flexible, Zhu Li! Flexibility is key! That's the key to my success, I could kick myself in the back of the head if I wanted to."

She nodded despite a certainty that he was talking just for the sake of it now. It was certainly a vivid mental image. His legs were probably long enough.

Better not to entertain those kinds of thoughts.

"You never said if you snored," he said suddenly, as if this were a grievous oversight on her part rather than his.

She set down her spoon. "I do not."

"Thank goodness," said Varrick, as dramatic as ever. "My last assistant snored like the dickens, I would have fired him for it if he didn't stew a mean sea prune."

She wondered what his last assistant would say if she could talk to him. Besides 'run'.

☽❆☾

Varrick was actually much more manageable when he was in a fugue state. She might not have even noticed that it had happened if he hadn't stopped talking. Mostly, he spent about an hour scribbling furiously in a series of notebooks in letters she was not convinced belonged to any language. He didn't respond when she tapped him on the shoulder, or waved a hand in front of his face.

Her life had become very strange, very quickly.

There was a pile of loose paper crumpled around his feet when Varrick finally collapsed. She had serious doubts about selling cactus juice to the general population if these were the long-term effects. Ironically, Varrick seemed to snore louder than anyone she'd ever heard.

Getting him to his room took a bit of doing. She hooked her hands under his arms and dragged him for most of it. Hoisting him onto his bed made her back hurt yet again; he was heavier than he looked, because of course he would be. Nothing was going to be easy with this man. She closed all the curtains to block out the light, and rolled him onto his side in case he vomited in his sleep.

She'd heard horror stories.

Zhu Li hesitated before leaving the room. Sleeping in his shoes wasn't right, was it? She wasn't going to change him into pajamas, because she thought that was a good place to draw the line. Unlacing his shoes, though, that was just a courtesy. Even if there was an odd intimacy to it.

And unbuttoning his jacket. Just his jacket. A shirt was one thing, but sleeping in a jacket was absurd. It wasn't done. He'd overheat in his sleep.

There really was a lot more of him than there seemed to be from a distance. A lot of… self. Very sturdy self.

She left his shoes and his folded jacket at the foot of his bed, and found herself wandering into his bathroom. There were a lot of things to be learned about a person from their toiletries. She had a right, she thought, to try and get to know him better. If she was going to be his assistant.

The master bathroom in this suite was as big as her house had been. He had more beautification products on the counter than she had owned over the course of her whole life. It looked like he'd invented half of them. She picked up each jar and each bottle in turn, reading the labels, smelling them to try and figure out what was in them. Most of them made a lot of dubious claims about masculine powers and aromatherapeutic musks, which told her more about Varrick's priorities than it did about the contents.

Salt soaks and exfoliating scrubs smelled like flowers that didn't cling to his skin, gone by the time she saw him. The pomade was the source of the beeswax smell. The aftershave made her nose burn, and she was glad he didn't smell like that most of the time.

It was his soap that was the peppermint. She supposed that must have been what she was looking for, although she hadn't known it. He kept a stack of spare bars on the edge of the counter, as if at any moment there might be some kind of hygiene emergency. It may have been a valid concern. She didn't actually know yet. He'd know better than she did.

For reasons unclear even to her, she took a small pin from the bun in her hair, and used it to slice a small sliver away from one of the bars. What was good for the turtle duck, she reasoned, was surely good for the turtle crab.

That was a poor excuse and she knew it. She smuggled it back out to the main room of the suite, anyway, the sound of Varrick's snoring following her as she did it. She opened doors until she found the one that was meant to be her room, a barren thing with only a single box sitting lonely in the corner. She'd need to use the main bathroom, instead of having one of her own, but it was still nicer than anything she'd had before. Her life had been turned utterly on its head, all on the whim of one man. She didn't understand any of it, she didn't understand him.

She wasn't a student anymore. She had time to learn.

CHAPTER FOUR

Good Help

Zhu Li smelled like tea tree oil.

That was the first thing he'd noticed after he'd landed on her. He probably would have forgotten about it immediately, except she also hadn't complained about the fact that he'd landed on her. She hadn't asked him what he was doing, or why he was doing it. That was very rare. Helpful suggestions were rarer. And she kicked like an angry ostrich horse.

That was when he'd decided he wanted her. As an assistant.

Good help was hard to find.

When Iknik decided he wanted something, he got it. When it came to people, he usually accomplished this by acting like they were already his. It was surprisingly effective, and Zhu Li was no exception. He'd picked up her life and rearranged it to be more convenient for him, and now he'd keep her until he broke her.

People were easy to break. One little explosion, a few broken limbs, suddenly they went running for the hills. A lack of vision, that was what it was. It wasn't as if they pay wasn't good enough.

She was strong for a mousy little thing. She might last longer than his other assistants, seven in the last four years. He hadn't actually had a female assistant before, so that might be awkward. Especially after he'd accidentally insinuated that she might be a whore.

Now that was embarrassing. Usually when he accidentally insinuated something it was on purpose. He'd just been trying to accuse her of naïveté. He hadn't picked up on it, that she was from the Lower Ring. She did a good job of hiding it, the mismatched thread in her hems and the worn fabric at her elbows. Only a Lower Ring woman would think to be touchy about that, in that specific way. It wasn't something that would cross a high-class woman's mind.

There were other things he should have noticed. The shadows under her eyes, the lines between her brows, the roughness of her hands, the way the bones of her wrists jutted out sharp. He was annoyed with himself for missing it. He'd been too distracted by the potential of her brain to notice the rest of her.

By the time he'd finished stretching and fixing his hair and getting the seams of his trousers just-so, he'd taken twice as much time as he'd told Zhu Li he would need. That wasn't on purpose, either, but she was still new and so he was still dressing to impress. He would have told her to enjoy it while it lasted, but he didn't want to accidentally insinuate anything again.

Best behavior. Professionalism. Good help was hard to find.

He hadn't, somehow, expected her to actually make breakfast. That was what room service was for. He wasn't going to complain, anyway, but when he moved to sit he noticed that there was something wrong. He froze as he tried to determine what it was, something about the room or the things in it. If it made Zhu Li nervous, she did a good job of not showing it.

His new assistant could be very difficult to read.

That, he realized, was what was wrong. Her. He stood back up, and invaded her personal space in that obnoxious way he'd made a habit. People hated when he did that. Usually it scared the hell out of them, or at the very least made them squirm. Zhu Li didn't even flinch.

"You used my soap."

She turned a shade of pink that was just about her only tell. "Yes." Most people would have tried to explain themselves. She didn't. Only ever answered exactly the question that was asked, and never asked any questions that she didn't absolutely need to. It made it tricky to try and get into her head.

He didn't necessarily mind it, that she smelled like him. It put thoughts in his head, though, thoughts he didn't need to be having and that she didn't want there. And he liked the way she'd smelled before. "I don't like it," he said, which was inaccurate but would have the desired effect. She didn't say anything, but she adjusted her glasses and nodded her head in the affirmative.

Satisfied, he returned to his stack of flapjacks and began immediately chewing with his mouth open. If she was horrified by his table manners, that was another thing he couldn't tell. Experimentally, he leaned his chair back and put his feet on the table. She just kept standing there. Waiting. He slurped loudly at his tea, and was surprised to find that he actually liked it. Had he told her how he liked his tea? He didn't remember doing it, if he had. He might have been tripping on cactus at the time. Speaking of which.

"So I guess you managed to get me into bed yesterday."

Shit. That wasn't how he meant that to come out.

Zhu Li was fortunately unfazed. "I did my best. I organized your notes, but I couldn't read most of it. I copied the blueprints onto larger paper."

"Blueprints?" he asked around a mouthful of syrupy pancake.

"Ten or so pages were blueprints for some kind of camera. I don't know much about the technology, so I couldn't do much more than copy them. The lenses didn't seem quite right, so I tried to make adjustments, but I think you'll have to go back over them yourself. Sorry, sir."

She called him sir, that was the other thing Zhu Li did. It was the way she did it. It sounded right when she said it. And she seemed genuinely sorry that she'd only managed to decipher what was probably the only usable part of his delusional scribbling. "It's a start," he said, because praise set a dangerous precedent. "Bring me the, ah — the thing," he said, waving his hand in a gesture that clarified nothing.

He wasn't deliberately obtuse. Words just couldn't keep up with him sometimes. Surprisingly, she once again brought him exactly what he'd wanted, a carefully arranged file folder filled with flattened out crumpled pages he'd torn out of perfectly good notebooks. He licked syrup from his fingers before flipping it open, and what he found was much more lucid than he'd anticipated.

"Oh, this," he said, pulling out a page and holding it higher so he could see it better. His feet were still on the table, and she still hadn't commented on it. "This is just shorthand. Modified shorthand. I invented it so no one could steal my ideas. I call it Vawriting." He tapped a finger to his temple to indicate that he was being clever, as if she hadn't already noticed. He set the folder down, and she turned her head so she could look at the topmost page. "It's pretty simple," he said, precisely because it wasn't. "You just write the big shapes, cut out all the vowels and do it upside-down and backwards. The other kind of backwards."

Zhu Li continued to look at the page, and he pretended to be looking at his so she wouldn't know that he was watching her. He thought she knew, anyway. Their gazes met at the corners of their eyes, watching each other pretend not to watch each other. "So," she began slowly, "this is a recipe for an egg custard tart?"

Like hell.

He took his feet off the table and planted them on the floor so he could reach out and take the folder back, furrowing his brow and narrowing his eyes. It was, in fact, a recipe. Which meant she'd read the damn thing.

He was starting to worry that his new assistant was almost as smart as he was.

"Well whaddaya know!" he said, enthusiastic despite his concerns. "My mother's custard recipe, I thought that was lost for good! Do you know how to cook?"

Her eyes flicked to the empty plate in front of him. "Some."

"You can make it, then!" he decided, flinging all of her carefully organized pages into the air. She immediately started trying to catch them all, which he hadn't actually expected, but he pretended that he had. It was petty and mean, metaphorically kicking the feet out from under her every time she started to get her bearings.

Iknik was not a nice man. Occasionally he feigned niceness to manipulate those for whom it was effective. He didn't actually like most of the people he was nice to, maybe in part because he resented having to be nice to them. He was nonetheless very good at it. Being nice to Zhu Li probably would have worked. Would have worked really well, in fact.

He didn't think he was going to be nice to Zhu Li.

She snatched a piece of paper from right above his head, and nearly fell on him in the process. "Now's not the time to be messing around Zhu Li," he said, as if she weren't trying to clean up the mess he'd made. "We need to get to work."

Sweeping past her to head back to the makeshift work area, his foot hit a loose piece of paper she'd missed and slid backward and into the air. With his legs going back and up, his face went inevitably forward and down, which was not generally a way that he liked his face to move at high speed. Before he could hit the floor… he stopped. About a hand's width above the ground. Since he wasn't aware of any powers of levitation on his part, this was briefly confusing, until the papers Zhu Li had been so carefully collecting fluttered to the ground all around him.

She'd caught him by the belt. And then, as if that weren't enough, she hoisted him up, wrapped an arm around his waist to set him upright. Worse, she pressed her palms to his shoulders, pushed them up to straighten his spine and fix his posture.

His assistant had just picked him up. His assistant had just picked him up.

What the fuck.

"Zhu Li," he barked, jabbing a finger toward the papers scattered all over the kitchen floor, "this is a health hazard. Pick this up immediately."

Her eyes went to the floor, and he couldn't tell if she was averting her gaze or just trying to focus on the task at hand. "Yes, sir." Immediately she was on the floor to pick them up, not even objecting to the fact that this was all his fault and she'd saved him from a broken nose.

Hell. Hell. She was almost as smart as he was. She was stronger than he was. It was absolutely unnecessary to walk over her on the way out of the kitchen, but he did it anyway.

Zhu Li Moon was dangerous.

Thank goodness he'd found her before anyone else could.

CHAPTER FIVE

Sharp as a Knife

"I got you some new clothes!"

"Excuse me, sir?" Zhu Li had not asked for new clothes. Her clothes were slightly worn, but they were perfectly functional. If they weren't, she could easily have repaired them. She'd been doing it for years.

"New clothes!" he repeated, as bellhops dropped bag after bag off in the main room of their suite. "Some of them are for me, since it can't all be about you, Zhu Li. But you look like crap!"

Her flush was faint, but undeniable. "Sorry, sir," she said.

"You should be! It reflects poorly on me, Zhu Li, having you running around here looking like that. Should have done this months ago, don't know why you didn't remind me."

"Sorry, sir," she said again.

"Here," he said, picking up a bag and pushing it into her hands, "try this on, make sure it fits." She accepted it hesitantly, bowed her head as she retreated back to her room. Opening the bag, she found first a blue dress and then a green one, neither of which she had any intention of ever wearing. Entirely too bright and too flimsy, and she could not imagine what he'd been thinking. If he'd been thinking at all. There were a few acceptable things, shades of blue pale enough and dark enough to be almost white and gray. Bland and modest and professional, and far nicer than any clothes she had owned previously. She would have to tailor them a little before she could leave the house in them, but they would do nicely in the meantime.

When she emerged from her room, Varrick had sprawled himself half-upside-down on the couch, one leg draped over the back of it. "Hey!" he said, "it fits!"

She looked down at herself. "It's… actually a little big," she said, though she was not complaining. But she did not want to risk that he would order more in the same size under a misconception.

"No it isn't," he said, and it was certainly not the first time she had seen him try to argue with basic facts. Like gravity. "You're going to grow into them."

She raised an eyebrow. "I am twenty-two."

"Pfft. Not like this." He waved his arms apart vertically to indicate height. "Like this," he said, and this time he spread his arms across.

It was true that she was eating better than she ever had before. She was not convinced that she would be getting large enough to make these clothes fit. Her body may not have been capable of having a figure to that extent.Curvaceous was an adjective that happened to other people. "If you say so, sir," she said, despite her misgivings.

"Here, see if these work," he said, and he reached into another bag to toss something at her. She caught it, surprised to find a pair of glasses. They looked very similar to the ones she already wore, but the metal frames were heavy, not the flimsy wire she wore now. Wire was more practical when she could not afford to have frames break, because it bent instead, but they bent often and readily and nowadays had an overall shaky look to them. These seemed much sturdier. She slid her old glasses off, and peered through the new ones curiously.

Everything looked much clearer, suddenly. And much less… foggy. She hadn't realized how scratched her lenses had become. She wasn't sure she wanted to know how he'd managed to guess her prescription. "Thank you, sir," she said, slightly dazed.

"You're no good to me blind, Zhu Li!"

It was true, but she still appreciated it. He would not be the first person to consider her useless, but he was the first to put forth effort to make her useful. She did not object to being useful.

☽❆☾

There had been a kitchen-related mishap, and there were blobs of gelatinous goo everywhere. Zhu Li didn't know what he'd done to make it green. She had been too distracted trying to make sure the stove would not explode to notice that some of it had gotten into her hair. It also never occurred to her that her boss would try to do anything about it.

Not until she had already bitten him.

She may have been more surprised that Varrick was. They stared at one another, wide-eyed, Zhu Li covering her mouth in horror.

"Did you just bite me?" Varrick asked finally, incredulous.

"I'm sorry, sir," she said, muffled by her hands.

"I can't believe you just bit me," he said.

"It was an accident, sir," she said.

"How do you bite someone by accident?"

"I'm very sorry, sir."

"I think you drew blood," he said, rubbing his hand and squinting at it.

"Would you like me to—"

"Oh, no, I don't think so," he said, holding his hands far away from her. "I think you've done enough for today, little miss dagger-mouth." She was going to be fired. He was going to fire her. People didn't just bite their bosses and get away with it. She did her best to look stoic in the face of her mortification. "I'm going to go bandage my hand, so you clean up this mess and stop giving me that look, Zhu Li. You didn't eat any of this, I don't know why you look green."

☽❆☾

Ting was surprised to find Zhu Li alone. She did not blame her for being surprised, because this was all happening on very short notice.

"Where's Varrick?" Ting asked, and she had clearly dressed for a date. Zhu Li almost felt bad for her. The huge amounts of very expensive silk involved made her feel less bad.

"Varrick will not be making it today," Zhu Li said.

"Is he not feeling well?"

This was awkward in the extreme. "He has decided to terminate your arrangement."

Ting froze. "He… what?"

"He has considered the issue, and decided that it would be better for the both of you to pursue other interests."

Zhu Li had never actually broken up with someone before. If she sounded as if she was terminating a contract, that was only because it was more comfortable and familiar to her.

"Is he breaking up with me?" Ting demanded.

"That would appear to be the case, yes."

"He is having his assistant break up with me?"

"He is very busy today," she said, which probably did not make her feel better. Zhu Li retrieved something from the side table. "He has asked me to present you with this complimentary gift basket, to help you through this trying time." Even she could not pretend to think this was a good idea, but she held it out anyway.

"Is this because of Kai Li?" Ting asked, completely ignoring the offered basket. "If he dumped me for that Leongshi bitch, I am going to be so pissed."

"I cannot speak on Varrick's personal affairs," she said.

"I fucking knew it," Ting hissed. "She always does this, I knew she was going to do this. What did she tell him? Did she tell him her dad could get him contacts in the palace? Because I know for a fact that the Queen hates her stupid dad. If he wanted to get into a palace fête, he could have told me. I could have done that. I could still do that. I can do so much more for him than that tarted up whore. Where are they? Are they at the Jasmine Dragon?"

"I am not at liberty to discuss his location with you at this time," Zhu Li said, still holding the basket in front of her, expressionless.

"I bet they're at the Jasmine Dragon," Ting decided with no evidence. "I cannot believe Kai Li would go there with him when that was our place. Well if she thinks I'm just going to let her take him, she's wrong. You keep your stupid gift basket, because Kai Li is going to need it when I get him back."

"Very well," was all that Zhu Li said, as Ting turned around in a flutter of silk and pearls, to reclaim the man she assumed had been stolen from the woman she assumed stole him at the place where she assumed he was.

Upper Ring women were baffling.

Zhu Li was keeping the gift basket. It was a horrible idea, anyway.

☽❆☾

The next time Varrick touched her hair, he jabbed at her bun with one finger before immediately recoiling. Zhu Li restricted her response to trying to slap his hand away. She didn't know if that was progress, and she didn't know towards what.

CHAPTER SIX

Home Is Where the Thing Is

They managed to last three years before they had to leave Ba Sing Se. Cactus juice had become the latest craze, but it was always only a matter of time before the crackdown. Word had come through the grapevine that the hammer was about to fall, and Varrick had every intention of closing up shop and getting out of town before they even had the chance. They couldn't put it past the Queen to try and punish him retroactively, but Varrick was sure she'd forget all about it in a few years.

They could have just fought the laws and worked to comply with new regulations, but that required effort that Varrick wasn't willing to give. There were some projects, in his mind, that were doomed to fail — but which could be extremely profitable until they did.

Every year it seemed that more responsibilities had fallen into Zhu Li's hands, until eventually she was taking care of everything that it was physically possible for Varrick to offload onto her. If he could find a way to make her sleep for the both of them, she was pretty sure he would have done it. He'd long since given up on making himself presentable before she saw him in the mornings; now making him presentable was her job.

She didn't know if he intended that as a sign of trust, but that was how she chose to take it regardless of his intentions. Deciding for herself what things meant was an important part of working with Varrick.

Currently she was raking a turtle crab comb through his hair; not because he couldn't brush his own hair, but because he was absolutely awful at multitasking. Doing it for him meant that he could listen to the radio in the morning, which got him ahead in productivity for the day.

It was a decent system, even if it took a lot more time and strength than hair should have. Man was not meant to have hair that thick, but Varrick would not be bound by the rules of men. They went through a lot of combs.

"Easy, wouldja?" he said with a wince, as if it were in any way her fault that his hair had a mind of its own, a mind with a real affection for complex knot-tying.

"Sorry, sir," she said automatically, setting aside the comb and raking pomade through it with her fingers. The briefest of touches, brisk and businesslike, barely noticing at all how soft it was against her skin. At this point it came as naturally as doing her own hair, as if his hygiene were an extension of her own.

In some ways, at least. She still preferred to make someone else do his pedicures whenever possible. She had her limits.

His complaint about her treatment of his hair were nothing compared to how much he whined when she threaded his eyebrows. Years, now, she'd been doing it for him, and every time he acted as if it was an astonishing new affront she inflicted upon him.

"Oww!" He flinched away from the threads, and in so doing made the whole process much more painful and time-consuming then necessary.

"Sorry, sir," she said again.

"No you're not," he said above the fuzzy drone of the news reports. "You're just saying that to try and shut me up. Well it's not going to work, Zhu Li, I'm not falling for it."

"Of course not, sir," she said, as threads wound around stray hairs, pulled them free of his skin.

He hissed through his teeth and his hands went up as if to bat her away from his face before freezing in midair instead. Every week, this song and dance. "You're heartless," he accused.

Rather than dignify this with a response, she untangled the fingers of one hand from the threads, reached into her pocket to find a cheap sucker. She peeled the paper off one-handed and shoved it into his mouth mid-indignation, and his complaints were briefly muffled before he gave up on them entirely. He sucked on it in sullen silence as she finished, though it eventually cracked when he bit down on it in pain. He spit out the stick as she threw away the thread, scowling.

"Zhu Li," he said as she wrapped a towel around his neck, "I'm beginning to get the distinct impression that you lack the appropriate respect for my dignity."

"Sorry, sir," she said as she tilted his chin upward, started applying lather to his skin with a brush.

"See, that's what I mean," he said, making his throat move in ways that would very shortly become dangerous. "You say you're sorry, but are you? Are you really?"

"Very sorry, sir," she assured him with no more consternation than before, tilting his chin back up when he tried to look at her.

"You know there's people who'd kill to have your job."

"I know, sir," she said, holding an impossibly sharp blade against his neck. Platinum, because metalbenders being able to control his razor gave him terrors. He had sense enough to stay silent and motionless for the half a minute it took her to get his skin bare. It used to take her ages, dragging the blade with agonizing slowness over his face. Practice made it easier. She'd practically memorized every inch of his face, the scar under his ear and the divot in his chin and the exact spot where he liked his moustache to end.

Every morning he tilted his head back and let her hold a blade to his throat. She liked to think that meant something.

She washed off his face and waxed his moustache, and she let him take care of his own aftershave because it still burned her nose and he'd accuse her of torture if she tried to do it. Cleaning off the blade, she looked at all the things that weren't in boxes that needed to be, all the things she needed to do and the hours she had to do it in.

She'd never left Ba Sing Se. Since he'd told her they were leaving, she kept waking up in the middle of the night, thinking that he'd left without her.

He wouldn't. Of course he wouldn't. He'd be helpless without her. She knew that he would. She'd made sure that he would. Every inch of his life he gave up, she wound it around her fingers until it was hers, until she'd knit their lives to try and make a whole.

She'd realized early on that she couldn't go back to the life she'd had without him. So she'd made damn sure he couldn't go back, either.

It didn't stop her worrying.

Rather than ask what she was thinking about, Varrick came up behind her and rested his chin on her shoulder, as if by doing so he could see what she saw and think what she thought. It was a thing he did, sometimes. She'd learned to ignore it. "You've got a lot of packing to do," he said finally, which was reassuring in its way. If he'd tried to be reassuring, then she would have worried.

Zhu Li had thought that eventually she'd get numb to the smell of him, stop noticing it. The opposite had occurred. Before it had been just peppermint and beeswax and sometimes green tea, but now it was also motor oil and molten metal and electrical fires and smoke and honey. In the mornings — like right now — he smelled like flowers dipped in alcohol, and by the evening that would be replaced by fire and salt.

"Do you have the trip mapped out?" he asked, stepping away from her.

"Yes, sir," she said. "We'll be taking the Full Moon Ferry to Republic City to finalize the construction agreement. Assuming a month of travel and a month of negotiations, we should be able to set sail for the Northern Water Tribe before the end of the year."

Varrick gave a sigh that was more of a groan. "At least Republic City should be nice this year. They've got some cute girls, Republic City."

"I'll take your word for it, sir."

"They might have some cute boys, too. I don't know, I've never really checked."

"I'll take your word for it, sir," she said again, because that didn't particularly interest her, either.

"Maybe we can go on a double date," he said, and she wondered if he was needling her on purpose. "I might still have some girlfriends out there. I don't think we officially broke up, anyway."

There were a lot of things she could have said to that. "Girlfriends who've been waiting three years?"

She could tell which face he was making by the sound he made to go with it. "You're right," he said, "way too clingy, better to get new ones."

She'd already started boxing up his combs, his shaving kit, all the things she'd left out so that she could use them this morning. "Shall I add it to the schedule, sir?" she asked. Even she couldn't tell if she was serious.

"No, no," he said, and she knew without looking that he was waving a hand as he said it, "better to let that kind of thing happen naturally, you know?"

She knew. His idea of happening naturally involved a lot of expensive dates and talking about himself, but he liked pretending it was spontaneous. He thought it reflected better on him. Maybe it did. She really didn't know.

"And the thing is—?"

"Yes, sir."

"And the other thing?"

"Yes, sir."

"Good. If we forget anything you're the one coming back for it."

"Yes, sir."

She didn't think that she would miss Ba Sing Se. Of her life here, there had been exactly three good years. She was taking the best parts of those years with her. The best part. Home wasn't a place, and she'd follow hers where she needed to.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Ferry

Every five minutes, Zhu Li found herself thinking that she was further from Ba Sing Se than she had ever been. Eventually the novelty would wear off, but it had not yet.

The Full Moon Ferry was the first boat she had ever been on. This was her first time on the water. It was strange to think that ships were Varrick's job. This would therefore be the first of many ships, the first of many trips. Those three years, she was learning, had been an anomaly in his normally nomadic lifestyle. She did not wonder why. He surely had his reasons, and he would explain if they were important.

Varrick was leaning over the edge of the boat in a way that looked dangerous. Ordinarily, she would have tried to pull him away from that kind of thing. In this instance, she did not feel equipped to do so.

"You should come look at this!" he called over his shoulder.

"No thank you, sir," she said, from as close as she could get to the very center of the deck. She would rather be in their quarters. They were very nice quarters. He had paid an exorbitant amount for them. It seemed a waste not to be enjoying them. Downstairs, where it was safe.

She was not handling her first boat ride very well.

Varrick seemed to sense that she was behaving unusually, because he stepped away from the rail and closer to her. "What gives?" he asked. "If you get seasick, Zhu Li, we're going to have a problem."

"No, sir," she said immediately, because she could not imagine anything worse than lasting this long only to get fired because her stomach disagreed with the ocean.

"Then what's the deal?" he pressed, and she clasped her hands tighter in front of her.

"It's really nothing, sir," she insisted.

He squinted at her suspiciously. Stroking his chin, he circled her like a tiger shark. She refused to be unsettled. Until, without warning, he shoved her toward the rail. Instantly she was trying to dig her heels into the deck, wide-eyed, and before she knew what she was doing she had grabbed onto his arms in a panic. "You can't swim!" he exclaimed, sounding somewhere between amused and accusatory. "How do you not know how to swim?"

"Where would I have learned how to swim, sir?" she asked back, fingers still digging into his forearms.

That brought him up short. "The… lake?"

"They do not allow swimmers in the reservoir, sir," she said, because it had apparently never occurred to him that growing up landlocked meant water was a limited resource.

"I saw people swimming in the river," he said, and he tried to loosen her vice-like grip on him.

"They were bathing," she corrected, slowly detaching herself and trying not to feel anxious. "And that river was also a sewer."

Varrick made a face. "That doesn't sound… hygienic."

"No. It isn't. That's why I stayed away from it."

He looked thoughtful as he rubbed his arms. "Well this isn't going to work at all," he said, and for a moment she was deeply concerned. "You're going to have to learn, I can't have an assistant who can't swim. I own the shipping industry, for goodness' sake!"

She didn't know why it still seemed plausible that he would replace her based on something so petty. "How do you suggest I do that, sir?"

"Well, back home we'd just drop you in the water and fish you out if you didn't figure it out," he said, but the look on her face made clear exactly what she thought of this plan. "They have a heated pool in the VIP section of this ferry," he said, "so we can probably use that."

☽❆☾

Varrick's bathing suit was dark blue with his company's logo over the chest. It looked like something that someone would wear to lift large, trapezoidal weights. Or so she assumed, based on every picture she had ever seen of someone lifting large, trapezoidal weights. Telling herself that he looked ridiculous did not make her feel better.

"Really?" he said, gesturing to her from where he stood in the water, and she blushed. She was not, by nature, the sort of person who cared what she looked like. Nonetheless, this was less than she had ever worn in his presence, and she was having a very difficult time not feeling self-conscious about it. At least she actually had a figure, now. She might have been better off finding something that would cover more skin, cover more scars. "You're wearing a bun to go swimming?" he added, which was the only thing that hadn't occurred to her as a concern.

"I don't see why not," she said, and he rolled his eyes.

"Well you can't swim with glasses," he said, and although he was correct, she hesitated.

"I won't be able to see."

"Oh noooooo," he said, slapping at the water like a panicking penguin seal and sending it splashing in all directions. "You might hit an iceberg!"

She narrowed her eyes at him and scowled, though the corners of her mouth twitched suspiciously upward. "Fine," she said, and she took off her glasses to set them carefully on a chair. Not being able to see anything but poorly-defined blurs, her steps toward the pool were agonizingly slow, because she didn't want to fall in.

This concern turned out to be irrelevant. "We don't have all day," Varrick said, and he grabbed her by the ankle and yanked. She shrieked in alarm as she fell in, and the fact that he caught her did not improve the situation.

"Sir," she said, with barely-contained outrage.

"You were taking too long!" he said in his defense, letting her go so that she could stand by herself. The water only barely reached her hips, and was not as warm as 'heated pool' had lead her to believe. "Hey, you've gained weight." He poked the skin of her stomach, and she smacked his hand away as he laughed, blushing again. "It's a good thing! You'll float better. Probably."

"That's a real confidence booster, sir," she said flatly, crossing her arms over her chest.

"Right," he said, ignoring her statement as he clapped his hands together. "Step one is holding your breath!"

"I know how to hold my breath, sir."

"Underwater."

"… can't I just stay… above the water?"

"Pffft," Varrick said, splashing water at her, and she tried to protect her face with her arms. "In a pool, sure. But that's not going to do you much good. Step one of learning to swim is learning not to drown. I can hold my breath for a half hour if I need to."

"Does that come up often?" she asked, raising an eyebrow. She couldn't see him very well, but if she didn't know better, she would have thought he blushed.

"You'd be surprised," he said, before suddenly and without warning dropping down below the water. Then he came back up, slid a hand over his hair to get it out of his face. "There, like that. Just dunk your head to start."

"Water will get in my nose." She did not consider this a question, but a statement of fact. Clearly, he had some kind of weird Water Tribe nose that negated this simply fact of biology.

"Don't be such a baby," he said, splashing her again. "Exhale through your nose at first, that will help. Haven't you ever put a cup in the water upside-down? Same thing. Don't try to smell the water and you'll be fine."

She balled her hands into fists to brace herself, and really wished he wasn't watching. This was embarrassing. She slowly bent her legs until the water was up to her shoulders, and then, with as much haste as possible, jammed her eyes shut and dunked her head under the water. She gasped when she came back up, and was amazed to find that there was no water in her sinuses. "I did it," she said, surprised, wiping the water from her face so she could open her eyes.

"Barely," Varrick scoffed, and this time she was the one to splash him. "I'm going to see how fast I can do a lap," he said, kicking himself backward. "Do that some more until you don't look so dumb," he ordered, which was not very specific. She did it, anyway, until it no longer felt like being underwater was a terrifying and unnatural thing. Sort of relaxing, even.

Varrick was a very fast swimmer. One of so many things she still hadn't known about him. He swam ten laps, then spent some time doing flips for no apparent reason on the far side of the pool.

"Not gonna drown?" he asked when he swam back to her side.

"No, sir."

"Great," he said, "then lean back and float."

"It sounds like you skipped a step, sir."

"There's no steps," he said, "you just… do the thing." She was still dubious. "Here, turn around." She did so. "Not like that, you look like you're about to punch someone." Indeed, for most of this venture, she'd been holding her fists in front of her chest. She had not actually noticed until he said something. "I don't know what you've been told, Zhu Li, but you can't punch the ocean. Arms out at your sides, calm the heck down." She attempted to do so, and so far there was no part of this endeavor that did not leave her feeling very silly. "Now just… well, don't fall backward. But sort of fall backward. Like a slow fall."

"That sounds dangerous, sir."

"That's why I'm here to catch you."

"That still sounds dangerous, sir."

"What are you insinuating?"

"Nothing, sir." She was pleased he couldn't see the face she was making. She attempted to do as he asked, and true to his word, his hands did catch her shoulders. Floating on the water and looking up at her boss was a very strange feeling on a number of levels.

"See? I'm not even holding you, you're just floating. Because it's water. That's how water works."

"I know how water works, sir."

"Are you sure? Because up until just now you were acting like it was going to try to drown you. Which is not how water works."

"I will admit to having behaved in a somewhat irrational manner," she said, and he snorted.

"You were scared," he said, and she considered poking him in the eye.

"I would not go that far, sir," she said instead.

"Scaaaaaaared," he taunted, and whatever the look on her face, he decided that the best response was to let her go and retreat into the deep end of the pool. She continued to float, and experimentally, spun around to see if she could float forward. She could. "Maybe let's save the rest of the lesson for some other day," Varrick said, a distant brown blur.

"Actually, sir," she said, "I think I might be able to do this." She attempted to kick her feet and legs in a way that would propel her forward, and was pleased when it worked.

"You'll be safer staying on the shallow end," he tried again, and she bit her lip to keep from smiling.

"I wouldn't want you to think I was scared, sir," she said.

"I wouldn't say that," he said. "Would I say that? Never. I would never say that. Stay over there. I think there might be a shark squid over here. This whole pool is unsafe. I'm getting out of here to report this to the captain, I didn't pay for a VIP suite to deal with this kind of thing."

"If you're sure, sir," she said. "I think I'm going to keep swimming." There was a splash as the brown blur pulled himself out of the water to sit on the edge of it.

"I'll stay to make sure the shark squid doesn't get you," he said, "but after that, I am definitely reporting this travesty."

CHAPTER EIGHT

All's Fair

Iknik was pretty good at Pai Sho.

It turned out that Agni Kai Pai Sho did not actually have very much in common with standard Pai Sho.

He probably should have considered this possibility before playing with Triple Threats. At the time, he'd figured that any variations would be easy enough to account for on the fly. Instead he found himself a little offended that they called the game Pai Sho at all.

It used the same tiles and the same board, but the similarities ended there. This was a four player game, a war game where each player was intended to represent an element. Somehow Varrick had gotten stuck with airbending.

He had exactly one saving grace, and that was that Zhu Li was playing with him. They were technically meant to be competing, but she'd been taking down the other players before they could get to his white lotus tile. He didn't know if she'd ever played before, and he didn't have the chance to ask. She was ruthless, methodical, precise. And when the other two players had been taken out, she'd move her white lotus to the middle of the board so that Varrick could claim it and emerge victorious.

The other players were not particularly happy about this. There was not, technically speaking, a rule against this kind of alliance. Since no one else in this place valued alliances more than prize money, it just wasn't done.

Five games in, the fire and earth players started to work together to try to take down Zhu Li's water. They weren't even paying attention to Varrick anymore, and honestly, that was fair. He wasn't actually paying very much attention to the game anymore. The red light of the lanterns was reflecting off the silver of Zhu Li's eyes, making her look ablaze. He didn't know if she'd been getting more animated over the years, or if he'd just been getting better at recognizing her more subtle expressions.

She was a damn war machine. In another life, she would reign supreme over empires. He was very glad to have her as his assistant, instead.

He was more than a little drunk.

Zhu Li claimed the white lotus of the earth player first, which was a considerable insult when taking into account intricacies Varrick didn't understand. He took this about as well as one would expect a very large one-eared gang member to take it, which was not well at all.

"This is bullshit," he bellowed, upturning the table and bringing what attention wasn't already on them to their table.

"Whoa," said Varrick, throwing up a hand, "whoa. Whoa. Hey there. Calm down, buddy. Just because the lady beat you—"

"She's cheating," he said, jabbing a finger in Zhu Li's direction.

"Now, I know that's not true," Varrick said, "because if she were cheating, it would be because I told her to, and if I knew how to cheat I'd just be doing it myself instead of having her do it for me."

Earth player did not seem to find this a compelling argument. He didn't even seem to understand the argument. Or maybe Varrick had reached that point in the night where he started speaking in tongues. They all seemed plausible, really. He did, however, seem to take this interjection to mean that his misfortunes were all ultimately the fault of Varrick. His solution to this problem was likely similar to his solution to most problems, which was to try and break Varrick's nose.

Varrick very sensibly responded to this by throwing his arms over his face and cowering with a shriek.

Eventually, he noticed that he had not been hit. Either he had been hit with such great force that the shock was too much for his body to bear, or someone had intervened. Cautiously, he peered out from between his fingers.

The angry Triple Threat was on the ground, and his arms appeared to have been dislocated. Both of his arms. He was assuming that this was Zhu Li's fault, since she was literally standing on him.

"Wow!" he said, throwing up his hands as much in surprise as anything. "You really fucked up!" he said to the man on the ground, who did not actually seem capable of hearing at the moment. Zhu Li, for her part, looked only mildly disheveled. A strand of hair fell in her face, and she tried to blow it away with obvious irritation, pushing her glasses back up her nose.

Considering his assistant had just knocked down a member of a bender gang, there were very little elements being thrown at them. Maybe they just didn't know how to react.

"What exactly," asked a voice, "is happening over here?"

Nice shoes, nice coat, bad hair in an unsettling shade of red. If he wasn't the head of the Triple Threat Triad, he was at least in charge of this particular operation. "Your friend here," said Varrick, jerking his thumb toward the guy on the ground, "is a really sore loser. Tried to hit my assistant and everything."

Zhu Li did not contradict this telling of events.

A woman started whispering into the Triad's ear, and his eyes narrowed as he looked at Varrick. Iknik was going to have to take charge of this narrative, and fast. "Look," he said, "to be honest with you, I don't really care about any of this." He gestured to yuans now littering the floor, his rightful winnings. Or Zhu Li's rightful winnings. Same difference. "Hell, you can keep it if you want. Unlike some people, I know when to let things go. Use the money to fix this table your boy broke, see if I care." Zhu Li had moved back to stand by his side, which was good, since he thought he might tip over soon.

"That's real generous of you, mister," said the Triad, and the way he said 'mister' made Varrick feel unbelievably old.

"You know, I've heard that about me? Generous, that's me. But here's what I'm thinking, Red." He did not seem to like being called Red, but that wasn't going to stop him. "See, I'm thinking, as long as I'm doing you a favor, wouldn't it be nice if you did me a favor, too? Because I know you don't like leaving things uneven, and all." Zhu Li was pressing her fingertips against his back, where no one could see that she was holding him upright.

"And what kind of favor is that?" Red sneered.

"Zhu Li, give him the thing." Iknik leaned forward to rest his elbows on his splayed knees, which fortunately made him look aggressive instead of tipsy. Zhu Li produced a business card from in her sleeve, and handed it to a lackey who handed it to Red. "What I'm thinking," he said, "is that shipments with that logo on 'em aren't going to be going missing quite so much, and the time I save not looking for them I'll be able to spend in these nice clubs of yours." He spun his hand around, ended it gesturing to the prone body on the floor. "Assuming people stop trying to hit Zhu Li, anyway."

Not an alliance, necessarily. But not having to worry about thefts at the docks would give him a significant leg-up over the competition in Republic City. It could still get him arrested on conspiracy charges if any Triple Threats got talking, but it wasn't like he hadn't prepared for the eventuality. There were other gangs to worry about, but none as significant as the Triple Threats.

"So, what," said Red, "we stay away from these ships, we get the pleasure of your charming company?"

"My charming company," Varrick agreed, "and my charming money, and the charming money of my business partners. And — Zhu Li, what's the thing we're not telling people about?"

"The chop shop underneath the Silk Road Bridge, sir?"

"Yes, that! That's the thing we're not telling people about, on account of we're friends and all."

The last bottle of sake had been a really bad idea, in retrospect.

Red considered the card he'd been given, the ship's logo painted on it, before handing it off to a lackey. "Well," he said, "as long as we're friends, and all. I might be able to put in the good word with Zolt."

"You're a real sweetheart, Red. Zhu Li!" She turned to attention. "I have to piss like a racing ostrich horse. I hope you know where the bathroom is, because I sure as hell don't." Exasperation had become a lot more obvious on her lately. For a second, she bowed her head and sighed. Then she knelt down and wrapped his arm around her shoulders so she could carry him. "Nice doin' business with ya!" Varrick said with a wave.

The last bottle of sake. He should have stopped at four. Four was his hard limit. He was going to need to have Zhu Li make a note. In his defense, he was distracted watching her win. He propped his chin on his shoulder, pressing his cheek to hers in the process. Leaning down to reach her level was starting to do a number on his back; he had a theory that he could fix it by hanging upside-down to counteract it. Maybe he'd have Zhu Li make a note of that, too. The upside-down thing, not the reason why. "You were really good at that," he said, and with his cheek to hers he could feel her mouth twitch. He couldn't tell if she almost smiled or almost frowned.

"Thank you, sir." She sounded much louder when her face was this close to his. She smelled a little bit like lemons. Those were Zhu Li smells, tea tree oil and lemons and welding torches and solder, and sometimes she smelled a little bit like cake and he had no idea why. Mooncakes. Zhu Li Mooncakes.

Never again the fifth bottle of sake.

"That was cute," he said as she dragged him into the hallway where the bathroom was, "with the hair." He didn't think he'd ever actually seen her with her hair down. He had occasional suspicions that her hair actually just grew in the form of a lump on the back of her head. Tilting his head back to squint at her bun, he found a pin and pulled it out.

"Sir, don't—"

"No, no," he said, "it's fine, it's fine." He pulled out another pin, and another, and Zhu Li made a huffing sound as her bun lost structural integrity and collapsed around her face.

"Sir, you need to—"

"Okay, now lemme see." He stood up to turn her around by the shoulders, but he had vastly overestimated his ability to stand upright. Tipping forward, he ended up pushing her back into the nearest wall, hands both holding her there and supporting his weight.

They stared at each other.

"See," he said finally, "it's cute. You should do that sometimes." He wasn't sure if it was actually cute, or if it only seemed like it in contrast to what he was used to. There were waves in it where her bun would usually be, and there were still a few loose pins caught in the mess. It seemed a lot more manageable than his hair.

"It's not my job to be cute, sir," she said, turning faintly pink, hands faltering between them. He could tell that she was trying to decide if she should push him away. He couldn't figure out why she didn't.

"Well," he scoffed, although she had a point. "It's not your job to… not… be cute."

"Yes," she said gently, "it is." She pressed her palms to his shoulders to try and straighten him out, using not even one-tenth of the strength he knew she had. Instead of doing what she wanted he just tried to move closer, to lean against her, until eventually she was just doing her best to hold him a few inches away from her. "Varrick," she said finally, with a hint of panic. A hint, for Zhu Li, was quite a lot. That brought him up short, leaning back a little, unsteady.

"You can call me Iknik," he said. He may have sounded on the petulant side of things.

Ah, but she looked so sad suddenly. So sad, unbelievably sad, why did she look so sad? "Iknik," she said softly, pleading, and she sounded even sadder than she looked. That wasn't right. She wasn't supposed to say it like that. This was all wrong. "You're very drunk," she explained, and he didn't know why she was explaining the obvious. He was downright shitfaced. "You need to stop."

Her eyes didn't usually shine that much, glitter on her lashes. He frowned, tried to tilt his head upside-down so he could see her better, but she turned her face away from his. Which was probably for the best, since his head didn't like being turned that way right now. She didn't seem half as worried as she should have been about the way the floor had gone all wobbly. "Zhu Li," he began.

"You need to get to the bathroom," she interrupted, and her voice didn't sound right, "before you vomit."

"Whaaaat?" He snorted, incredulous. "I don't…" He paused, swallowed hard. "I need to go vomit," he informed her.

"Yes, sir," she said to the empty hallway, after he'd stumbled away.

CHAPTER NINE

Errand Girl

Zhu Li was cold. She had been cold since they arrived in the Northern Water Tribe. She kept meaning to get some heavier clothes, but she simply hadn't had time. Even now, when Varrick was busy meeting with some of his ships' captains without her — and she didn't know why it was without her, didn't know why she couldn't be there to help — she didn't have free time. She was still trying to get the paperwork in order for the deal Varrick was trying to make with Aktuk Fisheries, so that they could finalize it as quickly as possible when he succeeded.

"Hey! Girl!" There was a snapping of fingers, and Zhu Li only looking up because she was not sure there was anyone else in the room.

Kaniq was the CEO of the fishery. He was, absolutely and utterly, insufferable. Presumably he had the capacity to be tolerable, since he the Aktuk heiress had married him. Zhu Li had seen no evidence of this theoretical charm.

"Can I help you?" she asked, because Varrick still wanted this deal to happen, and it was therefore necessary that she tolerate him.

"Yeah, you're Varrick's girl, right?" he asked.

"I am his assistant," she corrected stiffly.

"Whatever," he said, apparently considering the distinction trivial. "Deliver this for me," he said, and he flung an envelope at her. She caught it, the corner scraping against her hand and slicing shallowly through skin.

"… excuse me?" The location listed on the packet was on the other side of the city, outskirts that she had not visited.

"My girl's busy," he said, "you do it."

This was beyond the pale. "I am Varrick's assistant," she said, because it was not her job to run errands for every idiot that meandered through Varrick's local office.

Kaniq scoffed. "What, you want me to go get him so he can tell you to do it? You're an assistant, girly. Assist."

There was a heavy book on the desk that it would have been very easy to bludgeon him with. Varrick would be very unhappy with her if his plans fell through because she had aerated someone's skull.

The things she did for that man.

"This is outside of the purview of my job," she said, "and I am needed here."

Kaniq was getting irritated. "You're not needed anywhere," he said, "but if you think I won't tank this deal because you're being a snotty little brat, you're dead wrong. Think your boss will be happy to have you around, then?"

That book was looking impossibly tempting. But it was her own fault, she supposed, for being stubborn in the face of someone used to getting his way.

"There will be no need," she said. "I will take care of it."

☽❆☾

Varrick did not expect to find Kaniq waiting for him where Zhu Li was supposed to be. This was an unpleasant surprise on any number of levels. At least Kaniq hadn't expected him to have Sai with him, so he had intimidation going for him. A very large man with a face that looked like it had been sculpted out of raw steak could be a very useful accessory.

"Something you need?" Varrick asked, trying to act casual about his missing assistant.

"I've been thinking about it," Kaniq said, "and I think I'm ready to hammer out that deal we've been working on."

"I'm happy to hear that," Varrick said, "but your timing could use some work, since my assistant isn't here right now. You wouldn't happen to know where she went, would you?"

"Does it matter?" Kaniq asked, spreading his hands. "I don't think she's really necessary to the proceedings, do you?"

Zhu Li's absence was definitely deliberate. Kaniq was trying to do something clever, and it didn't suit him. Varrick feigned indignance. "You don't expect me to write my own contracts, do you?" he asked, holding a hand over his heart. "That would ruin my manicure, Zhu Li just did these." And she actually had, as a matter of fact, so it wasn't even a lie.

"Lucky for you," Kaniq said, "my hands aren't quite so delicate."

Kaniq thought Varrick was an idiot. This was all well and good, since being underestimated was the best way to come out on top. Kaniq's real miscalculation was in assuming Zhu Li's usual presence was for Varrick's protection.

As human accessories went, Zhu Li did not have the intimidation factor of someone like Sai, but she gave Varrick a certain je ne sais quoi. Established his place at the top of the pecking order without his having to do it himself. But he had, for many years before he had known her, been perfectly capable of doing that himself.

Varrick grinned. It was not a nice grin. "Kaniq," he said, "where is my assistant?"

"Don't tell me you're not willing to make this deal man-to-man," Kaniq said, apparently unaware that he was making things worse.

"Sai," Varrick said, turning to the man who had been waiting for Varrick to lose his patience, "he seems to be having trouble, but if I ruin my nails Zhu Li will never let me hear the end of it. Would you mind?"

"No problem, boss," Sai said, and this was where Kaniq seemed to realize that he had made an error.

"Hey, hey!" he said, but Sai picked him up by his shirt. It did wonders for Varrick's mood to see Kaniq's legs flailing above the ground.

"Kaniq," Varrick repeated, "where is my assistant?"

"She's just running an errand! Fuck's sake, let me down you crazy asshole."

If there had ever been a chance of getting the shipping contract for Aktuk, it was gone now. Varrick didn't like making deals with people who tried to screw him. Screwing people was his job. Metaphorically speaking. "Under whose authority?"

"What?"

"I didn't ask her to run an errand," he said, his tone dangerously pleasant, "so who the fuck is my assistant running an errand for?"

"She's a gofer," Kaniq said, "so she went."

"I'm sorry," Varrick said, "did I miss the part where I put a sign on her forehead saying free to good home? Did I miss the part where I said she was your Zhu Li? What the fuck made you think you could send my assistant to do your stupid Northy bullshit? Where. Is. She."

"She's fine," Kaniq said.

This was not informative. "Sai, do you remember that thing you did when we first met?"

"… you want me to tie you upside-down to the mast?"

Varrick reflexively slapped himself so hard in the forehead it would probably leave a mark. "Not me, you idiot — we're not even on a ship, for the love of — get creative, there's a window, use it."

It turned out that Kaniq became much more agreeable when he was hanging upside-down from a third story window. Clearly, not doing this in the beginning had been a mistake. "She's somewhere downtown," Kaniq said, suddenly very eager to be helpful. "Down downtown, it wasn't a real address, she's probably already figured it out — let me up."

Sai looked at Varrick. Varrick shrugged. "Snow's soft." Sai let him go. The screaming was entertaining, but Varrick had other things on his mind. He stuck his head out the window. "Get your own Zhu Li!" he yelled towards the street before turning on his heel.

Sai followed him as he stormed down the stairs. "You want me to go get her, boss?" Sai asked.

Varrick had made contingency plans, because there was always a high chance that Kaniq wasn't going to give him what he wanted. "How long would it take you to get some evidence together that he's been embezzling funds to run off with his secretary?" The secretary, that part was easy because it was true. The embezzling—

Aside from being a good captain and a terrifying fashion accessory, Sai was a forger of impressive skill. A man of hidden depths.

"Couple of days," said Sai.

"Then get on that," Varrick said. "I can retrieve my own assistant." He glowered when he noticed the look on Sai's face. "What?"

"You know," Sai said, "you can just bring her to the meeting next time. We already know you've gone soft."

"I'll show you soft — wow, no, that is not the threat I meant to make, I'm not showing you anything." Varrick huffed. "Here, let's try this: speaking of when we met, remember what happened to the rest of the crew?"

"You can just tell me to shut up, you know. You're my boss."

"Shut up, Sai."

"Yes, boss."

☽❆☾

Zhu Li probably would have been fine if she'd figured it out just a little sooner. She'd been sent on a fool's errand, and she was definitely going to bludgeon Kaniq with something heavy. Most of the streets in the North were too narrow for satomobiles, designed as thoroughfares for walking, slender alleys between houses of ice. The walk had actually been quite pleasant, for the first half-hour or so. Sort of refreshing, and at least the air was clear and the sun was out. Then her toes and the tips of her fingers had started to hurt.

She had checked and double-checked and triple-checked the street that ought to have had the address on it. Her glasses kept fogging up, and at first she had blamed that for her trouble. But eventually it had been obvious that something was wrong, and so she had given in and opened the envelope.

There was nothing in it. Not even a note to gloat about how she'd wasted her time.

She'd already been half-numb by then, and that was the real issue. Sooner, and she could have walked back. Maybe not all the way back to the office, maybe not all the way back to the hotel, but somewhere to get warm enough to make it the rest of the way.

Someone else might have thought to knock on the door of someone's house. The kindness of strangers was not something that occurred to her as an option.

She was only barely still walking when something touched her, and unable to see through the fog in her glasses, she squeaked in alarm. Possibly her vocal cords had frozen. The response was a lot of familiar obscenities.

"Sir-r-r-r?" Her teeth kept coming together and interrupting her words, and it sounded very silly.

"Zhu Li," he said, not sounding particularly amused, "you are an idiot." She felt that this was probably an accurate assessment of the situation. "This is going to take forever, I'm just going to carry you. Don't hit me or we're both going to fall down."

She didn't know what it said about them that he assumed she would punch him for trying to carry her. If anything, she was extremely concerned about him hurting himself if he tried. It came as some surprise when he picked her up with no apparent trouble at all.

"Sweet spirits, how long have you been out here? Are you made of snow?"

"Sor-r-r-ry sir-r-r-r," she said, and he snorted.

"Stop trying to talk before your teeth fall out," he said. "I'm not paying for dentures. You chatter your teeth out of your head and that's it. You're my assistant, Gummy. Don't think I won't start calling you Gummy."

No wonder he'd asked her not to hit him. She didn't, but she did prod her elbow gently into his sternum.

"No, you shut up," he said. "I'm your boss, I say what I want." Only the slightest amount of warmth was escaping from his coat, but it was still warmer than anything else. "I need to yell at you, anyway, for being dumb. Why did you come wandering around out here for Kaniq? He's not paying you. I'm paying you. And you know what I'm not paying you to do, is freeze to death. And now I've had to come all the way out here to get you after Kaniq fell out that window accidentally somehow—"

"What!"

"They're a very clumsy people, Northerners. Anyway, stop taking orders from assholes." The freezing temperatures had been hell on her sinuses, and so her derisive snort was much louder and more dramatic than she had intended. "… who aren't me." They reached a main thoroughfare, so he was finally able to set her down in the back of his car. He had, with surprising foresight, brought blankets. He did a very poor job of wrapping them around her, and the end result made her feel like she'd been caught in an exploding linen closet.

"I didn't want to interfere with your deal, sir," she said, because her teeth were slightly more willing to stay at a distance for extended periods.

"So try not to insult his mother or break his nose," Varrick said, faintly baffled, rubbing gloved hands over her blanketed arms. "Don't start taking orders. If he wants a Zhu Li he can get his own." She wondered if he knew that he'd said her name instead of 'assistant'. Maybe he considered them synonyms. He took her hands and rubbed those, and she tried not to enjoy it. "This whole thing has been hell on my cuticles, Zhu Li," he said, "and if you think a little frostbite is going to get you out of fixing them, you've got another thing coming."

She almost laughed, but the freezing air had not agreed with her lungs. It immediately turned into a racking cough, and she curled into herself to try to bury the mortifying show of weakness in blankets.

Varrick rubbed her back as she struggled for air. "You see what happens when you don't take me seriously?" he scolded, and that almost made her laugh again.

"Sorry, sir," she said.

"I ought to revoke your going outside privileges for this."

"And when you go outside, sir?"

"Well obviously it doesn't count if I'm there." He pulled the blankets higher around her from where they had fallen, pulled one completely over her head with absolutely no regard for any desire on her part to see things. "Now think warm thoughts and hope the spirits like us, because I haven't had to drive one of these things myself in years and I almost drove into the palace three times on the way here. And that was on purpose, who knows what I'll do by accident!"

On second thought, maybe it would be better to stay in the dark for this trip.

CHAPTER TEN

Cultural Divides

Zhu Li still couldn't bring herself to wear her hair down. It would be warmer, she was sure. As well as other benefits. But the best she could manage was to keep a few strands loose at her temples. It was similar, she liked to think. Maybe it looked better. She never asked.

She still wasn't used to the North. Nothing like Ba Sing Se, nothing like Republic City. Cold and white, everything made of ice and snow. It was very unsettling, being inside a building made entirely out of ice. Her clothes were heavier now, but she still seemed to spend half her time trying to keep warm.

It was also very… rigid. There were rules she didn't understand in play, and Varrick didn't explain them to her. She kept quiet and she kept to herself, because that was easier than trying to learn why everyone looked at her the way that they did.

Varrick didn't like it here, either. She didn't know if that was because the North was so different from the South, or so similar. She thought it was probably the latter. There didn't seem to be a lot of poor seal hunters in the North. His interactions with the local elite had gotten no friendlier since throwing Kaniq out the window. She thought he might throw most people here out of a window, if they gave him the chance. At least now potential partners thought twice before trying to be clever.

Her relationship with Varrick was, and always had been, that he used her. There were other ways of putting it, but it was what he was. At home she was a nanny, in the workshop she was a tool, and in public she was a prop.

She'd spent a lot of time as a prop since their arrival in the Northern Water Tribe. As it was her least favorite part of her job, she thought it might be coloring her views of the city. It might not have even been a conscious thing for him, using her as a way to establish dominance. But it was what he did, what she let him do, what he'd been doing a lot of; it was why she was so certain he was uncomfortable here. He wanted to be very sure that everyone knew he was top polar bear dog, and that meant that he wasn't sure.

Varrick was having dinner with Nuniq now, which left Zhu Li's evening free for work. A waterbender, but more importantly she was one of the most beautiful women in the North. She was a status symbol, and Varrick showed her around town like a trophy. In a way, she was being used by him, too.

… also in other ways. Zhu Li preferred not to think about those.

Nuniq and Zhu Li didn't like each other, which was why Zhu Li hadn't accompanied him to dinner. Some of his girlfriends didn't mind her presence, and he always brought her along when that was the case, retrieving flowers and arranging romantic gestures. Zhu Li had become very good at being a good boyfriend on his behalf.

She was using her free time to stand on an overlook that let her see the progress on Varrick's new yacht. Things were coming along nicely now that they'd finalized the plan. Varrick had spent a considerable amount of time adding and removing rooms as he adopted and abandoned hobbies, and as Zhu Li pointed out that there were limits to the number of hot tubs needed on a single boat.

Their sources had brought news of potential glassbenders in the Fire Nation. Work on some of their projects had stagnated while they tried to find someone capable of making lenses of the high quality necessary to complete it. Glassbenders were considered to be little more than a legend, but also the only ones capable of making the kinds of glass that they would need. Rumors were mixed as to whether they were earth or firebenders who did it. She had her doubts, but it couldn't hurt to follow the lead.

"Not with Mr. Blackstone today?"

Zhu Li started, looked up from her notebook and adjusted her glasses, surprised to find the voice coming from the Chief of the Northern Water Tribe. She couldn't imagine what he was doing here. Was he hoping to find Varrick?

She thought that referring to him as Blackstone might have been an insult, somehow. She didn't know enough to be sure, but it made her dislike him. "Not today, sir," she said, because it was still important to be respectful to him. Varrick had a lot of money riding on his trade routes between the North and South, and she wouldn't endanger that for an irrational distaste. Kaniq had been one thing, but Unalaq was another.

"Busy with Nuniq?" he asked, and it sounded like he was trying to be sympathetic. She didn't know why.

"Yes, sir," she said, letting her eyes drift back to her notebook, trying to hint that she had things she needed to be doing. Varrick was the one who did the talking, and Zhu Li preferred it that way. Unalaq was ignoring the unspoken arrangement, another point against him in her mind.

"Tell me, Zhu Li," he said, standing beside her uninvited, "in your travels with Varrick, what have you learned of the spirit world?"

He was fishing for information, and she didn't know which direction to steer him in without knowing the why, so she'd give him nothing if she could help it. "Varrick Global Industries is more focused on material matters," she said diplomatically. She couldn't read the expression on his face, couldn't tell if he looked displeased or smug or if she just always thought he looked both.

"Well," he said with some disdain, looking to where the yacht was being built in his harbor, "Mr. Blackstone is from the South." She wanted to push him over the ledge. It was no wonder Varrick had developed his recent appreciation for defenestration. "You do a lot for him, don't you Zhu Li?"

"I am his assistant," she said, which was not technically agreeing or disagreeing.

"That's a lot of power," he said. "With all of his…extracurricular… concerns. I bet you're practically running the company yourself."

"I wouldn't say that," she murmured cautiously, because this felt suspiciously like getting in over her head. Not in the fun way that she got in over her head with Varrick, either. This seemed like the envelope incident all over again, a Northerner underestimating Varrick and overestimating her as a result. She knew better now than to think that Varrick would want her to let them get away with it. But she wanted to understand what he wanted.

"He doesn't seem to appreciate all the work that you do for him," he said, setting a hand on her shoulder that she resisted the urge to shrug away. "Southerners have always had trouble with… priorities. You aren't Water Tribe, but you seem like a woman with her priorities in order."

"Thank you, sir." It felt like a backhanded compliment. She was starting to wonder if she would ever meet a Northerner that she did not find vile.

"Power, knowledge — someone who really wants those things needs to be able to look beyond the material plane. I know you aren't a bender, but with the knowledge you've gained working with—"

"Zhu Li!" She had never in all her life been so happy to hear Varrick yelling at her. "What the hell are you doing up there, I need you down here!" He was down on the street, Nuniq nowhere to be seen, his arms akimbo in questioning disbelief.

"Sorry," she said quickly to Unalaq, not sorry at all as she twirled away from him, "I have to go." She ducked her head as she went back into the overlook tower, down the spiral staircase with such haste that it was miraculous that she didn't slip and fall. At the foot of the stairs Varrick was already there, and he grabbed her by the wrist to yank her out the door, into a secluded area where there was little chance of Unalaq interrupting. She found herself between Varrick and a wall of ice, though he kept a decent distance.

"You stay away from him," he said, a warning finger in her face, and it was rare for him to be this quiet or this serious. She wasn't sure that she'd ever seen him be so much of both at once, not ever.

"Sir?" She held her notebook closer against her chest, shrinking in on herself involuntarily.

"You stay far away from him, and his weird kids, and his weird servants. You even see them on the same street, you turn around and you go a different way, is that clear?"

"Yes, sir," she said, unsteady; she didn't know that she'd ever seen him so heated. She'd had no inkling that he felt so strongly about the chief in particular.

Varrick leaned back, looked around them with a scowl on his face to make sure they were still alone. "Did you tell him anything?"

"No, I—"

"What did he want?" His face was too close to hers, eyes intense and boring holes into hers.

"I'm not sure," she said, back pressed anxiously to the ice. "Something about spirits, I think."

"Dammit," he hissed between his teeth, hitting the wall beside her head, and she flinched before he stepped back, turned his back on her and scratched at his jaw. He spun back around, but stayed a few feet away from her, jabbing a finger toward her again. "I knew it," he snarled. He adjusted his accusatory finger to point somewhere to his far right, presumably intended to be toward Unalaq. "That guy," he said, taking a step closer to her, "is gonna start some shit." His finger moved in front of his face, and he bit down on his knuckle. "I don't know what," he said, "but it's gonna be some shit." He rocked back on his heels, bounced on his toes. "It never fails," he said, but he was just talking to himself now, shaking his head. "Northern Water Tribe, those uppity — those backward — that smug—"

"Why did he call you Mr. Blackstone?" she asked before she could stop herself, all in one breathless exhalation.

Varrick froze, then threw up his hands, rolled his eyes. "Because he thinks it's an insult," he muttered. "Blackstone was my mother's name." His eyes narrowed at Zhu Li, and she realized she was shivering. He put his hands on her shoulders to pull her away from the ice wall, and he was probably correct in deducing it as the source of her heat retention problems. "I keep telling you, Zhu Li, you need to get better clothes," he scolded. "How's it going to look if my assistant freezes to death?"

"Sorry, sir." She was pleased despite his tone, because it almost sounded like he was worried about her. He shrugged out of his coat, an opulent thing made of fur dyed blue, and threw it over her shoulders with a look of faint disgust. It felt like wearing a blanket. A blanket that weighed as much as she did.

"If you ruin this," he warned as he fastened it around her neck, "it's coming out of your pay." He stepped back, threw up his hands again and made a sound of displeasure as he gestured around her ankles. "Look at that, it's already dragging. Why are you so short?"

"Sorry, sir," she said again, attempting to gather some of the coat in her arms and hold it higher. It felt like being hugged by a polar bear, if the bear was very friendly. It was still radiating Varrick's body heat, and it smelled like incense and tallow candles.

"You know what," he said, "I don't want you near the Palace anymore. From now on you go from the hotel to the yacht and back again, nowhere else. Only places where the guards can keep an eye on you." He kept making rules like that lately. She didn't know how to feel about it. It felt like being an inconvenience.

"We don't have guards," she pointed out, rather than object outright.

Varrick handwaved this as he guided her back toward the street, her steps inconsistent because she was trying to keep his coat off the ground. "Some of those guys down at the docks are beefy," he said, "we'll just get one of them. Like this guy! Hey, you!" A construction worker they'd brought with them from Ba Sing Se stopped in his tracks, looked around before pointing to himself in confusion. "Yeah, you! Get over here."

"Uh… it's my day off…?" he began, crossing the street, and Varrick snorted.

"I don't pay you to have days off!"

This did not make the man less confused. "Uh. Well,no, but that's—"

"Stop talking, Rain."

"My name's Ren—"

"What did I just say?" If men had tails, this one's would be between his legs. Which was fair. It wasn't as if there was anything stopping Varrick from abandoning the man in the Northern Water Tribe, far away from anything he'd ever known, with his only skills being a willingness to work for low pay and a total lack of ambition. "You know Zhu Li, right?" Varrick pointed, and Ren's fell on her, currently engulfed in Varrick's coat.

"Uh. I mean, we haven't, uh, met, but I know… of… her?" Ren had eyebrows proportional to his arms, and his eyes were a bit vacant, and overall Zhu Li felt bad for him as he awkwardly tried to do something like bowing. He seemed to have seriously misjudged her position in the company hierarchy. Why were so many men doing that, lately?

"What the hell do you think you're doing, Ron?" Varrick asked, looking genuinely baffled.

Ren stopped, and slowly stood back upright. "… showing respect to my betters?"

Zhu Li pulled the coat up over the lower half of her face so Ren wouldn't see her trying not to laugh. Varrick's face was going to collapse in on itself if he got any more appalled. "Don't do it for Zhu Li," he said, "you're gonna give her ideas." Now she was glad that Varrick couldn't see her face. "Rod, you're getting reassigned. Escort Zhu Li back to the hotel, in the morning you're going to escort her to the yacht. You're an escort now." He paused, and Zhu Li retreated so far into his coat that she resembled ambulatory laundry, biting her lip to keep from snickering. Varrick narrowed his eyes at the shadow where her face was hiding. "A. Hired esc… guard. Hired guard, who escorts." He pushed Zhu Li in the direction of their hotel, then pointed to indicate that Ren should follow. "Go, get out of here before Nuniq figures out I'm not in the bathroom."

Ren leaned toward her conspiratorially as they walked. "Did I just get promoted?"

Even the perception of a victory was better than nothing. She'd let him have it. "Yes." Ren pumped his fist victoriously and gave her a friendly pat on the back.

"Don't touch my coat!" came a shout from down the road, and Ren recoiled in such horror that Zhu Li wasn't sure he was going to be able to protect her from anything. It was the thought that counted, anyway.

She didn't think she liked the Northern Water Tribe.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Tactical Retreat

The yacht was finally finished. They could finally — finally — get the hell off this stupid continent.

As soon as Iknik got his arm out from underneath the woman sleeping next to him.

He hadn't told Nuniq that she'd be coming with him, per se. It was possible that it had been implied. Heavily implied. He had absolutely no intention of ever seeing her again, because she was clingier than a kelp forest and she liked to buy things on his tab instead of letting him feel magnanimous by buying her gifts.

They'd been drinking rather heavily the night before. His brain felt like it was trying to burst out through his eye sockets. She was probably going to be asleep for a while more. But every time he tried to pull his arm out from under her, she started to stir, and letting her wake up before he'd managed to escape was a recipe for disaster.

He rolled as close to the edge of the bed as he could manage with his arm still trapped, and craned his neck toward the door. "Zhu Li," he hissed, an urgent whisper through his teeth. "Zhu Li!" Nuniq released a tiny groan beside him, and he huffed through his nose. It seemed to take forever before Zhu Li cracked the door open and peered inside. Of course she was already dressed and ready to go. Of course she was.

He was going to have to come up with more things for her to do in the mornings so she could stop making him look bad in front of himself.

"Zhu Li," he whispered, "help." He jerked his head toward Nuniq, the only thing visible from the door the fall of her hair and the bare skin of her back. And his arm. Trapped beneath her.

Zhu Li looked at Varrick. She looked at Nuniq. Her eyes narrowed. She looked back at Varrick, impassive.

"Don't you dare," he rasped, eyes widening, hints of panic in his voice and his face because he could tell, he could tell. "Zhu Li — Zhu Li don't you dare, don't you abandon me Zhu Li—"

She had already closed the door.

"I will fire you, you get back here this instant you—" Nuniq wriggled into a more comfortable position on his arm, and he froze, fell silent. He would never forgive her. He would never forgive Zhu Li for abandoning him in his time of need. She had left him when he needed her most, she had betrayed his trust, there was no possible way that he could ever forgive her for this heinous crime. When he finished gnawing his arm off so that he could escape, he was going to give her hell.

Another eon passed before the door slowly opened again. Zhu Li slid silent as a shadow into the room, and this time she was carrying a stick. A stick with a furred scarf wrapped around it. He stared at her. She came nearer to him, and — very, very slowly — began to slide the stick along his arm and underneath his girlfriend, stopping every time Nuniq so much as breathed differently. When she finally had it far enough to lever her upward the tiniest amount, Varrick slid out from underneath Nuniq and rolled out of the bed to the floor, barely avoiding tangling his legs in the blankets. Zhu Li immediately dropped her impromptu intimacy crowbar and joined him in a crouch beside the bed, hiding beneath Nuniq's waking eyeline.

Their foreheads nearly touched so that he could speak under his breath, Zhu Li looking entirely too intense under the circumstances. "Okay," he said, "now we enter phase two: finding my pants."

Zhu Li's eyes went wide. She looked, probably reflexively, downward. So did Varrick, even though he knew exactly what he was going to see. They both looked back up. They stared at each other. Zhu Li's face turned a fascinating shade of red.

They broke apart simultaneously to search the floor for something resembling his clothing. He grabbed things and tossed them aside just as quickly: probably not his slinky red slip, probably not his weird corsety thingy, he didn't know what that was but it looked like a torture device and he would never own anything with that many straps. "Is everything ready to go?"

"Everything but you, sir." Zhu Li threw something resembling pants in his direction, and he had to assume that it was an accident that it hit him in the face. He pulled it off his head in time to see Zhu Li bent over on her knees, stretching to reach further under the bed, which was an interesting position for a number of reasons that weren't going to make it any easier to get his pants on.

"That had better not be sass, Zhu Li." He got the pants up to his waist, then looked down at himself. "These are not my pants." Zhu Li looked up from the boots and coat she'd managed to pull out from under the bed, to the sealskin leggings that only barely fit him. They were meant to be worn underneath dresses with slit skirts. On the bed, Nuniq made a vaguely questioning sound.

"They are now, sir," said Zhu Li, throwing the coat over him without bothering to look for his shirt, grabbing his wrist to pull him out of the room. He managed to get his boots pulled on in the elevator, with Zhu Li looking very pointedly toward the ceiling. His coat covered most of the pants problem, but it turned out the North Pole was cold. Cold enough to make pole a bit of a misnomer, it seemed to him.

"Wow!" He nearly doubled over when they made it out to the street and the air of the outside hit him. "That is brisk!"

This definitely necessary observation was met with a yell from a window above. "Varrick!"

So, Nuniq was awake.

He yelped as Zhu Li, with no warning at all, picked him up and dropped him into a waiting car. She didn't have the time, or maybe the strength, to do it in a way that left him right-side up. As quickly as he'd realized that he was stuck upside-down in the passenger seat, he felt Zhu Li leap over him into the driver's side to start the car.

"Zhu Li!" he yelled over the roar of the engine, the skid of the tires. "We have talked about this!"

"Extenuating circumstances, sir!" she shouted back, and a rapid turned combined with his attempts to free himself from the wheel well knocked him into the backseat. He turned around, wind whipping his yet-unbrushed hair around his face, and beheld the most beautiful woman in the Northern Water Tribe chasing them half-naked on a pedestal of ice.

He may have had a few regrets about his life choices.

"How soon is the yacht ready to set sail?" he asked, before Zhu Li swerved to miss ice shards sent their way.

"The engine's already running, sir," she called over her shoulder.

She'd known this would happen. That was the only explanation. She'd known this was going to happen and yet she had done nothing to prevent it. Admittedly, the only way to prevent it was to get him to go to bed alone the night before. She was only one woman, and Nuniq had been wearing that dress. "Who's driving the boat?"

"Ren," she said, and the face he made was interrupted by a hasty turn knocking his head into the back of her chair. He leaned between the front seats so that he could hear her better.

"Does he know how to do that?"

"I showed him, sir."

Varrick's eyes narrowed suspiciously even as Zhu Li took a hairpin turn into an alley that would barely accommodate their vehicle, through a series of side streets that might give them a slight lead. "I'm not sure Ilike this Runt character."

"What?" She looked away from the road for a split second to look at him in disbelief. "Why not?"

"I don't like the way he's always hanging around you."

"Sir, you pay him to hang around me," she pointed out as the yacht came into view, a gleaming vision in white and blue marred only by the crude wooden ramp leading onto it.

"Well I'm going to be putting a stop to that, I can tell you that much right now." It was a miracle that the car didn't fall into the sea as it made its bumpy way up the flimsy plywood, only barely making it over the ramp as the yacht had already begun to move. The engines weren't supposed to be turned to full speed this close to the docks, so those were slightly destroyed in the process, but it was a small price to pay. Unalaq could send him the bill.

It was enough to get them a decent lead over Nuniq. She had a considerable wake following behind her, but she couldn't go faster than they could, and he was pretty sure she'd get tired soon enough. If she was feeling anything like he was, her head was killing her. He looked up to the helm, and Ren waved cheerfully at them from behind the wheel.

Iknik jabbed a finger in his direction. "I've got my eye on you!" he shouted, which possibly would not penetrate the glass. To emphasize the point, he pointed two fingers at his eyes, and then the same at Ren. Ren dropped his hand, visibly confused and alarmed. Iknik collapsed then, sprawled over the backseat with a groan. "How does anyone wear these?" he asked the sky. "Zhu Li, I'm not sure I can have kids anymore."

He fell onto the floor of the back of the car in surprise as the driver's door slammed unexpectedly. "I'm sure that won't stop you from trying, sir."

"Now what in the hell is that supposed to mean?" he said as he scrambled back up, draping himself over the side of the car as Zhu Li continued to walk away. He pointed after her, even though she couldn't see it. "That was definitely sass, young lady!" he called after her.

"I need to man the helm, sir," she called back, before disappearing into the ship.

☽❆☾

Iknik joined Zhu Li after he had managed to locate his biggest, fluffiest, and roomiest robe, as well as three pitchers filled with water. His head felt slightly better.

"So it looks like Nuniq gave up," he said, hitting Zhu Li a little too hard between the shoulderblades. Friendly, and all.

"Yes, sir." Zhu Li was focused firmly on navigation.

"What happened to the, ah—"

"Ren had to get some sleep," she answered without waiting for him to finish the question.

"… Zhu Li, you seem displeased for some reason." Usually when Zhu Li had feelings he just ignored them until they went away. Maybe her driving had done something to his brain.

"Not at all, sir," she said, which was clearly a lie.

He narrowed his eyes, then checked that they were still the only ones in the room. Then he stood behind her so he could rest his chin on her shoulder, look out at the ocean ahead of them and the scribbling she was doing on her ever-present notepad. "Make a note, Zhu Li," he said. "Next time we leave a city, I shouldn't invite my girlfriend over the night before." She scribbled something in a shorthand of her own on the paper without looking, and he squinted at it. "Hey!" he protested, standing back upright, "that is not a nice thing to call… anyone. Bad Zhu Li." If he was trying to get back into her good graces, scolding her like a misbehaving lemur probably wasn't the best way to do it.

"Sorry, sir," she said, not sounding very sorry at all. "I must have misspelled her name."

"And pretty badly, too," he agreed, "since none of those letters are anywhere in there. You can be a real prude sometimes, Zhu Li." She rolled her eyes instead of responding, and he crossed his arms over his chest to warm his hands and look stern.

He wasn't convinced it was working, because he still hadn't fixed his hair or his moustache. Or shaved.

"Love is a beautiful thing, Zhu Li."

At that she snorted before she could restrain herself. "And what love was that, sir?"

She may have had a point. "Maybe not love, exactly," he conceded, "but basically the same thing." He thought of Ren, who he'd been so irritated about, and wondered if perhaps he ought to have been using him to distract Zhu Li from his indiscretions. Logically speaking, she might get less irritated with him if she had a man around to cheer her up. It was one thing when he was trying to irritate her, and another when it happened by accident. And with Ren — hell. If things got too distracting he could pay the guy to go away. "You should try it sometime," he suggested, testing the waters.

This was a grave miscalculation.

Slowly, a single eyebrow began to arch. Out the corner of her eye, her gaze met his. And then, still not turning her head, her eye traveled down the length of him, from his unkempt moustache to his slippered feet. Grey eyes flicked back to his face briefly before returned to the view, and she had not moved a single muscle in her neck the entire time.

"No thank you, sir."

He held up a hand. He opened his mouth, then closed it again. "That is not what I meant." Zhu Li unfolded a map wordlessly. "Zhu Li, that is not what I meant. You know that's not what I meant, because if it was, you would have—"

"If you meant what, sir?" she asked, feigning ignorance, interrupting him before he could say something he would really regret. He wondered if she'd known what he was about to say, and stopped him deliberately.

He could not win this. He was tired. He was hungover. Zhu Li had probably spent all morning waiting for him to wake up and thinking of clever ways to make fun of him. Her victory would be short-lived, because Varrick always had the upper hand. Pants or no pants. "Zhu Li," he said, spinning around, "I'm going to take a nap. Wake me up in four hours, the light should be good then and I need you to do something about my toenails."

He could literally hear her shudder as he walked away.

For good measure, he stuck out his arm to knock a pile of maps onto the floor before he went out the door. "And clean that up!"

Alone at the helm, Zhu Li sighed. "Yes, sir."

CHAPTER TWELVE

Paper Moon

It was a little nowhere island where they found the 'glassbenders'. The waters wouldn't accommodate the yacht, so they had to take a little jet boat instead, just Varrick and Zhu Li. She'd gotten behind the wheel out of habit, but in short order Varrick had yanked her out of the way so he could drive.

"You're doing it wrong," he huffed, although she didn't see how, since they hadn't crashed yet. Watching him drive anything made her anxious in ways that were mostly irrational.

"Sir, are you sure—"

"You don't get to be a shipping magnate without knowing how to steer a boat, Zhu Li." He sounded legitimately offended. She'd heard ten different stories about how he'd built up his empire from a single canoe, but he never actually talked about the practicalities of it. Practicalities were Zhu Li's thing. He really was better than her at it, she realized, the ride smoother despite the choppy waters. She watched the wind ruin his carefully crafted hairstyle, and wondered how he'd done it. She knew how he'd do it now, with her, but what had he been like then?

He must have been young. Had he still been boisterous? Too clever for his own good? How early had he learned the value in not letting people know how clever he was? She knew him so well, but she still knew so little. She wouldn't ask. She couldn't. Her value was in all the questions she never asked, the things she didn't need to be told and the things she didn't ask for.

He was wearing red, because he liked matching his clothes to his location. Zhu Li preferred neutral colors, because it made it easier to laundry. Every once in a while he would insist she match herself to him, like an accessory, requiring she find one of the three outfits she owned in colors. She didn't have a lot of fashion opinions, but she liked him best in blue. It matched his eyes. Red made him look… ominous.

They were assuming this was the right house because it was made, top to bottom, out of glass. Clear glass, colored glass, faceted glass spun into delicate shapes. It made it look as if the whole place had been made out of light. Docking the boat near shore, Zhu Li jumped out, water up to her knees. Varrick hesitated. He looked down at his shoes, then out at the water. With a sigh, Zhu Li turned around so that her back was to boat. It took Varrick no time at all to place his hands on her shoulders, nearly knocking her over with the weight of him as he wrapped his legs around her waist.

Varrick was a very warm person. A very warm, very heavy person. His arms wrapped around her so that his hands rested on opposite shoulders, his chin on the top of her head. Water sloshed up to her thighs as she started to trudge toward the beach. "Hurry it up, Zhu Li, we don't have all day!" His voice resonated from his ribcage through her back, and she rolled her eyes but said nothing.

There was a time when she wouldn't have even done that. She was becoming downright expressive.

She set him down in the sand, and he disentangled his limbs from her, brushing himself off as his clothing was at risk from prolonged contact with her.

"Can I help you folks?" called a voice, and Varrick clapped his hands together with his most sparkling smile.

"Yes! We're looking for the owners of this…" He gestured with both hands to the island in general. "… thing."

"Then I guess you're looking for us," said the man, white in his hair and his clothes all in black. Maybe Varrick would look good in black. "Me and my wife, that is," he clarified. He looked at Zhu Li, with her skirt half-soaked with saltwater. "Did you need a towel?"

"She's fine," Varrick said on her behalf even as she opened her mouth to say something. "Did you build this place?"

"My wife and I, yeah," he said, though he didn't seem convinced that Zhu Li was fine. "You two benders?"

Varrick held out a hand, and the man took it with some reluctance. "Varrick, head of Varrick Global Industries, entrepreneur and inventor."

"Binh Phanh," he introduced in turn, before tilting his head toward Zhu Li. "Who's she?"

Varrick seemed surprised that he'd ask. "That's my assistant, Zhu Li." She bowed, and he nodded thoughtfully.

"Mostly we get benders around here, nowadays. Think we can teach 'em to bend glass."

"Can you not?" Varrick asked, surprised, gesturing toward a delicate glass buttress.

Binh laughed. "We're not benders," he said, "we're just good at what we do." He smiled, and she wondered what Varrick would look like when he got that old. "Did you two want to come in, maybe discuss what exactly the head of Varrick Global Industries is doing here?"

☽❆☾

"Zhu Li, show them the thing."

She pulled out the schematics of the lenses they were going to need and slid them across the table to Binh and Mai. She was standing behind Varrick's chair, and there was an empty seat next to him where they had clearly expected her to sit. Their house had a faint smell reminiscent of a forge that didn't seem to suit the way it was bathed in light. It wasn't surprising that people assumed they were possessed of powers, when they made things like this. She had yet to see a single piece of glass with a flaw.

Mai held up a viewing glass to one eye, held up the schematics and squinted at them. Binh looked over her shoulder. "Seems a bit finicky," she said finally, "but it's doable." She set them down, looking at Varrick. "Mind telling me what it's for? This one looks a little like a camera lens, but this…"

"Trade secret," Varrick said with a wink, and when Binh narrowed his eyes he smiled at him.

"We won't be able to start this today," Mai decided, "but come back in a week and I should have something for you. Assuming you can pay, that is."

"Ab-so-lutely I can," Varrick said. "You can hammer out the details with Zhu Li here." Accordingly, she rearranged the notebooks in her hand so that she could get her ledger and write up a preliminary invoice.

"I figured, with a boat like that," Binh said, tilting his head toward where the yacht was visible through the glass walls.

"I would have killed to have something like that back when we were traveling around," Mai said to her husband, and he smiled, setting a hand on her shoulder. They looked at each other like they'd never been more in love, and Zhu Li looked away to her ledger again.

"That's adorable," exclaimed Varrick, and she couldn't tell if he was serious. He did seem to appreciate romance when it happened to other people, but he might have found it more amusing than sweet.

"There is nothing more romantic," Binh agreed, "than seeing the world with the person you love."

"Not that you two are…" Mai added, trailing off meaningfully. Varrick and Zhu Li shook their heads in unison. Zhu Li tore off the page and handed it to Binh, who in turn showed it to Mai. She nodded her approval, and so did he; Zhu Li gave a small bow to acknowledge their agreement.

"As long as you're here," said Binh, "did you want to have a drink? We don't get company very often, and disappointed earthbenders don't make for very good company."

"He doesn't drink," said Zhu Li before Varrick could open his mouth.

"What she means is," he corrected smoothly, "I don't usually drink. But this is a special occasion, isn't that right, Zhu Li?" He gave her a friendly whack on the shoulder that was a little harder than necessary.

☽❆☾

Small talk. Endless, interminable small talk. Zhu Li could not do small talk, but Varrick was in his element. He told the story of when they'd met, but this time it involved a dragon. The way he told it also seemed to involve Zhu Li fainting a lot. Binh and Mai were pleasantly impressed, and told stories of their nieces and nephews, of the places they'd seen when they were young and newly wed.

She watched his alcohol intake like an eagle hawk. She was absolutely prepared to drag him out if he tried to have more than his hard limit, and the thought of having to do so put her nerves on edge.

They had both agreed without talking about it to pretend it had never happened, that last time. But she remembered. She wasn't letting him get that drunk again, not while she was around.

She didn't think her heart could take it.

"What about your family, Zhu Li?" asked Mai, and she started. She'd lost the thread of the conversation long ago, and hadn't been prepared to have it directed at her.

"I don't have any," she said without thinking, and realized this may have been a mistake when their faces fell.

"I'm so sorry," said Mai, holding a hand over her heart.

Binh patted his wife on the back. "Your parents aren't…?"

"I, uh." Her eyes darted to Varrick, but he was pretending to be engrossed in his drink. Pretending, because she could tell when he was listening intently, something about the corners of his eyes. Usually he looked like that when he was eavesdropping, not participating in a conversation. She didn't know what to make of that. "I don't really know?"

"Mr. and Mrs. Moon don't keep in touch?" Varrick pressed, and that he was feigning disinterest worried her more than the alternative. He did not ask Zhu Li questions for the sake of asking them.

"It's not, uh." Everyone was looking at her, her face felt hot, this was a nightmare. "Moon isn't a family name," she explained to the couple instead of Varrick. "It, uh. It means I was born in the winter of the year of the Hare. In Ba Sing Se, that's… what it means."

"I didn't mean to put you on the spot," Mai apologized again, looking genuinely beside herself.

"No, no! It's fine, really. I'm… very happy. Did I hear you say something about a spider island?" They leapt on the change of subject happily, but Zhu Li wasn't really listening. Varrick looked very involved in their story, and he'd lost the thoughtful expression. She realized she'd lost track of how much he'd had to drink, distracted by the conversation.

She hated small talk.

☽❆☾

The sun was setting by the time they got in their boat to return to the yacht. It painted the sky in pink and gray, and her skirt was soaked again. Varrick's breath smelled like whiskey. "Shall I drive this time, sir?" she suggested, though he was already at the wheel.

He snorted. "I'm not drunk," he said. "And anyway, I can drive this thing better drunk than you can sober."

"Yes, sir." She listened to the water lapping against the lacquer of the boat, the hum of the engine on its lowest setting. She was going to have to take his word for it that he wasn't too drunk. She wrapped her arms around her waist, the twilight bringing a chill with it.

"You never told me that," he said eventually, breaking the silence.

"Sir?"

"Your name," he said. "You never told me that was what it meant."

He'd never asked. Not about her name, not about her family. Not even about friends. They'd lived in the same hotel suite in Ba Sing Se for three years, and she'd never visited anyone or been visited by anyone else. Maybe he'd just thought it was normal, that she had time for no one but him. "I thought you knew, sir."

"I didn't." She didn't know what to say to that, so she said nothing. "Does that mean your birthday's coming up?"

They'd never celebrated her birthday. Not Varrick, but not anyone else, either. Maybe he would have, if she'd brought it up. It had never occurred to her to do so. "I don't actually know, sir."

He was silent again for a long time, until their jet boat pulled up beside the yacht. He was looking out at the ocean, at the moon's reflection on the water. "You know, you can be a real bummer sometimes, Zhu Li."

"Sorry, sir."

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Gifted

Varrick had questionable ideas about personal space. The only reason he didn't usually come into her room while she was in bed was that he was normally asleep at all the times it would be possible.

"Zhu Li!"

She was upright in bed immediately, her body reacting on instinct before the rest of her could follow, holding an imaginary pen in her hands. As her brain caught up, her eyes fell on the blur that she assumed was Varrick. "Sir, what's—?"

"What are you wearing?" he interrupted to ask, which at least meant the yacht probably wasn't on fire. She looked down at herself.

"… a nightgown?" Having seen what he looked like when he'd just woken up, she felt like he didn't have much room to judge. Not that hypocrisy had ever stopped him before. Hypocrisy was his bread and butter.

"It's hideous," he said, which seemed a bit unfair. It wasn't supposed to be cute, it was supposed to be comfortable, which the heavy flannel and the big wooden buttons managed admirably. She had no one to impress with her bedclothes. "Where did you even get that thing? I better not have paid for it."

"Ren got it for me," she said, still almost asleep. It had been an early winter solstice gift, because he and most of the other men were going to be ashore all day for festivities.

"What?" Varrick was being very judgmental for a man who'd burst into her room in the wee hours of the morning. "He's buying you nightgowns now? How does he even know your size? And — what is this?" Zhu Li retrieved her glasses from her nightstand so that she could see him grabbing one of her embroidered throw pillows, a look of mingled disgust and confusion. She snatched it back, and hugged it to her chest.

"Amir made that for me," she said, defensive. It was actually rather hideous, with a crudely stitched koan on it, but it was the thought that counted. It, too, was an early solstice gift. "And nightgowns don't have sizes." Varrick threw up his hands.

"Who is Amir? Where are you meeting all of these men?"

"They work for you," she said, as exasperated as he was. She tried to rake her fingers through the bird's nest of her hair. He'd actually done his own grooming this morning, so for once she was the one looking like hell. "Amir is in R&D. Do you not talk to your employees?"

Varrick shrugged, looking over the titles on her bookshelf. "Not if I can help it, I don't." He looked back at her. "Fine, keep the pillow. But that nightgown definitely has to go."

She stared at him, then looked down at herself. "Sir."

"… well not right now, obviously," he said, even though she would not have put it past him. "Come on, Zhu Li, hurry it up before I change my mind about this whole 'birthday' thing."

She froze in the middle of setting the little pillow aside. "The whole what, sir?"

"Your birthday," he reiterated, as if she were dense.

"It's the winter solstice, sir," she said, still not getting out of bed.

"Yes," he agreed, "and it's your birthday."

"… no, it isn't." Was he sleepwalking? It was starting to seem like he might have been hit on the head recently.

"Says who?" She opened her mouth, then closed it. He had a point. He looked very smug about it, too. "See? Now I say. Your birthday's the winter solstice now."

She had a birthday. This was new. And worryingly sweet. The sweetness was marred slightly by her certainty that he'd chosen the day so he wouldn't have to remember to buy her a gift more than once a year. Nonetheless, that in and of itself indicated that he didn't want to forget to buy her a birthday gift.

This was all very suspicious.

She slid out from beneath the covers, pads of her feet hitting the cold floor. She tugged the nightgown lower on her thighs, and looked up in time to see Varrick looking blankly in the direction of her knees. "Sir?"

Snapping out of it, he grabbed her hairbrush off her vanity and tossed it at her, and she only barely managed to catch it before it hit her in the face. "You wasted too much time, Zhu Li!" he said, snapping his fingers. "No time to change, you'll have to brush your hair on the way to the deck. And don't give me that look, Zhu Li, everyone's too busy with solstice to care about your ugly nightgown anyway."

There was no arguing with him when he got that attitude. With a huff she started to drag the brush through her hair, and she followed him as he walked into the hall, even more quiet than usual without her shoes. Someone had put up decorations through the yacht a week earlier, snowflakes and tinsel and little bits of mirrored glass. She assumed Varrick had ordered them to do it, but she wasn't sure who on the ship had the appropriate interior decorating skills. Maybe there was a designated interior decorator somewhere.

She may have been better about knowing their names than Varrick, but she still didn't know most of his employees. They fluctuated as they moved from port to port, as Varrick adopted and abandoned projects. Maybe he'd learned their names, once upon a time, before he'd decided it wasn't worth the space in his brain.

It was cold out on the deck, and she pulled a last knot out of her hair before wrapping her arms around herself. They weren't in a climate where it snowed, but the metal of the deck felt practically frozen against her feet. The sun hadn't risen yet, only the barest approach of morning twilight leaving the sky a bright gray. She rubbed her eyes beneath her glasses. "Sir, what's—"

"Quiet, Zhu Li," he said automatically. He paused. "Birthday girl," he corrected. "We're waiting. Quietly." His eyes raked over her briefly, then went back to the coast. "Watch the sky over there," he said, pointing.

She squeaked in wide-eyed alarm when something exploded.

The alarm subsided when she realized it was not the kind of explosion Varrick usually had her dealing with, which was accidental and dangerous. They were fireworks, threads of silver and gold bursting in circles in the sky. Which explained the time crunch: they needed to go off while it was still dark, and he needed her out here in time to see them.

"Those aren't the solstice fireworks, are they?" she asked. She'd hate to have had him pilfering from the holiday festivities.

"Of course not!" he said, coming closer to stand behind her. "Winter solstice fireworks are tonight, this is the morning. These are birthday fireworks."

That didn't seem like a real distinction. "Of course, sir." She watched another burst of light against the sky. "We don't do fireworks for your birthday, do we, sir?" She knew they didn't, because she would have noticed by now. Fireworks were not a thing a person could keep secret for very long.

"Oh hell no," he said, clearly appalled by the very idea. "Explosions and hangovers do not mix, if you set off fireworks on my birthday I'm firing you." He then considered what he had just said. "You're not hungover, are you Zhu Li?"

"No, sir."

"Good." He stroked his moustache. "We need to find a better way to set these off, the guy I have doing it is getting the timing all wrong."

"I'll make a note of it, sir," she said, rubbing the top of her foot against her calf to try and warm it.

"No," he said sternly, "no note-taking. It's your birthday. Remember it until tomorrow and make a note of it then." It would be a lot easier to tell if he were joking if his sense of humor weren't horrible. Both of his senses of humor. The obvious sense of humor, where he told bad jokes and expected everyone to laugh, and the less obvious one where he did things he thought would be funny and didn't think anyone would notice.

"Yes, sir," she said, because it worked either as agreement or as a punchline and he'd be happy either way. She tilted her head back so that she could see him over her shoulder. There was a long moment of silence as he stared intensely at the sky, and a moment of visible relief when the burst of blue and green and silver came, the biggest one yet. It was a bit wasted on her, but she liked the way the light looked on his face better than she would have liked it in the sky.

"Hot dog," he said, pumping his fist. "That was great, right?" He looked at her expectantly, and didn't seem to notice that she hadn't actually been paying attention.

"Very impressive, sir," she reassured him.

"Now we move on to phase two," he said, taking her by the shoulders to steer her back into the ship. When they were inside he reached over her to grab her hairbrush out of her hand. "You missed a spot," he said, grabbing some of her hair in his fist. She stiffened, but he prodded her in the back with her brush so she'd keep walking. "Geeze, Zhu Li," he said as he started trying to brush out whatever it was that had offended him, "I hope you're better than that about my hair."

"I can't see the back of my own head, sir," she pointed out. Having someone hold her by the hair was extremely unsettling, and if it were anyone but Varrick she never would have allowed it.

"Well you should work on that," he said, using her hair to steer her toward the workshop, "because I'm not going to make a habit of this. These are special birthday circumstances. You're a grown woman, Zhu Li, you should be able to brush your own hair." It really seemed gratuitous to have his knuckles that close to her scalp. If she spent more than a second thinking about long fingers tangled in her hair she started to blush, and so she pushed the thought as far out of her head as she could.

"Yes, sir," she said again as they walked into the workshop. Their latest project had been moved so that their usual workbench could be covered in very poorly wrapped… lumps. He seemed to have just wadded newspaper around things until they ceased to be visible, and then wrapped that newspaper with what would otherwise be very nice ribbon, which he had tied into knots. The end result was that it looked like he'd been trying to anchor an invisible boat to paper-mâché boulders using curtain trim.

"I did it all myself," he said proudly, making a sweeping gesture with her hairbrush. If she had to guess, he had probably forgotten about the wrapping part of the presents until some point late last night, when he had panicked because he couldn't make Zhu Li do it.

He wasn't always good with details.

He let go of her hair as she stepped closer to the table, anxiously considering the items before her. "Which one should I unwrap first, sir?"

"This one!" he said immediately, hovering over the largest lump. "This one's the best — although maybe we should save that for last? No, open this one first, this one here."

Varrick was so far enjoying her birthday more than she was. Not because she wasn't enjoying it, but because he was clearly pleased with himself. He only let her try to unfasten one of his knots for about a second before intervening.

"Honestly, Zhu Li," he said, unwrapping her gift for her, "it's just a constrictor, it shouldn't take that long." Unlike Varrick, she did not know the names of a hundred different knots. Sometimes she suspected him of making some of them up. Even a sailor could not possibly need that many ways of tying a rope. "Ta-da!" he said as he pulled the newspaper aside.

Zhu Li cocked her head to the side as she looked at it. "It's a very nice…"

"Automatic sewing machine!" he said, twisting a wheel on the side to make another part move. "I haven't figured out a name for it yet. Varrick Stitcher? Vitcher? No, that sounds awful, we're not calling it that. Anyway, you always take forever whenever you have to do anything that involves a needle, so this is going to save us a ton of time."

Zhu Li was already sticking her face up close to it to try and get a better look at the mechanisms. "But how does it work?" she asked, spinning the wheel and watching the needle move with absolutely no apparent way of getting the thread to bind the fabric together. She was too distracted by the mechanics to consider the many ways in which his gift was actually inconsiderate.

"Stop thinking," he scolded her immediately, batting her hand away from it. "You're thinking about it too much, it's a present, you can think about it tomorrow."

She moved away from it with reluctance, as he had already started unwrapping her next gift, apparently not trusting her to do it herself. This gift may have been more baffling than the last. "A toy boat?"

"It's a scale model," he corrected, exasperated. "It's a ship! For battle! A battleship! This is a model of the one I decided to commission. Look at the name!"

She looked. "You're naming it after me?"

"Yes!" He could not possibly have looked more proud of himself. "They sent me the model, and I thought to myself, you know who this reminds me of? Zhu Li!"

"I remind you of a cold metal war machine?"

"Exactly!" He clapped his hands together. "It's perfect, right?"

She was having a lot of feelings. A lot of feelings about him naming what was clearly a very expensive and dangerous investment after her. It was all so… Varrick. "What's that?" she asked suddenly, pointing to a covered dish on a scrap table behind him.

He looked to where she was pointing, then immediately tried to block it from her view. "Nothing! That is nothing. Don't look over there, look at your ship. It's your birthday, stop asking questions."

Completely ignoring this protest, she moved past him to peer beneath the silver lid. It was… a mess. She didn't know what it was. Some kind of sweet-smelling pile of slimy lump. With a candle in it.

"… did you try to bake, sir?"

"… the cook was busy. With solstice. So I, uh…"

She was going to cry. Her eyes were already watering.

"Oh, come on," he said, hands hovering vaguely in her direction with indecision as she covered her face with her hands. "It's not that bad—"

"This is so perfect," she said, quiet and high-pitched and only barely keeping herself from keening, muffled by her hands.

Varrick faltered, then put his hands on his hips. "Well… obviously. I did it, didn't I?"

Yes. Yes he had. She wanted to hug him. She wouldn't. She wanted to. She wanted to say things, so many things, and she was about to burst into tears. She may have also been a little exhausted. It was still very early, after all. "May I go put some pants on now, sir?"

"I've never heard of a perfect birthday that involved pants," he said, crossing his arms over his chest, "but, yes, fine. And fix whatever's happening with your face, it's freaking me out." She nodded wordlessly because her throat was closing up from the force of things unsaid, and did not so much walk as run back out of the workshop.

Riding high on success, Varrick attempted to eat some of the cake, and spent the rest of the day vomiting. Zhu Li held the bucket without complaint.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Boys on Film

The first prototypes of anything send up from R&D were always nonfunctional. This was a feature of the development process, and not a bug. The plans Varrick sent down were always slightly off, in a way that would be easy for Zhu Li to fix and difficult for anyone else to identify.

Usable plans did not leave Zhu Li's sight until they were ready for mass production, if they ever were. Varrick knew how easy it was to lose a good idea to a tricky competitor, because he did it all the time. His goal in all things to ensure that no one could ever treat him the way he would treat him, and it made Zhu Li's job a lot more difficult than was probably necessary. There was no one else quite like Varrick, after all.

She was supposed to tell him as soon as she thought it was ready, but she didn't want to disappoint him if it still wasn't working. It was a habit now, fiddling with things she'd been assigned to finish on her own until she knew they'd do what he wanted, instead of waiting for him to test them himself. She didn't like the look of annoyance he got when something failed, those subtle tantrums he threw when he considered giving up on a project entirely.

Varrick had a series of maps out on another table, and he was trying to decide on the best course to get to an island of wild ostrich horses. He didn't usually mind just puttering about willy-nilly, but sometimes he got impatient, and when that happened he liked to map things out himself. He never shared the logic behind his routes. It almost seemed like a crime that such knowledge of oceanic currents was locked away in his head. He would have been an amazing waterbender, in another life.

She propped the camera on top of a makeshift tripod, adjusted her glasses as she peered through the lens. Immediately, she discovered the first unanticipated problem: focusing. There was no way to ensure that things stayed in focus, meaning the camera would need to be at a very specific distance from whatever they wanted to film. It seemed to work just for looking through, at least, though that didn't tell her anything about whether it would actually copy things to film as intended. No flashbulbs, just a rotating shutter — if it worked.

The camera wouldn't move in a way that let her turn the crank at the same time, so in order to actually test it she'd have to find something that was moving. The lens turned, inevitably, to Varrick. She only managed to record him for a second before he recognized the sound of the camera crank, looked up at her. She stopped what she was doing immediately, face feeling hot even though she hadn't technically done anything wrong.

Varrick didn't seem to know what to make of the situation. "Is it working?"

"I don't know, sir," she admitted, busying herself with covering the whole camera with a heavy wool blanket, removing the film from inside it.

"Then hurry up and do the thing!"

☽❆☾

They hadn't decided yet on the best way to actually view the resulting filmstrips. Right now they were trying something based on simple children's toys, embedding the developed film permanently in a hard transparent spiral shade that they could place over a directed lamp. It was already obvious that this wouldn't be practical for anything longer than a couple of seconds, but it seemed almost decent as a proof of concept.

Varrick was sitting on the edge of table, rubbing his hands together with anticipation. "Is it ready?" he asked, which he had been asking every thirty seconds.

"It's ready, sir," she could finally say.

"Then do the thing." Zhu Li turned on the little lamp, and for a moment a still picture of Varrick in profile was visible on the wall. Not a very good picture, high contrast and a little blurry, but a picture. "Ha! Look at that handsome devil!"

With a flick of her wrist, she sent the little shade spiraling downward in front of the light; with that, Varrick moved. Jerky and inconsistent motions, little but shadows and light with no shades of gray, but still: moving. Varrick, writing for a moment, before looking up at the camera in confusion. The camera wasn't good enough to pick up the blue of his eyes, and so they looked wide and white like an animal at night. Then it ended, and Zhu Li flicked off the light.

"It worked!" Varrick announced triumphantly in the darkness, and she knew without being able to see him that he'd thrown up his arms. "We're going to have to work on the fidelity, rejigger the, ah, the thing. And we're going to need to get a better proof of concept, that was boring. No one's going to watch these if they can't hear what's going on, we're going to have to work on that, too."

Zhu Li pulled open the curtains so they could see again, and Varrick had grabbed one of her notepads to start writing furiously. Gently, she lifted the shade off the little lamp, looked at the filmstrip of tiny black-and-white Varricks.

"Throw that out," he said, and she froze. She understood why, because he'd done things like this before. He was the sort of person that threw out all his first drafts so that everyone would think he'd done it perfectly the first time. Ordinarily, she did not mind that particular bit of vanity. She held the bit of film against her chest, gently as if it were eggshells.

She couldn't ask to keep it. He'd want to know why, and wouldn't let her besides. "Yes, sir," she said, turning on her heel before he could see the protective way she held it. She didn't trust him to be as engrossed in his work as he looked. She turned in the hall as if she was headed toward the furnace, took the long way around to get back to her room.

There wasn't a lock on her door. Even if there was, Varrick would have had a key. Some things didn't occur to him, and other things he arranged to make it seem as if they hadn't occurred to him. She looked again at the little image of Varrick, ran the pad of her thumb over it.

Where in the hell was she going to hide this stupid thing?

☽❆☾

She waited until Varrick was safely asleep before retrieving the little zoetrope from under her bed. She'd brought a little box with a lock that she could keep it in, as well as a crude version of the little lamp they'd used in the workshop and a collection of watercolors.

The watercolors were experimental.

She jammed her door shut with a chair, turned out the lights and watched the little thing play again, spinning it back and forth. Like watching a shadow of her boss suddenly notice her, alone in her room.

She had a whole kit of watercolors, but she only really cared about the blue. With a tiny brush and a set of goggles meant for fine electrical work, she started painting his coat — again and again, each little frame on the little strip. She waited until last to paint his eyes, little spots of blue, every muscle in her body tense as she fought to keep her hand from shaking.

She didn't think she could forgive herself if she ruined his eyes.

It was almost morning by the time she was done, the paint irreversibly dry. With her heart in her throat, she turned out the lights and spun the shade.

It wasn't perfect. She'd known it wouldn't be. But blue eyes that couldn't see her looked up from her wall, and she hugged her knees to her chest, spun it again. And again.

This was cheating. And unhealthy. And weird. She did it again.

When she couldn't bear it anymore, she locked the little lamp and the little film in her little box, slid it under her bed behind miscellaneous less interesting things that she'd collected. She doubted anyone would think to look there, ever stop to consider that she might own something worth hiding.

She was allowed to have a few guilty pleasures. It was just the one. Her little secret.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Wonders of Nature

"You need to see a doctor, sir."

Varrick's feet were a major point of contention between them. She wanted absolutely nothing to do with them. She could tolerate a lot of disgusting things, but those were abominations. "You can't trust doctors, Zhu Li," he said, "and they're just callouses."

"They are not, sir." She wasn't carrying Varrick on this particular hike, but she was carrying enough equipment that she may as well have been. Her backpack was, at this point, bigger than she was. "There is nothing just about it."

"Don't be a drama queen, Zhu Li," he said, which was really something coming from him. "So maybe they don't smell great, they're not haunted."

"I would not discount that possibility, sir."

Varrick threw up his hands, held them out as he turned around so that he was walking backwards up the mountain. "Really? Really, Zhu Li? You're going to accuse my feet of being possessed by dark spirits?"

"I didn't—"

"No, no, it's too late now. You said the thing, the thing has been said. You know what? You know what I'm going to do? I'm going to find an exorcist, Zhu Li, and I will pay him to perform a ceremony over my feet, and it will be ridiculous, and a huge waste of money, and it will be all your fault. Is that what you wanted, Zhu Li?" He must have been feeling optimistic about this venture, because he only got this insufferable when he was feeling good about life.

"Or," she suggested, "you could give that money to a doctor."

Varrick scoffed. "You can't trust doctors," he repeated, which was even more baffling in light of his previous threat.

They'd been listening to the news on the radio in the mornings, regular updates from Republic City. It had become, from the sound of things, a clusterfuck. Varrick was disappointed that he wasn't there to find a way to profit from things, but pleased that he hadn't been caught in any crossfire. The best way to enjoy a good war was, in his opinion, from a distance.

Eventually, they were going to have to fix the various formal and informal arrangements that had been thrown into chaos by the power shuffles occurring. But Varrick would wait until the dust had well and truly settled.

She missed living in a city. There was less mountain climbing involved.

"Do you really think that Amon guy can take away bending?" he asked over his shoulder after he'd faced forward again. He did ask her opinion, sometimes, when there was no one else around to see him do it. Wouldn't want any bystanders to know that she was capable of having opinions.

"I don't really know, sir," she said, and she meant it. She knew very little about bending. She did not consider it necessary information, learning about a skill she didn't have and never would.

"People have been trying to figure out how the Avatar did it for years now," he said, scratching at his jaw, the audacity to not even be out of breath. Sometimes, when they were alone, he forgot to be useless. "A popular theory's always been some kind of fifth element, some kind of a, uh, spirit thing. Except there's never been any soulbenders, so as theories go, it's got flaws. But if this guy's not one of the normal kinds of benders, that kind of throws a wrench in the whole works."

He seemed more interested in the mechanics than the implications, and he seemed to be using her as a sounding board for those ideas, trying to work something out. "Do you think that's what he's doing, sir?"

"I don't know," he said, which was not something he usually admitted. "Might be just some kind of mental thing, he scares the everliving crap out of these poor suckers and they can't figure out how to get the mojo working anymore. Then again, back when I was in the circus—"

"The circus?"

Varrick frowned over his shoulder at the interruption. "Yes, the circus. Did I never tell you I was in the circus?"

"You told me you were a poor seal hunter's son, sir."

"They aren't mutually exclusive," he said defensively. "Anyway, the circus came later. The point is, when I was in the circus there was a woman there who knew how to turn off people's bending. Not permanent, but she'd use acupressure to… I don't know. Something about chakras. So it might be he's doing something like that, mucking up their mojo on a physical level. Wouldn't have to be a bender to do that."

She hadn't known that was possible, for someone who couldn't bend to stop someone who could. Now she was curious, because that sounded like a skill she wanted to have.

"There they are!" he said as they reached the top of the plateau, derailing her train of thought now that his was done. "Hurry it up, Zhu Li, we're gonna miss the light!"

The light would be fine. It wasn't even noon yet. Still, she tried to speed up those last few feet, until she'd joined him in the grass. Ostrich horses, if she was honest, scared the hell out of her. Most large animals did. She was a city girl at heart, and large animals weren't really a consideration in the city. She could handle people, stray dogs, stray vehicles. Badgermoles and camelephants, those could go right to hell. She pulled the pack off of her back, let it hit the ground with a thud. She began unpacking the camera and related accessories, and when she looked up, she found to her horror that Varrick was inching toward the things.

"Sir," she hissed, trying to keep the animals' attention away from her, "stay away from there. Those are wild animals."

Varrick gave her A Look, all wavy eyebrows and open palms. "They're just ostrich horses. Calm down, I know what I'm doing."

She was not convinced he knew what he was doing. She stopped what she was doing, because she was worried that she was going to need to come to his rescue. A camera would only get in the way of that. Varrick assumed some kind of pose, still moving towards the ostrich horse furthest from the rest of the herd, and started making the most hideous noise she had ever heard. It sounded like his organs were rusting.

If he got himself killed she would never forgive him.

The ostrich horse screeched at him, and immediately Zhu Li was on her feet, ready and willing to carry Varrick all the way back down the mountain.

Until he jumped on top of it.

What the hell.

The ostrich horse was as shocked by this development as Zhu Li, and its screech this time was even more discordant. Varrick laughed his familiar laugh of triumph, fingers caught on feathers and holding on tight as the animal tried to buck him off. "You know I used to do trick riding?" he called to Zhu Li, apparently oblivious to the fact that she was having a heart attack.

"Sir, would you please—" She clapped her hands over her mouth to muffle a strangled scream when the ostrich horse suddenly rolled over, trying to knock Varrick off into the grass. When it came back up, Varrick was still holding on, though his clothes were disheveled and his hair was going every-which-way.

He didn't look discouraged. He was almost smiling, except he wasn't: he was baring his teeth. "Now what did you go and do a stupid thing like that for?" he asked the animal, who did not seem happy at all about its failure to get rid of him.

"Sir, please," she said, and he shook his head because he didn't have a hand free to wave her away.

"Just give it a minute," he said, as the ostrich horse moved this way and that, the others staying their distance. "It'll get tired and give up."

"And then what?" she asked helplessly, as it rolled over again.

She couldn't keep watching this. She couldn't. She turned her back on the whole horrible affair, and started setting up the swiveling tripod. There were screeching and barking sounds behind her, and she couldn't tell who was making what. The noises stopped at about the same time that she'd managed to get the camera fixed onto the legs, and she flinched when Varrick tugged on her ponytail to get her attention. She turned around, and nearly knocked the camera down with her instinct to back away from the animal.

"See?" he said, looking like a mess on its back, the sleeve of his shirt torn and his moustache gone all crooked. He looked — as he so often did after doing something stupid — awfully pleased with himself.

"Good work, sir," she said, sounding not at all enthused as she crossed her arms over her chest. "Now what?"

"Now," he said, ignoring her insubordinate tone, "we don't have to wait for these idiots to do something interesting, because we can make them!" He made the ostrich horse trot in a circle around her and the camera, which was not reassuring at all. "Here, put the camera on that one." He pointed to one of the ostrich horses currently grazing near the cliff. "I'm gonna make it run around a little."

She refused to be impressed by the way he looked riding. She refused. Absolutely refused. Awful, awful man.

Zhu Li got behind the camera, turned it to focus on the animal he'd pointed out just in time for him to start herding it. They were going for something more naturalistic, so it was important to keep Varrick out of the frame. It would have been easier if they could have just actually filmed them actually behaving as they did in their natural environment — she'd thought that was the whole point — and she couldn't tell if this had been Varrick's plan all along or if he'd just been struck by some kind of inspiration. Except, idiotic inspiration. Dipshitspiration.

She didn't think she'd be sharing that name with him.

He did it a few more times, and she tried to only record when she was sure that it would show up well on film. They didn't have an unlimited supply, after all.

Zhu Li looked up from behind the camera when the whole lens was taken up by the herd of fleeing ostrich horses, and she was entirely prepared to see Varrick doing something even more abominably stupid.

She was not prepared to see him trying to stay on his mount while being confronted by a platypus bear. Nor was she prepared to see him fail, knocked off by the panicked animal, falling to the ground as it fled.

She was moving in an instant, tearing into her pack. It wasn't just cameras and tea sets, it was also protection. Her hands moved faster than her brain assembling the crossbow folded beneath Varrick's picnic basket, loading it with a bolt and firing before she'd even managed to consciously take aim. She was pure adrenaline and fear, and the bear roared its displeasure at the bolt embedded in its paw. Varrick saw his opening to scramble to his feet, running back towards Zhu Li; she loaded another bolt and shot it in the neck, then another in its eye.

It took entirely too long to fall over, blood coming out of its bill. At some point, Varrick had hunched behind her, peering over her shoulder at his latest near-death experience. Rather than being annoyed by his cowardice, she felt a surge of pride that he'd feel safe there. She spent a long moment listening to nothing but the sound of their labored breathing, the call of a distant bird.

"Ho-ly moo-sow," he said finally, standing up straight and moving closer to the felled predator. "Did you catch that on camera?"

Zhu Li slumped and dropped the crossbow. "No, sir."

"Well, hell," he said, kicking its bill with his foot. "Now that would have been a thing to watch. Think you can carry this back down to the boat?"

Adrenaline gone, her limbs felt shaky and weak. She fell to her knees in the grass, and tried to make it look like she'd done it on purpose. "No, sir."

"Well, hell," he said again. "Light up a flare, then, we'll have someone come get this. I'm going to have it stuffed! I think it'll look pretty impressive, don't you? Make some tea while you're at it, we might be here a while."

She shot off a flare as he'd requested, but took her time getting the tea set out, as he came back to her side to sit cross-legged in the grass. "You never said what you thought, sir," she murmured as she struck a match beneath the kettle.

"Thought about what?"

"Whether Amon can bend a fifth element." While they waited, she dug a comb out of their pack so she could fix his hair.

"Riddle me this, Zhu Li," he said, remarkably placid about her pulling the comb through the knots in his hair. "Does it make sense for a soulbender to only be able to take bending away?"

She considered the question. "I suppose not, sir."

"And if you actually wanted people to be equal," he continued, "would you do it by making everyone powerless, if you could make everyone powerful instead?"

He had a point. "So you think he's manipulating their chakras?"

"No idea," he said. "But if I were taking bets, I'd put good odds that equality isn't really what he's going for." Setting aside the comb, she poured him his glass of tea, stirred in the frankly absurd amount of honey that was his preference. "I may not know much about spirits and bending," he said, picking up his teacup, "but I know a power grab when I see one." He took a sip, and the serious line of his brows softened. "Upside: we're gonna make a fortune when they start rebuilding. What do you think we should call the bear?"

Varrick could be accused of cynicism, but at least he wasn't a pessimist.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Variables

Varrick was unhappy about something. He'd spent the last week or so in meetings with various contacts from around the world in order to stay abreast of the goings on, to give them the appropriate instructions for his operations in that sector. Now he was looking at some maps like they'd done him some great wrong, and so Zhu Li waited for his verdict.

"Zhu Li," he said eventually, "we're going to the Glacier Spirits Festival."

"Yes, sir."

"Have I ever told you about the Glacier Spirits Festival?"

"No, sir."

"Well I don't blame me, because it sucks. It's in the South, but there's businessmen traveling there from all over, so it'll be a good chance to debut the movers."

"So we'll be bringing Ginger?" She tried not to sound too much like she was displeased by this idea. It wasn't Ginger's fault that she was pretty. Pretty and ambitious with a hunger in her eyes that wouldn't be satisfied until she had everything she had ever wanted and everything anyone else had ever wanted too. Which was fine. That was fine.

Varrick liked her legs. Ginger had long legs that he thought people would pay to see, because it was the only chance most of them would ever get to see legs like that. Unlike Varrick, who would probably be between them if he weren't particularly cautious about women he thought would be difficult to get rid of.

"They're going to love Ginger," was his answer, but she wasn't convinced that promoting movers was the only reason they were going. So she waited. "The Avatar's going to be there," he said finally. "Did you know she's Unalaq's niece?"

There it was. Though it certainly wasn't the reason she'd expected. "I thought Avatar Korra was from the Southern Water Tribe, sir."

"Her father's Northern," he said, tapping fingers impatiently on the table. "Should have been Chief. Isn't."

He didn't say that he thought Unalaq was responsible for his own ascension, but he didn't have to. She didn't know the specifics, didn't know if he did either, but she could see him arranging the circumstantial evidence in his head. Stay away from him, Varrick had said, as Unalaq tried to whisper about power in her ear.

Varrick thought something was happening, and he was going towards it instead of away. This was unusual. "Northern ships have been spotted in waters they have no right being in," he murmured, tracing his fingertip over places in the southern hemisphere, islands not technically owned by any nation. He crossed his arms on the desk and rested his chin on his hands. "They've been looking for excuses since the war. What I don't understand is why now. He could have done this years ago. He'd have had the South and the Avatar with it. The timing is… mmph." He rubbed his hand over his face, raked his fingers through his hair. "I'm missing something."

"Will we find it at the festival?"

"No idea," he said, "but whatever Unalaq wants, he's going to try and talk his way into it first." Varrick took a tiny model of his battleship, pushed it nearer to the South Pole and then clasped his hands in front of his face as he stared at it. "It might be possible," he murmured, "to turn things — if he wasn't expecting it… maybe. If we could just… delay. Until I know what he wants. If things get bad it'll be real bad real fast, Zhu Li. We still haven't recovered from the war, I've only got one battleship…"

"Worst case scenario, sir?" she prompted, because Varrick could sometimes be reassured by imagining the world possible thing that could happen, all the ways he could still turn that to his advantage.

"Without knowing what he wants I can't very well know that, can I?" he snapped. There must have been something showing in her expression, because he sighed. "If I assume he wants to assimilate the South," he said, "then that's the worst case scenario. Unalaq unites the tribes under his Chiefdom, he seizes any of my assets that he can get his hands on because he dislikes my priorities, and Varrick Global Industries is pushed entirely out of the Northern and Southern waters. We keep to the Earth and Fire Nations, but that's a real tricky thing to keep sustainable, and we might be fugitives at that point. I don't think Raiko would honor any extraditions after I financed his campaign… but even so. Assuming nonintervention by the other nations, half our business goes underwater overnight."

She didn't know if it was deliberate, calling it our business. It did not seem to have cheered him up. He leaned back in his chair, letting his head hang over the back of it and his arms hang limp toward the floor. She wanted, very badly, to stroke his hair. "And the Avatar?"

"That's what I'm missing," he said, holding his hands up like he was trying to claw an idea from the ether. "I wouldn't think Tonraq's daughter would ally with Unalaq, but for Unalaq to go against the Avatar would be political suicide. Then again, what the hell do I know about teenage girls? Every teenage girl I ever knew hated her dad, but that's a self-selecting sample is what that is. I can't account for that variable, I know it's significant but I don't know how."

He was on the verge of a tantrum. He did not cope well with not knowing things. "So," she said, and she gently pressed her fingers to the back of his head to tilt him back upright, "we are going to the Glacier Spirits Festival." She took him by the shoulders to pull him straighter in his chair. "Phase one will be trying to learn Unalaq's endgame." Turning to the tray she'd brought with her, she poured him a cup of tea and placed it in his fingers. "Phase two will be trying to draw attention to that endgame in order to make it more difficult to achieve. And in phase three, we should have enough information to make a new plan." She shouldn't have, but she fixed his hair just a little. "We will, at the same time, be working toward diversifying Varrick Global Industries profits via movers, so that we will have yet another source of income outside of shipping in a worst case scenario. Correct?"

She wasn't telling him anything he didn't already know. She was just rearranging the data to be less overwhelming, an easy-to-process list that got rid of extraneous variables or unknowables. He looked at the map again, brow furrowing and eyes narrowing. "… ye-e-e-s," he agreed, slowly, as if he hadn't actually decided whether or not he was agreeing. He took a sip of his tea. "Yes," he said again, more firmly.

"And since this is a few months off," she continued, "there's no reason for you to worry about it right now. Is there anything we'll need to take care of in advance?" He had to have been fairly stressed not to accuse her of patronizing him.

"We'll have to send word to have your battleship finished and fueled up ahead of schedule," he said, "but that… might be it."

"My…?"

He looked up, the first time he'd looked at her in a while, as if recalling that she was a person and not an affirmation machine. "Well, not your battleship, obviously, it's my battleship, but it's — you know." He waved a hand, clearly already moving on from his near-crisis. "I think I need to get in touch with them, anyway, they asked me what to do with some of the empty space and I was drunk when I replied." He finished his tea and handed her the cup, and she took it wordlessly. Some of the tension had left his shoulders, the line of his brows a softer curve than it had been. "Did that guy end up coming with us?"

Ugh. "The 'swami', sir?"

He hadn't been able to find an exorcist, but he'd settled for a swami instead. She couldn't tell if he was still doing it just to spite her. Somehow the little man had convinced Varrick that the best way to get his feet under control was to walk on hot coals, even though Zhu Li had definitively stated that it was making the problem worse.

If he kept it up, he was going to end up with hooves.

"Yeah, that guy! Which deck is he on? He does this thing with bells and makes me sit funny and it makes me go all floaty, it's great." That was the trouble with Varrick, she could never tell when he actually thought he was on to something and when he was just going along with it because he enjoyed the process. Did he actually think he was floating? Or did he just enjoy feeling lightheaded? His predilection for hanging upside-down made the latter a significant possibility.

"He's staying on one of the lower crew decks, sir."

Standing up, Varrick stretched his hands above his head until his back cracked. "Coming with? You might like it."

"No thank you, sir. I haven't checked in with R&D in a few days and I need to make sure things are on schedule since the resupply." Zhu Li found the man to be a creepy little con-artist, and the appeal was lost on her.

"Suit yourself," he shrugged, and as naturally as if it were a force of habit he leaned down and kissed her forehead. Then he strode away, and left her standing stock-still and wide-eyed behind him.

He'd never done that before. Not even anything remotely similar, if he was in his right mind (or as right as his mind ever was). It almost felt like he'd confused her with someone else, the way a child might accidentally hug their tutor, a reflex. She hoped he wouldn't make a habit of it. And, yet, she hoped he would.

She stayed standing there for a long while, staring at his teacup.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

The Calm

Zhu Li liked the Southern Water Tribe better than the North. It felt less formal, it felt kinder. Still snow and ice, but warmer, in its way.

She wondered about Varrick's family. She didn't ask. There were people here who knew him, but none of them called him Iknik, and she took that to mean they had not been close. Employees were helping to set up the decorations and the entertainment, and the festival was taking shape, narrow carnival streets and glowing lanterns in all colors. Varrick was helping with the planning, although most of his ideas were vetoed as being excessively dangerous.

She shouldn't have been surprised that he knew a man with trained otter penguins, and yet.

"Is it always like this, sir?" she asked one night, as they drank tea on the deck of the yacht and watched workers and locals assemble booths.

Varrick shrugged and made a noncommittal noise. "Probably? How should I know?" The way he said it made her feel like an idiot for having dared to ask, and she lowered her eyes to her teacup, fell silent. She listened to the sound of hammers, of sawing wood and people talking and laughing in the distance. Somewhere out there, the swami was impressing people who didn't know any better. "My father took me once when I was a kid," he said eventually, "but I don't really remember it. We didn't really live… here."

"Sorry, sir."

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw him shrug again. "It's a big continent." He sipped his tea, and she warmed her hands around her cup. "You know what we should do," he said, "is pretend this is your birthday party."

She kept forgetting that she had a birthday now. "I don't think the entire Southern Water Tribe would throw me a birthday party, sir."

"No," he agreed, "but it'd save me a lot of trouble if you'd pretend."

For a man who usually spent his birthdays partying with strangers, he seemed very determined that she have nice ones. "Yes, sir," she said, as if it had been an order. They lapsed into silence again, and she poured him another cup of tea. Unalaq hadn't arrived yet, but Varrick had hired a few locals to act as impromptu spies. There was nothing to be done about the Avatar unless she came to them, because Varrick had no intention of being the guy determined to spend time with seventeen-year-old girls. Entrepreneurs and the idle rich would be arriving soon, and Varrick had a short list of who he would be allowing on board.

Future Industries had been a last minute addition. Hiroshi Sato had been a genius, and sometimes she thought it annoyed Varrick, all the things Hiroshi'd built that he hadn't. It made sense, since Varrick was in the shipping industry, but the last ten years had found him with a growing interest in tech. Asami Sato may not have been a genius like her father — only time would tell — but the company was hers regardless. A company with any number of troubles since Hiroshi had allied with the Equalists.

Asami, they had also heard, knew the Avatar. There were a number of ways the Sato heiress could be useful, but they'd have to meet her before they could be sure. If Future Industries was as bad off as the papers said…

He'd been itching to get his hands on one of those mecha suits. And if he could get the blueprints along with it, well, that would be quite the coup de grace.

"We lived further down the coast," Varrick said without prompting, eyes unfocused in the direction of the horizon. "Did I ever tell you that my mother was a waterbender?"

He'd never told her anything about his mother. Only that her last name was Blackstone, and that wasn't anything at all. "No, sir."

"Amazing waterbender," he said, setting down his tea, "or so I'm told. Supposed to have been a pretty amazing healer. You know, the whole… thing." He made a gesture with his hands similar to the one used by healers manipulating water, though he did it carelessly. "Lost it, though. Not the bending, the, ah…" He twirled a finger in the air near his temple, still looking at nothing as if he were looking at the past instead. "Couldn't live in the village anymore, too dangerous."

He was so nonchalant about it. That was the thing about Varrick, a strange sleight of hand where his melodrama about trivial things let him hide the more serious things that he didn't want anyone to notice. All the things he would never say about living with a woman whose mind made her a weapon, about isolation and stigma and living in the wreckage of someone else's shattered life, about living a life apart.

She may have been jumping to conclusions. But she thought of how Unalaq had called him Blackstone, of all the ways he chose to make himself a stranger, of the man who would run away with a circus and turn the ocean into his empire. And maybe it was selfish to imagine his life in a way that made them similar, the girl she had never been and the family she had never had.

"Do we know where Ginger is?" he asked. Varrick considered it very important that she be looking her best tomorrow. She didn't think she'd ever seen Ginger looking anything but her best, regardless of circumstance, but she liked to take precautions.

"She went to bed early," was all that Zhu Li said, and did not bother specifying that it had been her doing. He would know, just as he would know that Ginger would be terribly unhappy with Zhu Li for the rest of the festival. It was a price she was willing to pay.

Silence again, but it was neither uncomfortable nor expectant. They'd grown used to being silent in one another's company, because they wouldn't have been able to get any work done otherwise. "The brown-nosers are supposed to be in first tomorrow, aren't they?" he asked, holding out his empty teacup.

"Yes, sir," she said as she poured him more tea, because he had literally sectioned off part of his guest list and labeled it 'brown-noser quarantine zone'.

He continued holding out his teacup, because he could tell she hadn't added honey yet. "I've decided I'm going to start off with that levitation trick the swami taught me."

She raised an eyebrow as she mixed honey into his cup, watched the little streams dissolve along the surface. "Really, sir?"

"Mmm-hm," he hummed, taking his cup back to take a sup. "It means I'll have my eyes closed for… five minutes, maybe. I want you to take notes. Every person in the room and what they look like when I can't see them. Just the gist is fine. If they say anything, write that down, too."

Huh. "Yes, sir." He didn't say whether he actually thought he was going to be able to levitate. Maybe he didn't consider that relevant. Maybe he considered it a theoretical bonus. He might have wanted the notes to know which guests had the most respect for him, or he may have wanted it to make him seem omniscient if they said something they didn't want him to hear. Or maybe both.

It wouldn't be the first time he'd warned her that he was going to do something dumb so she could see how people reacted. He didn't used to warn her, but she wasn't very helpful in those circumstances, since she was busy watching him.

A lot of things were going to be starting into motion tomorrow. It was almost exciting. She'd already helped him make six different contingency plans so that they could flee the country. One of them involved hiding out in an abandoned air nomad temple for six months. That plan was hers, and Varrick didn't care for it because he thought it would be boring. She did that sometimes, snuck in a plan they would never use. It gave her an excuse to imagine having him all to herself for a while. It wasn't a fantasy if it was part of a practical plan.

Even in her practical plans she tended to imagine him getting bored and wandering off after a week.

He had at least one plan that involved disguising themselves as a dead animal and paving the way out with money, so it wasn't as if she was the only one being self-indulgent.

"Do you ever miss Ba Sing Se?" he asked, looking out at the festival lights. "The parts that sucked, I mean. Before you met me."

Zhu Li took her time thinking about the question, in part to spite the way that he'd asked it. She didn't know if she could describe herself as happy, but she knew for a fact that she'd been miserable then. Happier now than she'd ever been in the walled city. People didn't understand that about Varrick, that no matter how difficult and how thankless it could never be as bad as it was without him.

Life had been difficult and thankless before. It had been disappointing and humiliating and hopeless. She'd been hungry and she'd been angry and sometimes it still came as a surprise not to be able to see her bones beneath her skin. Her victories had been small and they had been hard-won and unsatisfying, and she would rather carry Varrick up a hundred mountains than ever go back.

"I miss being able to sleep in."

Varrick snorted. "You're an awful liar, Zhu Li. You've never slept past sunrise in your life."

She almost smiled. "Nothing gets past you, sir."

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Straight Shooter

"Varrick!"

He had been busy playing a game on the deck of his yacht, hitting balls with a stick to send them into the ocean. His only real goal seemed to be getting them to fly as far as possible; he'd asked Zhu Li to keep score, but she just wrote tally marks every now and again when he seemed particularly impressed with himself.

Bolin nearly doubled over when he made it to them, trying to catch his breath. "Where's the fire, kid?" asked Varrick, resting the stick he'd been using on his shoulder. Then he looked thoughtful. "I guess your brother would know that better than you would, wouldn't he?" This was why she tried to keep him away from idioms. Bolin's fire ferret poked its head out of his coat.

"Unalaq is taking Korra to the south pole so she can restore balance to the spirits and stop them from attacking ships all the time," he said, which was a very impressive amount of words for a single breath. "Did you guys want to come?"

Varrick and Zhu Li looked at each other. The strange thing wasn't that he had asked, but was in knowing that he was completely and utterly genuine in the asking. Bolin had decided, with minimal prompting, that they were friends. He therefore, without any effort on their part, trusted them implicitly. She could see in Varrick's eyes the information he was processing, filling in the missing pieces about Unalaq and the Avatar.

"That sounds like a heck of a thing, kid," said Varrick, clapping a hand onto the shoulder not occupied by ferret. "Do you have any idea how touched I am you came to invite me along?"

Bolin looked bashful. "Well," he said, scratching his ear, "when they said there'd be spirits, I thought of that great mover you made of the ostrich horse, and I thought: you know what would be even better? A mover about spirits."

"And that's the kind of out-of-the-box thinking I like about you, kid," Varrick said, "but the thing is, I don't even know if spirits will show up on camera!" There was no reason they wouldn't, but it certainly sounded plausible.

Bolin made a sound of surprised disappointment, punching the heel of his palm. "I hadn't even thought of that."

"Lucky for you, thinking's my job," Varrick said. "And you know I'd love to go just to keep you company, but tonight's the night Zhu Li files my toenails, and that's a five hour job at least."

"Ugh." Bolin looked approximately as disgusted as Zhu Li felt, wrinkling his nose and sticking out his tongue.

The thing of it was, Varrick really and truly liked him. Bolin was, without question, the only person who could have pointed out that Varrick wasn't levitating and gotten away with it. Not because he was an idiot, because there had been no shortage of idiots in that room. It was because he had been absolutely and utterly genuine. He had been legitimately confused, had felt no shame in admitting that he was confused, and had only wanted someone to help him to understand what was happening.

The rest of Zhu Li's notes had been focused on Sato, because the only thing that interested Varrick from that point forward was the most honest and well-meaning person he had ever met. He was as fascinated as he would have been if the ferret had started talking.

"Hey," suggested Varrick, "how'd you like it if I gave you some things to make the trip easier? All brand new stuff, top-of-the-line, courtesy of Varrick Global Industries?"

Bolin was obviously delighted, because he wore his heart on his sleeve in a way that Zhu Li could not begin to imagine. "Really?"

Varrick's grin — and this was a much harder thing to identify — was also genuine. "Really," he reassured him. "Then when you get back you can tell me all about it, maybe I can put it in a script."

Liking him didn't mean he wouldn't use him. Bolin didn't seem like he'd be able to pick up all the intricacies of what he saw, but he'd be able to give them the broad strokes of what happened. Probably without stopping to breathe.

☽❆☾

"This motor sled was designed for Zhu Li to drive me around," Varrick said to Bolin as he tried to zip himself into the snowsuit Varrick had given him. Zhu Li was very tentatively trying to feed Pabu a small tea cookie. The fire ferret gave it an obliging nibble, whiskers and fur brushing against her fingertips. "Since you don't have a Zhu Li, you'll just have to drive it yourself. Zhu Li, show him how to do the thing."

"Yes, sir." Standing back upright, she stiffened when Pabu took her retreat as a chance to climb onto her shoulder. He snuffled at her hair, possibly looking for more cookies. She went to Bolin's side, and pointed to various mechanisms on the vehicle. "Go. Stop. Go forward. Go backward. Left. Right. Don't press that button. Only press that button if you think you're about to die. Never flip that switch. If this gets red, you're out of fuel and you'll have to walk."

"Thanks, Zhu Li," he said, reaching out to retrieve his ferret. "Come here, Pabu, leave the nice lady alone."

"Yeah, and tell him to stay off of Zhu Li," Varrick added, and she and Bolin both narrowed their eyes at him. He met their looks with a grin and a spread of his arms that suggested he didn't know why they were indignant. Bolin tucked Pabu into his jumpsuit, and Zhu Li brushed the fur from her shoulders.

"He just gets really friendly," Bolin explained apologetically.

"Zhu Li! Get him a thing." Without asking, she turned to retrieve a heavy thermos that she could fill with hot tea. "It gets cold out there, kid, tea'll keep the blood pumping."

"It's so cool how you two do that," Bolin said, scratching Pabu behind the ears. "You're like an old married couple." Zhu Li nearly spilled his tea. "I mean, I don't actually know that many old married couples? Because of the whole, you know… orphan thing. But if I imagine an old married couple, but they also work for each other and they're rich, they kind of have that same thing going on. You know?"

Varrick slapped Bolin on the back. "Kid," he said, "you've got some weird ideas about relationships."

Bolin sighed. "I know," he said, as he took the thermos Zhu Li gave him. "Hey, you seem like you know a lot about girls," he said, perking up.

"Wrong," Varrick corrected with a swipe of his hand through the air. "I know a lot about women."

"Wow," said Bolin, "that was really smooth."

"I know, right?" Varrick was clearly very proud of that line. This conversation was going to be a trainwreck. "Bolin, I'm going to give you some advice given to me when I was your age, by a firebending strongman named Ugly Pete: Never. Be. Yourself." He emphasized each word by poking a finger into Bolin's sternum.

Bolin's face fell. "Really? Does that work?" Zhu Li turned around so they wouldn't see her rubbing the bridge of her nose beneath her glasses.

"You're darn tootin' it works. Think about yourself, Bolin. Think about all the things you do when you're home alone and you don't think anyone is looking. That's the real you, kid. Now tell me: what kind of a woman would love a man like that?"

"… a very understanding one?" Bolin sounded hopeful, but not very.

"Wrong! A terrible one. You deserve better than the kind of woman that would love the real you, Bolin." Zhu Li turned back around to see Bolin hanging on Varrick's every idiot word. "Kid, I need you to imagine your perfect woman." Bolin closed his eyes and screwed up his face, which was presumably his 'imagining' face. "Now imagine the kind of man a woman like that deserves. What you need to do is pretend to be that guy."

"Won't she eventually figure out that I'm not that guy?" Bolin asked, opening his eyes.

"That's the beauty of it, kid: by the time she figures it out, it'll already be too late."

Bolin was clearly believing every word of this, was the worst thing. Zhu Li might have offered contradictory advice, but she didn't have any. She'd never had a love life, and all she had now was a job. 'Land on a woman and then make her your adventure maid' did not seem widely applicable, and it wasn't even working that great for her.

"So, let's say there's this girl," said Bolin, "and she's from the Water Tribe and she's really pretty and kind of scary and I feel like maybe there could really be something there? Should I tell her how I feel, or—"

"Absolutely not," Varrick interrupted. "Women like mystery. They need to feel like they earned it, otherwise it doesn't mean anything. You've got to hold those feelings in reserve in case of an emergency."

"… a feelings emergency?"

"Exactly. Or if you think you're about to die, then you might as well just go for it since it's not like it'll make things worse." Zhu Li was not sure that Varrick had ever experienced a feelings emergency. Not since she'd started working for him, at least. Maybe it had happened more often when he was younger.

She really needed to get Bolin out of here before Varrick could give him more advice. "Sir, the time…"

Varrick looked at her blankly for a moment. "Oh! Right, right, you've probably got places to be, eh kid?"

"Oh, you're right!" Bolin looked briefly alarmed. "If I'm late they'll probably just leave without me, they do that sometimes." He stuffed his thermos into the back of the motor sled, and clambered on top of it. "… which one did you say was the go button?"

"That one," Zhu Li said, pointing. "If you crash or get caught in an avalanche, the suit should inflate to protect you."

"That's awesome! How do I make it deflate?"

"You don't," Zhu Li said flatly, which somewhat dampened his enthusiasm.

"We're working on that," Varrick added. "Consider it another reason to try not to crash into anything. Aside from, you know, costing me a ton of money and all."

"I won't cost you anything!" Bolin insisted, obvious earnest fear as he hugged the sled, maybe to protect it with his own body. "I'll bring it back safe, I promise!"

Varrick, who had only been teasing, was clearly uncomfortable with Bolin's intense desire to protect his property. "Calm down, kid, I've got like ten of those. Set it on fire when you're done with it, see if I care. Not in the city, though, they get mad about that kind of thing."

"You guys are so nice," Bolin said, and he meant it. It was an unfortunate misconception, but they weren't going to correct it. "I'm going to come back when we're done saving the world again or whatever, and I'm going to show you this thing I taught Pabu how to do with a fire hoop, you're gonna love it."

"Sounds great, kid," Varrick said as he stuck his hands in his pockets, watched Bolin make a jerky exit on his newly acquired vehicle. When he was out of earshot, Varrick turned his head toward Zhu Li. "He's gonna drive that thing right into the ocean."

"Very probably, sir."

"Tell R&D that I want the next generation to be amphibious."

"Yes, sir."

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Phase Two and a Half

"You know, looking on the bright side? It actually smells better on the inside."

Zhu Li did not look particularly enthused about the smell of the inside of the platypus bear. The support system that kept it upright and potentially mobile made it smell weirdly of pine. Personally, Iknik didn't think it was that bad. It was warm. Kind of cozy. They'd brought the kale cookies he'd had Zhu Li steal from the meeting. There was a whole picnic basket, in fact. He'd almost taken a nap earlier, but Zhu Li had been forced to wake him up so he wouldn't snore, despite his assertions that he did not do any such thing.

This mansion was mostly for show, and occasionally the storage of things he didn't feel like having take up room on the yacht — like Ping-Ping. He'd built it before he'd hired Zhu Li, so the only room available for her was too far from his own. He'd thought about putting some kind of second bed in his own room, but he was pretty sure she'd draw a hard line in the snow about that. It was just his luck the hammer had fallen the one time he wasn't on his yacht.

It was getting pretty boring.

"Zhu Li," he said, "let's walk this thing closer to the window so we can see what's going on outside."

"I can't, sir."

"What?" he asked, too loudly. They'd been speaking in low whispers, bare hums of sound under their breath. "Why not?" he asked, quiet again. If she couldn't actually move this stupid bear, their whole plan had just been fucked. Not that it was much of a plan to begin with, but still.

"My legs are asleep."

"… oh."

He'd been sitting on her lap for some hours now. It was more comfortable that way then to try to fit into the left or the right, or so he thought. He was basically perched on her knees, and really, he'd thought he was the one getting the short end of that particular stick, having longer legs and less padding than his assistant.

"Well, let's… here, don't move." The look on her face, mostly shadow but visible to him now that his eyes had adjusted, made it clear that she thought this was a stupid request. But if she moved her legs wrong, this was going to get very unpleasant very quickly. He twisted around in a way that suggested he considered spines optional, and slipped an arm underneath hers, used the arm around her torso to pull her up against him. Her eyes went wide and her spine went stiff, but he twisted her around him until he'd fallen into the hollow of one of Ping-Ping's legs and their positions had been reversed.

Sort of. Zhu Li was fitted much more snugly in his lap than he had been in hers, because as they'd moved his arm had wound its way around her waist, pressed her back to his chest. He rested his chin on her shoulder, and told himself it was because it made it easier to be quiet. "Better?"

Her skirt had twisted, and the hem of it was higher than her knees now. Slowly, she rubbed at one of them, pulled her knees closer to her chest to try to get them moving in the small space. "Thank you, sir." Her tea tree oil smell mingled with the smell of pine, and this close he could detect that strange undercurrent of cake. It might have made more sense if she'd been the sort of person to dab vanilla behind her ears, to try and make herself appealing. Zhu Li wanted to be appealing about as much as she wanted to be a frog, and so it was a mystery he might never solve.

Unless he asked. But that would mean admitting that he'd been smelling her. Awkward.

"You're doing it wrong," he huffed as he watched her try to get the kinks out of her legs. "Didn't you see the way I did it earlier?" He knew that she had, because there had been literally nothing else in there for her to look at. A man didn't join a circus without learning good ways to keep himself limber, how to hide in boxes that should have been too small for a person and contort himself in strange ways for the amusement of others.

"Is that what you were doing?"

Apparently she had been under the impression that he'd been squirming around just for the fun of it. Sometimes he got the feeling that Zhu Li thought he was a moron. "Yes, that was what I was doing," he sighed. "Do the thing I did, we can't be tipping over just because you let your legs fall off." Her legs would probably not actually fall off, but tipping over was a much more serious possibility.

Accordingly, she pressed her knees to her chest so she'd have enough room to stretch her legs upward, ankles pressed together and toes pointed toward Ping-Ping's mouth. She made a tiny noise as the muscles of her calves protested, and he realized then that this was a horrible idea. She was wiggling in his lap and when she stretched out her legs he could see the top of one of her stockings, and, yes, this was a terrible idea. His mouth went dry as she turned her ankles, ran a hand beneath her legs to try and keep them stretching.

Terrible bad awful idea, and his arm shouldn't have been tightening around her and he shouldn't have been burying his face in the crook of her shoulder as he watched the strain of her legs in the air. She tensed against him again, and he hated when she did that because it felt like she'd been spooked. Which was an irrational way for him to feel, since she wasn't an ostrich horse. She wasn't going to buck him off.

… he was a bad, bad man.

"Sir?"

"Just finish what you're doing so you can stop squirming," he muttered, disgruntled.

"Sorry, sir."

She stretched her legs out one last time, made another frustrating little sound, and he tamped down the bizarre impulse to sink his teeth into her neck. The way his head rested on her shoulder let him feel her pulse against his skin, faster than circumstances seemed to warrant. She curled back in on herself, wiggled her hips to try and get her legs back in order, and he grunted but still did not let her go.

Bad, bad man.

She relaxed against him, and somehow that was even worse. He ought to have released her, or adjusted their positions so she wasn't plastered against him. She wasn't an idiot. She was going to notice. Then again, she might not mind—

That was a dangerous train of thought, and not one he was going to finish. Not least because that would be at odds with their plan of staying quiet and hidden.

Besides. She was Zhu Li. Zhu Li was quiet and competent and terrifying and plain, sarcastic and cold and clever and ruthless. There was only one Zhu Li, and that wasn't what she was for. He could use anyone for that.

"Well now my legs are sore," he said, which was a lie, but one that gave him a plausible reason to go back to the way they'd been before. The way that didn't have his assistant trapped in his lap all warm and soft. His arm left her waist, and immediately she leaned forward so that he could try and slide out from underneath her. It wasn't as easy as it had been the other way around, and soon they were a clumsy tangle of limbs that was literally the opposite of what he'd intended.

She opened her mouth to say something at the same time as he thought he heard a footstep, so he covered her mouth with his hand, and he could feel her scowl at him. It was the correct decision, as voices and footsteps came closer, not yet distinct enough to identify. But it also left him with the image of Zhu Li underneath him in the dark, looking indignant and disheveled with her clothes all twisted and her hair falling out of place.

It wasn't a memory that he needed, but he didn't think it was one he'd be able to get rid of.

Voices became easier to identify, so he abandoned Zhu Li to the bottom of the bear, pulled himself up on the wooden framework to peer cautiously out of Ping-Ping's bill.

Distractions. Distractions were good. He'd be happy to see Unalaq, at this point. That'd be really distracting.

The faster it was safe to leave the bear, the better.

CHAPTER TWENTY

Generational Divides

Varrick had decided to take over Future Industries before they'd even reached Republic City. Asami Sato was desperate, and desperation spelled weakness. Not desperate enough, not yet, because if he suggested it now she'd be suspicious. She had to be desperate enough to ask for the help that would be her undoing, and then he'd have what he wanted and she'd be grateful to him for taking it.

It wasn't like he was planning to kick her out into the cold. New ownership would mean new investors, combining it with a few other holdings made vertical integration possible, and there seemed to be very little doubt in his mind that she'd make more as a figurehead than she was currently making as CEO.

Less work and more money, and he'd be the new owner of several proprietary designs. Win-win.

So it went with Varrick. Zhu Li generally didn't question his decisions unless she saw a practical flaw, because she trusted him to know what he was doing. His ends, whatever they were, would justify his means. The world was a better place when Varrick got what he wanted.

He seemed more than a little unsettled by the presence of so many teenagers on his yacht. Bolin was one thing, Varrick quite pleased to be able to take him under his wing. Bolin didn't actually do very much under that wing, since he was entirely too sweet and too honest to learn any of the things that Varrick could teach him, but it was the thought that counted.

The rest… Zhu Li wouldn't say that he was avoiding them, necessarily. But spending extended periods around them seemed to make him tired, making an effort to play the part of the fun relative that he wasn't.

Zhu Li liked them well enough, as much as she liked anyone. Korra and Asami were young and powerful in ways that she had never been, pretty faces she'd never had. She didn't envy them, because they had the weight of the world on their shoulders, responsibilities that had also never been hers.

Mako and Bolin were easier to relate to, that way. Boys whose biggest concern had been their next meal, who'd known what it was to be hungry and cold and alone, with no thoughts past making it another day. But even they'd had each other.

With Varrick the only adult in a position of authority on the ship, the teenagers slept in until noon for the duration of the voyage. Zhu Li kept a buffet lunch on the top deck, because when they woke the benders liked to practice in the open air. Sometimes Asami joined them for sparring exercises that didn't require bending, and sometimes she simply watched.

"Varrick!" Bolin called with a wave during a lull in the action, and Varrick looked over the top of the reports he'd been reading. "When we get to Republic City, can we hang out at your mansion?" Zhu Li could see at a distance Mako rolling his eyes, because his eyerolls seemed to involve most of his head. He was like an owl that way.

"I don't have a mansion in Republic City," Varrick called back.

"Whaaaaaaat." Bolin was not a person who could comprehend choosing not to own a mansion when owning a mansion was a possibility. The herd of teens drifted nearer to where Varrick was seated and Zhu Li was standing, the better to hold a conversation.

She hadn't decided yet if 'herd' was the appropriate collective noun. A flock of teens? A colony? A plague? There didn't seem like enough of them to constitute a swarm.

"Kid, have you ever tried to buy real estate in Republic City?" Varrick asked as if he did not know.

"N… no?"

"That's because you're smart," he said, which Zhu Li knew he did not believe, but which was more flattering than reminding Bolin that he was the poorest person on this boat. "It ain't worth it, kid. Just ask Miss Sato, I bet you that house of hers is a real pain on the upkeep."

"Isn't that the sort of thing you pay other people to worry about?" Asami asked, and she might have been teasing. It may also have been a sore spot, another responsibility to be reminded of when her company was hemorrhaging funds.

"And you know who I pay?" he countered. "The Four Elements, that's who. Great view of the city, bathrooms have fountains in them that I assume I'm supposed to be using, and don't even get me started on the soap. You know I contacted the company that makes that soap? Exclusive contract, not allowed to sell it to anyone else, and I was very convincing."

It was entirely true. Zhu Li associated the smell of lavender with nights in Republic City, because he'd use his peppermint in the morning to wake him up and lavender at night to help him sleep. It was a good thing they didn't charge separately for utilities.

"You know, I've got extra rooms," Asami suggested. "I'd be happy to have you as guests."

"You're a real class act, Miss Sato," Varrick said, "but I learned my lesson about not sticking to my boat the last time." He tapped a finger to his temple. "I don't know if you've ever spent 18 hours in a platypus bear, but I do not recommend it."

"I don't think President Raiko's going to be calling for your arrest anytime soon," Korra said with a crooked grin.

The finger that had been at Varrick's temple pointed at her. "I bet you a week ago you'd have said the same thing about Unalaq."

Korra slumped. "You have a point."

"So Varrick Global Industries doesn't have an official headquarters in the city?" asked Asami. She wasn't as smart as her father yet, definitely not as smart as Varrick, but she was getting there.

"We've got a small office in the Cultural Center," he shrugged. "Saves me a bunch on property taxes."

That had been Zhu Li's doing, though of course he didn't say so. She'd whittled down operations to their maximum possible efficiency, eliminating redundancies until everything that needed to be done could be handled out of a single office by a few trusted employees. Varrick had always liked to run lean, but as his empire had expanded the growth had been awkward; Zhu Li had been the one willing to put in the time to restructure from the ground up.

Korra looked slightly surprised and impressed, though not because his business practices were impressive. "You own the Water Tribe Cultural Center?"

"The Southern Water Tribe Cultural Center," he corrected. "Unalaq can build his own, I'm not paying for it." Korra snorted.

"Is there really that much of a difference?" asked Mako, and Varrick and Korra both leveled him with A Look. Mako had the sense to hold his hands up in immediate surrender. "Sorry," he said, but he sounded more exasperated than apologetic. "I was just wondering."

Bolin had made his way back to the little buffet, and was eating tiny sandwiches with gusto. Pabu tried to steal one of them before it could reach his mouth, and was punished by being set aside. Pabu responded to this slight by trying to coax a cookie out of Zhu Li. She tried to discourage this behavior by ignoring him, but rather than giving up he tried to nibble on her fingers.

"Pabu!" Bolin scolded around a mouthful of sandwich. "What has gotten into you, young man?"

"He thinks she has cake," Varrick explained absentmindedly, and she didn't know how he could possibly pretend to know that. It made her suspicious that he had secretly planted some kind of cake on her person, in order to prank her with animals. It seemed not only annoying for her, but also dangerous for the animals, and therefore entirely in keeping with what Varrick would find funny.

Naga didn't seem as interested as any potential cakes on her person, Korra rubbing at her snout and looking thoughtful. "How long do you think until we'll be in Republic City?"

Varrick's eyes flicked toward the sky, towards clouds on the horizon, before reaching over to offer Pabu head scritches. Pabu declined, pinning back his ears and avoiding Varrick's hand. "Just give it a few more days," he said. "I'm sure Tonraq's doing fine," he added, answering the question she hadn't asked.

"I hope so," Korra said, more solemn. For a moment it looked as if Asami was going to put a comforting hand on her shoulder, but Mako beat her to it.

"You'll be bringing reinforcements soon enough," Varrick said, leaning back his chair and propping his feet on the table. He had very little doubts about his ability to convince Raiko to intervene, and having the Avatar in agreement only made him more certain of their ultimate success.

Ultimately, it came down to convincing the President that Unalaq posed a threat to Republic City. Appealing to his better nature was a nice idea and all, but he was a politician. Varrick's cynicism was not only justified, but it was possible he wasn't being cynical enough. She thought it very probable that he was overestimating the city's gratitude.

Gratitude was reserved for people who had done more than was expected of them. Risk and sacrifice and pain were a young woman's birthright, and the Avatar would be no different. For her their gratitude would be less and not more, and for Republic City gratitude was a thing for words and not actions.

Zhu Li would not say any of these things, because giving Varrick more to worry about was the opposite of what she wanted. Better to just quietly add to his pile of contingency plans, and wait to see how things shook out. Varrick had found a cookie, and was offering it to Pabu, who seemed slightly more amenable to his advances when put into a cookie context.

"So have you kids found the ninepins hall yet?"

"There's a ninepins hall?" Bolin looked delighted by the very idea.

"Sure! It's right under the aquarium."

"Why do you have an aquarium inside of a ship?" asked Mako, who seemed much less delighted. He had convinced himself that poverty was a virtue, disdain for lifestyles he had assumed out of reach. A pessimist at heart, and she might have had more sympathy with that if that pessimism didn't put him at odds with her boss.

"Because this ocean is saltwater," Varrick said as if it should have been obvious, "and the aquarium is freshwater. You want to see a salty fish, you come on deck. You want to see a less salty fish, you go to the aquarium. There is a world of fish at your fingertips, Mako. Except for mantipi, I had a mantipus once and you'd better believe I learned my lesson fast."

"Yeah, Mako," teased Korra, with an elbow to his ribs that nearly knocked him over. "What have you got against fish?"

"I don't have anything against fish," he said, crossing his arms over his chest.

"But with eyebrows like that, fish might have something against you," Varrick said, and Asami smothered a laugh at a joke that Mako clearly did not understand. "Maybe cover those up if you're going to the aquarium, I don't need you scaring my fish."

"I don't—"

Korra smothered Mako's indignation in a sudden kiss, and Asami and Bolin made faces at each other behind their backs. "Come on, Mako," she said as she took his hand, "let's go play ninepins. You don't have to do anything with a fish that makes you uncomfortable."

"When we were kids we used to play ninepins," Bolin chimed in, grabbing a few sandwiches for the road, "except instead of pins we used bottles, and there were only six of them, and we used a rock instead of a ball."

"That wasn't ninepins, Bolin," Mako corrected, "you just used to throw rocks at bottles."

Bolin got a faraway look in his eye. "Oh, yeah." He came back to attention as he looked to Varrick. "Are you going to play with us? I bet you're great at ninepins."

"And you would win that bet," Varrick said, and Zhu Li would never tell them that Varrick was the worst player she had ever seen. "In some places, they call me The Ninepin King. The Nineking, if you will."

"Is that an official title?" asked Asami, also preparing to head below decks.

"It's mostly ceremonial," said Varrick. "Unfortunately, you're going to have to wait to be in awe of my prowess, because Zhu Li needs to finish some of this paperwork, and if I'm not there to keep an eye on her she'll slack off. Isn't that right, Zhu Li?"

"I lack your prodigious work ethic, sir," she deadpanned. The girls gave her a look that might have been pity, but she didn't return their understanding glances.

"You kids have fun, though!" Varrick waved them off, and when they were gone he picked the reports back up.

"Should I send word to the crew to initiate emergency tank breach protocols?" she asked after a moment.

"You mean you haven't already? Get to it, Zhu Li, what the hell do I pay you for?"

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Hero of the South

Operation: Better Futures was already underway. Operation: Literal Metaphor was also starting into motion. Varrick had not yet told her the name for his plan to make movers in support of the South, because his announcement was the first that she'd heard of it.

Directly asking the captain in charge of shipping mecha to steal his own shipment was a good way to leave evidence lying around. He had an elaborate system of codewords with his most trusted captains, though their function was usually more along the lines of sabotaging the competition. Some of those captains had a suspicious resemblance to pirates, and the number of years that they had worked for Varrick raised a lot of questions that Zhu Li would not be asking.

Sometimes she wondered if a conspicuous face scar was the ten-year anniversary gift for Varrick Global Industries employees. She thought one across her nose might look cute.

Varrick was hanging upside-down again, doing that thing where he'd bend in half in a way that made her stomach hurt to watch, making rough plans for the mover scripts. "And the animals talk," he added, and Zhu Li noted it on his Nuktuk brainstorming web.

"Why Bolin, sir?" she asked, because she'd been curious since he came up with this idea.

"Why not Bolin?" he countered, relaxing and hanging limp for a moment. "Who the heck else would I get to do it?"

"I thought you'd get someone actually Southern — like you," she said, tapping the end of her pencil against the notepad.

"Ha!" Varrick lifted himself up again so that he could look down at her with his face upright. "The viewing public isn't ready for that much man, Zhu Li," he said loftily, and she snorted and then tried to pretend she hadn't. He narrowed his eyes at her before falling limp again. "Anyway," he continued, with a hint of petulance, "the whole point of Operation: Snow Raccoon is to get Republic City on our side. Best way to do that is with a Nuktuk that looks like them, not a Nuktuk that actually looks like a Nuktuk."

She swallowed the ghost of a smile. "You don't think Bolin looks like a Nuktuk?"

Varrick swung himself upward, caught the bar with his hands and unhooked his legs to balance upside-down. "The eyebrows, maybe," he said with a grin. He let go with one hand and stuck it out to try and balance on just the one.

"Have you known many Nuktuks?"

"Just the one," he said, and as his arm gave out he swung down and landed back on the ground. If she hadn't known better, she might have thought he was showing off — but they were the only two there. "Nuktuk Varrick didn't have eyebrows as much as he had a winter pelt on his face, though."

"… oh." Somehow that took the wind from her sails, a different conversation than the one she'd thought they'd been having. She didn't know why he still thought he could get away with things like that, sliding revelations like prizes into casual conversations as if she wouldn't notice.

It wasn't just his father's name. That was just a curious fact, an interesting but otherwise not noteworthy thing. It was knowing that he'd given the name to a character on which his plan hinged, a character intended to embody heroism and lovability. Another little piece clicking into place in the puzzle she had made of him, Nuktuk the poor seal hunter who'd married a waterbender, Nuktuk whose wife had gone mad, Nuktuk whose son would make him a hero if only in name.

If Varrick knew all the things he had said between the lines, he chose to continue barreling through the conversation before she could catch him. "Ugh," he said with a wrinkle of his nose, holding out his arms and looking down at himself. "Why'd you let me do that in my nice clothes?"

Varrick didn't own clothes that weren't nice. It was why he usually had the sense not to let himself get all sweaty. Trying to get sweat out of fur was a nightmare. At least once she'd just bought him a new coat out of her paycheck rather than bother. It wasn't as if she had anything else to do with her pay. He took care of all her living expenses himself, and she had enough saved up to live comfortably for fifty years. "Sorry, sir."

"Walk with me, Zhu Li," he said with a nod of his head toward the door, and she closed her notebook and rose to her feet. If he was specifying, that meant he wanted her listening closely. Radios had been getting smaller, and it had made his paranoia no better. He now liked to discuss sensitive things while moving from room to room, so if anyone did put forth the effort necessary to listen in, they would also have to piece together conversations bit by bit. If the technology existed to do such things, they hadn't heard of it yet. "How are things going with the Triads?" he asked under his breath.

"We've had to establish new contacts since the Equalist uprising," she said, "but it may ultimately work in our favor." Varrick took off his coat and handed it to her, and she accepted it without breaking stride. "Working through Ren with new contacts means there are very few left who could make the connection to you. If we—"

Her words ended with a strangled sound in her throat as Varrick pulled off his shirt.

She'd seen him without a shirt before. She'd seen him in less. Living in close quarters with a man for five years meant seeing things. Usually, there was slightly more warning than this. He tossed his shirt at her, and she caught it, but with a touch more fumbling than she normally would have done.

Disgusting. Absolutely disgusting. She was very sure that this was disgusting, because the alternative meant considering that he actually smelled a little bit attractive when he was all sweaty and that made her hate herself. They passed the open door of one of the labs, and she made eye contact with a tech who had gone all wide-eyed at the sight of their boss wandering around the yacht shirtless. It was a strange moment of employee solidarity.

"Are the detonators going to be done in time?" Varrick asked, apparently as oblivious to her struggles as always. She wasn't usually this grateful for it.

"They should be," she said, fighting to keep the strain out of her voice. "We've scheduled use of the center for 'cultural exercises', so the only ones on site should be the briefed security team." If it went the way it was supposed to, it would look like luck that no one got hurt. Casualties might be politically useful, but they were easily avoided and far from necessary.

Ideally, the destruction of the Southern Water Tribe Cultural Center would represent a microcosm of the North's desire to subsume the South, while also making clear that being within the borders of the United Republic didn't make people of the Southern Water Tribe safe.

Operation: Literal Metaphor was one of the few plans that Varrick had given a subtitle. 'They Were Probably Going To Do It Eventually' didn't quite roll off the tongue as easily.

Varrick was taking his boots off while he walked downstairs, and the temptation to grab him by the belt to keep him from falling was staggering. She refused to take those, so he threw them over the guard rail and onto the level below. There was a distant ow that they both ignored. "The pool down here is still working, right?" he asked, which seemed like something he should have checked earlier. "They didn't give the dog a bath in it or anything?"

"We kept your private pool locked while Team Avatar was on board, sir." She made a mental note that they were going to have to sterilize the floors, because she hated it when Varrick walked around barefoot. It really would make her life much easier if he would hire a damn doctor.

"Fan-tastic," he said, and in short order he had jumped in the pool in nothing but his pants. His white pants.

Holding his dirty laundry in one arm, she rubbed at the bridge of her nose. He resurfaced and shook water out of his hair in a manner strangely canine, which left about half of it hanging limp in front of his face. She very pointedly refused to look at the way water weighed down the natural curl of his hair, or the triangle of curls in the middle of his chest, or the width of his shoulders all wet and dark and gleaming.

And absolutely not that pants situation.

Varrick ran his hands through his hair and leaned back to float, resting his hands behind his head. "You know, Zhu Li," he said, "I could have sworn I didn't used to get that gross." He scowled at the ceiling. "Getting old sucks."

"I'll have to take your word for it, sir," she said, before realizing that made it sound as though she hadn't aged. Mostly she had meant that he was older than she was, but he made a face at her anyway.

"You only say that because you were born old," he accused. "The only little girl in Ba Sing Se working on a retirement plan." She opened her mouth to protest, then closed it again with a flush of embarrassment as she realized that he was almost correct.

… it wasn't as if it had been an actual retirement plan. Just a lot of math and budgeting. It wasn't as if she'd had anything better to do. She dumped his clothes into a basket intended for towels, and realized with some dismay that holding them for as long as she had left her smelling like him. "I don't know what little girls in the Water Tribe are like," she said, moving to one of the cupboards, "but maybe the little girls in Ba Sing Se are different." There was a splash as Varrick pulled himself out of the water, and she held up a towel without looking at him. He took it, but when she turned around he shook the water out of his hair again. She squeaked and threw up her hands to try and protect herself from the resulting droplets, then glared at him.

He grinned, then knelt down and brought his face too close to hers so he could look her in the eyes point-blank. "Normal little girls," he informed her, "plan weddings. Not corporate takeovers." Then he withdrew so he could rub the towel over his head with great vigor.

She draped a robe over his shoulders, and pushed him toward the door without waiting for him to be able to see. "Since I seem to be doing much more of one than the other," she said, "I'd say it's working out for me."

Sometimes, secretly, she did imagine scenarios where she and Varrick got married. Usually it was part of some greater scheme on Varrick's part, even in her imaginings. In order for this plan to work, we need to get married or perhaps for legal reasons we need to get married immediately or maybe Zhu Li marry me hurry up no time for questions. Or else in some kind of doomsday scenario, she would use the fact that they were going to die anyway as an opportunity to propose, and he would agree because they were going to die anyway, and then maybe they would climb into a tank and drive it over their fallen enemies on the way to their doom.

Zhu Li was not great at having an imagination. That was Varrick's job.

"Hey," he said, "speaking of you technically being a woman and all—"

There was no ending to that sentence that was good.

"—we've got Ginger to bring in the gents, but do you think Nuktuk would draw in the dames? Bolin seems pretty popular with a certain demographic, it seems like we ought to be able to use that. Maybe some kind of costume? I mean, considering what Ginger'll be wearing, it'd only be fair, right?"

"I don't know, sir," she said flatly, "being that I am aroused only by the filing of particularly complex tax returns."

"… that sounds suspiciously like sass, Zhu Li."

"Never, sir."

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Best Laid Plans

"Who are the two nicest guys on security?" Varrick asked, and she thought he looked unnecessarily ominous when the only light source in the room was hot coals.

He was still using the hot coals for his feet. It was still making them worse.

"Jiro and Peng," she said without even needing to think about it, because on days off Jiro volunteered at a soup kitchen and Peng used his downtime to knit blankets for orphans. What they were doing working for Varrick was anyone's guess.

"Send them up," he said. "We're going to have to enact Operation: Shark Cage." He did not look happy about this.

"Will I be laying the groundwork for phase two, sir?"

Varrick groaned, slouching in his chair and spinning it around like a child on the verge of a tantrum. Phase one of the plan involved trying to get Mako to sit down and shut up; phase two, if that failed, was to shut him up more literally. Phase one was for Varrick, and phase two was for Zhu Li, because they preferred to focus on their respective skillsets. Varrick never questioned that breaking and entering was one of Zhu Li's skills.

"There's this voice in my head," he said, "saying Bolin is going to be pretty upset about this."

Varrick didn't like taking responsibility for his own conscience. He didn't like taking responsibility for most things, in fact. Just credit. Sometimes his externalization methods were strange, but she accepted it for what it was.

"So you'd like to abandon phase two?" she said, knowing the answer already.

"It's not my fault if the kid can't mind his own business," Varrick continued, as if she hadn't said anything. He was still spinning in his chair. "Damn snitch, anyway. Prison's not even that bad. He wants to be a cop, you know where you learn a lot about crime? Prison. You know what you can't do in prison? Fight wars. Really, this is going to work out great for him."

"… is the head voice satisfied, sir?"

"… no." He stopped the chair spinning and rubbed his hands over his face. "Well, it's too late now. Kid's determined, it's us or him." There was no question who he'd choose if those were his options.

"He still might take you up on the offer, sir," she said, though neither of them believed it. He was about as bad with moral gray areas as Bolin; but where Bolin would err on the side of believing everyone was good, Mako was much more pessimistic.

"It doesn't matter," he said, possibly trying to convince himself as much as anyone. "Spirits help us if the fate of the world is left to the moral compass of a teenage boy." Everything she had managed to piece together about him suggested that Varrick had been a uniquely awful sort of a teenage boy. It was no wonder that his opinion of the group as a whole was so low. Varrick rubbed his forehead with a sigh. "Still can't believe that kid snitched on the Avatar. Of all the harebrained things. We bombed a building and that still isn't good enough. We're going to have to advance operations dramatically." Varrick was getting irritated, and he made rash decisions when he got irritated.

"Sir?"

"Is it still theoretically possible to utilize Operation: Grand Finale?"

"Sir—"

"It's only going to work if we make it personal," he interrupted before she could protest. "We've tried everything else, everything, Zhu Li. Raiko won't step up until the knife is at his throat, fine. That's what we'll do." She closed her eyes and rubbed at her temple, and she knew that he knew she didn't like this plan. "Unalaq will probably do it eventually," he said, which was what he'd said about the bombing, how he'd been justifying so many things. "He wasn't satisfied with the North, he won't be satisfied with the South, and who even knows what he's going to do now that he has access to that spirit whatchamacallit. He didn't have Korra open it for her own good, that's for damn sure."

Things were snowballing, and they were going to get out of control so quickly she didn't know if she'd be able to save him from himself if it all went wrong. When.

She trusted him. She had to trust him. Her faith in him was all she had, and he was determined to stop Unalaq to the point of obsession. It would work out. It would all work out. She had to believe that it would all work out, because it would need to be one hell of an end to justify these means.

That didn't stop her from making contingency plans. So many contingency plans. She'd begun quietly moving assets out of the United Republic, sending ships to international waters as a wait-and-see maneuver. She'd had some of their R&D department work overtime on copying Future Industries blueprints and designs, in case they lost access to the originals. Varrick always kept his lawyers and his top management prepared for the possibility that he might mistakenly be accused of a few minor crimes in whatever country he happened to be in, so that was one less thing for her to worry about.

They wouldn't have much to fear from the media. The papers ate out of the palm of his hand, and Zhu Li was ready with a switch if they didn't. Whatever the outcome, the company would be safe, the public would still adore him, and there was still at least one country where the government didn't have anything against him. As far as she knew, anyway. She couldn't put it past him to have offended Fire Lord Izumi at some point prior to her employment.

There was always the ocean.

☽❆☾

People had a lot of weird ideas about what breaking into houses entailed. Wearing a lot of black, and catsuits, and agility that would be more in Varrick's wheelhouse than Zhu Li's. She didn't know why so many people thought trespassing necessitated backflips. All anyone really needed was to look as uninteresting as possible, and own a clipboard.

"Excuse me," she said to someone letting himself into the apartment complex where Mako lived, "do you live here?"

"… yes?" he said slowly, looking around as if he thought he might be in trouble. Looking vaguely similar to everyone's third grade math teacher had certain benefits in that regard.

"I'm with the Republic City Health Department," she said, adjusting her glasses, clipboard held against her chest. "We've had reports of unsafe living conditions, but this landlord has a history of being uncooperative when it comes to inspections. I was wondering if you would be willing to let me in."

"Oh!" He looked surprised, but he did not for one moment question the story. It was rare that anyone did. "Of course," he said, unlocking the door and holding it open so that she could pass. "Does this mean he'll finally have to do something about the mold in the second-floor hallway?" Zhu Li pretended to make a note of what he'd said.

"That is our intention, yes," she said, and the click of her heels on hardwood lent her an authoritative air.

"If you'd like, I can show you some of the worst of it," he offered.

"There will be no need," she said, pretending then to jot down something about a water stain in the wallpaper. "But thank you for your assistance."

She had a deadline to meet, and so she could only linger in the hallways for so long before coming to Mako's door. She pulled a nonessential pin from her bun, and got to work. The trick was to remain standing so that passerby might believe she was only having trouble with her key, to hold her breath so that she could hear the little clicks echo through the wood.

She was very good at it. If she left any scratches in the doorknob, someone would have to look very hard to find them. She locked the door behind her when she entered, making a face into the empty living room.

As teenage boys went, Mako was fairly fastidious. His apartment nonetheless had the faint miasma she associated with males of that age. Too much cologne and not enough soap. She propped the window open so that she could go out the fire escape and retrieve the bag she had left on the roof, evidence of perfidy that had not been committed. A thin pair of silk gloves kept her fingerprints off of anything — not that she thought they would bother to check. She didn't think she'd be mentioning the oversight in their police procedures to Chief Beifong.

She was careful not to put too many things out of order, planting the evidence in an obvious location. As frame-ups went, it was fairly simplistic. They weren't trying to position Mako as any kind of a criminal mastermind, nor were they telling a lie that would be difficult to believe. Varrick was above the suspicion of everyone but Mako. And Mako…

Police, in her experience, only ever paid lip service to the idea of reform.

She considered, on her way out, a photograph Mako had framed of the family he'd once had. She wondered if it was worse, knowing what was missing, knowing what was possible. Losing a family seemed worse than never having one.

Zhu Li left Mako's apartment looking almost exactly as it had been when she'd entered, aside from those few important additions. She made her way to the other side of town, a payphone that they had decided on previously, and waited. When it rang, she answered.

"Hello?"

"He didn't go for it," Varrick grumbled from the other end of the line.

"Shall I enter phase three?" she asked.

"Gonna have to," he said.

She hung up, and put in enough coins for a phone call to the police department.

☽❆☾

Despite Zhu Li's perfect execution of her part of the plan, Varrick chose to blame her for the failure of his part.

"You asked for the nicest men, sir," she pointed out for the third time, "not the nicest looking."

She didn't want them to go to the premiere, but she couldn't say so. That meant suggesting that she didn't believe Varrick's plan would work. That wouldn't do at all. There was no way out of it, anyway, not without looking suspicious.

Bolin should have suspected them — it seemed so terribly obvious to Zhu Li, when they knew Mako had been framed and they knew who Mako had been accusing. She understood Bolin's disbelief more than Asami's. Bolin didn't see shades of gray; they were friends, and therefore they were good people. Good people didn't do bad things. To see otherwise was outside of his purview.

Asami Sato, she should have known better. Her own father had betrayed her. Her capacity for trust after such a thing was astonishing. Or maybe she just didn't want to think that Mako had been right, because that would make her ultimately responsible for both of their downfalls. Flattering lies were the easiest to make people believe.

There were so many ways that this could have gone better. If Unalaq could have been delayed a little longer, if Raiko had given them the help they'd asked for, if Mako had more faith in his girlfriend than in the idea of the law…

The world was a better place when Varrick got what he wanted. She hadn't been doing a very good job of getting him that, of late.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Sleeping Arrangements

"That probably could have gone better."

Lin Beifong would have to fight her way through an army of lawyers before she could bring Varrick to trial. She wasn't happy about that, or about Zhu Li handcuffing herself to her boss, or about the luxurious room in the prison that he had built for himself. She was almost as mad about that as she was about Mako having been right all along.

"It's possible, sir," she said diplomatically.

Now that the guards were gone, she was using one of her hair pins to pick the lock on the cuffs. He was sitting in the only chair in the cell, and so she was kneeling on the floor while she worked. He'd asked them to bring her another chair, but she had her doubts about whether they would get one.

"On a scale of nine to ten, how fucked do you think we are?"

She shrugged noncommittally, adjusting her glasses and squinting closer at the little lock. "There's always the Avatar." Saving the world was her job, after all. Not Varrick's. He didn't have a spiritual destiny, just a brain as enormous as his wallet and a conviction that those two things should have been able to solve anything.

"Great," he said. "I'm just going to have to trust the fate of my country to the ability of a teenage girl to punch problems into submission."

Well if anyone could punch an entire war in the face…

The cuff clicked off of his wrist first, and he rubbed at it as she stood and began working at her own. Varrick didn't like having things outside his control. He got angry and he threw tantrums, and sometimes he made things worse just so he could feel like he had some kind of power over the situation. "As you said, sir," she reminded him, "the prison may well be the safest place to be."

Until the dust settled, until Unalaq had succeeded or failed, until the city could focus on punishing criminals instead of trying to stave off wars. Zhu Li was much better than Varrick at surrendering control of her destiny. Even when she had worked her way out of the Lower Ring, she had accepted that she had luck as much as skill to thank. At any moment anything could have taken it all away from her, and smarter and braver girls than she had been lost to poverty and despair. Luck brought her Varrick, and she entrusted her fate to his whims.

Control and power were things that happened to other people. Zhu Li did not expect them.

"Is Operation: Winged Freedom ready to go?" he asked as the cuff clicked off her wrist.

"Whenever you see an opening, sir," she confirmed, setting it aside. She hesitated. "Sir… where am I supposed to sleep?"

He froze.

He looked around the room.

He looked at the only bed.

"Oh no," he said, sounding anguished, rubbing his face with both hands. "I forgot about — it was years ago, I didn't think — this is the airstrip all over again."

She had hoped that there was some kind of secret cot under the bed. This did not seem to be the case. She moved to one of the dressers and opened each of the drawers in turn, until she found one with an extra pillow and a blanket. It was better than nothing.

"It's fine, sir."

"I should have built a suite," he said. "If your snoring wakes me up I'm having them move you to a different cell at night." Sometimes he woke himself up with his own hideous nighttime cacophony, but he preferred to blame Zhu Li than accept the truth about his own sinuses.

"Yes, sir," she said, already moving to make him a pot of tea. His posture was horrible, and that always meant he was on the verge of a headache. He wouldn't be moving her, snoring or no. She knew he wouldn't. The possibility of not being able to reach her when he wanted something would be too great, to say nothing of the possibility of missing a chance at escape.

It wasn't vanity to think he needed her now more than ever. Failure could be a useful thing, a lesson, a step forward; this was not that kind of failure.

Chamomile tea with lavender and honey to put him to sleep, and he accepted it without thanking her, the way he always did. She found gratitude in the curl of his fingers around the cup, the loosening of the muscles in his shoulders. Maybe someday that wouldn't be enough. This was not that day.

Zhu Li found a book on one of the shelves, and it kept her busy while Varrick got ready for bed. At least prison meant he was wearing pants at night. That was a welcome change. Ordinarily he was opposed on principle to the wearing of clothes in bed, regardless of circumstance.

There was a reason she didn't wake him up in the mornings.

He pulled the blankets nearly over his head, a great sprawled out lump of blue. "Zhu Li, do the thing." She turned out the lights, and in the darkness retrieved the blanket and pillow she would be using. The floor wasn't comfortable, but as floors went, it wasn't the worst.

There had been a superstition in Ba Sing Se, and she didn't know why she was remembering it now. So many superstitions, vague ideas shared by children to try and keep themselves safe. Never sleep on the cobblestones was what they used to say, because the Dai Li would swallow children into the ground. It made no sense to think the Dai Li would wander around the Lower Ring, stealing stray children. It had made them feel better, anyway, that when someone went missing they could nod sagely and say yes, I saw him sleeping on the sidewalk last night.

She didn't know that she'd have been able to sleep if the floor had been stone. So many years now, another place and another life, but some things remained.

Still dressed, her only concession to sleep was to let her down from its bun, tie it into a loose ponytail at her neck. Another echo of the child she'd been, that she didn't like to have her hair loose in situations like this. On the yacht, perhaps, but not here. Her glasses were left on Varrick's side table, which she assumed he would not mind.

Curled on the floor near the bed, cocooned in a blanket, she practically leapt out of her skin when something poked her in the shoulder.

"Zhu Li," Varrick asked, "are you asleep?"

Well she sure as hell wasn't now.

"No, sir," she said, though the rasp of her voice spoke to how near she'd been.

"I can't sleep," he said, as if she hadn't figured that out.

"I'm sorry, sir," she said, groggy and monotone and rubbing sleep from her eyes with her fingertips. "What would you like me to do?" Because obviously he wanted her to do something.

If he asked her to read him a bedtime story she was going to request a separate cell.

… actually, she would probably do it. She was well past the point of pretending she still had her dignity.

"I keep waking up because I think there's something in the room," he said, "but it's just you."

She had no idea what she was supposed to do about that. "Would you like me to sleep in the bathtub, sir?"

"Then I'll just keep waking up because I think there's something in the bathroom! That's even more frightening." Her head dropped to her pillow in a manner suspiciously similar to beating her head against the floor. "Look, why don't you just get up here until I fall asleep?"

"Mmmph." That was a very suspicious solution to a very suspicious problem, but she was too tired to argue with him about it. "Fine." She dragged herself upward as he wiggled to the other side of the bed beneath the comforter, taking her blanket and her pillow with her. She set them up so she could sit against the headboard, him beneath the covers and her above, her own blanket in her lap. She refused to get comfortable when he was just as likely to push her back onto the floor in his sleep.

He waited a whole minute before wiggling closer to her. "My head hurts," he said, and in the darkness she could hear him pouting. She knew this was a lie, because he responded to actual headaches with inconsolable weeping and breaking things. Before she could respond to this falsehood, he gently headbutted her thigh. "Fix it."

It was official. In less than five hours, prison had broken him. He had regressed to some kind of childhood state. Spirits only knew what might have become of him in a prison he hadn't built himself. Tentatively, she reached down and pressed her fingertips to his temples, moved them in small circles. With a sigh that was presumably intended to indicate relief, he wiggled his head into her lap like she was a pillow. It was too dark to tell if he was looking up at her as circles moved along his scalp, back to his temples.

She wasn't going to let him make a habit of this. This was an unsustainable nighttime ritual. He was not a cat, he didn't get to demand head scritches before bedtime. Prison or no prison. This conviction faltered when she tried to stop and he growled at her.

Varrick was a literal child.

So she kept going, until his breathing grew deep and slow, until he'd gone limp beneath her fingers. Which meant that she was trapped, because there was no way to slide back out of bed without waking him up and starting the whole process over again. Zhu Li sighed, and ran her fingers through his hair with what might have been affection.

Her boss was an idiot.

She stole some of the pillows that he had abandoned in favor of her lap, and stuck them beneath herself so that she could get comfortable. Varrick had no one but himself to blame for the fact that she had to sleep in his bed.

She didn't think she was supposed to enjoy prison this much.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Twenty Miles

They landed in a forest in the mountains surrounding Republic City. They weren't supposed to go that far, but a battle between enormous Avatars of the spirits of light and dark had certain effects on the weather patterns.

"That was not how it went when we practiced," Varrick said, and he was handling being stuck in a tree much better than Zhu Li was. Of course, he wasn't tangled up in the wreck of his broken wings. She undid the strap that held him to her, and he dropped to the ground with entirely too much ease. "Hurry it up, Zhu Li," he said, looking up to where she was still dangling from a branch, "we gotta get a move on before they notice we're missing."

The crash had been a little harder on her, it seemed. It did strange things to a person's legs to fly above a city with a person between them, and she was sure she'd be bowlegged for day. Her glasses were askew, but fortunately hadn't broken. The wings had yanked on her arms when they'd gotten caught in the tree, her leg had hit the trunk awkwardly, and her neck was sore. Her everything was sore. It didn't matter who wore the wings, the end result was always that Zhu Li felt like crap.

Airbenders probably didn't have these kinds of flight problems.

When she finally managed to get herself free, she fell much faster than anticipated. Much to her surprise, Varrick caught her before she hit the ground. He looked as surprised as she was. His response to this surprise was to drop her, and at least the shorter distance meant her tailbone felt less abused than it could have been.

"We're too far out to get a car," he said, stroking his chin thoughtfully as she got to her feet. Her ankle felt like she'd twisted it, but it didn't feel badly enough to be sprained. She'd done more with worse. "We're just going to have to walk to the nearest safehouse, since someone landed us in the middle of nowhere."

"Sorry, sir." She fixed her clothes so she'd look slightly less like she'd just landed in a tree, following as Varrick began to walk.

"Sorry isn't going to carry me up this mountain, Zhu Li."

"… did you want me to carry you up the mountain, sir?"

"I thought you'd never ask."

She could have told him no. He might have pouted, but he wouldn't have forced her to do anything. He never did. But maybe, just maybe, it was nice to have an excuse to touch him. And maybe it was nice to have his legs around her this time. In a platonic kind of a way.

It was reassuring, as well, carrying him around. Second-nature to the both of them, the way he rested his chin on her shoulder and wrapped his arms around her, the rise and fall of his chest against her back. Reassuring that they were alive and they were together, and she may have only been his assistant but he trusted her to keep him safe.

Holding him meant she couldn't lose him. It probably wasn't the healthiest attitude, but it was what it was. Watching deities punch each other outside the windows of a prison wasn't exactly conducive to a sensible emotional state.

The trip ended up being about five miles, which wasn't too bad. Varrick fell asleep on her, which was baffling. The man could fall asleep in the strangest places, and other times he'd get insomnia for no apparent reason at all. It was only a little cabin, but through it they could contact Varrick Global Industries employees to come get them. They might never be able to come back to the United Republic, which was a bit of a shame. Still, as long as Varrick was never officially tried, business ought to be able to continue as usual.

The benefits of having a monopoly were manifold.

Varrick woke as she lit the fire in the furnace, rousing from where she had set him in bed. At least there were two of those this time. She sat on her own bed with a wince, Varrick sitting cross-legged across from her. "What did you do this time?" he asked, which was as close as he would get to asking if she was okay.

"Nothing, sir," she said as she pulled her shoes off. Her left ankle was swollen, and her shoes had left impressions in her skin. Varrick frowned, stood and walked around his bed to the other side. Then he pushed his bed, a hideous sound as it dragged along the floor, and she had to pull her legs up to keep them from getting caught between the two. "… sir. What are you doing?"

"It's easier this way," he said, sitting back down on his bed across from her and gesturing to indicate… for once, she wasn't actually sure. "Your ankle," he said finally, exasperated. "Let me see it." She very slowly stretched her leg towards him, and when he went to touch it she flinched. "Don't be such a drama queen, Zhu Li," he said, and it almost seemed like justifiable hypocrisy when his hands touched her as gently as they did. "When did this happen?"

"When we landed, sir."

Varrick made a sound of disgust, looking up from the foot in his lap. "Why didn't you say so?"

"It isn't that bad," she said, feeling oddly defensive.

"Carrying me around like that was very irresponsible."

"It was your idea, sir."

"That's not how I remember it." For someone who didn't like doctors, he was certainly acting like one, gently moving the joint to see how she reacted. "I can't believe you walked ten miles—"

"—it was only five—"

"—and it was uphill, so really it's more like twenty—"

"—it was only five—"

"—twenty miles on a sprained ankle, and didn't even let me walk myself." Watching him construct a narrative on-the-fly was fascinating. How long would it take for him to believe that was what had actually happened? He disappeared into the bathroom, and when he returned he was holding a first-aid kit. "And now I have to fix you, because otherwise you're going to be useless for at least a week."

"Sir, if you would just give me the—"

"Absolutely not," he said, cutting her off. "Zhu Li, you have lost your taking-care-of-your-own-health privileges. You clearly cannot handle them." She said nothing, but crossed her arms over her chest as he began wrapping her ankle in gauze. "Don't give me that look," he said, although he didn't look up to confirm whether or not she was actually giving him a look. "You brought this on yourself." Oddly, he was much better at wrapping her ankle than he was at wrapping presents. She would have thought they'd be similar skillsets, but his brain must have been compartmentalized differently.

"Are you going to fix the beds so we can sleep?" she asked, changing the subject.

"I didn't break them," he said, which was not remotely what she'd meant. "Not that it would be the first time I broke a bed and didn't notice—"

"Sir."

He froze. "By. Uh." His mind was clearly racing through all the non-suggestive ways to break a bed. "Experiments. Explosions. A hammer. Jumping. None of this is making that better, strike my previous statements from the record immediately."

"Yes, sir." He released her bandaged foot, and she did not miss that he had never actually answered her question.

"Man I'm exhausted," he said, tossing the first-aid kit across the room and flopping backward to sprawl on his bed. "That hike took a lot out of me."

"It's true," she said as she moved to the furthest side of her bed from him, pulling blankets over herself like a protective barrier and setting her glasses aside. "You look like hell, sir."

He was quiet, and she wondered if he'd pull their beds back apart. The furnace was roaring, but she shivered anyway. With two layers of blankets between them, she felt his back press against hers. It wasn't the warmth that she wanted, but it would have to be enough.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

Old Friends

"Trust me," Varrick had said, over and over again. "We'll definitely be safe in Zaofu." He would not say whether he had actually been to Zaofu, or if he knew anyone there — just kept saying trust me, in that way that never worked.

She had a suspicion that this was one of those plans that wasn't actually a plan.

This suspicion was confirmed when they reached Zaofu.

"Is this any way to treat an old friend?" asked Varrick, holding up his hands to keep metalbenders from taking his head off.

"What are you doing here, Varrick?" asked Suyin Beifong, arms crossed, and she said his name like an insult.

Zhu Li was standing behind Varrick, and the only reason she wasn't putting herself between him and Zaofu's security force was that sudden movements seemed more dangerous than the alternative. She was close enough to him, anyway, that she could yank him to the ground in an emergency. There wasn't a whole lot she could do against metalbenders, but she could certainly try.

"I very specifically recall you inviting me," he said, and Suyin came closer with an eyebrow raised.

"What I said," she corrected, leaning closer in a way that made him lean away, "was that if you ever decided to stop acting like a disgusting piece of human garbage, you could find me in Zaofu."

Varrick paused. "… ta-daaaaa." The jazzhands seemed particularly unnecessary.

"Really?" said Suyin. "Because the last I'd heard from Republic City, you tried to assassinate the president."

"Kidnap!" Varrick corrected. "Allegedly! And even if I had done what I allegedly did, it was for very good reasons totally unrelated to being some kind of trash man."

"I cannot believe," Suyin said, "that you thought you could come crawling to me for help, and expected me to let you hang around my daughters—"

"—hey!" Varrick interjected.

"—and my sons—"

"—hey, you are making me sound a lot worse than I am—"

"I mean that you are a bad influence, Varrick," Suyin sighed.

"… that's better than what I thought you meant. I don't care about your kids — wait, no, that sounds worse. Zhu Li, what did I actually mean?" He looked over his shoulder at Zhu Li, who had heretofore been silent.

She did not actually know what he'd meant. Presumably what he wanted was for Zhu Li to express to Suyin the unlikelihood that he would corrupt her children. "He meant to say that he generally avoids children because they remind him of his own mortality and failure to grow as a person."

Varrick's eyes narrowed over his shoulder. "That is not — there is a time and a place to discuss my personal shortcomings, Zhu Li, and this is not it."

"Sorry, sir. You usually have some free time on Thursdays—"

"The appropriate time is never, Zhu Li," he hissed through his teeth.

"Sorry, sir."

Suyin had been watching this exchange with a mixture of confusion and fascination on her features, head cocked to the side. Her security force also seemed to have relaxed, although Varrick was keeping his hands elevated as a precaution. "Varrick," she said slowly, though she was looking at Zhu Li, "give me one good reason I should let you into my city."

"Zhu Li?" he prompted.

This was not the usual way that they functioned. Usually Varrick did the talking. Talking was not her strong suit. Being convincing was not her strong suit. Then again, trying to be convincing didn't seem to be working out terribly well for him. "… because rather than being defined by his mistakes, a man should be defined by how he learns from them?"

Varrick turned back to Suyin. "Yeah, what she said."

"… and what you learned was…?" she prompted.

"No good deed goes unpunished," he suggested, and he could immediately see by the look on her face that this was wrong. "No. Never try to save the world. No. Never underestimate meddling kids. Closer? No, that wasn't closer. Zhu Li?" He looked over his shoulder at her again.

"What he means to say is that he learned that the desired end does not always justify the means."

Varrick lowered his hands to turn around and look at her incredulously. "What? Are you sure? That doesn't sound right."

Behind him, Suyin sighed and rubbed at her temple. "You can come in for as long as it takes me to ask you some questions," she said, "and I'll decide what to do with you after that."

Zhu Li didn't know if that meant she'd been successful.

☽❆☾

She didn't know if she believed that it was possible for a man to detect all lies. Suyin clearly believed it, and Varrick was pretending not to be nervous. She could tell, anyway, by the way his eyes moved. There were two chairs, but she didn't sit.

"Did you actually think," Suyin asked from behind Aiwei, "that kidnapping the president would be a good idea?"

"Well I don't know about good idea," he waffled. "It was the best one I had at the time. I figured it was better than whatever Unalaq would do if I didn't get Raiko off his ass."

Aiwei narrowed his eyes, but gave Suyin a slight nod.

"And what happens if you decide I need to 'get off my ass'?"

Varrick snorted. "I'd tell you," he said. "Raiko's a jackass, if he'd just listened to me from the start we probably could have kept Unalaq away from the evil kite before Korra had to punch it back into the spirit realm."

Suyin looked to Aiwei with a raised eyebrow. Aiwei looked faintly exasperated. "Well he thinks it's true," he said, though he clearly thought Varrick's confidence was misplaced.

"Did you spend any time at all thinking about who you might hurt?" asked Suyin, and Varrick threw up his hands, crossed his arms over his chest and slouched in his seat.

"Oh, sure, because I didn't get enough of this from the head voices."

"… the what."

Varrick sat up straighter in his chair, ignoring the look they were giving him and spreading his palms on the table. "Look, I'll tell you what I told them: I went with the plan that I thought would end best for everyone. Was it ideal? No. There may have been some slight emotional trauma on the part of some teenagers, and it's possible I overestimated the willingness of people to run away from a fight. But if it had gone the way it was supposed to, nobody would have been hurt. Except for the soldiers that would have ended up fighting in the war, I guess, but in my defense that is the whole point of soldiers."

Aiwei gave the barest hint of a nod, but he didn't look happy about it. Suyin came closer to the table, leaned over it to squint at Varrick.

"… when's the last time you had a cigarette?" Zhu Li's eyebrows shot up so high they disappeared beneath her bangs, and Varrick's eyes went wide and darted towards her before he tried to pretend they hadn't.

"That has nothing to do with anything," he said, jabbing an accusatory finger towards Suyin, leaning over the table.

"Answer the question, Iknik," she said, leaning closer. They were glowering into each other's eyes, and Zhu Li and Aiwei exchanged confused glances.

Surprisingly, Varrick was the first to back down, returning to his preferred pouting posture. "You know when it was," he said, pulling up his legs to rest on the edge of the table for added petulance, "because you were there."

"Really?" she said more than asked, and she was clearly dubious.

"Yes, really," he snapped, "and personally I think it is very mature of me to have forgiven you, even though you still haven't apologized—"

"—I have nothing to apologize for—"

"—for that waterbender nearly drowning me—"

"—if you hadn't been poisoning your lungs she wouldn't have needed to put water in there—"

"—vomiting black stuff for days—"

"—black stuff that was in your lungs—"

"—and it was very happy in my lungs, not bothering anyone—"

"—kept it up a few more years and it would have bothered you all right—"

"—well we'll never know, now, will we, because I quit, because someone made all my cigarettes taste like vomit."

They lapsed into scowling silence. "You're both telling the truth," Aiwei said finally, "but all that means is that you are both, honestly, children."

"I am not," protested Suyin, giving Aiwei a gentle smack on the shoulder with the backs of her fingers that only proved his point. She sighed. "What were you hoping to do here, Varrick? Rebuild your empire somewhere you haven't committed treason yet?"

"My empire doesn't need rebuilding," he scoffed. "Heck, it practically runs itself at this point. I just give it a kick every once in a while and money falls out, it's great. But I've been working on ways to make these mecha tanks more interesting—"

"Mecha tanks?" Suyin interrupted.

"Let me finish," he chided. "So I've been working on those, and trying to come up with a more comfortable way to travel when we're on land — maybe some kind of sand yacht, write that down Zhu Li — and I thought that maybe my old friend Suyin in the most technologically advanced city in the world would be interested in that kind of thing. Was I wrong?"

Suyin looked thoughtful, looking at Varrick like she was trying to unravel him. "I won't give you a third chance, Varrick," she said finally. "But there will be ground rules." She looked to Zhu Li. "Was there anything you wanted to add?"

Zhu Li had been thinking. Quietly considering the relationship Varrick seemed to have with Suyin, the past they seemed to share, maternal impulses that he resented and could not stand in the face of. Even as he started to say that she wanted nothing, she said, "A doctor."

"What?" Varrick and Suyin said simultaneously.

"Varrick," Suyin warned, "if you're sick and you didn't—"

"For the last five years," Zhu Li said flatly, "he has had the most disgusting foot fungus I have ever seen, and he refuses to see a doctor."

"That is blackmail," Varrick gasped, outraged. "Your bizarre hatred of feet—"

"It has nothing to do with feet," she said, cutting him off. "Feet are fine. You may have even noticed that I have a pair myself. The problem is that skin is not supposed to be orange."

"Varrick," Suyin gasped, sounding very motherly indeed, "that is disgusting. You will get that taken care of, what if it's contagious?"

"I'm going to get you for this," he said to Zhu Li. "Just you wait. Pedicures. Every night. And in the morning. Constantly. You've lost your excuse."

"Sometimes sacrifices need to be made, sir."

"You know, I like her," Suyin said to Aiwei.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

Nostalgia

"Okay — okay. Okay. You have to… you have to explain the feet thing."

"What! No. No. It's not — you're making it sound weird. It's not weird."

"It's weird. It's weird. Iknik — Iknik. It's weird. The feet thing is weird."

Suyin and Iknik were drunk. They had never actually done this before. The age difference between them had seemed more dramatic when they were younger, and the last time they had seen each other had been on bad terms. Mostly that had been Varrick's fault.

"No. No. It's not — it's not weird. It's not like that." For reasons that had seemed good at the time, he was on top of one of Suyin's bookshelves, draped across it like a lurking cat. He had a half-empty bottle in his hand. Suyin was sprawled across her couch, and she had a glass. She was much classier than he was, that way. "It was this. This thing. Okay. It's. I'll tell you a story, okay?"

"Your stories are — you're just going to make something up."

"No! No. Never. Cross my heart."

"That's not…" She stopped and snorted, having clearly thought of something she considered to be hilarious. "I don't think you care about that organ."

"Su!" Varrick exclaimed, scandalized, looking down at her from atop the shelves. "That's — I am offended. I don't know what… I cross my… brain. Cross my brain."

"Cross your feet."

"No. Listen. Listen. This one time — okay. So I was, I told Zhu Li I wanted a, a viper bat. A dead viper bat."

"What!"

"Look! Look. It was. It made sense. Because wings. And. Stuffed. I meant a, glass eyes, viper bat. Not just. But she went to a butcher. A weird butcher."

"This is a gross story, Iknik, I don't like this story."

"I know! It was so gross! But she was just. Just. It was a dead gross thing. She didn't even care! Just. So gross. Guts, and." Iknik stopped in his story briefly to gag.

"Stop talking," Su groaned, covering her face with her hands.

"No, but. But. I get these callouses, you know? You know. You get 'em. You still do the, the dancey stuff. And they itch like the dickens in the middle of the night and it's just, it's no way to live, Suyin."

"Just scrape your own feet!" Suyin exclaimed. "Why can't you just — I don't make Baatar do it."

"I didn't get rich to not get pedicures," he said with a disdainful sniffle, and Su hiccuped a laugh. "But. The place I went — only good place in Ba Sing Se. All of Ba Sing Se. I tried 'em all. You should go. Sometime. It was a really good place. Anyway. One week I was busy. You know? You just. No time. So I thought — Zhu Li. Make Zhu Li do the thing."

"How much do you even pay her?" Suyin asked, tossing back her glass and then holding it out when it was empty.

"Eh. Enough. More than you! Could pay her. No sniping. That's. My assistant." He held out his bottle, and poured it in a stream that fell about five feet into her glass. His aim was, of course, impeccable. "But. She wouldn't do it. She was so disgusted. And. Dead thing! Just. Drew the line. Right there."

Suyin cackled. "You're grosser than a — than a dead viper bat." She sipped at her wine, still giggling.

"I know! I know. So I. It was like. A threat. I mean, I wouldn't. She'd. She'd break my leg. But it was. A thing. To say. And then. I was. But she did the thing and so. You know. She called the — the bluff. And now it's just. I don't know. It's funny?"

"It's so weird," Suyin said.

"You're weird." Varrick took a swig straight from the bottle. "With your. Marriage. And kids. Weird kids."

"Talk shit about my kids and I'll — you'll. You'll see." Suyin pointed at her own eyes and then to him in a strange gesture of warning.

"Weird. Weird. Can't believe you married a — a nerd."

"You're a nerd."

"That's what makes it weird!" He squinted at the bottle, trying to determine how much he'd had. "Do you remember. The guy. That one guy."

"There were a lot of guys," Suyin said, and Varrick snorted. "Don't. Don't you start. With that."

"Wasn't gonna," he lied.

"You were — you were bad, too. You were bad." He waggled his eyebrows and his moustache simultaneously, and Suyin started laughing so hard she almost fell off the couch. "That's — is that why you grew that?"

"It's. It's manly." Suyin started laughing again. "It's all the. The manliness. Beards are. I don't want to cover my chin. Look at my chin." He pointed at it with the hand not holding the bottle. "This chin is great. You can't — it would be a crime. To cover this chin. It's." He stroked his moustache. "It's a good moustache. No rug burn."

"Ew!" Suyin actually did fall off the couch this time, rolling in horror while still managing to hold her glass safely aloft. Varrick laughed, but managed to stay safely atop his shelf. "That's — Iknik. Iknik." Her attempt to sound like a disapproving mother was undercut when she continued sitting on the floor, crossed her arms on the seat of the couch and took another sip of her wine.

"Don't pretend it's never happened," Varrick said with an accusatory point. "You. There were guys. With the moustaches. The big ones."

"Yeah," Suyin sighed. "Those were. That is. You're not wrong."

"Ha!"

"Which guy. You never said which guy."

"Oh! It was, uh. I really hated him."

"That doesn't narrow it down," Suyin laughed. "You hated — you hated everybody."

"Ugly Pete was okay."

"Oh, Ugly Pete. I miss Ugly Pete. He was crazy, but he was sweet. He meant well. You two got along so well. It was so cute."

"I'm not cute," he said indignantly. "I'm. Manly. And so on."

"You were so cute," Suyin said, propping herself up with her hand on her cheek. "With your little topknot and everything. I don't know what happened."

"Hey! Hey. I could be cute. If I wanted."

"Which of the guys that you hated, though?"

"Right! Right. It was, ah. The one who threw me into the ocean that one time."

"Oh! Oh, oh. Oh, I remember him. Ugly Pete almost killed him."

"Yeah! You were always. Guys like that. And then Baatar."

"I learned my lesson eventually." She leaned back, pulling her limbs off the couch like flowing water. She crossed her legs where she sat on the floor. "Eventually. You figure it out. One day you're all about… cute tushes. And tough guys. And then you meet some dork. And he's so fucking sweet you can't even handle it. With his glasses. And his. Um. He also kind of. Cute tush."

"Yeah," Iknik sighed, setting the wine on a lower shelf so he could go limp. "I know what you mean."

"Iknik. Iknik. Have you been looking at Baatar's cute tush." She narrowed her eyes at him suspiciously. "Because. You can look. But hands off."

He rolled his shoulders, wiggled until his top half started to fall off the shelf. He bent his legs so that he could hang upside-down from it, arms hanging limp toward the floor. Suyin still had not managed to talk him into wearing metal all over himself. That sounded like a good way to get dragged around by metalbenders, no matter how much she promised that she would never let that happen. He was willing to tolerate the less-than-fabulous clothing, but a metal noose was an accident waiting to happen.

"Are you accusing me," he said, "of trying to seduce your husband?"

"You're a homewrecker, Iknik," she said.

"Once! One time, that happened. Twice. Six. Six times. On purpose. It. It doesn't count if it's. If they don't tell you. Accidents don't count. Baatar isn't my type." The good thing about being inverted was that if his face turned red, his position would be blamed.

"My husband's not good enough for you now?"

"He — what? No. That's. It's not him. It's me."

"I've heard that line before. Baatar deserves better than that."

"Is this. What is this. Would it make you feel better if I tried to seduce your husband. Is that what's happening."

"I'm not — no. He wouldn't even… do you know how long it took to get him to realize I was flirting with him?"

"Wait. Wait. You hit on him? He didn't… he wasn't…"

"No! I don't think it even occurred to him! It was — I kept hinting and hinting and then after he was done working he was just going to leave. It was horrible." Even after having kids with him, Suyin seemed absolutely anguished by the memory of his total lack of reception to her advances. Being a good friend, Varrick laughed until he fell off the bookshelf and barely avoided landing on his head. "I got — it wasn't even innuendo at the end but he still didn't get it! Then when I kissed him he fainted. He got a concussion. It was awful. It was the worst."

"You're saying," Varrick said from where he'd sprawled on the floor, "that I can hit on him all I want. Because. You'll know. But he won't know."

"No!" Suyin said, and she flopped sideways in his direction. She could not quite reach him, but she pointed at him accusatorily across the floor. "Iknik. Don't. Not… not in front of the kids."

He lifted one hand limply and waved his fingers towards the too-high shelf where he had left the wine. "But. When the kids are gone. It's fine."

"I will custom-fit you a chastity belt," she said, before pouring the rest of the glass in her mouth and giving up on moving. Varrick simultaneously gave up on the wine.

"I didn't even wanna. Your idea. Don't blame me for your weird idea." He wished Zhu Li was here. She would bring him the wine.

Well, no. She wouldn't. It was one of her rules, that she wouldn't have anything to do with him when he'd been drinking. Even though he was delightful.

Varrick sighed. "We drank too much."

"We did," Suyin agreed. "I should… get to bed. Before Baatar misses me. And tell him I love him, because he's. He's great. He's so great, Iknik. I love him so much. Crawling into bed with your husband is. It's so great. You wouldn't even believe."

"Prove it," he said, closing his eyes and fully prepared to fall asleep on the floor. "Take me with you. Let's snuggle your husband."

"No. No."

"Your loss."

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

The Girls from Ba Sing Se

"I don't think I ever got your name."

They had been keeping, mostly, to themselves. Varrick hadn't stopped pouting about having to wear a uniform, but Zhu Li didn't mind it. Su had forgiven him for whatever slights were in their past, and he got along surprisingly well with Baatar. He kept doing this thing with his eyebrows behind Baatar's back, and Su would get a look on her face that Zhu Li couldn't interpret.

So many of the people in Zaofu were from the Earth Kingdom. And some of them, she knew, had to be from Ba Sing Se. It was like they could sense each other, and Zhu Li had been avoiding the meeting, though their eyes had met in passing.

it's a long long way to

Zhu Li was working on creating modified blueprints from crude notes, and so could not flee the way she otherwise might have. Her hesitation may have been as telling as what she said. "Zhu Li Moon," she said finally. No point hiding it.

"I used to be a Feng." Spring in the year of the Cockerel. Girls like her ate girls like Zhu Li for breakfast, or so superstition said. "How old were you when you grew out your hair?"

Another coded question, secret messages to each other. Meaningless to anyone not from a very specific circumstance. She was marked as much by the asking as Zhu Li would be by answering. "Six or seven, I think," she said, looking at her work but writing nothing. "When I got pins."

"You were braver than I was," the Cockerel laughed. "It wasn't until a year after Suyin took me in that I decided not to cut it."

Zhu Li looked up from her rice paper, to the braid that went down the woman's back. "I still don't let mine get that long," she said. "Just long enough to keep… up." Not like her, not a great thick rope down her back daring anyone to try and grab it. Just enough that she could pass as a girl who'd grown up better. Marked by their names and their hair and feet light on the ground, the orphan girls of the Lower Ring.

but the girls in the city

"I'm Kuvira," the Spring Cockerel said, holding her hand, and the Winter Hare accepted with a hesitant touch. "You work with Varrick, right?"

"I'm his assistant," she said, which was not quite either agreement or correction.

"I didn't mean to corner you," Kuvira apologized. "I've just been curious. I don't usually see anyone else who…"

Made it out, she did not need to say.

"It's fine," Zhu Li said, though she would have been happier without the reminders. She didn't know if it was a trait she had picked up from Varrick or one they had in common, this preference for pretending that painful things had never happened. It was hard to tell where his habits ended and hers began, sometimes. "We both got lucky."

"When did you get out?"

She couldn't tell if Kuvira meant Ba Sing Se or just the Lower Ring. Maybe she assumed it had been simultaneously. "Varrick moved me out of Ba Sing Se a few years ago," she said, and it seemed like so much further away than that. Those years in Ba Sing Se together hadn't felt like Ba Sing Se at all, felt like something separate and strange.

"You're kidding," Kuvira said, and maybe she was looking for the scars that twenty years in the Lower Ring should have left.

"I moved to the Middle Ring… ten years ago. I think." Hard to keep track of the years when so many of them ran together, when she'd only recently acquired a birthday.

Kuvira's look of incredulity and horror gave way to a smile. "That's amazing," she said, and she seemed genuinely impressed. Such a strange conversation, such a strange bond. "And you're not even a bender, are you?" Zhu Li shook her head. "You weren't…?"

they kiss so sweet

"No," she said immediately, though she knew so many who'd gotten out that way. The painted girls of the Middle Ring, and the things they said about them might have been worse. A small price to pay for a warm bed. So small, and yet she'd never wanted to pay it. Maybe part of it was a fear that it simply wouldn't pay. Mousy Moon, with her glasses and her hair pinned tight, untouchable. "I was a student."

Kuvira chuckled. "We got lucky. You didn't get lucky at all, did you? I got lucky. You worked. I don't know if I would have lasted that long, if Suyin hadn't found me."

It felt like more superstition. Girls with short hair stay free and girls with light steps don't fall through the cracks, girls who work hard make it out. Things they were told, things they told themselves, because the alternative was to accept that there was nothing they could do to change the lives that they'd been given. She had more than she had ever dreamed could be hers, but it wasn't work that had done it.

She thought of the life she might have had, toiling away at the university until they could keep her degree away from her no longer. Government work, maybe, or working as a professor. Hard work with poor pay, until her fingers ached and her back stooped and her eyes were locked in a squint. It wasn't what she'd dreamed of, because she hadn't had dreams. Only a desire to be fed and to be safe, to never again feel the ache of a hunger she could not satisfy. To aspire to more never occurred to her.

Until someone else's dreams had landed on her. Until she had made his desires her own.

"I feel lucky," she said quietly.

Kuvira looked out at the view of Zaofu. "Yeah." They were silent a moment. "I have to head to dance practice," she said eventually, "but if your boss ever gives you a break, you can always come say hi. You don't have to. But you can."

"If I get a break," she said noncommittally. It was a nice offer, and she felt a sense of guilt that it did not interest her. Most of her acquaintances were born out of obligation, making the best out of the fact that they would need to spend time together. So it had been with Ren, with Bolin. It wasn't that they weren't nice; only that she preferred to be alone.

She didn't know when she'd begun to include Varrick in 'alone'.

They didn't have conversations as much as she sometimes helped him talk to himself. The ways that he confused her made more sense than with other people. He was exhausting, but not in the way that other people were exhausting. If she had a break, she would rather spend it sleeping than trying to figure out how to socialize.

Maybe they could be friends, eventually. But she wasn't in a hurry. They had time. Time to find things in common other than a past she'd rather keep behind her, perhaps.

you've really got to meet

"What's taking you so long?" asked Varrick, and she had no idea where he'd come from to sneak up on her like that, looking over her shoulder at all the things she hadn't done.

"Sorry, sir."

"Those Beifong boys haven't been bothering you, have they?" he asked, suspicious.

"No, sir," she said, adjusting her glasses and trying to look busy again. "I just got… distracted."

"Since when do you get distracted?" he asked, and she may as well have said she'd been earthbending.

"Sorry, sir."

"I guess it worked out, anyway," he sighed, gathering up her notes from underneath her hands with no regard for what she was doing. "Baatar and I have been talking, and we've changed our mind about all of these. Maybe not all. Most. We've got new ideas, Zhu Li, better ideas. We're on a roll, you've got to get in here and start taking notes before we forget what we were doing." As she rose to her feet, he squinted at her. "What's going on with your face?"

"… sir?"

"You look flatter than usual, Zhu Li. Did you eat something weird?"

Somehow she doubted that was the actual expression he was trying to describe. "I was just thinking, sir."

"Well there's your problem," he said, exasperated. "Thinking's my job. Stop trying to work above your paygrade."

She bowed her head so he wouldn't see her smile. "Yes, sir."

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

Magnetism

For a man who claimed to be moving on, Varrick's latest ideas still seemed to circle back around to shipping.

"The problem with moving things over land," he was saying, "is that it always takes too darn long. There's all this stuff in the way, the more you're trying to carry the more power it takes, you're just as much at the mercy of the weather as you are at sea… cars and planes are fine for small things, but that's not scalable."

Zhu Li didn't know where he'd found a toy train. She hoped he hadn't stolen it from any children. She assumed that he hadn't, because she felt like Baatar would probably complain if he had. The two men were sitting cross-legged on the floor, considering the tiny train circling the tracks very seriously.

"I was part of an exploratory project to run trains between a few rural Earth Kingdom cities," said Baatar. "Once you'd factored in maintenance, repairs, and fuel — it just wasn't worth it. It's not just that it has to be profitable, it has to be more profitable than the alternatives." The little train made a tinny whistling noise as it circled the track again.

"That's a tall order when my ships are one of the alternatives," Varrick said, which may have been preening. He did always take it as a compliment when he heard that he'd ruined someone else's business.

"So what are you thinking?" Baatar asked, crossing his arms and narrowing his eyes at the little toy train in thought.

"Do you remember the thing I was doing?" Varrick asked.

"… you're going to have to be more specific."

"The, ah. Zhu Li, the thing, you know the thing, right?" He was gesturing like he was shoving an invisible person.

"The magnets, sir?"

"Yes," he said, snapping his fingers. "The magnet thing! We were trying to figure out — well, you'll see eventually." They got along, but Baatar was not someone that Varrick was close enough with to ramble. He was bouncing ideas off him now only because of Baatar's familiarity with the subject, checking that he wasn't overlooking something obvious before he got any further. It was almost responsible of him. "Anyway, that's when I got to thinking: what if the train didn't touch the tracks? That's where most of the wear comes from, right?"

Baatar blinked as he processed this. "I… well, in theory, I suppose."

"I've run some numbers — Zhu Li?" She handed Baatar some notes that she had rewritten and reorganized so that they would make sense to non-Varrick human beings. "If I'm right — well, it'd cost a pretty yuan to build it up front, that's for sure. But in the absence of friction, it should be able to go faster for longer, with less maintenance and less fuel."

Baatar skimmed through the pages he'd been given, looking slightly overwhelmed. "This would require a lot of metal."

Varrick raised an eyebrow. He looked around them. He looked at his metal epaulets, which had taken a lot of coaxing to get him to wear. "Is there a shortage?"

"You know what I mean," Baatar sighed. "It will take me some time to go over these numbers," he said, flipping through the pages again. "With everything else we have going on right now, I might not be able to get back to you until next week."

"That's fine," Varrick said with a wave of his hand. "It's more of a long-term thing, anyway. I'm in no hurry."

☽❆☾

That was a lie.

Varrick was caught up on the idea, and whenever that happened it was the only thing he could bring himself to work on. He spent the evening making a few half-hearted prods at the potential magnet ray, but he clearly wasn't interested. It was getting a bit depressing to watch. A plan half-formed in the back of her mind, and she stood from where she was meant to be working. "Sir, will you excuse me for a moment?"

He assented. Sort of. Actually he flopped a hand in her general direction while muttering something that sounded like, "Ffffflahminaflibbiduff."

It took some time to find Kuvira, longer than she would have liked. She hesitated before knocking, but Varrick's listless flailing won out over her social ineptitude.

Instead of the door opening as she'd expected, it cracked open only a small amount, Kuvira sliding more than stepping into the hallway after looking around the door to see who it was. Which raised the question of what she had in her bedroom that she so badly did not want anyone to see. She seemed to wear her hair slightly differently at night.

"Zhu Li," she said, sounding pleasantly surprised. "What can I do for you?"

She hesitated. "I was wondering if you could help me with something. A, ah. Metalbending thing."

Kuvira's expression turned sympathetic. "Did Varrick send you?"

"No! No." Zhu Li realized she was fidgeting with her notepad, and she made a conscious effort to stop and smooth the pages. "I just need… can you magnetize things? I'm sorry, I don't know how it works…"

"Magnetize…?" Kuvira looked suddenly very thoughtful. "I don't actually know," she said, and she sounded surprised. "How would you normally do it?"

"Well normally if you wanted to make a permanent magnet, you would just sort of… rub it against another magnet. Or you can use a special current but we haven't, um. Done anything with that yet. There's also magnetite but I don't know if metalbending would work on that or if there's any in Zaofu and—"

Kuvira tapped a finger under Zhu Li's jaw to shut her mouth, and Zhu Li blinked in surprise. "You are really overthinking this," she said, and she smiled. "I'll just ask if we have any magnets around that I can try to bend, and we'll go from there."

Then she disappeared back into her room, leaving Zhu Li in the hall to wonder who exactly she'd be asking.

☽❆☾

There was, in fact, a collection of magnets that they were free to experiment with. Zhu Li really hadn't intended for this to turn into a project, and every distant sound made her turn her head and check that Varrick hadn't come looking for her.

"So according to what I've heard," Kuvira said, in the half-light of the empty room, "the problem isn't with bending the magnets. It's that they stop being magnets."

"Oh," said Zhu Li, disappointed. She picked up a small piece of magnetic iron. "So this isn't going to—"

Kuvira plucked the stone from her hands. "What that says to me," she said, "is that there's something in the shape of it that it needs to keep." She picked up another stone that looked basically identical, checked their magnetism against the metal of the window frame by sticking them against it. "Which just means we need to experiment." She took one of the magnets down, and in her hand it gently changed shape into a cube. A small enough change, and when she tapped it to the windowsill it stuck again. "See? Progress already."

Zhu Li did feel strangely relieved. "I'm sorry again for putting you to all this—"

"You don't need to keep apologizing," Kuvira said, as she bent the cube into a longer rectangle. "It isn't hard to bend," she said thoughtfully, half to herself, "but it does feel… strange." She tapped the piece of metal to the windowsill, but this time it didn't stick. Zhu Li held her notebook against her chest and waited in silence, and it was not terribly different from what she usually did.

Kuvira picked up the unaltered magnet, and held one in each hand, jaw setting in an almost stubborn way as she looked at them. It was a moment before Zhu Li saw any kind of visible change, and even then it was only a slight vibration around the edges of each piece. She couldn't tell what was happening, not being a bender, but Kuvira's eyes shut so she could concentrate on whatever it was she was doing.

After a long moment of this, Kuvira opened her eyes, and tapped the bended metal to the windowsill. This time, it stuck. She brushed a stray hair from her forehead, and in the process wiped away the sheen of sweat that had accumulated there. "I'm not sure that I can do that with anything much bigger," she said, raising an eyebrow in Zhu Li's direction.

"That's fine," Zhu Li reassured her. "All I need is — well, here." She opened up her notepad and flipped the appropriate page, handing it to Kuvira. "The only parts that need to be magnetized are these," she said, pointing to the appropriate parts of the diagram.

Kuvira considered the little drawings. "Okay," she said finally, "I think I can do that."

☽❆☾

It didn't seem like Varrick had noticed she had left. Or so Zhu Li thought, until she came a little closer to where he was moping at his workbench.

"Did you fall in?" he asked, breaking the silence without looking at her, and Zhu Li rolled her eyes. He looked up when she began setting down the little pieces of what she'd had Kuvira make for her. Hopefully Varrick would like it enough to make it worth feeling indebted. "What the heck is that?"

A gift, please like it, I got it special just for you.

"Obviously a true prototype would be impractical at this stage," she said, adjusting her glasses before assembling the little track. "While this isn't a true scale model, I thought having something tangible might be helpful."

She set the little train onto the track, and with nothing to power it, she could only push it and watched as inertia kept it moving in circles. It was… disappointing, she realized. A crude little facsimile, and even the children's toy he'd been playing with earlier had been more impressive than this. An awful idea, a waste of everyone's time and she didn't know why she'd ever thought he'd like it.

"Zhu Li," he said, moving closer so that he could lean in and bring his face near to the track, "this is adorable."

His tone was entirely too intense.

He pushed the train again when it started to slow down, tilting his head sideways and twisting himself to an awkward angle to try and see underneath it. "Oh, man," he said, "obviously we're not going to be able to go with the traditional train shape, we're definitely going to need some way of compensating for this wobbly thing it's doing right now — do you see this wobbly thing?"

"I see the wobbly thing, sir," she said, and without moving his head Varrick looked up at her face and slowly lifted one eyebrow. She felt her face turn hot. "The — the train," she said, exasperated, gesturing to it. "I see the thing that it's doing."

Honestly. Honestly. He was worse than a teenage boy sometimes. Maybe not worse than he'd been when he was a teenage boy, but worse than the tamer and more commonplace varieties.

He stood upright, poked at the train again before crossing his arms over his chest. "This was a really good idea," he said, faintly surprised. It sounded suspiciously like gratitude. He pointed to the slowly spinning train, arms still crossed. "Do you think we'll be able to get the ride smooth enough for the turtle ducks?"

"… the turtle ducks?"

"The turtle duck car," he repeated, as if it should have been obvious.

She refused to look anything but impassive. She would not give him the satisfaction. "That being the train car with a pond full of turtle ducks in it, sir?"

"Obviously," he said. "What else would it be?"

"Do we need a turtle duck car, sir?"

Varrick looked extraordinarily offended. "No, we don't need it," he said, "just like we don't need hot towels, and we don't need honey in our tea, and, geeze, Zhu Li, why don't we just walk across the desert and eat rocks and drink sticks."

"My mistake, sir."

He clapped a hand onto her shoulder, and a weaker woman might have been thrown off-balance. "I'll forgive you," he said, turning to leave, "but only because I really like this thing."

He liked it. He liked it. Which wasn't the same as thanking her, and wasn't the same as liking her. But it made her feel warm and effervescent all the same, and whatever it wound up costing her, she was sure that this was worth it.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

Impartial Third Parties

Varrick and Zhu Li both had generally done as they had said they would, and avoided any possible negative influence on Suyin's children. It wasn't particularly difficult, because they were mostly teenage boys and therefore very busy teening. Or whatever it was they did. Baatar, Jr. had occasional input when Varrick was working with Baatar, but his attitude towards Varrick was overall unfavorable. It was a very familiar reaction, almost resentment that a person could be both so smart and so frivolous. Kuvira was not technically a Beifong, but her lack of any interest in Varrick probably worked in his favor.

And then there was Opal.

Suyin had not been terribly pleased when Varrick had asked if she was sure she was a Beifong, because Opal was a sweet kid in a way that he did not associate with their family. She was the one Suyin wanted around Varrick the least, a certain protectiveness she did not show for anyone else.

It meant it was slightly worrying when Opal was the one who came to them.

"So… you two have been all over the world, right?" she asked, and Varrick and Zhu Li both looked up from the electromagnet they'd been working on. She looked nervous, and it was hard to tell if that was only because she knew her mother wouldn't be happy about her being there.

"Everywhere worth being and a lot of places that weren't," Varrick confirmed, pulling his goggles up to his forehead. "And I can tell you all about — maybe thirty percent of those place. How old are you?"

"Seventeen," Opal said, coming closer into the room.

"What, really?" Varrick was taken aback. "I thought you were twelve."

"What?" Opal's anxiety briefly gave way to the indignation universal to teenagers confused with children.

"No offense, kid, you get to be my age and everyone looks either twelve or old. Is there somewhere in particular you wanted to know about?" He leaned against the workbench with one hand, crossed an ankle over the other. The goggles on his forehead were making his hair do something quite frankly absurd, and secretly Zhu Li thought it was cute. Insofar as Varrick was capable of being cute.

"Not really anywhere specific," she said, and she looked over her shoulder to the open door behind her, moved closer with a slightly conspiratorial air. "But you've probably seen a lot of crazy things, right? I know you were in Republic City during Harmonic Convergence."

"I've seen things that'd turn your hair white," he said, and Opal looked at his hair. "Not mine, though. My hair is too powerful for that."

"And you've met all kinds of different benders?" she pressed further, clearly digging for something.

"Even the weird kinds."

"Have you ever met anyone that just… had bending?" she asked, almost under her breath.

Varrick blinked. "Clarify."

Opal looked flustered, and checked the door again. "Well, if — if there were these waterbenders, and they had a kid, and the kid was a firebender… can that happen? If neither of her parents were waterbenders?"

Varrick and Zhu Li exchanged a glance. The questions were all pointing to a very specific problem, a problem with unfortunate implications. "It's possible that she had firebenders in the family," he suggested slowly. "Maybe a grandparent?"

It seemed possible. It wasn't as if anyone knew who Suyin's father was. Maybe Baatar had someone in his family way back.

Opal did not look reassured, and her eyes were starting to shine in a very worrying way. Varrick and Zhu Li were bad with children, and bad with emotions. Combining the two seemed like a recipe for disaster. "I don't think that's it," she choked, shaking her head, "because I — I —" She choked. "I think I'm an airbender."

And then she burst into tears.

Varrick and Zhu Li went wide-eyed, both of them looking as if something had just exploded in their lab. Or rather, how someone else would have looked. They knew how to handle explosions. Varrick gestured silently to Zhu Li and the girl. Zhu Li gestured back. Eventually she lost their silent argument, and she very tentatively tried to put a comforting hand on Opal's shoulder.

Opal collapsed onto Zhu Li, sobbing. Varrick gestured again behind Opal's back, and Zhu Li tried to set him on fire with only her eyes. She did her best to pat Opal on the back, because that seemed like the sort of thing that people did.

"I guess Avatar Aang was the only airbender before Suyin was born," Varrick said thoughtfully. "Although, if Korra is any indication—"

"Sir," Zhu Li hissed in warning over Opal's head, because telling a teenage girl that maybe Raava is the spirit of light and also sowing your wild oats seemed like exactly the kind of thing Suyin had been trying to avoid.

"If there aren't any other airbenders in our family," Opal gasped between sobs, "then that means I'm not really — I'm not — if you could just become an airbender you would know about it and if even you've never heard of it then I'm—"

"Whoa, hey," said Varrick, and he came closer but not too close. Sort of hovering, leaving Zhu Li to handle the actual clinging and crying. "I know a lot of things about a lot of things, but this, ah… spirity stuff isn't really my thing. I mean, I don't know how it works. There's all kinds of conflicting stuff about, you know, your parents and your eye color and I'm told lionturtles are a thing — you haven't been talking to any lionturtles, have you?"

"Where would I even find a lionturtle?" she demanded, angry and anguished.

"Well I don't know," Varrick said, exasperated and defensive in the face of her emotions. "Maybe he visited you in a dream, I don't know how it works. Zhu Li, would that work?"

"I don't know, sir," she snapped, because having someone weeping on her shoulder was extremely stressful.

"Okay, you know what? It doesn't matter. It doesn't even matter. You know why it doesn't matter?" Opal looked up, rubbing at her eyes, but said nothing. "Because Suyin wouldn't lie to you about something like that. If you're airbending, it has to be some kind of… freak accident, or something. The whole world got weird and glowy for about an hour, kid, that seems like the kind of thing that has consequences." He was trying. He really was trying. "Have you told Su about this?" Opal shook her head. "Now, see — it just doesn't make sense for her to lie to you about being some kind of secret airbender. She'll probably be a lot more help figuring out what's happening then we are."

"I just…" Opal sniffled, and drew away from Zhu Li, who felt a bit petty for caring that she'd have to change into a clean uniform. "I just didn't know what to do and I didn't know if I should tell anyone or if I was going crazy, and I couldn't just ask my parents if they'd secretly stolen me or something." She rubbed at her eyes again, seeming to have recovered from the worst of her distress. "I don't know many people who aren't my family," she said, wrapping her arms around herself. "I thought if anyone would know about people spontaneously bending, it would be you guys."

"Maybe you're the first," Varrick suggested. "I've never heard of spontaneously bending, but I've been hearing about a lot of new things the last couple years. Did you know they've got machines that can make cakes now? Zhu Li won't let me buy one."

"You do not eat enough cake to justify that investment, sir."

"I could start."

"You should not. Sir."

"I bet you could build one," Opal said, and they had reassured her enough that she could be distracted by arguments about cake. "Dad would probably love a cake machine. You'd have to keep it a secret from Mom, though."

"I won't tell if you don't," said Varrick, at the same time as Zhu Li said, "Please do not give him ideas, Miss Beifong." Opal giggled, though her eyes still looked pink and puffy from the outburst.

"I won't tell," she said, "if you don't tell that I told you guys first." Opal looked sheepish.

"Miss Beifong, I am nothing if not discretion personified."

This was a lie. But if Suyin found out she would never let him hear the end of it, so secrecy was in both of their best interests. Varrick may not have been discreet, but he was good at keeping secrets.

"I'm sorry about your shirt," Opal said to Zhu Li, who looked about as one might expect for someone who had been used as a tissue.

"It's fine," Zhu Li said with a small bow of her head. "I've dealt with worse." She hesitated. "Are you going to be okay?"

"Mmhm," Opal nodded. "I think I should be fine now. I was just… panicking. A little. Thank you."

It had been a while since anyone had said that to her. Not since they'd left Republic City, if she had to guess. Probably not since the arrest. Not since a completely different set of people younger and kinder than she was, children for whom gratitude cost nothing. "You're welcome," she said, with another small bow.

The words felt rusty on her tongue.

CHAPTER THIRTY

Reunions

Bolin had taken no time at all to forgive them for any possible indiscretions. He may have never actually been upset with them. It was hard to tell.

"You guys should have seen it," he said, regaling them with tales of Harmonic Convergence from the couch in their suite. Varrick was sitting across from him as Zhu Li served them tea: green for Varrick, with too much honey, and genmai cha for Bolin. "I kept telling Korra what a shame it was that you weren't there to make a mover about it."

"That sounds like one helluva mover, kid," Varrick said, accepting his tea.

"So how do you know Suyin Beifong?" asked Bolin as he sipped daintily at his own. "Were you two pirates together? I heard her say she was a pirate before, was she your pirate captain?"

"What? No." Varrick looked offended by the very idea. "She quit pirating before she was old enough to be a captain — and anyway, those were totally different timeframes. How old do you think I am, kid?"

Bolin hesitated. "… old?"

Varrick sighed with a slight slouch. "I don't know what I expected, you're twelve."

"I'm—"

"We met in the circus," Varrick said before Bolin could correct him.

"You were in the circus?" Bolin asked, looking excited. Varrick clearly thought this was the appropriate response to finding out he'd been in the circus, contrary to Zhu Li's flat incredulity. "I always wanted to join the circus, but the circus didn't come to Republic City very often and also Mako wouldn't let me."

"You would have done great in the circus," Varrick said, setting his teacup back on the tea tray. Zhu Li picked up the tray as soon as he had done so, accurately predicting his plan to prop his feet up on the table. "Especially with that little, ah, thing there." He gestured to Pabu, sleeping curled up on the back of Bolin's chair. "Animal acts always did great."

"Did you do animal acts?" Bolin asked. "I thought you'd be more of, like, a clown maybe?"

"Yes and no," Varrick said, lacing his fingers behind his head. He was surprisingly unfazed by being accused of clownitude. "The circus has a hierarchy, you don't just start out doing the good stuff. Especially not being a clown."

Bolin processed this. "So you… weren't good enough to be a clown?"

"Of course I was," Varrick said, taken aback. He took his hands out from behind his head so that he could use his fingers to tick things off. "I started off with errands — even geniuses start out running errands — and then I moved on to trick riding, and then I did acrobatics sometimes, magician's assistant, magician, then I got to be a clown, I got to be ringmaster one night, that was fun—"

"Were you actually in a circus," Bolin asked, "or were you just… a circus."

"Every operation needs a jack-of-all-trades, Bolin," Varrick explained. "You never know when someone's going to get a cold. You can't tame an elephant mandrill with a cold, everyone knows that. The only things I couldn't do were the bending tricks — well, that and fortune telling. They wouldn't let me do fortune telling, not after that first week."

Zhu Li held out the tea tray so that Bolin could set down his cup, and waited until he had given in to his obvious impulse to steal a handful of kale cookies. "Were your predictions bad?" he asked around a mouthful of cookie.

"Oh, no, they were accurate," said Varrick. "Too accurate, in fact. I was old enough to fit into the Lady Zoltar costume by then, so whenever a pretty girl came in I'd tell her she'd find love with a man whose shoes matched his eyes. Then when they left I'd take off the costume and bump into them outside."

"Were you… wearing blue shoes?" Bolin asked slowly.

"Obviously," said Varrick. "Wouldn't have been much point, otherwise."

"Did that work?" Bolin asked, and Zhu Li found herself wondering as well.

"It would have," Varrick said, "but when Suyin figured out what was happening it all went a bit sideways."

"Was she jealous?" Bolin asked with a waggle of his eyebrows.

Varrick made a face. "What? No. She was more of the older sister type. Or, what she thought the older sister type was. So mostly we didn't really talk but she yelled at me sometimes." Zhu Li snorted, then feigned impassivity before either male could look at her. "She ended up leaving the circus before I did," Varrick said. "She even came to visit after I became the richest man in the world. A lot of people did, actually, but Suyin never asked for money, so that was nice."

"That's so sweet," Bolin said, though Zhu Li was not convinced that it was.

—you still haven't apologized for that waterbender nearly drowning me—

"Oh, yeah," Varrick said, "Su's a real doll." The things he didn't say let Zhu Li fill in a few more gaps, and Bolin would doubtless remain oblivious to them.

"So now that you've been here for a little while," Bolin said slowly, leaning forward in his chair and failing to pretend he was nonchalant, "what do you know about her kids?"

Varrick blinked. "Do you mean nerd, pretentious, jocks, fake daughter, or real daughter?"

"Uh. Real daughter?"

"Opal!" Varrick said, proving that he was in fact capable of remembering some names. "Sweet kid. Pretty crazy about the airbending, right? Couldn't have picked anyone better to… infect. Or whatever you want to call it."

"Right, right," Bolin said, nodding and stroking his chin. "But do you know if she's, I don't know… seeing anyone? Just because, I mean. It would be a shame. Taking her to the Northern Air Temple and away from her boyfriend. If she had one. Just curious."

Varrick and Zhu Li exchanged a look. Varrick looked back to Bolin, still failing to look casual. "You're asking if there are any young men in Zaofu," Varrick said slowly, "willing to go through four Beifong brothers and Suyin to get a girl?"

"… yeeeeesss."

"… no. No, there are not."

Bolin pumped his fists victoriously, before leaning in again. "Do you think a guy would have a chance if he were, hypothetically, like, a famous pro-bender and a mover star and he'd saved the world a couple times? If he focused on that stuff, it would probably work, right?"

"Bolin," Varrick said, "Opal is a nice girl. I can tell you a lot about women, but I have absolutely no idea what to do with a nice girl. Sure, it's impressive, but do nice girls like to be impressed? Zhu Li, you seem like you've met a nice girl before, do you know what they want?"

The both of them looked at Zhu Li expectantly. "Honesty, sir?" she suggested.

Varrick recoiled in horror. "I understand if you're not feeling helpful, Zhu Li, but you don't have to sabotage the kid."

"Sorry, sir."

"We've all learned a valuable lesson about asking Zhu Li for relationship advice," Varrick said to Bolin, "which is that we don't do that ever again. You're just going to have to try and give her the ol' razzle dazzle and hope it works. And keep your hands to yourself, because that seems like the kind of thing that would set off Suyin's maternal instincts and next thing you know you don't have hands."

"What?" Bolin sat on his hands immediately, wide-eyed, as if even now they could not be trusted. "But she seems so… cool. Like a cool mom."

"That is a façade, Bolin, that's how she gets you." Varrick leaned across the table, far enough that he could throw an arm around Bolin's shoulders and gesture widely in the air. "She lures you in by making you think you can get away with things. That is a trap. You do the thing, and then next thing you know you have a black eye and she's been lecturing you for an hour but you only remember about half of it because you're heavily concussed."

"… what… what did you…"

"What I did isn't important, Bolin," he deflected, which was unfortunate, because Zhu Li was also curious. "What's important is that you know what you want, and now you just need to go for it."

"I don't know…" Bolin said. "Zhu Li, you used to be a teenage girl, right?"

Unlike if Varrick had asked such a thing, she knew Bolin meant no harm by it. "Technically, yes."

"How did guys get you to date them?"

He was even so kind as to assume she'd had suitors. It was almost sweet. Less sweet was the look on Varrick's face, which made clear his intent to say something horribly offensive at Zhu Li's expense. "His name was Cheng," she said before Varrick could speak, and he shut his mouth with something like surprise. "It was complicated. There were a series of wagers involved. His appearance was adequate, and he owned a motorbike. I agreed to his terms and wrote up a contract, and he spent one week attempting to convince me of the many benefits involved in pursuing a continued relationship with him. At the end of one week, I chose not to renew the contract. I won enough to pay the security deposit and first month's rent on a new apartment." Bolin and Varrick stared at her. "It was very romantic," she added.

"Zhu Li," Bolin said finally, "you can be really scary sometimes."

"Thank you, Bolin." Varrick was still staring at her.

"I don't think I'm going to be doing that," he added, and he sounded apologetic.

"I do not recommend it, no," she agreed. Then she hesitated. "Except, maybe, the motorbike."

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

Right and Wrong

"I'm going to be leaving Zaofu."

Zhu Li waited, because presumably there was a reason Kuvira was telling her this. She did not think their relationship was on a basis where they told one another such things as a courtesy. Kuvira stepped closer to the desk where Zhu Li had been working, hands clasped behind her back, and it was such an uncomfortably military posture.

"I'd like for you and Varrick to come with me."

Zhu Li blinked. She fidgeted with her pen, but did not set it down. "You should talk to—"

"Varrick?" Kuvira finished before she could. "I'm not convinced that's the case."

Zhu Li drew breath to protest, but it died in her throat before it formed sound. There was obviously more that Kuvira wanted to say, and Zhu Li would not waste words asking for something she would receive regardless. It felt unfair to wish that Varrick were there to hide behind, but that was the whole point of this. Varrick was busy. Kuvira would not be here if that were not the case.

"I don't think Varrick would understand," Kuvira continued, when it became obvious Zhu Li would say nothing. "But I think Zhu Li Moon might understand. And I think he might listen to you."

Of course he listened to her. To think otherwise betrayed a fundamental misunderstanding of their relationship.

Working relationship.

"The Earth Kingdom is collapsing," Kuvira, said, and she leaned forward to plant her hands on the edge of the desk. "It is falling apart. Every power-hungry minor lord, every gangster, every warlord, they are tearing our country apart to try and claim as much of it as they can for themselves." Our country, she said, as if Zhu Li had ever felt loyalty to the land. "Our people are caught in the crossfire of petty power squabbles, and no one is doing anything to save them."

Zhu Li's grip on her pen tightened, and her gaze lowered to her paperwork, unseeing. They didn't save people. They'd tried that, once. They hadn't saved the world. They hadn't even saved the South. Saving the world was the Avatar's job — and look at all the good it had done her. The world was not grateful and the world was not kind. The sun would rise and it would set, and they would work with the world they had and not the one they wanted.

"The Avatar is gone," Kuvira said, as if she could read the thoughts in Zhu Li's expression. "Who knows when she's coming back. We can't depend on her any more than we can depend on anyone else. We shouldn't have to depend on anyone. The system needs to be rebuilt, top to bottom, until no one has to depend on someone else's charity to live the life they deserve."

As goals went, it was hard to get much loftier. Trying to idiot-proof a country seemed doomed to fail. A determined idiot could break anything.

"There are horror stories coming out of Ba Sing Se," Kuvira pressed, as if there were not always. "Who do you think the casualties are of those gang wars? Of the entitled little lordlings with no one left to keep them in line?"

Little girls with their hair cut short and little boys with quick fingers, children who step lightly and don't sleep on stone. What could Zhu Li — what could Varrick — possibly contribute to their salvation?

"One of the problems with the Earth Kingdom has always been the infrastructure," Kuvira said, as Zhu Li continued to look at her pen rather than at her. "It's too big to manage from a single location. The Earth Queen has always been a figurehead, dependent on corrupt governors, blind to everything happening outside the capital. If we're going to be traveling across the country anyway, it's a perfect time to lay down track, to bring the rural areas into the modern world. And if we build the mecha tanks Varrick has been designing, we can have an army where the non-benders contribute just as much as the benders. That's one thing that none of these other factions have."

She made it all sound so good and so rational, but that was the danger. Anything could sound rational, if it was worded just right, without time to think it over. "It's not my decision to make," she said finally, looking up to meet Kuvira's gaze. Green eyes held grey for a long moment, until Kuvira straightened, clasped her hands behind her back again.

"But you will discuss it with him." It sounded like she was supposed to think it was a question, but it wasn't. It felt, instead, like an order. She was planning to discuss it with him, and yet.

She did not take orders from Kuvira. Did not, and would not. There was exactly one person from whom she took orders. And though it only felt like an order, though it would only be a statement of pre-existing intent, she couldn't bring herself to say yes. Carefully, she set her pen down, and she laced her fingers on the desk. "We'll see how he feels when he gets back."

She didn't know if Kuvira was consciously trying to undermine Varrick's authority. It didn't matter. If Varrick chose to make himself Kuvira's subordinate, that was his decision to make. But Zhu Li would, regardless of circumstances, answer to Varrick. If Kuvira wanted to give her an order, she could do it through her boss.

"I trust that you'll do the right thing," Kuvira said as she stepped away from desk, and Zhu Li had no response to this. The right thing was a dangerous idea. There were no alternatives to the right thing: only the right thing, and an infinite number of wrong things. Zhu Li preferred to think that there was only ever the least wrong thing.

Was it the least wrong thing to stay in Zaofu? They were comfortable here. The world would turn without them. The things they made here would reach the world in time, if they were worth sharing with the world. Yet necessity, not comfort, was the mother of invention.

Kuvira's crusade did not need them, and it would not wait for them. The question became: did she think they could succeed?

If she could lead armies, if she could rule nations — if,if — then it would be better to be behind her than in front. Selfish concerns, selfish considerations, when Kuvira had done nothing but try to appeal to greater impulses that Zhu Li was not convinced she possessed. Selfishness was survival. The helpless were dead weight. She could not imagine a Ba Sing Se that did not teach its children that.

Then again, Ba Sing Se didn't teach its children that. Not all of its children. There existed a Ba Sing Se that was kind, where women wore flowers in their hair and men wore silk.

The least wrong thing. Varrick on the front lines of the rebuilding of a nation that wasn't his, a woman who thought she could do the right thing, children who grew up to be cold heartless war machines. Was this how Varrick had felt, listening to reports of Northern ships in foreign waters, staring at his maps?

She knew what it was that she wanted to do. She knew how to present it to Varrick. Somehow, she hoped that he could find a less wrong thing. Ultimately, it was his decision. That did not make her feel less responsible.

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

Changes

Ba Sing Se had fallen. Or maybe fallen wasn't the word. Zhu Li didn't know if 'saved' was the right word either. Today was meant to be the day they found out.

She hadn't left the airship, hadn't even looked out the windows. The mecha tanks weren't done yet, and she was still helping Varrick to finalize the designs for manufacture. It may also have been avoidance on her part.

There was still word of mouth. Kuvira had started in the Lower Ring and worked her way inward, taking gangs under her wing and destroying those who would not be of use to her. By the time she'd made it to the Upper Ring, she'd had an army, and the myriad of pretenders to the throne had been given no choice but to surrender their claims and their property in equal measure.

They never specified what happened to the ones who did not bow their heads. Perhaps they thought Zhu Li possessed of a delicate constitution.

"So, this should be fun, right?"

Some things never changed. Like combing Varrick's hair in the morning. At least they had metal combs, now; no more broken teeth lost in his ridiculous mane. She made a noncommittal noise, and ignored how much she missed his old clothes. Coats and tiepins and little bits of tedious frippery, and she didn't think he was aware of how much they had drawn the eye. From, for instance, his eyes.

There were mornings where he closed his eyes while she tended to making him presentable, others where he stared vacantly into the middle distance. This was one of those mornings where he watched her, as if there were anything even remotely interesting in her handling of a razor. It was impossible to say what made those mornings different from others, when she looked the same as she always did and changed her routine not at all.

"What do you think they ended up doing with the old cactus bar?" he asked when there was no longer a blade pressed to his skin, and Zhu Li busied herself with putting things away and not looking at him.

"I don't know, sir," she said, and she still hated the smell of his aftershave.

"Do you think our hotel is still there?"

"I don't know, sir."

"How long do you think it will take to finish up here and move on?"

"I don't know, sir."

She stiffened when Varrick very suddenly snatched the hat off her head, taking with it the pins meant to hold it in place and a few stray strands that fell out of her bun as a result. She spun around, indignant, in time to see him place the hat on top of his own head. "How do I look?" he asked this time, spreading his hands in a grandiose pose.

"… lovely, sir," she said flatly, crossing her arms over her chest.

Varrick feigned shock and delight, slapping hands to both his cheeks. "So you are capable of having an opinion," he said, and she felt herself turn pink. His point made, he took off her hat and attempted to return it to her head. She flinched when he dug a pin into her scalp as part of his attempts, gaze fixed on the space of his collar where a tie should have been, the shape of his throat. "How the heck are you supposed to do this thing?" he said, clearly realizing the error of his ways. "Especially with your hair like this, it's going to fall out if you keep pulling it this tight and that will look ridiculous. I won't have you making me look bad by going bald, Zhu Li."

She sighed as he retreated, checking her hat and feeling that it was not too badly out of place. "I wouldn't want to reflect badly on you, sir."

☽❆☾

Ba Sing Se was… Ba Sing Se. She didn't know why that surprised her, that it still looked like itself. A little worse for wear, maybe — but then, how could anyone tell? Zhu Li certainly couldn't. Kuvira had been methodical and precise, so of course it wouldn't look like a bombed-out shell of its former self.

She'd thought it would feel more different.

It did feel different, in some ways. She didn't know if any of the other people in their little tour group would even notice, Kuvira showing off her accomplishments to those wealthiest that had left Zaofu, proving the return on their investment. Varrick was the only one who'd brought along 'the help'. No one else seemed to notice. They were functionally a unit.

It was quieter in the Lower Ring than she remembered. Maybe it had only seemed loud to someone small and quiet. She didn't think that was it.

Baatar, Jr. was talking about the changes they were going to make, the updates to the transit system and the buildings they would be taking down and the buildings they would replace those with. She didn't see any children. They were good at not being seen — she still was — but not that good. The streets felt so empty. She'd always hated the crowds, and yet now there were none.

"What are you thinking?" Varrick asked close to her ear, and she could see Kuvira look in their direction.

"Nothing, sir," she murmured, lowering her eyes to the cobblestones. He hummed thoughtfully, but did not press her.

The first place they went in the Middle Ring was Ba Sing Se University. She had not been to the campus since she'd received her degree, and it felt… strange. Nostalgic didn't feel like the word for it, memories of a time when this had been her place. Not a place that made her happy or that made her feel safe, not a place that she belonged. But it was where she was, every day for years, and now she was here again.

"One of the biggest changes we're going to be making," Kuvira was saying, louder to be sure that everyone heard her, "is to the staffing and admissions at the University. For too long, actual academics have fallen by the wayside in favor of giving the second sons of the idle rich a way to while away their time. We're reassessing the employment of all professors, and anyone will be free to take the admissions exam without needing to pay a prohibitory fee. We are raising the threshold of scores required to be admitted, and any student that meets that threshold will be able to attend free of charge."

Oh.

That was…

That would have saved her a lot of trouble. And time. And pain.

Zhu Li Moon was one of five students in the history of the University to get a perfect score on the admissions exam. Getting the money to take it had been hard enough. Getting the money to attend the school she had earned admission to was worse. Semesters taken off to try and make enough for another, barely scraping by, degree taking years longer than it ever should have.

What a strange thought, how things might have been different. She might never have been on that street the day Varrick had fallen from the sky. It was a horrible thought. But for all those for whom a better life would never fall out of the sky…

They'd still have to make it to University first. That wouldn't be feasible for most people, not people like the person she'd been. But it was something.

"A big part of the changes we're making here is fixing the crime problem in the Lower Ring," Kuvira said as she lead them away from the campus. "Part of that is reforming the prisons — we've already moved the prisoners out of the dungeons and into work camps, isolating them from the population and allowing for a focus on rehabilitation. Undoubtedly some of those prisoners are there for political reasons, but until the country is stabilized, it's unrealistic for us to try and go through the rosters trying to sort the good from the bad."

Zhu Li was only half-listening, because even she wasn't capable of getting particularly excited about the concept of prison reform. She was sure it was all a very nice idea, anyway. It was never something that was particularly relevant to her, since she had always managed to avoid being arrested.

Until Varrick had been arrested, anyway. But that didn't seem like it should count.

"The other part of what we are doing," she said as they approached one of the schools of the Middle Ring, "is opening the schools to the public. All of the schools. Until we can get more built in the Lower Ring, we've been bringing children in from the Lower Ring to come to the schools we already have. Many of these children are at a disadvantage compared to their peers who had already been attending private schools, but we have faith that they will catch up in time."

Zhu Li had vivid memories of lurking outside windows, squinting at distant blackboards, stealing books from poorly attended bags. She wasn't bitter about it. She'd done what she had to. Once again she thought of how much easier it would have been, the things that would have been different. A school that let her in the door and a university at the end of it, and all the other children she had known who had not been as pigheadedly stubborn as she was.

Kuvira was building a Ba Sing Se where Zhu Li would not exist. Would not need to exist. She looked to the school, and a group of short-haired children in ill-fitting uniforms were gathering at one of the windows to gawk. One of them waved.

"Sir," she asked under her breathe, "would you please excuse me for a moment?"

"Good idea, Zhu Li," he responded, at such high volume that it startled her, slapping her on the back. "Hey, Kuvira," Varrick called, and this was very much the opposite of what Zhu Li had wanted, going rigid where she stood, "does this tour include time for bathroom breaks? Because I need to powder my bladder something fierce."

Kuvira had the grace to smile, albeit ruefully. "Why don't we take a break?" she said to the group at large. "Ten minutes, those who would like to discuss what they've seen so far will be free to do so, and we'll meet back here to continue on toward the Upper Ring. There's a noodle shop across the street that should be happy to have anyone who needs to make use of their facilities."

"Great," said Varrick, throwing an arm around Zhu Li's shoulders and herding her toward the place in question. This wasn't what she'd wanted, she'd wanted to slip away discreetly for a moment alone, she didn't understand why he was doing this when he was usually so good at knowing what she wanted.

She didn't even duck through the door curtain as they walked in, and when Varrick's arm left her she immediately sat herself on a stool at the counter. It wasn't the most graceful way to extricate herself from the situation, but her legs felt somehow wrong and she did not trust herself to walk much further.

"Can I help you?" asked the man behind the counter, and Zhu Li shook her head because her tongue felt thick and heavy in her mouth.

"Give us a minute, will ya?" said Varrick, and the shopkeeper obliged them with a small bow, disappearing back into the kitchen. He spun the stool that she was sitting on around, but she fixed her eyes on her own knees rather than look at him. She was, she realized, not breathing the way she was supposed to. Or anyone was supposed to. Her heart was hammering against her ribs, which made no sense when she could have sworn that she felt fine, fists balled tight in her lap and shoulders rising in a hunch. Hopefully her glasses were fogging, because the alternative was that her eyes had gone all funny.

"Hey — hey." Varrick ducked his head to try and get in her eyeline, but realized quickly the futility of the endeavor. "What… what's happening, here? Did something happen?" She shook her head, with the oddest sense that she was watching herself. "Are you just… having a moment?" She nodded, and it felt like her throat was closing up. "Okay. Okay, well, breathe, first. You should do that. You remember how breathing works, right?" She attempted to draw more air into her lungs than she had been, a ragged and shaking thing. "That was. Better? No, it wasn't right at all, you're usually much better at this."

He hesitated before touching her, but ultimately decided to wrap his hands around hers, engulfing them completely. It was almost jarring, being touched, a single point trying to reattach her to her body. "Here. Focus on this, okay? Just this, the one thing." His thumbs stroked circles over hers, softer than they should have been for an engineer, all his nails perfect shining ovals. "Breathe." He squeezed her hands, and somehow that made doing as he'd asked much easier.

"That's a start," he said, and she was grateful that he didn't let her go. "Now: are you upset?" She shook her head. "Angry?" She shook her head again. "… happy?" She nodded. "Huh." He said nothing for a moment, but his hands were still there, and she tried to time her breathing to their unconscious motion against hers.

"Are you the kind of happy that is also overwhelming and upsetting and you don't know what to do with yourself?" She nodded furiously. "Okay. That's okay. That's fine. We'll just wait here until you're done doing whatever this is."

"Sorry, sir," she hiccuped.

"You should be," he said sternly, bending down again. This time he was more persistent, and he nudged her forehead with his. She blushed, and met his eyes for the first time since that morning. "I wasn't kidding about having to pee, you know."

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

Strenuous Exercise

The train car they shared was not exactly close quarters, but it was the first time that Zhu Li and Varrick had been made to share a bathroom for an extended period of time. It wasn't as big or as nice of one as he would have preferred, but he didn't mind anyway, because Zhu Li somehow managed to never use any hot water and keep all of her toiletries in half of a single drawer. Whereas Varrick took up the entire counter, all of the cupboards, most of the shelves inside of the shower, and an additional small table he had found and stolen to keep more of his things on.

Just because they were living on a train didn't mean he had to live like an animal. He had needs.

It turned out to be extremely convenient, anyway, because he had figured out exactly how long he had to wait after Zhu Li had turned off the water to resume the conversation they'd been having when she disappeared into the bathroom. Not that he was accosting her in the bathroom with any kind of regularity. Just… emergencies. Discussion emergencies. When they had things to discuss that she did not necessarily need to be dressed for.

Anyway, he didn't know what she expected when she abandoned him in the middle of the day like this. They'd spent all morning testing the prototype for the new mecha tank — which meant Zhu Li had tested it, and Varrick pretended not to be surprised by the several interesting new uses she had found for the grappling hook.

It didn't seem like it should have been that strenuous. He thought. He did not actually know, because he had no intention of ever being the one to drive one of them. He could get hurt. But now he had things he wanted to talk about, and Zhu Li was busy… washing her hair. Or whatever it was she did in there.

He waited a generous five minutes after the water stopped running. Then he covered his eyes with one hand as a precaution and opened the door without knocking first. "Zhu Li, are you decent?" With his eyes covered he could only see her bare calves, and that was not particularly useful information.

"Define 'decent', sir."

That meant that she was, so he removed his hand to see her all wrapped up in a towel and using another to dry her hair. "So you think we're good to start up mass production?" Every time they tested it, it seemed like Zhu Li found another bug, another little thing that would make use in the field more difficult than it needed to be. Things he never would have considered, like the shape of the seats and how things fit around her legs and the way certain levers couldn't be used because they jabbed into her ribs on some settings.

"I believe so, sir," she said for the first time, dragging a brush through her still-wet hair. Which was not even remotely good for it, but trying to convince Zhu Li to take better care of herself for beauty's sake was a futile endeavor. He already knew she knew that she was doing it wrong, because she never would have done that to his hair.

"Thank goodness," he said, as he watched her pull her hair back and then pull loose the two stray locks at her temples with her other hand. How she got her towel to stay up, he would never understand. "That means we get to move on to other projects, I've got a couple of things already that I want you to test." She twisted her impromptu ponytail, wrapped it around itself into something that could be held out of her face with a single pin. The others were just precautionary measures, all but the special pin he'd given her last solstice, the pin that was also a knife and a bottle opener and a screwdriver.

Which was really more of a gift to himself, since he needed it more often than she did. It still pleased him inordinately to see her using it.

"Like what, sir?"

"I think I've figured out a shake that can replace all meals—"

"I'm not drinking that, sir," she said before he could even finish.

"Zhu Li! Where's your spirit of adventure? Maybe you'd like Varrishakes if you gave them a chance." If she was already this opposed, he didn't know how she'd respond when she actually saw the thick green concoction.

"Did you make it, sir?" she asked as she knelt to open the lowest drawer, the one he didn't like to use because there was too much bending down involved. The edges of her towel separated slightly around her thigh, and he did an admirable job of only looking a little.

"Yes, I did the whole thing myself, specially chose all the ingredients for their healthful properties." He was quite pleased with himself about it.

"Then I'm not drinking it, sir," she repeated, setting the jar she'd retrieved on the counter as she stood.

"Zhu Li," he whined, leaning on the counter, but she remained unmoved.

"We are not having this discussion again, sir," she said as she opened the jar, 'this discussion' being his repeated attempts to do anything resembling cooking.

He thought he might be getting better at birthday cakes. It was difficult when he only practiced once a year, but the latest one had almost remained in a vaguely circular shape. Zhu Li rubbing his back while he vomited was becoming a treasured solstice tradition, in his mind.

"Zhu Li," he began again, but then he stopped. He sniffed the air. Then he snatched the jar off the counter so he could look at it. Zhu Li was unfazed, having already dipped her fingers into whatever-it-was, and she rubbed it over her face with her fingertips like there was nothing out-of-the-ordinary about the situation. "What is this?" he demanded of the unlabeled glass jar, bringing it close to his nose so he could smell it.

Sweet and vanilla and lemon and a little bit of coconut. It smelled like cake. "It's a sugar scrub, sir," she said, reaching out to wipe some of it from the tip of his nose with her pinky.

"You rub sugar on your face?" he asked, incredulous. He smelled the little jar again to be sure. Yes, that was definitely sugar, and yes, she was definitely rubbing it on her face.

"You rub seaweed on your face, sir," she pointed out, turning on the water to rinse off the concoction.

"That's different," he said, although it probably was not. He rubbed a lot of things on his face. Some of them were probably ill-advised. They were not, as a general rule, desserts. Experimentally, he stuck a finger into the jar and tasted some of it, not even bothering to ask first if it was edible. "This is delicious," he said, and somehow that offended him more.

"Don't eat it," she said, appalled and exasperated, grabbing it back out of his hand so she could put it away. "We're not having that discussion again, either, sir."

He sucked on his finger thoughtfully. "The don't eat my stuff discussion or the don't put things in your mouth if you don't know what they are discussion? Or the don't eat in the bathroom discussion?"

"All of them, sir."

"Fair," he said, and as Zhu Li collected her glasses and walked towards the door, he walked backwards in front of her. "But you don't get to say no to the next one, it's not food."

"What is it, sir?" she sighed as she headed towards her bunk so that she could change.

"I've invented a way to exercise while sleeping," he said, and she raised one eyebrow.

"I'm not testing torture devices, sir."

"No, no! The Varricizer isn't a torture device! It's a way to keep your figure without all that pesky doing things and sweat. Working out without the work. Justing out. That's not the tagline, that's terrible, we're going to work on that. You wear it when you go to bed, it stimulates your muscles while you sleep, next thing you know you've got abs like the Avatar. That might be the tagline, that was pretty good."

"I'm not sure that's how muscles work, sir," she said, but she waited at her door for Varrick to excuse her, because of course she would.

"No one really knows how muscles work," Varrick scoffed, which was probably inaccurate. "It sounds like it should work. If it feels like it should work, then it will probably sell!" He brought his hands together and gave what he thought of as his very best I am adorable please give me what I want face. "Just try it for one night?"

Zhu Li sighed and rubbed at the bridge of her nose. "Can you promise that it won't set my bed on fire, sir?"

He hesitated, squinting as gears turned in his head. "I can promise that… it won't… set the metal parts of your bed on fire. I… can't promise that it will set your bed on fire."

She opened her door. "I'll think about it, sir."

☽❆☾

The Varricizer had set Zhu Li's bed on fire.

At least, that was what he was assuming had happened. That sounded like a woman whose bed was on fire. Which wouldn't have been so worrying, if she hadn't locked her door for the first time he could recall in… ever. "Zhu Li," he yelled, banging on her door with his fist.

Eventually, slowly, it cracked open just enough for Zhu Li to look out at him. "Yes, sir?" she asked, sounding breathless. She certainly looked like she'd been putting out a fire.

"What's going on?" he demanded, attempting to look past her and failing when she held the door nearly shut. "Is everything okay?"

"What?" She looked slightly dazed, and definitely sweatier than she should have been for not actually doing any exercise. Her hair was falling out of its ponytail, and she was wearing the flannel nightgown that he hated. "Yes, yes, everything's fine. It's all fine, here. I'm fine, are you fine? You look fine. You should go back to sleep, I should go back to… testing." She attempted to close the door on his face.

"What?" he said, putting his hand in the way of the door so she couldn't. "Zhu Li, are you drunk?" He'd never seen Zhu Li drunk, but he'd never seen her acting like this, either. It seemed as plausible as anything else. Red-faced and sort of delirious and more aggressive than usual.

"No," she said, taken aback, but then she looked thoughtful. "No, but I should… I should try that…"

This was getting weird. And she smelled nice. Nicer than usual. There were a lot of things not adding up. "Zhu Li, if you don't want to test the Varricizer—"

"No!" Her vehemence was intense and surprising enough that he recoiled. "I am — I am trying to test it. I said I would test it and I am testing it. I am a professional, sir, I am trying to be thorough but I don't know how I'm supposed to get any work done if you're going to be showing up with your hair all bad in your ugly pajama pants—"

"These are very attractive pants," he protested, looking down at himself. So maybe gold trim was a little much for something he wore to bed, but she was one to talk.

"Some of us are trying to get work done, sir," she finished, before closing the door in his face.

He had no idea what had just happened.

☽❆☾

Zhu Li had a lot of ideas about the Varricizer. A lot of very puzzling ideas. Unlike her ideas about corrections to be made to the mecha tanks, she would not explain her logic to Varrick. She also had not given the prototype back.

He could sort of understand wanting it to be quieter. A person could hardly fall asleep with it on if it was too loud. Even making it easier to clean made a certain amount of sense, judging by how inexplicably sweaty Zhu Li had been. He did not understand the need for variable strength settings. Or waterproofing.

"And what have you two been working on?" Kuvira asked as she entered their car with Baatar, Jr. They hadn't checked in with her in a few days, so she had apparently decided to take matters into her own hands.

"The Varricizer," he announced, spreading both arms over the worktable in a grandiose gesture. "It lets you exercise in your sleep! You never have to move a muscle, because it moves your muscles for you."

Kuvira was not actually Suyin's daughter, but he thought the look on her face was distinctly Beifong despite that. Baatar, Jr. looked much more snide, which he must have gotten from a distant relative. "That is not," he began, but whatever pedantry he was about to inflict upon them was interrupted by a small clearing of her throat from Zhu Li. She made eye contact with Kuvira, and with the slightest nod of her head indicated her desire for private conversation. Kuvira wordlessly agreed, an intrigued raise of one eyebrow, and the both of them went to the far corner of the train car.

Varrick and Baatar exchanged glances. Both of them, without trying to make it too obvious that they were attempting to eavesdrop, attempted to lean nearer and eavesdrop. While they did not generally get along, in this one instance their interests aligned.

"It does what," Kuvira exclaimed suddenly, pulling away from the huddle in the corner. Zhu Li looked over her shoulder at the men behind them, red-faced, and the two of them leaned back in. It was impossible to even guess as to the nature of their discussion. Baatar gave Varrick a questioning look, but Varrick could only shrug helplessly. For once, he had no idea what his assistant was doing.

Eventually the two women came back to the table, and their attempts to look casual might have worked better if Zhu Li hadn't still been all pink. She wouldn't make eye contact with Varrick. "So," Kuvira said, picking up one of the devices, "is this a… functional prototype?"

"Yeah, it should be," Varrick said. For a split-second Kuvira and Zhu Li's gazes met again, and Zhu Li's blush returned full-force.

"I think I'd like to test this one for myself," she said slowly, and Varrick looked almost as surprised as Baatar.

"Sure, if you want," Varrick said, "I don't see why not." He didn't see why either. Something was missing from this equation, and Zhu Li wasn't telling him what it was. Maybe Baatar would have better luck figuring it out than he was having.

☽❆☾

Baatar had figured it out.

He accosted Varrick in one of the storage cars between his room and the lab, a hallway where he could grab Varrick by the shirt and push him against one of the walls. He had a wild look in his eye. "Woah, hey," Varrick said, throwing up his hands, "easy there, what gives?"

"Do you have any idea what you've done?" Baatar hissed through his teeth.

"No," said Varrick, "no I don't, I don't have any idea, what have I done?"

"Your Varricizer," Baatar snarled, somehow yelling and whispering all at once. "Didn't your assistant tell you?"

"Zhu Li? No, actually, she's been very cagey about it, it's very unusual for her."

Baatar made a sound of exasperated disgust, but he still hadn't let Varrick's shirt go. It didn't seem like it was very good for the shirt, but hell, his girlfriend was the one paying for the uniforms. "It stimulates muscles, all right," he explained, "but not the way you said, and not the ones you meant it to."

Varrick screwed up his face in confusion. "What?" In that case, what the hell was it—

The weird noises. The blushing. The sweating. The waterproofing.

"No," he said, wide-eyed, lowering his hands to grip Baatar by the shoulders. "No, you don't mean — they aren't—"

"They are," Baatar confirmed. "Do you have any idea what this means?"

He knew exactly what this meant.

"I am going to make a fortune," Varrick said, awestruck, before Baatar hit him upside the head. "Ow!"

"No, you idiot," Baatar said, shaking him by his shirt, "it means you have made us obsolete."

"What? No." Varrick scoffed, making a dismissive and undignified sound with his mouth. "Made you obsolete, maybe. Women appreciate me for more than just my high-quality moustache rides, Baatar."

"Oh sweet spirits," Baatar shuddered, immediately letting Varrick go and recoiling, holding up his hands as if ready to cover his ears. "Please stop talking."

Varrick straightened out his much-abused shirt, stood taller and polished his nails against his chest, warming to the subject. "Women enjoy my sparkling wit, my charming personality, and my greater-than-average cuddleability—"

"Why are you still talking."

"—no mere device can replace all that. Not that it matters, in my case, since the person using it is Zhu Li, which — wow, that is weird. That is… that is really weird, I do not know what to do with this information. That is… wow. Weird."

He had accidentally built Zhu Li a battery-powered boyfriend. One that she apparently found extremely satisfying. Was he imagining that this was weird? He was pretty sure this was weird. He was doing his best not to think about it too much.

He was thinking about it a lot.

"You and Kuvira, though—"

"If you say one more word, Varrick, I will throw you off this train."

"You don't have the upper-body strength for that," Varrick said with a dismissive wave of his hand. "All I'm saying is, in a way, I've done you a favor. The… the thing takes care of all the tricky stuff, you still get to join in for the fun parts. All the weird noises, none of the hand cramps. It's win-win!"

The loathing in Baatar's eyes was truly impressive. "You are a vile, vile man. You know that?"

"Look, Baatar, communication is an important part of any relationship," Varrick said, inching his way towards the door. "So maybe you two should communicate. About how she's replacing you with a belt."

He ran the rest of the way back to his car. And tried to act casual when Zhu Li looked up from what she was doing.

Her eyes widened. "You figured it out."

"What? No—"

"You figured it out," she repeated, her face turning red, and she immediately retreated back to her bunk. She could move almost as fast as he could, when she wanted to.

"Zhu Li," he said outside her door, knocking fruitlessly. "You can come out, it's fine."

"It is not fine, sir," she called back, and it sounded like she was underneath her comforter. Hiding. Which was… hilarious.

"It is totally fine," he contradicted. He hesitated.

He shouldn't.

"If you need some time off to be with your boyfriend—"

"Sir!"

"—I know you're probably pretty committed, at this point, and I want you to know that I am completely willing to pay for the wedding—"

"That isn't funny, sir!"

"—I'm imagining a very tasteful ceremony, you can have it in Republic City, they're very modern there—"

Zhu Li did have the upper body strength to throw him off the train. He told himself that she wouldn't have done it if the train had still been moving. It probably didn't help that he was still laughing when he hit the ground.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

Master of Seduction

Iknik did not fantasize about Zhu Li. He was, occasionally, curious about how she might react to certain hypothetical situations. He considered this a very important distinction. Fantasizing about his assistant would be creepy. Idle curiosity was harmless.

Mostly this curiosity manifested itself when he was aggressively bored. Not just normal garden-variety bored, but aggressively bored. Lately this had involved a lot of Zhu Li briefing him about the technical and logistical details of something Kuvira was trying to accomplish. It was all a formality, since they both knew he would retain none of it and Zhu Li would simply have to point him in the right direction when the time came.

Formalities were obnoxious. This was why he preferred not to work for other people. Suyin had been one thing, someone who let him go about things in his usual way. But all this bureaucracy and respect for superiors stuff was really getting on his nerves. If not for Zhu Li, he'd still be in Zaofu, enjoying kale wraps and bean puffs and sleeping in until noon.

It wasn't deliberate, anyway, getting curious. It never was. If he could stop himself from getting curious about things, it would save him a lot of time and money. It was just that Zhu Li had this very particular way of bending over his desk when she was trying to show him things he didn't care about. It wasn't like he stared at her. He instead stared vacantly into the middle distance, which wasn't any different from when he was curious about anything else.

One of the things he was curious about was her legs. Or, what was on them. He'd seen her legs. But he couldn't figure out if she was wearing tights or stockings. When she bent at the waist just-so, her skirt inched up just the slightest bit, but it wasn't enough to tell. Tights seemed more practical, and therefore more likely. But she used to wear stockings. Maybe she still did. Green stockings with green garters, although he didn't know how much Zhu Li cared about color-coordinating her undergarments. If her nightgowns were anything to go by, she was more the everything-in-heather-grey-cotton type.

He wasn't sure which he'd like better. Not that it mattered.

He was also curious what she'd do if he did something… inappropriate. In theory. Hypothetically. Not that he ever would. Tapping her on the nose or touching her on the shoulders, that was one thing. He would certainly never actually come up behind her and wrap his arms around her waist, slide his hands under her shirt.

He was 90% certain that if she became aware that he had even thought about it, she would break his fingers. One at a time, and slowly. And then she would quit, and work directly for Kuvira instead. That was the last thing anyone needed, so he would not be trying to confirm his idle theory any time soon.

But that left a 10% chance that she would do what she always did when he was being especially obnoxious, and ignore him. The best-case scenario in a universe where he completely lost his mind and tried to grope his assistant was that she would pretend he wasn't doing it and keep talking. Thus treating his sexual advances the same way she treated his attempts to balance one-handed upside-down on the back of his chair.

As best-case scenarios went, it wasn't really worth the risk of testing it.

Rearranging maps around the boots he had propped on the corner of the desk, she pulled the pen that he'd been chewing on out of his mouth before it exploded and replaced it with a pencil. She really did think of everything. He used his tongue to roll it to the other side of his mouth, held it in his teeth like a cigarette in bad weather.

Even if she just ignored him, she would only ignore so much, surely. It seemed to him that the likelihood of getting seriously injured increased exponentially the more he tried to do. In this hypothetical, strictly-for-curiosity's-sake scenario. If he assumed that she would ignore him, and if he assumed that he could get away with touching her, that hardly meant he would be able to get away with anything else.

He had no one but himself to blame for this whole situation. Ever since he'd figured out how she'd been using the Varricizer, he'd had a lot of additional data that made his curiosity worse and not better. Data like the fact that she would do something like that, and that she would do it very noisily.

Iknik had a lot of information and nothing to do with it. Information like: Zhu Li had shown not the slightest interest in any man since they had met; Zhu Li had scars on her knuckles and her knees; Zhu Li could throw him off a train; Zhu Li was prone to making sounds like her bed was on fire; Zhu Li did not like to drink or be around people who did; Zhu Li blushed very easily under the right circumstances; Zhu Li played Pai Sho like a warlord-in-training; Zhu Li had a scar over her ribcage that made him suspect that her bones had not always stayed where they were supposed to; Zhu Li had a gray bikini that made her look like a clumsy selkie; Zhu Li could dislocate the arms of a man twice her size; Zhu Li could carry him up a mountain with a twisted ankle; Zhu Li did not know the name or the date of her birth; Zhu Li cried over battleships and educational reform; Zhu Li was more stubborn than a Beifong; Zhu Li weighed three times as much as someone her size should have, and may literally have been made out of steel.

Very soft steel.

She looked at him expectantly, and he didn't know why he felt… something. Guilty, maybe. He assumed that was what this was supposed to be. "Shall I bring Kuvira your approval?" she asked.

He looked at the desk, covered in papers that she had been explaining and that he had not been listening to. "… yes?" She nodded, which he took to mean that this was correct, and proceeded to stamp his signature over ten different pages. World domination involved a lot of paperwork, and personally, he blamed Baatar, Jr.

"I will return momentarily," she said, sliding it back into a folder that she held against her chest. He waved her away, and pretended not to watch her leave.

☽❆☾

It was seeming increasingly possible that Iknik was not just curious, and actually had fantasies about his assistant. He had a hunch that this might be the case, based on the fact that he was jerking off in the shower and thinking about fucking his assistant.

It was him: he was the asshole. He had ascended to the top of Mount Fuckface, and was now Head Asshole, Lord of all Bullshittery. He was now almost as bad as every male executive he had ever met with a cute secretary, and his only possible advantage was that he had not actually slapped her ass.

Just thought about it.

He was a bad, bad man.

He was remembering the way she had looked when he had pulled her into the pool that first time, wet and barely covered and pressed indignantly against him. When he'd gone into her room, and everything had smelled like warmth and sleep, her nightgown had barely covered her thighs and he'd held her hair like it was his specifically because he'd remembered how much she used to hate it. She'd let him do it and she hadn't complained and in retrospect that was the worst thing she could have done, because it had only encouraged him. Now he was thinking about how fine her hair felt in his fist and how soft she'd felt nestled in his lap, his hand over her mouth and the sounds she made when she was surprised.Really surprised, caught off-guard in a way that was difficult to do but that he could still sometimes manage.

Bent over his desk, wearing that blue-gray he'd bought for her instead of Kuvira's green, with her hair undone and her shirt pulled open and her skirt around her waist. His hands over hers, pressing her palms into the table, kissing her shoulders and her spine and hearing what she sounded like when he nipped at the skin of her neck.

Always like this, because he couldn't imagine being able to look her in the eye and he didn't want to imagine the look on her face. The way she said sir sometimes like it was a question, an oath, an interjection, a promise, worlds of meaning in that little word. He imagined her biting her lip, stifling every last sound, because Zhu Li was a vault that had swallowed her own key. He'd thrust harder and harder trying to break her, and it would never work because she'd tamed herself before anyone else ever could; but that sure as hell wouldn't stop him from trying. Anything to make her say it, sir and sir and sir until she couldn't help but say his name.

He was Iknik Blackstone Varrick, and breaking things was what he did.

The nice thing about showers was that they were good at hiding evidence. The bad thing was that they couldn't wash his brain. The worst thing was that this thrice-damned train had shit for hot water capacity.

☽❆☾

Varrick and Baatar, Jr. were only barely willing to tolerate one another, because they preferred the usual arrangement in which they were the smartest person in the room. Competition was unwelcome. The fact that Baatar would come to see him willingly — while Zhu Li was distracting his girlfriend-sister-boss, no less — was suspicious.

"You seem to know a lot about meaningless gestures," Baatar said, which was not really getting off on the right foot.

"I know about a lot of things," Varrick said, a towel around his shoulders and the metal parts of his uniform still set aside. "But, yes, that is one of the things. What do you need to know?"

"A good way to impress someone," Baatar said.

"Depends on who you want to impress."

"That's none of your business."

Varrick snorted. "Kuvira, then."

"The details are irrelevant," Baatar insisted.

"If you wanted relationship advice," said Varrick, "you could have just asked."

"I would not," Baatar said, "come to you for relationship advice."

"I'll have you know," Varrick said, stroking his moustache, "that I am referred to by many as a master of seduction."

Baatar snorted. "Yeah," he said, "I'll believe that when I see it."

Rather than acknowledge his incredulity, Varrick's eyes widened in feigned shock, placing a splayed hand over his heart and recoiling slightly. "Baatar, Jr.," he said, looking the man over with a scandalized air, "you are in a relationship."

Baatar immediately began turning red, sputtering. "That's not — not with me, you dolt!" This probably wouldn't have been as effective if Varrick had not been in a slight state of suggestive disarray, and he was pleased by the serendipity.

"Well that's hardly better," Varrick said, putting his hands on his hips. "That just means you're a voyeur."

"No it does not," Baatar insisted, crossing his arms and trying to look less perturbed than he was. "It means I think you're bad with women."

"Obviously you're entitled to your opinion, but I don't see how it follows that you'd have a chance, that's extremely assumptive—"

"—I am not interested—"

"—and furthermore, I don't know that I'm comfortable with the level of interest you're showing in my love life."

"You are being deliberately obtuse," Baatar accused, and accurately.

Varrick grinned, stretching his shoulders in the pose of a man preening. "I don't know about deliberately," he said, sounding very flattered, "but I have been told that I—"

"That's not what obtuse means," Baatar interrupted, before he could go any further.

Varrick looked thoughtful. "Are you sure? I can double-check. I'm pretty sure Zhu Li knows where we keep the protractors. But we can't tell her what it's for, she gets mad when I use office supplies for that kind of thing."

"I'm not even sure what you're trying to insinuate anymore," Baatar said.

"And that's how I know I'm better with women. Are you trying to impress your sister because you fucked up, or because you're trying to earn goodwill for future fuckups?"

"Kuvira is not my sister," Baatar said heatedly.

"Mmm — kinda, though," Varrick said, shaking his palm in the air to indicate it could go either way.

"We were childhood friends."

"Who shared a mom."

"I don't expect you understand."

"That's true," Varrick agreed, "I never even had a sister, let alone one I wanted to make out with."

"She's not my sister."

"We're going to have to agree to disagree," he said, "since I don't think you'll be able to educate me on the intricacies of which of the girls you grew up with it's acceptable to swap spit with."

"I have no idea why I thought this would be a good idea," Baatar said, stalking towards the door.

"That's a pretty good question," Varrick said, "since if she wanted a lot of meaningless gestures, she probably wouldn't be dating you." Baatar hesitated. "Since she seems to be into… whatever this is," Varrick continued, gesturing to all of him, "you're probably better off sticking with whatever horrible boring thing comes naturally. If you want my actual advice, it involves two tons of plastic explosive and six camelephants—"

"Please keep your advice to yourself," Baatar said, and somehow he managed to slam the train car behind him.

Iknik had a lot of problems, but at least he could always comfort himself with the fact that he wasn't that guy.

☽❆☾

"Look, all I'm saying is — all I'm saying — is that if the guy giving her away at the wedding is your dad, and your mother-in-law is also your mother — no red flags? Really? None?"

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

Listening

It was becoming a nightly routine that Bolin came to their car at the end of the day. He didn't have a private car of his own, not being of high enough rank, but he probably would have spent most of his time in theirs even if he did.

The thing was, they probably could have found extra furniture to accommodate their guest. Nice furniture, even. Instead, Bolin and Varrick insisted on building — every night — a fort. Which meant that every night it was Zhu Li's job to disassemble the fort and figure out who to return all of the pilfered pillows and quilts to.

The first night, it had just been a bizarre solution to a minor problem. They seemed to have decided that it was tradition immediately after. Zhu Li didn't particularly understand it, but whatever made them happy. Even they could not seem to agree on what this was meant to accomplish, and the ambiance changed with each night and the different blankets they had acquired. Last time there had been a lot of purple and white, and so the unspoken theme had been pirates. Varrick had told a number of highly improbable stories about the functionality of eye patches. The blankets this time were patchy and mismatched, and she could not imagine what possible theme could be drawn from them.

"These quilts remind me of the circus," Bolin said, though Varrick scoffed at this idea.

"This is nothing like a circus tent," he said. "This is like we are noble hobos, riding the rails and making our home in abandoned train cars. Right, Zhu Li?"

Zhu Li handed out the night's hot cocoa to the two men sitting cross-legged on mounds of pillows, Varrick's radio between them. The volume was quiet, but it played only static. She only ever put peppermint in Varrick's mug, but he never commented on it. "I don't have the necessary frame of reference to answer that question, sir," she said, because he probably knew as well as she did that hobos were not generally this comfortable. Trying to respond to him as if he were being literal was never a good idea.

Bolin had started the hot cocoa. She didn't know whose idea the radio had been, but it was all now an integral part of the evenings. Breakfast, work, lunch, conquer something, dinner, build a fort. Some days were too busy, but most were not. As bonding rituals went, it was probably slightly safer than shooting arrows blindfolded.

She joined them in the fort, because Bolin got upset when she didn't. Still, she did what she always did, sitting slightly apart from the both of them because this was not for her. She didn't know who it was for. It didn't seem like something Varrick would do just for Bolin's sake.

Maybe it reminded him more of the circus than he let on.

"Just trust me," Varrick said to Bolin. "In this scenario, I am the Hobo King, and you are my trusty… Hobo Squire. We are on a quest to find the Hobo Queen, spoken of only in legend."

Bolin considered this. "Is Zhu Li the Hobo Queen?" he asked tentatively.

"What?" Varrick recoiled. He glanced to Zhu Li, who remained impassive. "Zhu Li is Zhu Li," he said, pulling a spare blanket over his legs.

"I thought we were all being hobos," Bolin said.

"There are limits to what a suspension of disbelief can accomplish, Bolin," Varrick said. "There is no plausible set of circumstances where Zhu Li becomes a hobo."

"So is Zhu Li just gone in the hobo universe?"

"No, of course not! She's my assistant, obviously, she assists me on my noble quest."

"But if you're the Hobo King, and she's your assistant, doesn't that make her the Royal Hobo Assistant?" Bolin was clearly missing some of Varrick's dubious logic.

"You don't have to be a hobo to work for the Hobo King," Varrick said. "Are you accusing the Hobo King of discriminatory hiring practices?"

"I just don't understand why we're hobos and Zhu Li isn't," Bolin said, exasperated, gesturing to all three of them.

"I was unaware that you were so unfamiliar with the practices of train hobos, Bolin," Varrick said, "and quite frankly, I'm a little disappointed. Here's how it works: picture someone in your mind. Doesn't matter who it is, and I don't care. Now, think: can you imagine that person forming the lid of a can of beans into a crude spoon in order to eat the cold beans inside of that can? If so, it is plausible to consider them a part of this hobo situation that we're constructing."

"Oooooooh." Bolin looked as if this were a legitimate revelation for him. "So, like. Korra could definitely be a hobo."

"The Hobotar," Varrick agreed. "Master of all four… cardinal directions? Obviously we may have to workshop this a little. Zhu Li, make a note."

"I'm not creating a paper trail for this, sir," she said.

"Wise," Varrick said. "Remind me to give you a raise."

"I'm in charge of payroll, sir."

"Remember to give you a raise."

"Already taken care of, sir."

"Efficiency like that is what got you that raise that I apparently gave you at some point," Varrick said approvingly, before suddenly shushing everyone assembled and turning up the volume on the radio.

This was the part she understood the least, less than inventing pirate or circus or hobo related scenarios to explain why they were sitting on the floor under someone else's blankets. Pro-bending, she would understand listening to that. There were quite a few dramas that they could have listened to, Zhu Li being quite partial to a few of the comedic adventure stories.

What they preferred to listen to instead was the ramblings of a madman in one of the basements of Republic City. Or maybe it was unfair to madmen to call him that, as he seemed surprisingly lucid for the most part. He was very popular, anyway, or else no one would be willing to boost his signal far enough to make it to where they were.

He had a lot of very strong opinions about the world, whoever he was. He insisted on remaining anonymous, lest they find him. Who they were seemed to change every night. Usually it was someone from the moon, or some kind of lizard person. Sometimes, lizard people from the moon. He would regularly bring in guests claiming to have evidence that, yes, lizard people from the moon were responsible for all of the world's ills.

Amon had apparently been a lizard person. Unalaq? From the moon. Zaheer was some kind of false flag operation, which seemed to be code for 'this person who agreed with me made me look bad'. Lizard people had abducted the Avatar, and were surely brainwashing her so that she would take them to the moon.

Varrick and Bolin loved it. Zhu Li found it a battle to stay awake.

"So this Kuvira," the radio began, and Bolin gasped with such delight that one may as well have thought it had been his name.

"Kuvira is a moon maiden!" Bolin squealed with excitement, clapping his hands together like a penguin seal.

"No way," Varrick said. "She wears too much green, he's going to go lizard person, one hundred percent."

"Oh, c'mon," Bolin began, but Varrick held up a silencing finger.

"… classic lizard person," the radio said, and Varrick threw up two fists in triumph.

"Called it!" he announced.

She really didn't understand this hobby.

☽❆☾

It wasn't clear when Zhu Li lost the battle with her eyelids, but by the time she started to rouse they had turned the radio off. "Don't wake her up!" she heard Bolin whisper, and she stiffened, but kept her eyes shut. Curiosity, perhaps.

"I'm not waking her up," Varrick whispered back, exasperated, and she felt a blanket being pulled up to her shoulders. "But I should," he added. "I'm not paying her to sleep."

"I don't think you're paying her to sit around in Fort Handsome, either," Bolin pointed out.

"You don't know that," Varrick muttered. "I pay her to do a lot of things."

"I think technically she pays herself."

"… yeah, but it's my money." It was very difficult not to flinch when he slid the glasses from her face.

"Do you want me to carry her to her room or something?" Bolin asked, and it was really very sweet of him to offer. She had absolutely no intention of letting him do that, but still. It was the thought that counted.

"What, you think I can't carry my own assistant?"

"… no?"

She could imagine the look on Varrick's face. "I could carry two Zhu Lis, if I had to."

"I don't think you should be measuring your strength in Zhu Lis."

"You're not the measurement police." Varrick tucked the blanket tighter around her.

"Do you think there are really people on the moon?" Bolin asked, and she wondered how long he'd been wondering.

"On the moon? No. In the moon? Maybe. Technically speaking the moon is a person, so… it's complicated."

"Wait, what?"

"Didn't you grow up in Republic City? Who did you think Yue Bay was named after?"

"The moon's name is Yue?"

In the quiet of their whispered conversation, she could hear Varrick hit himself in the face. "Yue was a Water Tribe Princess—"

"Like Eska?"

"Yes. And when she couldn't be with the man she loved—"

"Like Eska!"

"Yes. And rather than live without him, she turned into the moon."

"… not like Eska."

"No. That's how you know it wasn't meant to be."

Zhu Li was not an expert. But she was pretty sure that wasn't how the story actually went. She had some questions about where he had learned his version.

"I feel like someone should have warned me about the possibility that my girlfriend would turn into the moon."

"Turned into the moon, walked into the ocean, tried to bring about the end of all things. Water Tribe women take love very seriously." She could hear him patting Bolin on the back. It was probably not as reassuring as he had intended.

"What about men? What do you do if someone breaks up with you?"

"You know, it's never come up? I like to think I would handle it with the kind of dignity and grace you would expect from a man of my caliber."

"You don't think Opal will turn into anything weird, do you? Like, if she got mad at me?"

Zhu Li had been listening with great intensity to this conversation, and found herself very alarmed when arms slid beneath her — blanket and all. Not alarmed enough to stop pretending she was asleep, but still very alarmed. "She's Earth Kingdom," Varrick murmured, "so she probably won't try to kill herself if you leave her. But she's a Beifong, so she'll probably leave you. In a ditch. The safe thing to do is not screw it up."

Varrick's pride must have been injured by Bolin's disbelief that he could pick up Zhu Li, because he wasn't even complaining about how heavy she was. He smelled even more strongly of peppermint than usual. She used her feigned sleep as an excuse to curl herself against his chest, because he was warm and she really was very tired and she was allowed to indulge herself every now and again.

"What are we going to do with all these blankets and stuff?" she heard Bolin ask.

"Just throw them out the window," Varrick said. "They'll blow in the general direction of the laundry car. Probably."

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

Upstanding Citizen

"How much do we know about these spirit vines?" Varrick asked.

Zhu Li looked up from the soaps she was currently trying to stack neatly in Varrick's spare bag. Like a toddler left unsupervised, he was now hanging half out of the window, his waist balanced on the windowsill and his feet not touching the floor. He was holding himself up with his hands and craning his neck to try and get a better look at the forest that had half-consumed the city. The wind this high off the ground was sending his hair in every direction, and it would serve him right if he fell.

Honestly. It was like working for a lemur. An enormous, petulant lemur.

"Enough that you should be more specific, sir," she said, coming up behind him to hitch her fingers in his belt and pull him back inside. He went unbalanced as he came in, and so she stepped out of the way as she let him go, so that he could roll backward and up onto his feet. He put his hands on his hips as if he'd never fallen, and she very pointedly shut the window.

"They're supposed to be some sort of earthly manifestation of the spirit world," he said, "but how does that even work? What are they even made of? Are they all just made of spirit stuff? Benders have chi, but they're not made of it, so how does it work? When Unalaq married that kite he could just… shoot chi at people. I think. That was what it looked like, anyway. And it affected things like a tangible thing, not like some woo-woo floaty spirity stuff. But are they all the same thing?"

Zhu Li processed his train of thought to follow it to the logical conclusion that had gone unsaid. If the vines were composed of energy in a physical state — the kind of energy that could be used to bend — then it could theoretically be converted from one form back into the other. A raw form of that energy not contained within a person could then be manipulated by a non-bender to create similar effects. Of course, it would be a lot of trouble to go through when they could already create flamethrowers and throw rocks perfectly well.

"Electricity, sir?"

"It'd be really convenient," he agreed, taking it in stride that she had figured him out, because he'd intended that she would. It was her job to know what he wanted. "The Earth Empire is almost stabilized, once the politics get sorted out those power plants aren't going to be able to keep up."

The power plants in the work camps, the ones that had been filling up as they put off problems in order to deal with them one at a time. Stabilize the country first and then sort out the prisons, stabilize the country first and then handle the dissidents, stabilize the country first and then—

It was hard to argue with results. Three years was a short amount of time to build a nation. Set the possible destabilizing elements aside until the nation was a given rather than a question, and it was an imperfect solution but it was speed that Kuvira wanted. A prototype of a country, and the faster it was done the faster they could work out the kinks.

It wasn't perfect, but the logic was sound.

Generating enough power for the technological advancements in the Empire was currently only possible with the power plants in work camps. If the prison situation was sorted out the way it was supposed to be, there was a good chance that things would deteriorate very quickly.

And even with what was effectively slave labor, there wasn't an unlimited supply of firebenders capable of shooting lightning from their fingertips. Being able to generate electricity directly would solve any number of problems.

"Would you like me to locate some of the relevant research, sir?"

"No," he said, leaping backwards into the bed so that the pillows and blankets all tried to go airborne around him. "Let's just get some samples. When meddling with forces beyond mortal ken, it's best to skip straight to poking it with a stick. Nothing beats primary sources."

Zhu Li sighed and rubbed the bridge of her nose. This was going to be one of those experiments that ended with explosions.

"Hey," he said suddenly, less exuberant, and his tone startled her out of her irritation. She looked to where he was laying, now on his side with his head propped on his hand, which was overall entirely too evocative. She hoped she wasn't turning pink. She probably was.

"Sir?"

"I think the yacht is still in the harbor," he said, and she knew he was right because she checked on his assets with more regularity than he did. Waiting for this presidential pardon or waiting until they called it to another harbor, but in over three years they had never done either. Never reason, never time. "What do you think about just… getting on the ol' boat and taking off? Just me and you?" He paused. "And… the crew. The crew would also be there, that's about fifty people probably, and honestly we might want to bring along Bolin, too. So not just me and you. But skipping out this whole coronation and declaring sovereignty thing."

She was at a loss. All their plans and all their work, and he wanted to leave before anything actually went anywhere? Before he could actually profit from all that infrastructure they'd been building? What was he seeing that she wasn't?

"Is that an order, sir?" she asked uncertainly.

He made an exasperated sound. "No, I'm asking your opinion. I've got a lot of conflicting head voices right now, I want to know what you think. I've got one head voice that's like, 'yeah, finally, this is where it starts to get good' and I've got another head voice like, 'but is it really?' and the first head voice is like, 'of course it is, this is what we've been working for' and the other voice is like, 'I don't know, this seems a lot like that thing you told Suyin you'd learned your lesson about', and then another completely different head voice comes in and it says, 'the shit's about to hit the fan something fierce and we don't want to be anywhere near that', and the other head voices say, 'yeah that's probably true' and I've got to say they're all making some pretty good points here." He sprawled out on the bed, grabbed either edge of the comforter in his hands, and then rolled himself in until he resembled a perturbed caterpillar. "Kuvira probably wouldn't take too kindly to us asking to leave, this might be our only chance, and I don't think anywhere is going to be much safer than the ocean. You can't earthbend the ocean."

"I… suppose that's true," she said slowly, and Varrick narrowed his eyes at her.

"Don't give me that look," he said, which came as some surprise when she was not aware of having given him any kind of look. "I know what you're thinking."

That was surprising, since even she wasn't sure what she was thinking. He was very sure of himself, for an indignant cocoon man. "What's that, sir?"

"You think I'm being a coward," he accused. "You think I'm going to pass up the chance to do real good because I'm not in charge."

"Your concerns are perfectly valid, sir," she said, but she had a sneaking suspicion that he had turned her into one of his head voices.

"Don't lie to me, Zhu Li," he said, sitting up, still tightly wrapped in his blanket. "Do you really believe in this whole Great Uniter thing?"

He made it sound so silly. Naïve. Like she was just another in a long line of idealists wrapped up in Kuvira's charisma, like she didn't know any better. As if she could not support Kuvira while still accepting her shortcomings.

"I think she's the best option," she said cautiously, which did not actually answer his question.

"So that's a yes," he said, and all at once he unwrapped himself and threw the blanket off like a fabric explosion. How he did not get tangled in it, she did not understand. "Fine. You believe in the Great Uniter, then I believe in the Great Uniter."

"Sir—"

"What, you think I can't believe in the Great Uniter? I can believe in the Great Uniter. I'll believe so hard it'll make your head spin."

"Sir," she tried again, but he was now very dedicated to this idea for reasons she did not understand.

"No, you're right," he said, even though she had said nothing. "We were in this from the start and we should see this through to the end. We're committed. You think I can't commit? I can commit. I am capable of commitment under the appropriate circumstances. I'm offended you think I'm not."

"I never said you weren't, sir," she said.

"Good," he said, although he didn't seem particularly mollified. "As long as we're clear."

Usually when they had a conversation that wasn't actually about the thing they were talking about, she knew what it was. This time, she had no idea. What was he so worried about that he needed to know what she thought? He had as much insight into Kuvira as she did.

Still, it was an interesting change of pace. Usually the fact that she'd be with him regardless meant it didn't really matter what she thought. Asking was a formality, but a nice one.

She wished she knew why he was bothering now, of all times.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

Silence

It was a struggle to breathe.

Her ribs felt too small for her lungs, and it was only through force of will that she breathed, took breaths long and deep and slow instead of the small and gasping ones she wanted.

Every time Zhu Li closed her eyes, she saw Varrick on the backs of her eyelids. Varrick, above the tracks, and Varrick on the floor, crumpled and broken and low and all the things he never should have been.

It wasn't her fault. She knew, logically, that it wasn't her fault. But in that moment when she'd thought he was going to kiss her, in that moment when he hadn't, she had been so disappointed. She'd wanted to slap him. Maybe, if they'd been alone, she would have.

Kuvira hadn't been acting on her wishes. Kuvira hadn't been doing anything but serving her own ends. There had been that second, nonetheless, where she had walked over Varrick and she had looked at Zhu Li.

And she had smiled.

For an instant, Zhu Li thought it was her fault. She thought it had been for her. She had never hated herself more than she did in that moment, the moment she thought she had been Varrick's undoing.

The anger at herself was subsiding. She was working through it. She was transferring it to where it belonged.Kuvira, with the braid down her back and the smile on her face, Kuvira who did not tread lightly and who she could now see had never understood. Kuvira, the Spring Cockerel, and she would pluck every feather from her wretched wings.

It was still there, in the pit of her stomach, the fear that Varrick knew. The instant they'd been alone he'd shrugged away her touch, nothing she could do and nothing she could say. He hadn't said a word to her. She had never seen so much ice in his eyes.

For the first time in her life, she was afraid of him. Of the look on his face when he saw her, of the marks in his skin that hadn't been there before, of what he might say.

What he might not say.

He'd already gone back to their car, and she was putting off joining him. She didn't need to be the one cleaning up the mess, even if he'd said she should, even if that had been his deflection. It felt like the last order he'd given her, and so she did it, and she kept doing it until she could find no more excuses not to rest. But it didn't feel restful, going back to their car, seeing him. Her back and her feet and her fingers all hurt, but her heart hurt so much worse and her lungs weren't working the way they should have.

All her fault, all her fault, so hard to tell herself that she meant Kuvira. So much hate and anger and they needed to be for Kuvira, because she knew how to handle that. She could hate a woman like that. Such hate she had known, such impotent fury, and she may as well have been back in Ba Sing Se for all the anger that she swallowed.

Kuvira had promised a better world, but she had never felt more as she did when she was young. Mousy Moon, who swallowed her tongue.

She would have hesitated at the door if it weren't for the guards already there. When she stepped inside, it seemed for a moment as if Varrick was on the floor again, and she froze. He'd taken off the epaulets, the metal bracers, the green tunic. There were marks where metal had dug into his skin, angry red lines etched into his flesh, and she didn't know how long he'd been doing push-ups on the floor but there was sweat sliding down his spine and his knuckles against the floor looked raw.

You're too weak, she'd said, and she hated herself for letting fear drive her tongue.

Zhu Li waited by the door, but he didn't lift his gaze from the floor. He knew she was there. She knew that he knew.

"Do we have anything heavy?" he asked instead of greeting her.

"Sir?" Her voice didn't usually sound that small, she was sure that it didn't, utterly pathetic when he least needed her to be.

"This isn't doing me any good," he said, "I need more weight."

She'd never seen him like this. It was, she realized, anger. She had seen irritation and annoyance and fear, but she had never seen anger, wound all around him like barbed wire. Echoes of rage in them both that they'd both thought long dead, the people they were before they'd known each other. A disgusting piece of human garbage, Suyin had said of Varrick, and she wondered if this was the Varrick she had known. "We have a few things you could use," she said, back still against the door, "but I don't know how much weight you need."

I don't know what you're doing, I don't understand, things she'd never said and never would.

Her attempts to placate him did not seem to improve his temper. If anything, it got worse. "Well as long as it weighs as much as your fat ass, it should be fine."

She wanted to die. That was what this was. Doused in ice water, her whole body gone cold and pale as all her blood rushed from her face, stomach twisting and she had to close her eyes and force herself to breathe.

He was lashing out. He was lashing out and he didn't mean it, that was what she told herself as her nails dug into her palms and her fists shook. She just happened to be available, she just happened to be the only person it was safe for him to lash out at. Better that she was here, better that it was her, because she was the only one who would ever forgive him for something like this.

She hated him. It was an involuntary response, sudden hate that she tried and failed to redirect anywhere else. There were tears collecting at the corners of her eyes, and if she'd had her own room she might have gone to it, might have sobbed into her knees in a way that she never had before. Not even when she was a little girl had she ever been upset like this.

Zhu Li forced her eyes open, forced herself again to breathe. He wasn't going to chase her away. He wasn't. Damn him for thinking that he could, damn him for thinking that she couldn't see exactly what he was doing. Her steps were stiff as she walked towards him, and, wordlessly, she sat herself between his shoulderblades. Sat herself down hard, enough that she knocked him entirely to the floor and the air out of his lungs.

Good. Let him be the one with lungs too small and a pain in his chest.

"How's that, sir?" she asked, and she hoped he couldn't hear her voice trembling, feel the rest of her doing the same. Slowly, he pushed himself up off the ground, his arms shaking with the effort. How long had he already been doing this, how long could he possibly keep going before his arms gave out?

"Perfect," he snarled through his teeth when he'd lifted them both off the ground, before slowly lowering himself again.

She couldn't do this. Pretending that she was okay, that they were okay — this, whatever this was, this was where she drew the line. She stood suddenly, legs unstable, and stumbled into the bathroom.

Oddly, she didn't think she'd ever been the one of them to vomit before. Varrick vomited all the time. It was almost a hobby. Like everything, he made it look easy. She retched until there was nothing left in her stomach but bile. Somewhere along the line she'd become physically incapable of stopping herself from crying, so when she was done she buried her face between her knees with great, gasping sobs.

When she had nothing left, she did what she could to destroy the evidence of her outburst. She brushed her teeth and she fixed her hair, but there wasn't much she could do about the red of her eyes.

Zhu Li opened the bathroom door, and immediately hit a wall. The wall was very warm and very sweaty, and had arms that wrapped around her before she could figure out what exactly was happening. The hair on his chest was coarse against her cheek, and he held her so tight that she could hear his pulse. She bit down on her tongue, because if she didn't she was going to start crying again.

"I'm really gross," Varrick said eventually, and he might have meant sweat and he might have meant as a person.

"You should probably do something about that," she said.

He grunted. "I'm going to take a shower," he said. "We'll… it will be better in the morning. Normal. Back to normal."

She knew that he was sorry. It would be a formality to say that he was. He should have said it. He didn't. She was beginning to wonder if he ever would.

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

The Last Straw

"I think I've figured out what finally drove Zhu Li to leave me," Varrick said thoughtfully, and Bolin groaned.

He had been listening to Varrick talk about Zhu Li for hours. Hours. He was sick of it. Baatar, Jr. was sick of it. Even the nameless lackeys were sick of it.

"Do you really think you've managed to find that needle?" Bolin asked. "Because that is a really big haystack. That is a hay field. And you're not even trying to find a needle! You're just trying to find a specific piece of hay!"

Varrick continued thinking aloud as if Bolin had not spoken, almost absentminded as he assembled what no one else knew was a remote detonator. "I think it was when I called her a fatass."

"WHAT."

He understood Bolin's horror. He even understood Baatar, Jr.'s horror, though hearing him and Bolin say anything in unison was unsettling. What he didn't understand was why the lackeys thought they got to have an opinion.

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

Partners

Her mouth tasted like metal.

Zhu Li had been biting her tongue so hard and so often that it had begun to bleed. It was all she could taste anymore. Lies and rage and failure. Failure to keep Varrick safe, failure to redeem herself, failure to destroy the weapon Baatar was building.

We're partners.

She played the memory over and over in her mind as she lay in the dark, we're partners, the only hope she had left. Are, not were, they were partners in the present tense. Partners in this, in deception and sabotage. It had to have been what he'd meant.

She'd done everything she could to make it obvious, because Varrick was the only one who would understand. The only one who needed to understand. She said all the things that Kuvira wanted to hear and all the things that she would believe, and none of them things that had ever actually been relevant. She didn't understand that Zhu Li's loyalty to Varrick was a singular thing, a fixed point around which the world turned.

Kuvira thought a bow was the natural curve of Zhu Li's spine. Varrick would know better. He had always known better. Surely he knew better now.

We're partners.

An explosion they could not possible have escaped, but Varrick did the impossible. We're partners, and maybe it had been a warning. A deception to match her own. She had to believe that it was, because to let herself think otherwise was to come undone. She had trusted him to believe in her, and now she had to believe in him. He had lived and he would come for her, and if she didn't see him again it would be no one's fault but her own.

She would not think about the fear in his face that had looked so real, she would not think of women who threw themselves into the sky, she would not think of the things a person might do if they thought they had been abandoned.

To believe that he had done something drastic was to believe that he loved her, and thought she did not love him in return. Therefore, he had not. Simple. Logical.

We're partners.

Baatar was more clever than she was willing to give him credit for, and Kuvira more cautious. Harder and harder to try and destroy the weapon, delay the damage it could do. Even if she destroyed what they had, she could see now that Baatar would only try again.

Zhu Li didn't want to die. She wanted to see Varrick, see him safe and hear him laugh and know that he had always believed in her. She wanted to hear him say it again, we're partners. He didn't love her and he didn't have to, but partners.

She didn't stay because he paid her. He wouldn't fire her if she didn't do as he'd asked. They had always been excuses and it had always been a choice that she had made. Partners. A formal admission of a pre-existing arrangement. She wanted so badly to live for that.

Zhu Li was willing to die. If that was what it took, if it meant taking Kuvira with her, she would die if she had to. She was not so vain as to think that she could succeed where the Avatar had failed, but it wasn't the same thing. She was a nobody and a nothing, but that made her invisible. She had no power and no people, but she was stubborn and she was angry and she would die rather than fail again. She was not the Avatar. There was no one to save her from herself.

She ignored the ache in her heart that said it would be better to die. Ignored the whispers in her dreams that she might see Varrick again, might die as he had died in a burst of light that would leave not even corpses. Ignored the thought that even if he lived, death would be her redemption and would save her from his scorn.

We're partners.

She wouldn't die if she didn't have to.

She rolled over in her bed and sucked blood from her teeth, and even now she couldn't let herself feel anything, because Kuvira had no more respect for her personal space than had Varrick. If Kuvira had not yet noticed Zhu Li's deception, it was only because she wasn't looking for it. Zhu Li wrapped herself in hate that Kuvira confused for respect, because only Varrick had ever understood that her respect was like his, neither polite nor kind.

It was so hard to sleep in the silence.

How many years had she hated Varrick's snoring? She'd give anything to hear him snoring in the room next to hers. It meant he was there, he was alive, he was safe. There was nothing in the world more reassuring than that awful noise. She would never wear earplugs again.

The nights were bad, but in some ways, the mornings were worse. She would get ready before Varrick woke up, only to recall that he was not there. She would make a pot of tea that she could only drink half of, and bite her tongue as she poured the other half down the drain. She could not bring herself to cook, and barely ate. She had never been one to take a meal for granted, but her mouth hurt and her stomach roiled and everything tasted like metal.

Zhu Li did not have much imagination, because that had always been Varrick's job. When she tried to imagine seeing him again, she imagined kissing him instead. Everything went a little funny after that, because she couldn't imagine what could possibly come after that, could not imagine a world where she knew what his lips tasted like.

She had, on dark nights when she ought to have known better, imagined other things. She didn't know what it said about her that she could never imagine him kissing her, even then.

Imagining did not work quite so well as piecing together bits of memories, stitching together moments. That very first night, when she'd dragged him into bed, when touching him had still been a novelty. The first time he'd tried to touch her hair, and she'd bitten him as a reflex and miraculously hadn't been fired. The first time she'd seen his awful bedhead, seen him with another woman, seen him get mad at something he was building and throw it out the window. The first time she'd thought he was going to kiss her, and if he hadn't been drunk she would have kissed him first. That time he'd tried to grow a beard.

His chin on her shoulder, falling asleep with his head in her lap, when had it become so normal to touch and be touched so often?

She missed him the way that she would miss a limb. She'd much rather live than die for him, but there was no question that she would kill for him. Not to save the world, not because it was her destiny, not for any noble reason. Just for him.

We're partners.

CHAPTER FORTY

Alone

He kept cutting himself shaving.

Iknik had, he was very sure, been capable at one point of shaving himself. Of dressing himself. He'd done it himself for over twenty years, of course he could do it himself. He could do everything himself. He'd always done everything himself.

Until Zhu Li.

Perfect and precise and methodical, and no one else could keep up with him but she was always five steps ahead.

She was always going to leave. If it hadn't been Kuvira it would have been someone else. Something else. He'd always known it, deep-down. She deserved better. There were limits to how long he could trick her into thinking he was worth it.

Everyone on both sides of this clusterfuck of a war thought he was a huge asshole. Which was fine. Because he was. He didn't become the richest man in the world because he wanted to have to give a damn what other people thought. That was the opposite of what money accomplished.

Fat lot of good it did him, anyway, when it look three times as long to get ready in the morning as it should have.

He spent a lot of time thinking about kissing her. The train, mostly. But also other times, so many other times he'd had the chance to kiss her and never would again.

It wouldn't have made things better. She wanted appreciation, not sexual harassment. He still wished he'd done it. Just once. She'd have slapped him so hard it would snap his neck, but it would have been worth it. Just to know.

"Come in," he said to the knock at the door, and of course it was Bolin, because who else would want to see him? Who else even knew he was still here, staying at a hotel rather than leaving town on his yacht as soon as he could? Even he didn't know why he hadn't left yet. Maybe the empty room next to his. Maybe he just didn't trust himself on the ocean. "How's it going, kid, get things sorted out with Opal yet?"

"Not yet," he said, Pabu wrapped around his shoulders, "but I think I've got an idea that will — what happened to your face?"

Varrick scowled at Bolin in the mirror. He wasn't that bad. Overall. So maybe the lower half of his face was more tissue than skin. That was… normal. Probably. "What happened to your face?" he retorted, which really wasn't much of a retort at all.

"It's, uh. Good to see you wearing clean clothes again?" Bolin offered, which, really, was an entirely new low.

"Just gimme a week," he said as he rubbed a towel over his face, "I'll be back in top form in no time."

Whatever that looked like. He'd met Zhu Li during a transitional period, a man looking for new worlds to conquer, looking for someone new to be. He hadn't liked the person he was. No one had. He didn't know who he might have become if he hadn't happened to land on someone strong enough to carry him. He'd wrapped himself around her like a vine on a fencepost, and he didn't know what shape he'd take now that she'd been taken away.

He'd done this to himself. He'd never told her what she was worth and just hoped she wouldn't notice, because… well. He couldn't afford what she was really worth. No one could. No one but Kuvira, apparently, who could offer her a greater purpose that he hadn't known she'd wanted. Varrick's only purpose was to avoid being bored. Be interested, be interesting, be the best at everything and do things no one else had done. It hadn't occurred to him to wonder if that would be enough for her.

"What are you going to do when you see Zhu Li again?" Bolin asked, and Varrick froze.

"When?" Varrick repeated, spinning around. "Do you know something I don't?"

"No, no!" Bolin said, holding up his hands in something like surrender, and Varrick realized that he'd been advancing on him. Pabu had taken refuge inside of Bolin's coat. "I just mean, you know, when we beat Kuvira she's probably going to be, I mean, not right there probably but maybe nearby? Unless…"

"Unless what?"

"Well to be honest my big fear is that we take out Kuvira but then Zhu Li takes over, because that's the scariest thing I can think of," Bolin confessed. "I mean at least with Kuvira there's a whole war and everything, it seems like if we had to fight Zhu Li we wouldn't even know about it until it was too late and then one day we'd all wake up and we'd be in the Earth Empire and it would seem like we'd always been in the Earth Empire and we'd almost feel like we'd imagined ever not being in the Earth Empire. You know?"

Varrick slumped. "Yeah. Yeah, I know what you mean." He remembered her with a fire in her eyes, and maybe that was when he'd—

That train of thought derailed immediately with a spasm in his chest, and he rubbed the heel of his palm over his sternum.

"Anyway," Bolin continued, "you've been talking about her so much since she left I was just wondering what you were going to say when you could actually say something to her."

I'm sorry please come back I need you I l—

"Enjoy prison?" he suggested with a shrug. "That's probably where most of Kuvira's inner circle will go, so…"

"Varrick," Bolin said, and he sounded almost disappointed. Pabu poked his head out of Bolin's coat and gave a sullen chirp.

"What?" Varrick crossed his arms over his chest.

"You know, when you gave me that horrible advice before, and I figured out that it was horrible advice, I thought maybe you were just messing with me," Bolin said, and there wasn't censure in it. "But I'm starting to think you might just be really horrible with women."

"What?" Varrick repeated, but this time he was appalled and offended. "Do you know how many women I've been with? A lot. A lot of women. A veritable sea of women."

"Yeah," Bolin said, "but I feel like that might actually prove my point. With people, isn't it more quality than quantity? You've just got quantity. You had to build a special boat just to get away from one of them, that doesn't seem like a good thing."

"… that's not how it works," he said, although Bolin may not have been entirely wrong. "And that's not relevant, anyway," he said with a wave of his hand. "Zhu Li's not a woman." Bolin made a face. "Not like that, I mean she's not… she's Zhu Li. Was Zhu Li."

He didn't know who she was now.

"I just…" Bolin hesitated, touched his index fingers together in a fidget as he spoke. "I know I forgave you for almost killing me and all, but if you get to see her again and you leave it like it is I'm going to be really upset with you, like, on principle."

Varrick threw up his hands. "I'll think about it," he said, and he didn't want to, but now he wouldn't be able to help it. Not thinking about it meant he had missed the obvious.

Beating Kuvira was the best chance he had of seeing her again. If only from a distance, if only from opposite sides.

That was one hell of a motivator.

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

Unequal

Iknik was a coward.

This was a fact that he accepted about himself, because cowardice was smart. Cowards lived.

Cowards also didn't get the girl. Not the one they wanted.

He didn't know if it would have been better to have kissed her. For once, he had no idea. He'd had all these plans, and then she'd apologized to him and there were people there and he'd just… panicked. She took it all back, everything she said, and so he had tried to go back.

It took him a long time to find her room. He wasn't used to that, not having her right there. Bolin had finally brought him to it after Varrick had stuck his head into the tenth room where he was not wanted.

"If you want my advice," he began, and Iknik could tell that he was about to say something absurd.

"Didn't the Avatar cheat on you with your brother?" he interrupted, and Bolin wilted.

"Point taken."

He probably should have knocked. But that required remembering that Zhu Li's personal space was not also his, and some habits were hard to break. She ignored his arrival, anyway, sitting in front of her mirror and brushing her hair like he wasn't even there. He thought of her combing his hair, every morning for years, and she was always so much gentler with his than she was being right now. "Sooo," he began, but she still didn't look up or turn around. "Equals, huh?" He clasped his hands at the small of his back, rocked back on his heels and up on his toes. "I can see how that would be… fair. You've always sort of been a partner at the company. Changing the name might be a pain, but other than that—"

"I didn't mean the company, Varrick." He froze as Zhu Li set down her brush. "I don't care about the company."

"… well why the heck not? Is my company not good enough for you?"

She sighed, and she sounded very tired, which put a stop to his indignant bristling. "I don't care about the company," she repeated, "I don't care that you don't thank me and I don't care that you ask too much of me, that's not — that was never the problem." She turned around in her seat, and his heart constricted when he realized that her eyes were already shining with unshed tears. She seemed to struggle for words for a moment, balling fists in her lap. "Bolin told me," she said finally. "He told me, you almost died because you were so sure, you were absolutely certain that I'd abandoned you." She wiped away a tear with the heel of her palm, and she wasn't just sad: she was furious. "I trusted you, I was so sure you would understand. You said we were partners and I thought — after everything in Republic City, after I stood by you, and you were still so ready to believe—"

"Because I deserved it," he said, although he hadn't meant to interrupt, and she swallowed whatever she'd been about to say. "I thought…" He wrung his hands together, and realized he couldn't look her in the eye. "I have spent… almost a decade, now, treating you like garbage." There was a lump in his throat that might have been his heart. "I'm not an idiot, Zhu Li, it wasn't an accident. I thought… I thought if you knew what you were really worth, you'd leave. So I tried to make you feel worthless, and I thought… that it finally backfired."

Iknik was not a nice man. Had never been a nice man, would never be. Zhu Li knew that better than anyone. It wasn't a confession he could have made to anyone else, because they wouldn't have understood. Not like Zhu Li. She stood, and he almost flinched. "Did you think I didn't know?" she asked, and then he did flinch. "And that's the problem, that's always been the problem, that you know and I know but you never believe. You've never believed in me the way I believe in you. You've always been waiting for me to let you down. And I wish…" She choked and rubbed at her eyes again, and he wanted to hold her, wanted to run. "I wish you would just say it, it would be so much easier if you would just say it."

He knew. Just like before, he knew, he was absolutely certain that he knew what she wanted. "Say… what?" he asked anyway, quiet.

"Say that you don't love me," she said, and it turned out he hadn't known anything at all. "Say it, just say it, say that you don't love me and you've never loved me and you never will, I wish you would just say it." He was frozen in place, and he thought his heart had shattered into a million pieces in his chest, knocked the air out of his lungs. "You won't, though," she said, and she sounded defeated. "I don't need you to love me back and I don't need you to be nice, but you won't even—" She choked again, buried her face in her hands. "I love you, you idiot, and the only thing I've ever wanted was for you to believe that."

I love you I love you I love you, sobbing as she said it and it crashed in his ears like waves, like he was drowning. "Zhu Li—"

"How many times," she snarled, an explosion of feeling as she jabbed a finger into his chest, "have you done something stupid? Something so stupid but it was the best plan you had and I was there, I was always there, because being there was more important than being right. All you had to do was lie, all you had to do was say you'd known I'd never leave you, and you couldn't even do that. I have trusted you with everything, everything, everything that I have and that I am, but you can't even trust me to love you when it's all I've ever done." She grabbed him by the lapels, yanked him downward, and her lips crushed into his with a fury that he could almost taste.

He was wide-eyed and incapable of independent function when she pulled away from him, pushed him away. "You will never say that you love me," she said, "but it's worse that you won't even say that you don't." The finger jabbing into his sternum was pushing him out the door, and he had never felt more loathsome in all his miserable life. "You think dangling the idea of love will keep me around, like I need it, like I don't know. I can't do it anymore, Varrick, I won't. I won't keep waiting to catch someone who doesn't trust me enough to jump."

She pushed him into the hallway, and he stumbled back into the wall like an animal cornered. Zhu Li rubbed her eyes again, collected herself. "Tomorrow," she said, at a more discreet volume, "we are going to pretend this never happened, because we are so fucking good at pretending things never happened. Until Kuvira gets here… we need to get things done, and if I need to be your assistant to do that, then fine. Fine. I will work with you and I will help you, but when Kuvira gets here… well, we might die." She laughed bitterly. "But if we live, then that's… that's it. I won't be your assistant, not again, not after that. I'm done."

With that, she shut the door in his face.

He stared at the door.

He'd fucked up.

He'd seriously fucked up.

Zhu Li tasted like lemons and chamomile and if he was capable of love then this was probably it, this feeling like he was going die. He was a coward, but he had gravely miscalculated, because the thought of Zhu Li leaving him like this was worse than anything he'd ever felt. Worse than before, worse than when he thought he was reaping what he'd deliberately sown, because there was nothing deliberate about this.

He'd never said that he loved her. He'd never said that he didn't. If he'd known that she loved him he had tried not to think about it, tried not to think about her loving the idea of him more than she could ever love the reality, tried not to think about tricking her into loving him by making her think she couldn't do better.

Love in every cup of tea and every curl of his hair and every question she never asked, in the curve of her spine and the grip of her hands and everything she'd ever done for him had love all over it like fingerprints. But she couldn't have loved him because she shouldn't have loved him, because she was better than him in every way and even now the fear consumed him.

He'd trusted her with everything except her own heart, and he'd broken them both this time.

He needed… something. Zhu Li would have known. She would have handed him what he needed before he knew that was what he needed, and he would use it to fix this. He had two weeks to fix this.

Iknik, she'd said once, and she'd sounded so small and so sad. I love you, she'd said, in tears for all the things that loving him could not do.

He'd hear her say those words happy if it was the last thing he did.

CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

Deadlines

When Zhu Li brought him tea and breakfast in the morning, Iknik thought maybe that meant she'd forgiven him. When he realized she'd made black tea, it was obvious she'd done it as a reflex. Going through the motions whether she wanted to or not. Circumstances meant they couldn't help but be near each other, and they didn't know how to be near each other and not be this. He couldn't remember the last time their silence had been awkward like this.

He had to say it. Didn't he? He couldn't not say it. When was the last time he'd said those particular words in the particular order?

To his mother, maybe, and it hadn't stopped her from following her husband to the bottom of the ocean.

He struggled until she stood up to leave, and then he forced it out all in one breath, like a single word. "Iloveyou."

She hesitated. He risked a glance at her face. She did not look pleased. She looked the opposite of that. He felt like he was drowning again.

"I don't know why you think that's better," she said quietly, and he flinched, "when you still waited until you had nothing to lose."

He was still as a statue as he watched her leave.

☽❆☾

It didn't seem like it should have been that difficult to get a young woman with good taste to join him on a shopping trip. Eventually he had guilted Asami with the idea of getting Bolin to ask her to do it, because they both knew that trying to say no to Bolin was like kicking a turtle duck. Better that she resent Varrick slightly more than she already did than resent Bolin for doing what Varrick asked.

"Okay," he said, when they made it to the jeweler, "which one of these rocks is the best rock?"

"That's not really how it works," Asami said, arms crossed as she leaned against the display. "Haven't you done this before?"

"If I'm getting something for me I usually just grab something gold," he shrugged, "or, you know, blue. The blue rocks."

"They're called sapphires."

"Yeah, those," he said, squinting at the various loose stones available and the example settings. "And if it's for someone else I just buy whatever costs the most."

"So who are you buying it for now?" she asked.

"Have you always been this nosy?" he asked instead of answering, and she threw up her hands.

"You invited me!"

"Point," he said, before gesturing to the shopkeeper. "Open this, wouldja?"

The man did not hesitate, clearly delighted by the presence of two of Republic City's wealthiest. "If you would like," he began, but Varrick cut him off immediately.

"No. Go away now. We're looking." The shopkeeper slumped, saddened, and shuffled away as Iknik picked up an uncut emerald and squinted at it. "It's a secret rock," he said, "for secret reasons."

Asami rolled her eyes. "Fine. Well, emeralds are nice. Balance and patience."

"Those are good."

"And fertility."

He dropped it immediately. "Nope nope nope." He looked at the show pieces, noted that most of the rings had small stones in settings. The only ones that looked like they might work were…

"These are boring," he decided, pushing away the gemstones that could not be carved, utterly ruining the display. He picked up a little carved wolf. "What if I wanted something like this? Which ones are good for that?"

Asami blinked. "Well, you'd want… I mean, the obvious choice would be turquoise." She picked up a piece as an example, and ran her thumb over the surface. "There's also aquamarine… but aquamarine is for the ocean. Turquoise is easier to work with, and it's more grounded."

She'd certainly put a lot of thought into traditional betrothal necklace stones. He looked at the stone in her hand, the slightly faraway look in her eye. "Do you just want to get that?" he asked. "As long as we're here, and all."

Asami snapped out of whatever she'd been thinking of, faintly pink in a way she did not usually turn. "What would I need it for?"

That wasn't defensive at all. He shrugged. "Don't know, don't care," he said. "But for reference — hypothetically — you usually practice on soapstone first." Not that he'd be able to, since he only had two weeks.

She gnawed at her lower lip as she considered the stone. "What are you supposed to carve into it?" she asked slowly. "Usually. Hypothetically."

He shrugged again. "Lots of things. Family crest, personal crest. Symbols of your relationship. There used to be, ah. Icons? No one really uses those these days, just make it look neat and you'll probably be fine. Hypothetically." He grabbed a stone in green, one that looked about the right size for what he wanted. "What's this thing?"

"The jade?" Asami asked, surprised. "If you want the most expensive thing in here, that would definitely be it."

He narrowed his eyes. "This isn't another baby rock, is it?"

She covered her mouth with her hand and giggled. "It's healing and serenity."

"How can you possibly remember all these things?" he asked, incredulous. He passed the stone from hand to hand thoughtfully. Yes. This would work. Healing was good. Fixing what he'd broken. "Hey," he called to the sulking jeweler, "do you have any, ah…" He snapped his fingers as he tried to find the words, because half his brain was missing and she'd taken half his vocabulary with her. "Carving kit," he settled on.

"Of course," the man said, taking offense at the insinuation that he wouldn't. Apparently betrothal necklaces were still more popular than Varrick had thought.

"Great," he said, "then I'm getting this green rock, she's getting that blue rock, and we're both getting a carvy thing. Right?" He looked to Asami, who looked conflicted about agreeing. "Right," he decided on her behalf. He tossed the jade at the shopkeep, who only barely caught it with a look of intense alarm. "Do the thing, take my money, use it to get the hell out of this city because the whole place is about to explode!"

☽❆☾

"As a man who has somehow convinced a real human woman to marry him," Varrick began, before being rudely interrupted.

"Who let you into my office?" Raiko demanded.

"I'm rich, I do what I want," he said, before continuing. "So how exactly did you do it?" he asked, because while he didn't particularly like Raiko, he couldn't argue with success.

Raiko rubbed his forehead with a sigh. "It was summer," he said. "I took her to the park where we'd first met. I'd already spoken to her family, and I had my grandmother's ring."

"Wow," Varrick said, before Raiko could continue. "There is literally not a single aspect of your person that is not tedious. You are tedium in the shape of a man. Why did I finance your campaign?"

"You know, I looked into that, and you actually gave my opponent—"

"Good talk, Raiko, let's never do this again."

☽❆☾

Iknik opened his mouth. He closed it again. He could no longer remember why this had seemed like a good idea. "You know what," he said, "never mind."

"Good call," Lin said, not looking up from her newspaper.

☽❆☾

"Why do you hate me," he hissed at his hands, because his tools kept missing the stone and sliding into his skin. And even when they did what he meant for them to do, they did it wrong, and he was clearly a clumsy oaf because he had been working on this stupid thing for days and it looked awful.

Still. He didn't consider himself old-fashioned — quite the opposite — but carving it himself, that was important. Letting her wear a ring someone else had made, even if it was prettier and better and more like the ring she deserved, that just felt wrong.

He'd decided on spirit vines. Symbolism, and all. The last thing they'd worked on together, which may have been portentous. But still, it seemed appropriate. Wild and beautiful and powerful, with a higher-than-average chance of explosions. That felt like them.

This was the worst plan he'd ever had. This would never work.

☽❆☾

No one else noticed the ways that they were wrong. Still working together, technically, but it wasn't… right. They were silent and they were stiff, and Zhu Li kept avoiding eye contact.

She hated him. She definitely hated him.

☽❆☾

Kuvira was ahead of schedule. This put a serious crimp in his plans to somehow come up with the perfect way to woo a heartless war machine. This wasn't enough time. He needed fireworks. And flowers. Another battleship. A Varricizer with five oscillating attachments.

That last one might have been a little excessive. What would she even do with five? Nothing good. He'd table that plan for later. Assuming they didn't die first.

☽❆☾

"I really thought that would work," he muttered, clawing a hand through his hair.

"It was a good plan," Tenzin said, trying to be reassuring.

"No, not the — hey, you're married," Iknik said, as if this were a revelation.

"… yes?" Tenzin said slowly, because he still thought they were talking about an electromagnetic pulse.

"If a man is trying to apologize to a woman, and it doesn't work, where did he go wrong?"

He raised an eyebrow. "… that's hard to say. You said you were sorry?"

"… I was working up to that. You don't just lead with that, you have to, you know, set the scene."

"How, exactly, did you set the scene?" Tenzin asked, clearly anticipating the worst.

"I was trying to say that I know I have a history with this kind of thing, because, you know, I had this ostrich horse—"

"I'm just going to stop you right there," Tenzin said, "because it sounds like you tried to apologize to someone by comparing her to an animal that you used to ride."

Iknik froze. He stared blankly at Tenzin for a long moment. Then he slapped the heels of his palms over his eyes. "Ffffffffffffffff—"

"Shouldn't you be—"

Having apparently decided that he was done with the conversation, Varrick entered a nearby broom closet and shut the door. There were a lot of very loud crashing sounds.

"Varrick," Zhu Li said as she entered the hall, and she stopped as she found Tenzin instead. "I'm sorry, I thought…"

There was another loud crash, and muffled profanity.

"I think he'll be done in a minute," Tenzin offered.

"… right," she said, and there was a sound like the gravity in the closet had been reversed and its contents had crashed into the ceiling. "Well you can tell him he has five minutes," she said, "or I'm leaving without him."

Iknik curled up on the floor of the closet, and accepted that he was fucked.

He was out of time. All he could do now was… nothing. He should do nothing. Death would be a mercy. As long as he never asked he could lie to himself and believe she might have accepted.

I don't know why you think that's better.

CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

Millionaire

Varrick didn't actually pass out after they landed. He thought he should be allowed to lay down for a little while after a traumatic experience, was all. Zhu Li disagreed, because when she saw him on the floor she practically panicked.

Upside: Zhu Li climbing on top of him. That was nice. Accidental, but he was willing to take credit for that.

"Varrick?" she said, and there was fear in her voice as her hands cupped his face, slender fingers and calloused palms. Well that wouldn't do. He opened his eyes, and the relief that bloomed over her features was radiant. "Oh, thank goodness," she said, with a hitch in her voice as she curled on top of him, buried her face in his shoulder. Her thighs were straddling his waist and her breath was hot on his neck, and he was having a lot of conflicting feelings about the woman overwhelmed with emotions on top of him.

"Hey," he said, awkward, curling his hand around the back of her head. "It's okay, we're fine. Everything is fine."

Except for the explosions they could still hear in the distance, a fight that was no longer theirs. The abandoned building they had landed in seemed far enough away from the action that they probably wouldn't end up dead. Probably.

Things were much easier when he could pretend not to care about his assistant's feelings. He'd never had a fiancée before — not on purpose, anyway — but he was pretty sure he wouldn't be able to get away with that anymore.

She shook slightly on top of him, and it took a moment to realize that she was not sobbing, but laughing. Silent, shaking, half-mad laughter on his chest. "If you managed to die," she choked out, "right after you'd finally said you loved me — I was going to be so angry." She pressed her lips to his neck, up and again towards his jaw, and he shivered. "If you die on me I am going to bring you back and I am going to kill you myself, Varrick, don't you dare don't you ever—"

He silenced her with a kiss, held her face in his hands and kissed her the way he hadn't on the train, the way he hadn't so many times before. He couldn't remember why, in retrospect, he hadn't. Kissing her was extremely useful. It stopped her from scolding him, for one thing. It gave him the very useful information that she'd had mint tea that morning. And the tiny moan she made against his mouth wound its way around his spine, hot and languid and sweet as honey.

Maybe that was why he hadn't kissed her. Because now he didn't know how he was going to stop.

"We should," he rasped, before trying to clear his throat. "We should try to get somewhere… safe…" She was pulling the tie from her hair and letting it all fall loose around her face, around his face, and that was not making it easier to stop kissing her. It was doing the opposite of that. He tried to prop himself up on his elbows, but that just gave her an opening to wrap her arms around his shoulders, press herself against him in a way that made him groan. "We can't…"

She kept quieting his complaints with her mouth, hard and hungry, and somehow it was much less fair when she did it. If he kept kissing her, if she kept kissing him, he wasn't going to want to stop at kissing. That didn't seem right, the future Mrs. Varrick on the floor of some random building when she deserved better.

He didn't even know if he was her first. It was bad enough to think of her first time being anything but perfect, but if it was his fault—

"We need to stop," he said, hands on her shoulders to try and hold her away, all that heat and that softness even though he wanted more. Her eyes were like silver, like platinum, like stormy skies over a deadly sea and they were wide and sad with her mouth all swollen from the force with which she'd been kissing him. "Not here," he said, because surely she'd understand now that he'd said it. A bed the size of a bedroom all covered in silk, down pillows and locked doors and soundproofed walls; there, not here.

She craned her neck to press her forehead to his, and his eyes were trapped in hers, gazing at him above the lenses of her glasses. "Please, sir?" she said breathlessly, and it took too long to realize that the incoherent sound was coming from his own throat.

That wasn't fair, she wasn't supposed to call him that now, she wasn't supposed to say it like that. It shouldn't have worked, he hated himself for the fact that it worked, fingers tangling in her hair so he could kiss her like it had been an order. Models and heiresses and farmer's daughters, and not one of them had ever said anything even remotely as sexy as that. She ground her hips against his, and he could feel the heat of her through both of their clothes, suddenly he was rolling to pin her beneath him on the floor.

Had she always been able to do this? Had she secretly spent years capable of turning him into a mindless idiot with nothing more than a few well-placed words? How had he ever thought that she might be plain, when she was clearly the most beautiful woman in the world?

"Whose idea was it to put this many buttons on these jackets?" he muttered as he tried to get hers undone, bending low to kiss her throat.

"Yours, sir," she laughed, and her laughter hummed against his lips. Spirits, but when she called him that—

He was a bad, bad man.

He tugged and pulled at fabric with hands clumsier than usual, reveled in the sharp intake of breath as he exposed her breasts to the air. He was making a mess of this, making a mess of her, still half-dressed with her clothes torn open just enough. "This isn't how this was supposed to go," he apologized, lowering himself to kiss the peak of one breast, draw the hardened bud into his mouth. She cried out, arched her back to press soft flesh harder against his lips.

"Have you been planning it long?" she teased, and he could hear her smiling, one of a million smiles he owed her.

"There should be rose petals," he insisted against her skin, kissing his way up her body so his hand could slide past her waistband. "Silk, and candles, and those weird oils that I never really liked but it's the principle of the thing, Zhu Li." Fingers found the heat of her beneath her clothing, through damp curls to find the hard bud of her arousal, and her whole body arched as she made a high-pitched sound he'd never heard before. She hadn't even taken her glasses off, and that shouldn't have been as attractive as it was.

So many sounds he'd never heard her make and so many expressions he'd never seen on her face. She grabbed him by the hair to kiss him, urgent and not remotely gentle, and even that couldn't quiet her, already halfway to screaming. Because of course Zhu Li would scream, of course she would be utterly incapable of controlling herself, it all made perfect sense and he didn't know why he'd ever thought it would be otherwise. A finger slid inside her and curled, and she bucked against his hand so hard she almost knocked him over.

"Sir," she said, and she was pleading and scratching at his clothes, "please, please—"

There would never have been time for rose petals, not ever when she could say things like that and have him growling like an animal. A sad little sound when his hand pulled away from her, but her protests died as he unfastened his trousers.

—too many fucking buttons again, nothing but robes from this day forward, I will revolutionize the fucking fashion robe and never have to deal with this many buttons ever again—

Her fingers wrapped around his cock the instant it was free, and he shuddered with such force that his legs almost gave out, bit his tongue because if he didn't he'd finish in her hand like he was sixteen and desperate. Her hands, her hands, they'd always been rougher than his own and it was one of many secret shames that on lonely nights his hands hadn't worked because they hadn't felt the way he'd known hers would.

A million secrets in the quiet of the room right next to hers, and he wondered if her hands had ever felt wrong to her in the dark.

"Stop that," he snarled as his cock twitched in her hand, and that wasn't what he was supposed to say or how he was supposed to say it. She laughed and kissed him and didn't let him go, because of course she'd know better than anyone when he was all bark and no bite. He tugged her pants down over her hips, down her thighs as he pushed her knees to her chest and she was forced to let her fingers leave his shaft.

Half-dressed and bruised and sore in the wreckage of a city that was still falling apart, her hair smelled like smoke and her hands smelled like motor oil and he'd never wanted anything as much as he wanted her. Leather boots settled over his shoulders, and when he pushed inside of her she cried out and dug her heels into his back. Her hips tilted, lifted off the ground to try and align herself to him and push him deeper, and it was proving very difficult to keep any semblance of his wits about him.

I love you I love you I love you and he realized he was saying it, chanting it like a prayer, and she was pressing her hands to the ground to arch her back higher. He was thrusting into her harder, faster, none of the gentleness or the sweetness he owed her because all he wanted was to claim her instead. He kissed her, their bodies a tangled mess as he moved, and when he should have said something romantic in the inches between them instead he said: "Mine."

Zhu Li, the only one he'd ever needed and the only one who could ever keep up, her fingers slid along his scalp and pulled him back down to kiss him again. She sucked his tongue into her mouth and she scraped her teeth against his lip, and he mourned for all the years they'd wasted pretending they were anything but this. "Mine," she growled in return, and he didn't know how he ever could have doubted it.

Quicker now, he was ramming his hips into hers with an urgency he'd never felt, until he felt her tense and tighten beneath and around him. "Iknik," she screamed, and that was his undoing, buried as deep as her body would allow as he came. Still twitching as she fell limp against the floor, and her contented sigh as he filled her was almost as good as the screaming had been.

He rolled off of her, and the two of them sprawled into a sweaty heap of ruined clothes and shaking limbs. At some point the explosions had stopped, and neither of them had noticed.

All his brilliant plans to love her the way she deserved, and instead he fucked her into the floor without even bothering to take his boots off first. He rubbed a hand over his face, trying to fight off drowsiness because this was neither the time nor the place. "Ffffffuuuuck me." He really had done this entirely wrong.

"Again?" Zhu Li was snuggling up against him, hadn't bothered fixing any of the things he'd set into disarray, smelling like sex and looking terribly pleased with herself. He tousled her hair yet worse, and she giggled.

"Well I hope you're happy," he said, trying and failing to sound stern. "You have completely ruined Operation: Romantic Interlude." She snorted a laugh, clearly unimpressed by the amount of thought he had put into it. "I am very serious, Zhu Li, if any of this is going to be salvageable then until our wedding night we—"

"Please, sir?" she purred into his ear again.

"Hhnnnnnngh okay but give me at least ten minutes first. Five minutes. Two minutes. No, I was right the first time, ten minutes."

CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

New Routines

It was a very eventful, very exhausting day. Kuvira had destroyed half of Republic City, killed Hiroshi Sato, almost killed everyone else (but not for lack of trying), she'd created a permanent citywide night light, the Avatar had briefly been consumed by that night light, and Zhu Li had gotten engaged.

She politely kept her delight to herself.

She'd spent the majority of the time that they'd looked for the Avatar hoping no one would notice that she looked a mess. There was a mess, and then there was… a mess. It wasn't her fault they'd had privacy and nothing to do for twenty minutes. A near-death experience did funny things to a person.

Varrick's yacht had taken a brief detour out of harbor for safety reasons, but had returned as soon as the colossus had fallen. Zhu Li kept fidgeting with the ring on her finger. Varrick kept kissing her, on the mouth and the cheek and the forehead and neck, maybe just because he could. The delight he took in kissing her made her happier than she'd ever been.

When Zhu Li had gone into her old room, Varrick had hesitated in the hall. "Oh. I thought…"

He was interrupted when Zhu Li started handing him things. Pajamas and clothes and a few books and her little throw pillow, because they could retrieve the rest of it in the morning. "Could you start a bath after you put those away?" she asked.

Varrick looked utterly delighted by the prospect.

By the time she'd finished collecting her toiletries, he'd half-filled his comically large tub, and was fully dressed in a very uncertain kind of a way. "I hope you don't think I'm letting you go to bed like that," she chided, peeling away layers and refusing to feel self-conscious.

"I'm not that bad," he said, his own clothes discarded with such graceless haste that his pants were literally torn off.

She really was astonished by how attractive he was, now that she was allowed to notice he was attractive.

Sliding into the water, she left him plenty of room to do the same. "We are disgusting," she countered. "No fiancé of mine is bringing that much grime to bed."

"Say that again," he said as he joined her, and she wouldn't scold him for the reflexive order.

"We're disgusting?"

"No, the other thing," he said, leaning his face close to hers.

"Fiancé," she said, and then kissed him. "Mine," she added, before kissing him again.

"Yes," he said, "those things." He hesitated. "Did you want to, ah…"

"It's not that I don't," she said, pressing a hand to his cheek, "but I'm very tired."

"Okay," he said, and he kissed her forehead. "Just checking." She couldn't imagine he was feeling much better than she, when he'd done all that she'd done and more. Hot water did wonders to ease aching muscles, but that wasn't what had her feeling better than she had in weeks. "Does this mean I get to wash your hair?" he asked, and it made her smile that he made it sound like a prize.

"Yes, dear."

☽❆☾

He didn't make fun of her nightgown, which was really more suspicious than reassuring. Fiancé or no, Zhu Li knew him too well to trust his kindness. "How do I look?" he asked, sprawled out on his bed. Their bed.

"As blurs go, you're the most attractive in the room," she teased, because she'd set aside her glasses and couldn't see a damn thing. The very handsome blur pulled the covers over himself, and held them open for her to join.

"Get over here, little spoon," he demanded, and she slid into bed to press her back to his chest. He yelped and recoiled. "I changed my mind," he said, "how can you possibly be that cold?"

She laughed, because that was much more the Varrick she'd expected. "I only seem cold because you're a furnace," she countered, as despite his claims Varrick wrapped his arm around her waist and fitted himself against her.

"That is what it feels like when someone is capable of regulating their own body temperature," he said. "You know you have to tell me if you're a lizard person, right?"

"You caught me," she said with a yawn, pressing back against him to quietly insist he hold her tighter, gratified when he did so. "I've been a lizard this whole time."

"I should have known," he murmured, nuzzling against her neck. "I can't believe I missed the obvious signs."

"So obvious," she agreed.

"The constant sunning on hot rocks should have tipped me off."

"I was surprised you never said anything about the crickets."

"I thought it was an Earth Kingdom thing," he said, "and I didn't want to seem insensitive to your weird gross culture."

"Once again, your sensitivity has been your undoing," she said, half-asleep and smiling.

"I always knew it would be."

They were idiots. She was so happy she thought her heart might burst.

☽❆☾

She woke up in the middle of the night and tried to roll out of bed without waking him. It didn't work. His arms tightened around her, so quickly and so fiercely that she couldn't possibly get away without hurting him.

"Please don't leave," he whimpered into her hair, and her breath caught.

"It's okay," she whispered, and she put her hand over his, squeezed to reassure him. "I'm here. I love you, I'm not going anywhere." He relaxed, but only slightly, certainly not enough that she'd be able to get up. "I love you," she repeated, "but I do still have to pee sometimes."

Reluctantly, Varrick loosened the grip of his arms enough that she could escape. When she returned a few minutes later, he immediately latched onto her again. She couldn't fall back asleep until he started snoring.

☽❆☾

Breakfast in bed was a welcome change of pace. More welcome that he hadn't tried to make it himself. He didn't seem to want to let her out of bed, and she was too sore to disagree. It was sort of sweet, actually.

"When do you think we'll be able to go to the courthouse, dear?"

She liked 'dear'. Almost the right syllables and sounds, it made it easier to adjust the way she spoke. She would rather reserve 'sir' for special occasions. Like when she wanted something.

"The courthouse?"

"To get married."

Varrick was appalled. "We're not getting married at the courthouse."

Zhu Li blinked. "We're not?" She had anticipated getting the paperwork over and out of the way quite quickly, so they could get to the good part where they were married. Delays were unwelcome.

"No," Varrick said, and they were both clearly baffled by each other. "We're going to have the biggest wedding Republic City has ever seen!" He had that look that usually meant something was going to end up destroyed. "We're going to invite everyone who isn't in jail and some people who probably should be, all the papers will be there, it'll take a whole week and no one will be able to remember more than half of it."

She took a thoughtful bite of her omelette. "That sounds excessive," she said mildly.

"Nothing is too much for the future Mrs. Varrick," he declared, which really was entirely too sweet. Misguided, as were most of the sweeter things he did, but sweet. "I'm going to give you your dream wedding."

She chewed another contemplative piece of egg. "Do I have a dream wedding?" she asked.

Varrick paused to consider this. He set aside the tray, apparently unconcerned with the fact that Zhu Li was not done eating. Then he wrapped his arms around her, gently nudging her head with his. "Please stop being depressing when I am trying to be romantic."

She laughed despite herself. "You're the one who decided it was depressing," she said, kissing the top of his head. "I'm sure there are lots of people who don't dream of weddings. For lots of reasons."

"You'll have a dream wedding when I'm done with you," he muttered, and he probably hadn't meant it to sound ominous. He wasn't very good at making promises that didn't sound ominous, yet.

"I'm sure it will be lovely," she said, using one hand to pet his hair while the other brought her tray back into eating range. She grabbed a cube of melon, but halfway to her mouth Varrick intercepted it, doing his best impression of a tiger shark. "Varrick," she scolded half-heartedly. Sucking on her fingertips like that really was gratuitous. She didn't pull her hand away, despite that. "Tell me more about our dream wedding."

"Well we can't have it in the South," he said, and it was very impressive how coherent he managed to be when he was dragging her tongue across her palm. He didn't even have melon juice as an excuse at this point, he was just licking her like a cat giving her a bath. "The climate isn't healthy for lizard people."

"Don't make me do it," she warned.

"You wouldn't dare," he said, because of course he knew exactly what she meant. She pressed one of her feet to his calf, and he yelped and tried to curl into a ball of warmth to escape her chilly extremities. "You will be a terrible lizard wife," he pouted.

"I will," she agreed. "So where will we be having our lizard wedding?"

"Somewhere in Republic City that hasn't collapsed yet," he said, and he pulled himself higher on the pillows and flopped sideways so that she would have to lay on him. He was doing nothing to disabuse her of the notion that he had been a feral child raised by housecats. "Or somewhere that's collapsed in a really attractive way. I haven't decided." She ignored his unspoken invitation to fall back and cuddle, because she was still not done eating and she missed meals for no man. Even extraordinarily handsome ones. Not unless it was emergency — and even then, it had to be one hell of an emergency.

"Let's go with somewhere intact," she said, nibbling at unpilfered melon.

"I have decided," he corrected, sitting up behind her so that he could rest his head on her shoulder and wrap his arms around her waist. This was, she decided, much more comfortable. They should have started eating breakfast like this much sooner. Somehow.

How strange to know that he probably would have done it if she'd ever thought to ask. And she would have done it if he'd thought to do the same.

They really were idiots.

"We won't be able to have the wedding until the house is done, of course," he began.

"The what?"

"The… house?"

"In Republic City?" She tried to turn to look at him, but it was very difficult when he had his face buried in the crook of her neck. "I thought real estate here was a nightmare?"

"You'd be surprised what repeated giant monster attacks do to property values," he said, muffled against her skin. "Won't be in the city, anyway, I'm putting it on one of those mountains."

"A mountaintop estate?"

"More of a castle. I'll show you the plans. You'll like them."

He was turning accidental supervillainous affectations into a hobby. "When did you have time to draw plans?"

"Oh, I've had them for a while," he shrugged. "Never sure where to put it. Or if I wanted to. Want to now, though. We need a good threshold for you to carry me over."

She snorted. "How many pools will this castle of yours have?"

He hesitated. "… one. Our castle will have one pool." He cleared his throat in a way that sounded suspiciously like technically.

"Indoor or outdoor?"

"… both?" This was all she needed to know to form a mental reconstruction of the shrine to excess he wanted to create. The whole first floor would be connected by one enormous pool. It might also act as a moat. He would hollow out the mountain to build some kind of underground labyrinth, or a series of waterslides. Or both. He always hated having to choose.

Apparently realizing that Zhu Li was on to him, he reached around her to grab a piece of melon from his own plate and offer it to her. She deliberately nipped at his fingers when she took it. "Ow! You're vicious, you know that?"

"Hmm." She kissed his fingertips as if to make it better, then licked for good measure. And then…

"… that's cheating," Varrick accused hoarsely.

"Sorry, sir," she said, though that certainly didn't stop her.

"Hnnnn that is also cheating." She wiggled her hips backward against his lap. "This is — you are being very unfair."

"Only if you assume we want different things," she pointed out.

"True," he said, "but I sti—ah!—ll feel like you're winning."

"Get used to it," she purred, and she hadn't been aware that she was capable of purring, but the inhuman sound that Varrick made as a result made her wish she'd figured it out sooner.

There were a lot of things they should have done sooner. They had some serious catching up to do.

CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

Dancing Queen

"I got some band recommendations from Bolin," Varrick said, "so now we just have to figure out what kinds of dances we want to do at the reception."

"… dances?" Zhu Li repeated, looking up from her book. He'd been putting a great deal of work into planning their wedding, in part to make up for all the work he hadn't done for them in the past. The other part was that Zhu Li really could not care less about the whole affair.

"Sure!" he said. "Do we wanna do sort of a jazzy, swing thing? Do we want to keep it sort of classy? Maybe some traditional Earth Kingdom dances?"

"Whatever you'd like, dear," she said, looking back down to her book.

"Don't be like that," he whined, and he slid across the floor on his knees so that he landed with his head in her lap. He was trying to stick his face in the way of her book. "What kinds of dances do you like? We can do them together."

"I don't dance," she said, and he blinked.

"What?"

"I don't dance," she repeated.

"But… you'll make an exception for our wedding. Right?" He fluttered his eyelashes hopefully, looking entirely too cute.

"No, I mean — I can't dance."

"What!" Realizing there was no way to get out of this conversation, she set her book down with a sigh. "Of course you can dance, anyone can dance."

"Have you ever seen me dance?"

"No," he said, "but until a few weeks ago I'd never seen you orgasm, so—"

"Iknik!" She tousled his hair, which did not discourage him.

"I bet you could dance, if you tried."

"Iknik," she sighed, but he was fluttering his eyelashes again.

"Won't you try?"

"It's embarrassing," she said. "I'm really very bad. I'm not exaggerating. It's awful. I can't… move. That way."

"Yes you can," he disagreed. "Maybe not vertically, but you definitely can."

"Iknik," she said again, face turning hot.

"Let's just try it," he said. "Just you and me. If I agree that you're hopeless, you won't have to dance. Deal?"

"Hmm." She traced a fingertip around the outer curve of his ear, resisting the temptation to say yes just to make him happy. It was a habit they were both trying to break her of. "I don't see what I get out of this," she said loftily.

"I have to earn it?" he asked, and even as he asked he was sliding her skirt higher to kiss the inside of her knee. "I can earn it. Your wish is my command."

"Hmmm." She adjusted her position in her seat, closer to the edge and with worse posture. Her knees moved further apart, and he slid his hands along her stocking-clad calves. "It would serve you right if I asked for a pedicure."

"I'd do it," he said, and he took her by the ankles to kiss the arch of each foot in turn. "You've earned your revenge."

"I think my revenge is the fact that everyone assumes you have a fetish," she said, and he laughed.

"That was your secret plan all along," he accused.

"It's true," she said. "I'm an evil mastermind." Without warning him first, she hooked her knees over his shoulders. "Would that make you my minion?"

"I live to serve," he murmured, and she watched the look on his face as he slid her skirt higher for the exact moment that he realized. It was in the smallest widening of his eyes, the way his pupils dilated. "Zhu Li," he said as he kissed his way up her thigh, "some of your clothes seem to be missing."

"Are they?" she asked, feigning surprise. "Silly me. I must have forgotten."

"Must have," he said, and she shivered at the feel of his fingers spreading her open. "Not that I'm complaining," he added, and his breath felt cold against the heat of her. His tongue went wide and flat as it dragged upward over sensitive flesh, and already she was tangling her fingers in his hair and arching her back.

Zhu Li was not difficult to please, and Iknik could be very good at pleasing. By their nature, tongues did not have joints, and yet she could have sworn his was double-jointed despite that. The tip of his tongue circled her entrance, sucked gently at soft folds, and her hand turned into a fist to press him harder between her legs. She was aware, in a distant way, that she was making a lot of very loud noises. This had turned out to be a problem she had. At this point there was not a single employee on their yacht that didn't know when Zhu Li was having a good night. Or morning. Or midday.

He had discovered, while spelling out 'I love you', that she particularly like the last letter. So he wrote it again and again now, while his fiancé squirmed and screamed and threatened the shape of his skull with her thighs. She had a much greater appreciation for his lung capacity, these days.

When he sucked at her clit, she cried his name and saw stars, fireworks behind her eyelids. Pleasure rocked through her like waves through the ocean, and if he hadn't been in the way she might have slid out of the chair onto the floor.

"Fine," she panted. "I will try dancing."

☽❆☾

"You actually are really bad at this," Varrick admitted.

"You see?" Zhu Li said, mortified as he rubbed his sore ankles. "I can't dance."

"No," he said, "you just can't… do those. Yet. Probably not in time for the wedding."

"I don't know why you think I'll do any better at others," she said.

"There are options!" he insisted. "Just because you don't have any, ah. Rhythm. And your legs are legally classified as lethal weapons. That doesn't mean you can't dance!"

"That is literally exactly what it means, Iknik."

"No! There are dances that are just rote memorization, I promise. Like math problems for your feet. We haven't tried any of those, yet."

She'd really hoped that he would give up by now. So far, she had accidentally flipped him across the room, punched him, headbutted him at least three times, kicked him repeatedly, and stomped on his toes more times than she could count. It was not her desire to keep hurting the man she loved, but he would not be deterred. Grooms danced with their brides at weddings, and therefore they would dance. Whatever the consequences.

"If you're sure," she said doubtfully, as he switched out the records. It seemed like such a waste. When she wasn't involved, he was a marvelous dancer. The things he could do with his hips were anatomically improbable and possibly illegal within public spaces.

"Here," he said as the song began to play, holding one of her hands and setting the other on his shoulder. He placed his other hand at the small of her back. "I'm going to tap out the beat," he said, and he tapped his middle finger against her spine in evenly space measures. "One, two, three. One, two, three. On one, take a step back. Two, step to your left. Three, step forward. Back, left, forward. Watch my feet. Okay?"

"I'll try," she said, looking down between them. He made it sound much easier than it was, but the tapping helped. And she didn't have to try and do anything weird with her hips, so that was nice. She was not convinced that she had conscious control over her hips. They just did what they wanted, and sometimes it worked in her favor. Dancing was not one of those times. Watching his feet helped keep her from stepping on them, and gave her a better idea of the size of step she was going for.

Maybe not completely unsalvageable, this idea of his.

"Now try looking at my face," he said, "and just keep doing the thing."

She looked up at him, and he looked down at her, and somehow her feet kept moving. "This is never going to work," she said.

"It's working right now," he said.

"No," she said, "because this makes me want to do this." And the hand on his shoulder pressed against the back of his head so that she could pull him down to kiss her, and his sound of surprise was muffled by her mouth. "I don't think we can do this at the wedding," she gasped when she let him go. They had stopped moving.

"We're allowed to kiss at our wedding," he said.

"That wasn't what I meant," she said, balancing on her toes to kiss him again as she and his belt had a serious disagreement regarding its ideal arrangement.

"Mmph!" he said, and then, "oh," when his mouth was free. "No," he agreed, "I don't think we can do, ah, th-ah-ah-ah-at, no, yes, that."

One hand was down his pants, and she used her other hand to push him backward, until she'd walked him back into the nearest wall. This was probably not what he'd had in mind when he'd put a ballroom on his yacht. Or maybe it was. But certainly not with her. It always seemed to render him helpless, touching him like this, as if he suddenly didn't have the slightest idea what to do with his hands. She knew what to do with hers, however, and she did it well. She was a quick learner.

"See?" she said, and when she kissed the dimple in his chin he shuddered, cock twitched in her hand. Precum made her fingers slick, made it easier to slide her fingers over his skin. "Kissing you makes me want to do this," she said, and her grip tightened the smallest bit for emphasis, made him gasp. "And dancing like that makes me want to kiss you." She kissed his throat. "We can't possibly dance at the wedding," she said, working her hand along his cock, "we'd be arrested."

He took her face in his hands to kiss her, practically whimpering as his hips rocked against her palm. "It would be different," he said, trying and failing to remain coherent, "with an audience." He kissed her again. "You wouldn't."

"But how can you be sure?" she asked, pressed her chest against his as her hand worked faster. "Maybe I wouldn't be able to help myself! Maybe I'd drag you away in the middle of the wedding, and then the whole romantic evening would be ruined because I couldn't help but fuck you in a broom closet."

"That doesn't sound ruined," he rasped, which was how she knew it was working.

"That just doesn't seem like the sort of thing I should be doing in my pretty wedding dress," she said, and she wondered if he was imagining what she was imagining, the way it would look all in disarray when they got home. She didn't think that she would actually do anything so impetuous, but it was certainly a nice thought.

Iknik chuckled hoarsely. "You know they say that's why Republic City brides wear white?"

"I bet you're the only one who says that," she accused, and she nipped gently at his lower lip. She had to stand on her toes to rest her head on his shoulder, wrapping the arm not between them around him. "But this time," she said, "you'll be right."

"Zhu Li," he groaned, and he almost sounded pained. "You're — you're—"

"Filthy?" she suggested. "I didn't go too far, did I, dear?" It was a genuine concern. Nothing seemed to drive him over the edge like when she said filthy things, but she was sure that one of these days she'd say something just awful. And then he'd never be able to take her seriously again, because he would assume she had some kind of weird fetish for brooms.

"Don't stop," he begged, which she took to mean that this was not that day. "Sweet spirits, Zhu Li, you're — you're beautiful, you're perfect, you're so fucking good I love you so much—"

"I thought I was being bad," she said, moving her hand faster.

"You're good at that, too," he said, pulling her hair out of her ponytail so that he could tangle his fingers in it. "You're good at — at everything, everything, all the things, Zhu Li—" He kissed her as he came, hot and sticky all over her fingers, and she felt remarkably satisfied for being the one who didn't orgasm.

"Except at dancing," she reminded him.

"Yes," he agreed, panting. "But we're gonna… we're gonna find a dance that doesn't end like this. Don't make me cum in my pants at our wedding, Zhu Li."

"I make no promises."

CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

Operation: Ball and Chain

"So I'm thinking the catgator preserve will go here," Varrick said, gesturing to a large swath of forest on the land he had purchased.

"That sounds dangerous," Korra said.

"I've gotta say, I don't really get the catgator thing," said Bolin.

"Private catgator ownership is illegal," Lin Beifong pointed out, clearly unimpressed.

"Within city limits," Varrick corrected.

"No, actually," Lin said. "It's a federal crime."

Varrick considered this. "But if a number of catgators just happened to—"

"I will have you arrested for illegal animal trafficking so fast it will make your head spin."

"Noted." He would probably try to get them anyway. Just because.

Not many people were available to join the two of them on impromptu hikes up a mountain. They hadn't specifically invited anyone, anyway, but somehow groups of people kept happening. Bolin was with them because Mako thought keeping him in his hospital room was depressing. Korra had joined them as a chance to get away from some of the responsibilities that had been given to her in the aftermath of the new spirit portal's creation. Lin had invited herself because giving Varrick free reign over a mountain overlooking her city sounded like a number of regrets just waiting to happen. Prevention was the best defense.

Everyone else was busy with recovery, busy with family, busy with both. Asami was planning her father's funeral. She didn't want help.

"Where's my room going to be?" Bolin called as he ran across the clearing, because Varrick had already told him he would have his own room. Because of course he would.

"Where do you want it?" Varrick called back.

Bolin was already searching the area for the ideal bedroom location. It wasn't as if he needed it, since at this point Bolin had as many bedrooms as he did families, which was quite a few. He had a lot of families, for an orphan. "Oh! I know! How about here?" He earthbent himself a pillar to stand on, presumably to indicate that he wanted a room on a higher floor. Or possibly a tower, like some kind of princess.

"Zhu Li—" Varrick stopped himself, and she tried not to smile as he fought years of habit. "I am going to make a note," he said, searching his jacket for a notebook.

"Not if I beat you to it, dear," she said, because she always knew where her notebook was.

"Don't you assist me, Zhu Li," he warned, "don't you dare."

"I am assisting you, dear," she said in a monotone. "There is nothing you can do to stop me."

"Noooooo," he whined, and she was unmoved as she ever was by the display.

Lin rolled her eyes. "Get a room."

"We're working on that," Varrick said.

"Mako can have a room next to mine, right?" Bolin asked from atop his pillar.

"I don't know," he said, looking to Lin, "can he?"

"Why are you looking at me?" Lin asked, and when she tried to look to Korra for an explanation the Avatar pretended to be distracted by a leaf. "I'm not his keeper."

"… you kind of are, though?" Varrick said.

"Well if he wants to live with the man who got him arrested, that's his business."

"Hey, that's a good point." Varrick turned back to Bolin and cupped his hands around his mouth. "Do you think he'd get mad if I put bars on his windows?"

"Pretty mad, yeah," Bolin yelled back.

"Should I do it anyway?"

"Don't tell him I said yes."

"Do I get my own room?" Korra asked.

"Why not?" Varrick said, throwing up his hands. "Everyone gets their own room! Hell, it's not like it won't be big enough. We'll build rooms for people we haven't even met yet!"

"Your room can be next to mine!" Bolin said, descending the staircase he had made for himself.

"I don't want a room," Lin said flatly.

"Are you sure? It never hurts to have a spare room, you never know when the one you're using is going to explode."

"Why would my bedroom explode?" Lin asked, before she could think better of it.

"Chief Beifong, what you do in your personal time is your business and I want no part of it." Lin glowered at Varrick, then turned that accusatory gaze to Korra and Bolin, who dutifully pretended that they were not amused. "Incidentally, you know how you're all invited to the wedding?"

"Why would I go to your wedding?" Lin asked.

"First, because you still think I might be pulling some kind of long con and you want to catch me at it." Lin did not deny this. "Second, because I invited Su so good luck getting out of it."

"It'll be fun!" Korra said, although Lin did not look reassured by this.

"It'll be open bar," Varrick said, and then she looked much more interested. "Anyway, I've been thinking about it — we've been thinking about it." He looked to Zhu Li, who nodded to acknowledge his correction. He really was trying. "There's only one person we could think of that we want to officiate our wedding. One person who really understands love, and sacrifice, and saving people who don't really want to be saved and probably don't deserve it. The first person I think of when I need moral guidance, and the person least likely to ask for some kind of payment."

"Varrick," Korra began, but she was cut off by Varrick clapping his hands onto Bolin's shoulders.

"Bolin, do you wanna be the guy that gets us hitched?" Korra slumped and made a face, which Lin met with an expression more of resignation.

"Me?" Bolin asked, pointing to himself, awestruck. "But I don't know anything about marrying people."

"And I don't know anything about getting married!" Varrick said, throwing out his arms. "I'll never know the difference!"

"At least it probably won't be boring," Lin sighed.

☽❆☾

"Why does Zhu Li look fancy today?" Bolin asked Varrick over lunch.

"Oh, no," Varrick said around a mouthful of sandwich, "that's not fancy." He looked to where his fiancée was waiting for him on the yacht's deck. "That's… anxious? Pessimistic. Generally displeased."

"What? How can you tell?"

"It's the hair," Varrick explained, gesturing to his own. "Bun means she wants the option to stab someone with a hairpin. High ponytail isn't as on-edge, but still sort of nervous. Just, you know, about life in general. Low ponytail means she's happy but still doesn't want hair in her face. If it's loose, she is at maximum happy, which means if you want something that's the time to ask."

"Are these universal hair rules," he asked, clearly thinking of every woman with every hairstyle he had ever known, "or are these just Zhu Li rules?"

"As far as I know, these are Zhu Li specific."

"What happens if you try to take her hair down for her?"

"It does not work that way," he said. "Learn from my mistakes and never try it."

"Huh." Bolin considered this seriously. "So what does it mean if it's sort of half up and half down?"

"Based on limited data, I can only guess that it means I have made a horrible mistake and she wants to remind me how cute she is out of spite." He put two fingers up to the side of his face. "As long as she still has these thingies, though, we're probably safe."

"What happens when she doesn't have those thingies?"

"She had all of her hair up the first time I met her," he recalled. "She kicked me into a building so hard that it collapsed."

"What, really?" Bolin looked to the woman in question, shocked.

"The building didn't actually collapse until the Red Lotus Riots," Varrick admitted, "but I always assumed they were related."

☽❆☾

"I didn't expect to see you here," Kuvira said, which was reasonable. There was not a lot of reason, objectively speaking, for her to be here. The top floor of a prison all made out of wood, and Zhu Li had even had to wear wooden hairpins. She didn't think it was necessary, but just in case.

She looked about as awful as one might expect. They hadn't put her on trial yet, for any number of reasons. Rioting from those she'd wronged. Rioting from those who still believed in her. Rioting from people who liked having an excuse to riot.

And Korra wanted to give world leaders time to calm down, rather than making decisions while their wounds were still raw. Kinder than Zhu Li would have been, if it had been her decision to make. That was probably the point.

"I hope your boss wasn't too disappointed that you didn't manage to kill me."

She couldn't tell if she was being bitter or self-deprecating. In some ways it might have been easier to die. "Fiancé," she corrected instead of addressing the intent.

"Excuse me?"

"He's my fiancé now," she said. "And it was never his plan."

They looked at each other between wooden bars for a while. Kuvira looked away first, a huff of breath that wasn't a laugh. "So that's where I went wrong," she said, and the corner of Zhu Li's mouth curled in what wasn't a smile.

"One of the places," she agreed. They fell silent again.

"I assume you're not here to invite me to the wedding," Kuvira said, turning her back to Zhu Li. Her braid was still long down her back. Zhu Li looked down at her hands, clasped in front of her.

"I never thanked you," she said finally.

"… what?"

"For Ba Sing Se. I never said, but… it meant a lot to me. What you did there. They're keeping most of the reforms. None of it would have happened if it weren't for you." She hesitated, trying to find the right words, words that didn't seem to come as easily as they should have when she had practiced as much as she had. "I know you didn't do it for me, but I thought it was important that you know."

"Says who?" said Kuvira, and that startled her.

"What?"

"Who says I didn't do it for you?" Kuvira looked over her shoulder, and Zhu Li stared. "I didn't just get those ideas from nowhere." She looked away. "Of course I did it for you. I did it for all of us." Zhu Li watched as she wrapped her arms around herself, shoulders curling inward. "That was the whole point."

"It was," she said, because the Zaofu and Republic City had never had anything to do with anyone but Kuvira. Not really.

"… yeah." She might have argued the point, but there was a hint of resignation in the bow of her head. "I just…"

She'd wanted to prove a point. She'd wanted to be better. She'd wanted to be right. "Yeah."

"Sorry I almost killed the man you loved," she said, and this time it was definitely bitterness. "It seems to be a problem I have."

"I nearly killed all of us," Zhu Li shrugged. "I hardly have the moral high ground."

Kuvira turned, but did not entirely face her. "But not him," she said, and she didn't have to specify that she meant Varrick. Was her regret for what she had done, or what she had failed to do? Or for what it said about her, that she would try?

You're a monster, she'd said, well before any of the things that Kuvira had come to regret the most. Anger at each other, at the things they'd wanted them to be and the things they weren't and the things they saw reflected in each other. And now Zhu Li was the one who would get her happily ever after.

She hadn't come here to taunt her. But if there was comfort to be given, she was not one who knew how. "I'm not sorry," she said finally. "I wish things could have been different. But I'm not sorry."

"I am." She looked up, and their eyes met. "But not for trying."

☽❆☾

"Feel better?"

"I don't know."

☽❆☾

There were more reporters at Hiroshi's funeral than mourners. It was the first time she'd seen Varrick wear black. It didn't suit him.

☽❆☾

"So the backdrops are going to go here," Varrick was explaining to Tenzin, "and we're going to hire some waterbenders to get us some good snow action going, really give it that Hero of the South feel."

"It doesn't bother you that he's recycling mover props for your wedding?" Korra asked Zhu Li out of earshot.

"I wanted to skip straight to being married," Zhu Li sighed, "but he's a romantic. I appreciate his attempt to be efficient."

"I don't know how I'd feel about an efficient wedding," Asami said.

"Oh, it won't be," Zhu Li said, "but it's the thought that counts."

"I don't know if I've ever really thought about weddings," Korra mused.

"Really?" Asami teased, "Never dreamed about getting a betrothal necklace of your own?"

"What makes you think I'd be the one getting the necklace?" Korra teased back. "I could give someone a necklace, if I wanted."

"I always assumed it was based on height," Zhu Li said, though she was not convinced this conversation had anything to do with her.

"What?" Korra looked confused, and Zhu Li shrugged.

"I always thought the taller person proposed to the shorter person," she explained. "Otherwise, why would they have to kneel?"

She did not actually believe this. But she had a hunch.

"You are pretty short," Asami said to Korra.

"I am not," Korra protested, indignant. "It's not my fault you're a giant."

"That sounds like something a short person would say."

"If you girls will excuse me," Zhu Li said, adjusting her glasses, because whatever Varrick was saying was turning Tenzin an unusual shade of purple. That seemed like the sort of thing she ought to intervene in.

☽❆☾

"So technically we're not allowed to blow anything up, but — and hear me out—"

CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

Shindig

"You are so beautiful," Varrick said as they danced, and she smiled.

"I'm going to have to take your word for it," Zhu Li said, "because I can't see a damn thing."

"That's what the cameras are for, dear."

☽❆☾

"Oh thank goodness," she said when he handed her a slice of cake, the first chance she'd had to actually look at it.

"What's that supposed to mean?" he said around a mouthful of mostly frosting.

"I'm just very glad that you actually bought a cake," she said, because she'd had terrors that he would try to bake one himself.

"No I didn't," he said, and she froze, but by then she'd already put a forkful of it in her mouth.

… it tasted like food…

"I had Bolin make it," he finished, and with an audible groan of relief she let herself actually enjoy it. "Honestly, between the ceremony and the cake he's probably saved us a couple thousand yuans."

"Is he actually going to see any of those yuans?"

"Oh, don't worry about it," he said, and even at his own wedding he couldn't seem to stop himself from talking with his mouth full. "Wait until he sees the wedding present I got him."

She considered this statement as she nibbled her cake. "Your understanding of wedding presents," she said finally, "being that they are gifts you give the people who came to your wedding."

He hesitated at the way that it was almost a question. "… is that not how it works?"

Bolin came running through the reception, holding high above his head a pair of keys in one hand and an enormous bow in the other. "It's a convertible!" he was yelling as he ran, circling his brother a few times before coming back around. Varrick's eyes went wide with alarm, and Zhu Li, predicting what was about to happen, took the plate of cake from his hands. Varrick held up his hands to try and hold him at bay, but it did not work, as Bolin took a flying leap to hug Varrick. It was actually really more of a tackle, and they both hit the ground almost immediately, Pabu leaping away to safety. Zhu Li sacrificed Varrick's plate to keep the ferret from burrowing into the main cake, and he accepted the slice as his due.

"What the hell is this?" Lin interrupted, and both men looked up from the floor. Zhu Li, having had no input in the gift purchases, feared the worst.

Lin held, at arm's length, a tiny kitten by the scruff of the neck. It mewed. Bolin gasped for so long that it turned into a squeal, and he fell over backward from where he had previously been sitting, allowing Varrick to escape. Pabu climbed onto Zhu Li's shoulder to try and get a better look at the animal.

"It's your present?" Varrick said, as Mako came closer to see the commotion.

"This is not a gift," she said sternly, "this is a job." She pulled it back in closer to herself to hold it more securely against her chest. "Now I have to buy a cat bed. And special food. And clean litterboxes. Do I look like I have time for this?" Absently, she stroked two fingers over its head, and it yawned.

"It's so cute," Bolin squeaked, muffled by the hands covering his face. Pabu, apparently feeling threatened, immediately hopped to his side and tried to climb on his face to distract him from potential interlopers.

"Well," Varrick began, pulling himself up to dust off his pants, but she was not finished yet.

"And how long was it in that box?" she demanded.

"It had a blanket!" Varrick said defensively. "The box had holes in it, even."

"Those illegal fireworks of yours probably scared it half to death," she said, as the kitten yawned.

"Look, if you don't want it I can just take it back," he said, but when he reached out toward it she turned her whole upper body away to shield it from him.

"I'm not giving him to you," she said with a considerable amount of scorn. "I wouldn't trust you with a houseplant." She looked to Zhu Li. "No offense."

"None taken," she said, because not trusting him with houseplants was the correct approach.

"What are you going to name him?" Mako asked, leaning down to get a better look at the now-sleeping kitten nestled in Lin's arms. She looked down at the little white ball of fluff.

"Bai Hu," she said finally.

"Mako," Bolin stage-whispered, though he probably could have yelled and not disturbed little Bai Hu. "You're going to have to get your own ride home, because I'm going to take Opal out in my new convertible."

"Wait," Mako said, "why does he get a car, and all I got was this harmonica?"

"Varrick," Suyin interrupted, calling from across the dance floor and holding her gift aloft, "what exactly am I supposed to do with an exercise belt?"

☽❆☾

"I hope you're happy," Tenzin said. "I can't find Korra anywhere."

"Whoops," Varrick said, sounding not apologetic at all. If those girls had any sense, they were alone somewhere far away from authority figures. Zhu Li had disappeared to have a conversation with Suyin, which he guessed had come to its conclusion based on the familiar exclamation.

"It does what?"

☽❆☾

"So how was the bachelor party?" Pema asked.

"What bachelor party?" Varrick said, too quickly.

"I don't remember any bachelor party," Tenzin said, almost simultaneously.

"How dare you," said Bumi.

"No," was all that Baatar said, staring into the middle distance.

"I am not at liberty to discuss the events that occurred at the Republic City Zoo at this time," Raiko said.

"… so you had fun?" Pema attempted instead.

"No," repeated Baatar, still staring at nothing.

"Oh, no, he's doing it again," said Bumi, putting his hands on Baatar's shoulders and shaking them. "I'll get him back to Suyin."

☽❆☾

"It is done," Meelo said seriously, holding up a large canvas that looked to Zhu Li like a blur of color.

"Perfect," Varrick said, taking it from him. "This is going right above the mantle. One of the mantles. The best mantle. Thanks, kid."

"I didn't do this for the thanks," Meelo said, holding out a hand, and Varrick jerked a thumb toward the gift table.

"Underneath that table is a bag of candy that weighs more than you do," he said. He leaned toward Zhu Li as the little terror ran off. "We should probably get out of here before Pema figures out what I just did."

"Is it actually any good?" Zhu Li asked, squinting at the painting. She assumed those two blurs were supposed to be them, but she wouldn't know until she saw it with her glasses on. "Or did you just say that because he's a kid and you don't want to hurt his feelings?"

"Zhu Li, have you ever known me to care about a small child's feelings?"

"Oh. Well I can't wait to see it."

☽❆☾

"Zhu Li, if you drop me, I will never forgive you."

"I'm not going to drop you," she said with a roll of her eyes, carrying her husband over the threshold. Though he was holding himself up as much as she was, clinging to her shoulders like she might drop him at any moment. "But I might trip. This skirt is long and I still can't see anything."

Varrick squeaked and clung tighter. "I'll be your eyes," he suggested. "It'll be like one of those trust exercises at the corporate retreats I'm always scheduling and never going to."

"Fine," she said, "then tell me where our bedroom is, dear."

"Okay, we just — you just — okay you know what, let me get my map."

"Your map?" she asked, as he did indeed reach into his coat and start unfolding a large set of blueprints.

"It's a big house," he said, "and I don't remember where the trapdoors are."

"The…?"

"To throw off our enemies!"

"The enemies in our house?"

"Yes!"

Slowly, she set her husband down. "I don't remember agreeing to any trapdoors in our house."

"Well… you know how it is," he said, his posture sheepish, "it's late and you're working on a few last-minute additions and you find yourself thinking, what's the best way to hide our bedroom from interlopers?"

"You hid our bedroom."

"Yes."

"And now you can't find it."

"… yes."

"Did you check the pantry?" she suggested, deadpan, because she could not count the number of things he had accidentally left in the pantry while trying to get a snack. Unexpectedly, he gasped and stood up straighter.

"It is in the pantry!" he said, taking her by the hand.

"Are you serious."

"I wanted our bedroom to be as close to the food as possible, for, you know, midnight snack reasons."

"If we fall through a trapdoor in the kitchen, Varrick—"

"No, no," he said, and she was not reassured, "those just lead to the wine cellar anyway! And that has a door to our room, too!"

Marriage was startlingly similar to employment.

☽❆☾

"Those knots are terrible."

"That's really not the point, dear."

For a naked man with his new wife straddling his chest, Iknik was being extremely petulant. She'd just thought the scarves would be fun, but if she'd known he'd get like this about it, she probably wouldn't have bothered.

"It's the principle of the thing, Zhu Li!"

She sighed as she worked on getting her hair undone. "And what principle is that, dear?" She'd put her glasses back on, because not being able to see her wedding was one thing, but not being able to see her wedding night was quite another.

"It's an insult to my abilities as an escape artist." He was not, despite his complaints, making any effort to free his arms. Her hair fell free around her face, and they'd probably be finding hairpins in the laundry for weeks.

"Mmph — that's better." She tousled her own hair, because in short order she had become unused to keeping her hair so tight. "I sort of like the rest of this, though," she said, looking down at herself and the lingerie she was wearing, cupping her own breasts to push them higher in the corset. It wasn't very comfortable, but it did all sorts of interesting things to her figure that she thought made it worth it. She noted that he had stopped talking. "As to your abilities, dear," she said, resting both hands on his chest and leaning forward to kiss the tip of his nose, "you and I both know that the best knots in the world couldn't stop you."

"Accurate," he said, because there was no circumstance in which he would not assist in the stroking of his own ego.

"Which means the only thing really holding you there is the fact that I asked, and you love me."

"Also accurate."

"The scarves are really just set dressing."

"… I suppose," he said, but he was clearly still dubious.

"You can teach me to tie better knots later," she said, "but this will have to do for now." She patted his cheek.

"It's not like I haven't offered before," he said, as she wiggled herself lower on his body.

"That was when I thought you wanted me to tie up boats, dear," she said, tracing her fingertips along the curve of his cock. She probably ought to have been more naked, if only for the sake of fairness, but she would only get one chance to have him in her wedding lingerie. "Should I keep the sleeves?" she asked, because she still couldn't decide if they were sexy or made her look noncommittal.

"Yes," he groaned, trying to thrust towards her fingers and gripping the headboard to keep his hands where they were supposed to be. "And what was I—yi-ya— supposed to say? 'Zhu Li, get over here and learn a square knot so I can make my fantasies more elaborate without sacrificing accuracy'?"

"You never told me there were fantasies," she said. "And that probably would have worked," she added.

"Maybe not fantasies, exactly," he said, gasping as she ran her tongue over the head of his cock. "Curiosity. I was curious. In a—a-a-ah — way that didn't make me the creepy boss."

She laughed. "I had fantasies," she admitted shamelessly. She wrapped her lips around his shaft and pushed it back against her throat, and was gratified by the incoherent sounds he made. Then she kissed the base of it, giggling as she tried to keep him from hitting her glasses. "Of doing things like this beneath your desk, mostly."

"Hnnngh fuck's sake don't tell me that," he said.

"I don't know that I actually would have done it," she said, stroking him with her hand so that she could talk. This was the first time she'd actually tried using her mouth on him, despite having thought about it at length. "I still don't know what I'm doing."

"You're doing pretty good so far," he said, and she believed him because of the look on his face.

"You think that now because you love me," she said, giving his shaft another long lick. "You'd be much more critical if I were still your employee."

"I do—oh—n't fuck employees," he protested, and she kissed the tip of his cock affectionately.

"I know, dear," she said. "You're very ethical."

"That's no way to talk to your husband."

"It was supposed to be a compliment." The blowjob experiment was abandoned for now, because he enjoyed talking to her too much for it to ever work. Unless she put something in his mouth next time.

Hm. Now there was a thought.

Sliding her panties down her legs and over her stockings, she discarded them on the floor. Zhu Li pulled herself higher, straddling his legs and rocking her hips to rub her clit against the underside of his cock. "Spirits, Zhu Li," he said, taking a great deal of effort not to adjust his position to push inside of her.

"No spirits," she teased. "Just me."

"Good," he said. "I like you better."

She bent down to kiss him, reached down between them so she could guide him inside her. They groaned into each others' mouths, and then she leaned back so that there would be room for her to rub at her clit as she rode him. "Oh," she said as she rocked her hips to grind down on him, "I like this, why haven't we done this before?"

"Saving it for a special occasion?" he suggested.

"I want to do this more," she decided, and she was surprised when he started to laugh. "What?" she asked, stopping what she was doing. "Does it look silly?"

"No!, No, spirits no, this is — fuck, you look hot. It's just — your new favorite position is the one where you do all the work." He laughed again, and Zhu Li tried not to giggle and failed.

"It is not," she protested, and he responded by wiggling his fingers against the headboard where they were bound. "It… sort of is." Despite this, she resumed grinding as she had before. "I'm still not untying you."

"Oh nooo," he said, thrusting his hips upward while she thrust down. "So sadistic."

"Mmhmm," she agreed, running her free hand through her hair. She really did feel like the luckiest woman in the world, with a man as handsome as that at her mercy. It made things difficult, when pleasure made her want to close her eyes and stare at him all at the same time. "Say it again."

"You're a sadist?"

She laughed. "No, not that."

"I love you?"

"Yessss," she said, leaning further back so that he hit her at just the right angle. "But like you mean it."

"I love you," he said again. "I love you, I love you, I love you." It had never occurred to her, until the first time that he'd done it, how arousing it could be to hear someone reduced to nothing more than breathless exclamations of affection. Like all of the many things that usually filled his brain had been pushed away, like his love for her was so great there wasn't room for anything else.

"Iknik," she gasped, and as her brain lit up with pleasure her body tightened and shuddered around him, bucking forward so that her back curled instead of arched.

"IloveyouIloveyouIloveyou," he was still saying, and as she smothered his words in a kiss she felt him twitch inside of her. She relaxed against him, brought her ear to rest against his sternum so she could try to listen to his pulse. She may have actually been listening to her own; she couldn't tell, and wasn't sure she cared.

"I love you, too," she said.

"Does that mean I can take my hands down, now?"

"Yes, dear," she laughed, and her knots had indeed been terrible for him to wrap his arms around her as quickly as he did.

"The lace is very sexy, and all," he said with a yawn, "but you're going to have to get more naked before you fall asleep, because it's also kind of scratchy."

"You don't want me to be sexy in my sleep?" she asked, and the way his chuckle reverberated through his chest was simply lovely.

"Sleep is for snuggles," he said, "not sexy."

"What makes you think we're going to sleep?" she teased, and he froze.

"I don't, uh. Obviously it is our wedding night, and—"

He was interrupted by her laughter. "I was kidding," she said, "I'm exhausted."

"Oh thank goodness." She could feel him relax beneath her, and that made her laugh more. "Don't scare me like that, Zhu Li, my life flashed before my eyes. I'm not old enough to be the guy that can't keep up with his wife."

"You're already a rich guy who married his young secretary," she pointed out, and he let out of a long groan of horror. "Now help me get this corset off, dear, before the arthritis sets in."

"We'll see who gets the last laugh," he said, although he was already helping to undo the lacing. "When my hair goes white, I'm gonna be a silver fox."

☽❆☾

"Did you make breakfast?" Zhu Li asked, surprised. The staff hadn't been hired yet because he'd wanted the house to themselves, but it smelled undeniably of pancakes. Varrick looked very nervous, leaning against the counter and gripping the edge of it.

"A man can make a romantic breakfast for his wife," he said, defensive. She wrapped her arms around his waist and kissed his chin. He did not relax, and that made her suspicious.

Adjusting her glasses, she looked at the pancakes. The delightful-looking, fragrant, perfect pancakes. "… you didn't make these."

Varrick laughed nervously, eyes darting around the kitchen. "What? Of course I — look, why don't you go back to bed and I'll just bring you—"

"Where's Bolin?" she asked, and he gulped.

"I don't know what you mean," he said, scratching the back of his head, and she should have known the instant she'd seen him wearing pajamas. Thank goodness she'd thought to put on a robe. Blue eyes darted to the broom closet, and that was all she needed to know.

"So we're alone." There was a muffled, ferrety squeak from within the closet that was abruptly cut off.

"Of course! It's our honeymoon, I wouldn't, ah—"

"So if I just start taking your clothes off—"

"—wait, what—"

"—right here in the kitchen, so I can—"

"Please don't I'm so sorry I'm here please keep your clothes on." Bolin burst out of the broom closet with his hands over his eyes, not that there was anything to see. "You weren't supposed to be awake yet I'm so sorry please wait until I am gone."

She waited until Bolin had fled. "You had Bolin make me breakfast."

"… I wanted it to be edible."

She kissed his cheek. "Lies aren't romantic, dear."

"… yes, dear. Sorry, dear."

She patted him on the head. "Good husband."

"If you want, I can bring you breakfast in bed," he offered, and she smiled as she started unbuttoning his shirt.

"Oh, no," she said, "I wasn't kidding before."

"You—?"

"Well obviously I wasn't going to do it in front of Bolin," she said matter-of-factly, "but there are a lot of rooms in this house, dear." She turned him around as she pulled his shirt down off his shoulders, and hopped up backward to sit on the edge of the counter. "We're not going to have them to ourselves for much longer, and I intend to take advantage."

There was no word for the look on his face but starstruck. It was a good thing she hadn't tried ordering him around when she was working for him, because it seemed that she quite liked it. Particularly when he responded like that.

Married life, she felt, was going to suit her quite well.

CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

Epilogue

They stopped at the farm first.

Zhu Li didn't know what she'd expected, a farm in the South. It turned out to be mostly yak, a sea of fur and stink. "How old were you?" she asked, the words looking like a puff of smoke.

"Six when I got here," he said with a shrug. "Eight when I left."

She could barely imagine Varrick yak-herding as he was. When he was six? That didn't seem safe. She stood a few steps behind him as he knocked, because that was a habit that hadn't changed with marriage. Using him as a shield between herself and the world had always been part of their relationship, professional and not.

It was an older woman who answered the door, and Zhu Li had a hunch that she looked even older than she was. There were children running all through the house and screaming, and the woman narrowed her eyes as she looked them up and down. Then she brightened. "Iknik?"

"Heya, Uki," he said, taking a hand out of his pocket briefly to wave. "In the neighborhood. Thought I'd say hi."

"How long's it been?" she asked. "Thirty years?"

"Something like that."

"And who's this?" she asked, looking over his shoulder.

"My wife," he said, though he didn't give her name.

"I didn't hear you got married," she said, looking surprised. "Not that you ever bothered to write us a letter," she added, and there was a hint of judgment in the statement.

"Didn't I?" he asked, though he didn't sound surprised. "Must have been lost in the mail." If he'd really wanted, he could have visited any time. Chances were, they all knew it, but he was hardly going to admit it.

"Daddy died a few years back," she said. "Suppose that letter got lost in the mail, too."

"Must have," he agreed mildly.

"He always was a little mad at me for not marrying the richest man in the world," she teased, and Zhu Li didn't think she was kidding. "Not that I had any way of knowing you would be," she added, "since it isn't like you said."

"I did, actually."

"Hm?"

"I did say I was going to be the richest man in the world."

It was very easy to imagine him making such a declaration, whatever his age. "Well I didn't think you were serious," Uki said, as if he were somehow at fault for not adequately warning her. "Did you two want to come in?" she asked. "I can send the grandkids upstairs, keep 'em out of your hair so we can talk."

Grandkids? "No, thanks," said Varrick. "We haven't got a lot of time." This was a lie. "Mind if we poke our heads in the barn before we head out?"

"If you'd like," Uki shrugged. "Hasn't changed much."

Zhu Li followed close behind as Varrick walked out toward the decrepit old building. "You could have grandkids," she said under her breath, and Varrick shuddered for reasons other than the cold.

"Ugh. Ugh. Stop talking."

"I can't believe you missed out on being a yak-farming grandpa."

"I'm not that old!" He made a face at her, then braced himself against the door of the barn to try and push it open. "If you think not having kids means I don't know how to give you a spanking, you are very wrong, lizard wife."

"Mmhmm." She grabbed the big metal door handle and yanked, and he nearly fell over when the door opened. "Promises, promises."

"Feh." Varrick entered the barn in the manner of a cat caught losing its balance. "Get in here and shut the door, you're going to let all the cold in."

She didn't think he'd ever break the habit of scolding her when he was embarrassed. She was used to it, anyway, and she wasn't sure she'd know how to react if he didn't. An apologetic Varrick was a worrying prospect. She shut the door, and they were alone in the drafty old barn, smelling of hay and ostrich horse feathers. He walked away, and as he did he tapped the door of one of the stables like a reflex; 'Mrs. Beaks' was carved in crude letters into the wood.

Zhu Li traced her fingers over the words, and looked back up in time to see Varrick jumping up to catch the edge of the hay loft with his hands. He pulled himself up into it, and after a moment he peered down at her. "That is a lot easier when you're taller than four feet." He held down his hands so that he could pull her up, and she accepted his unspoken invitation.

"I have no idea how safe it is for us both to be up here," he admitted when it was already too late. "Honestly, I'm amazed this barn is even still standing." The roof was too low for either of them to do anything but sit on the floor. Even when he was small, it couldn't have been very comfortable up here.

"Did you spend much time in the hay loft?"

He looked faintly confused by the question. "I slept up here," he said, and he pointed to a far wall with his name carved into it, the same crude lettering as Mrs. Beaks had been given. Iknik Blackstone Varrick, and she wondered if she was imagining that Blackstone looked like it had been carved deeper than the rest. She took his hand and squeezed.

"They made you sleep in the barn?"

He kissed her cheek. "They were the only ones who would let me sleep anywhere," he corrected, and she squeezed his hand tighter. "Please do not break my fingers," he said, and she let his hand go so that she could wrap her arms around him. "It wasn't that bad." He paused. "Don't get me wrong, they were definitely huge assholes. But it really wasn't that bad."

☽❆☾

The Varrick household was almost hidden in the drifts. A small and unassuming pile of stone near windswept cliffs, nothing as far as the eye could see but snow and glaciers and nothingness. It took an hour from the farm to the house on a motorsled. She couldn't imagine how long it would take to walk.

"We don't have to do this," she said, not for the first time.

If he imbued his shrug with any more nonchalance, his arms would fall off. "It's fine."

The door had actually broken, and so there was a fine coating of snow covering everything in the house. It was one large circular room with a fireplace in the center. There was only one bed, but it looked big enough for five. If not for snow and age, the high pile of furs might have looked cozy. There didn't seem to be any toys, nothing that revealed the existence of a child.

"We weren't usually here," Varrick said, answering the question she didn't ask. "I was usually out with Dad. Doing… man stuff." She doubted it was that manly, considering he'd been a toddler. "This was her place, mostly."

"Is that her?" Zhu Li asked, approaching a small painting on the wall.

"E-yup," Varrick said, still standing by the door. "Good ol' rocky bottom."

"Sh." It was a small sound, but there were worlds of meaning in it. Be quiet, my love, because I will not have you hiding behind humor when it is just us two.

"Sorry," he said, because of course he understood. She took the picture down so she could see it better, surely done when she was much younger. Curls that reminded her of Varrick, what he might have had if he'd grown it long. She brushed her fingers over the paint, the betrothal necklace carved in the familiar sigil of a ship. "Pipaluk," he offered without prompting. "Dad called her Pippy."

"Are there any of him?" she asked.

"She had a sketchbook," he said, "but I haven't looked at it much."

She set the painting down, but she didn't hang it back up. She didn't want to leave it here, in this mausoleum. They didn't have to hang it up at home, but she wouldn't let it rot. The sketchbook was on the side table, and one of the first pictures was the one she'd been looking for. "You weren't kidding about the eyebrows," she said.

"I know, right?" he said, and he sounded more amused than he had for hours. "Imagine what would happen to my face without regular maintenance."

Still. It was a loose sketch, but for all that the eyebrows were fused with his hairline — and beard, somehow — that smile was unmistakable. Something they had in common, the love of that smile. She sat on the edge of the bed, and slowly began to turn the pages. Most of them had that same impressionistic feel, more importance placed on motion than on detail. Maybe that was where he got it from, that lack of concern for the fiddly bits.

Otterpenguins and arctic hippos and sunsets, and Nuktuk waving from a canoe. Occasional anatomical drawings, and those did have detail, cross-sections of muscles and skeletal structures. Then a drawing of a baby that could only have been Varrick, and Zhu Li felt herself smiling impossibly wide. What a fat and irritable looking baby he'd been.

It didn't take long to see where things started going wrong. It was when Varrick stopped having a face. Everything else was the same, aside from the unsettling faceless infants. The sketches started getting even looser, more abstract, more colorful, more repetitive. By the time she reached the end it was nothing but endlessly spiraling fractals, all of the fiddly bits that had previously been ignored in splashes of bright color. It hurt her fingers just to look at them. They must have taken hours, nothing like the quick sketches in the beginning of the book.

She looked up, and realized she was alone.

Zhu Li gathered up the sketchbook and the painting, hugged them to her chest as she walked back out of the house. Outside it was colder and brighter, and the air felt cleaner. Varrick was sitting in the snow near the cliff, looking out at the ocean.

Wordlessly, she knelt beside him, ignoring the cold and the wet that seeped through her clothes. He was resting his chin on the knees hugged to his chest. "Let's wait," he said, and she wouldn't have even heard him if it weren't so very silent in the snow.

"Okay," she said. He'd said he hadn't looked at it much, but she wondered if he'd seen himself, a child without a face. There was nothing to stop her from asking. It still felt, somehow, too raw. Three decades later and still an open wound. She hadn't asked to see it. Maybe he'd thought it would be easier. She couldn't tell if she was helping.

They sat in silence until the sun began to set. "They're reflections," he said finally, and his voice sounded raw. "The ocean and the sky. Currents in one and wind in the other, but they aren't… the same. She used to say that." She looked out at the water with him, listened to the waves hitting the rocks. "The moon on the water is just… a reflection. But she thought it was — she thought she would — fuck." He rubbed at his eyes, bowed his head so she couldn't see his face. "So fucking stupid," he muttered. "It's just light on the water, it isn't anything, I don't — there wasn't anything magical about it. I don't know why I thought…"

It wasn't a feeling she would ever understand, ever could. All she could do was lean against him, rest her head on his shoulder as she watched the moon's reflection ripple on the water. Eventually, he kissed the top of her head. "Thank you for taking me to meet your parents," she murmured.

He sighed. "You can't blame a guy for trying."

She wound an arm around his so she could lace their fingers together, the other still holding the painting and the sketchbook. Her legs had gone completely numb. "Are you good?"

"Not if I can help it," he snorted, and he rubbed his eyes with his sleeve. "But I'm better." He squeezed her hand, then sighed again. "I can't feel my ass."

"That's what I'm here for, dear."

"… I love you so much."

Zhu Li kissed his cheek. "I know, dear. I know."