Chapter Text
Never let an enemy under your skin unless you want them to discover that under hard muscles and thick blisters hides softness and vulnerable as everyone else’s, a heart just as tormented and easily breakable.
Instead slip into a charismatic, cocky persona of a man who knows just how powerful and attractive he is. Ghazan gained many things thanks to that. Occasionally a nutritious meal, a trim of moustache or a day not spent with his ears overflowing with sounds of sloshes, waves, water shattering on wooden surface of his prison. He keeps up the act of a dimwit, not at all bothered or nauseous and crawling out of his skin, being isolated from his element, surrounded by endless, merciless water.
He tries, keeps trying to think of ways to shape water into something else in his mind. He desperately scrambles up faded pieces of memories, searches for her face in the stars. Hair just long and smooth as his, and though he never touched it, he half expected a cool mountain stream under his fingers. Her gleaming grey eyes like rainstorm with the ability to turn sharper and deadlier than the ice she bent to her will so effortlessly...
He feeds his guards carefully chosen words and expressions until all they take him for is a slow-witted fool tricked into following his friends’ radical views in hopes of living more comfortable life.
He lets them laugh at his rigorous workout sessions, for all they know his muscles aren’t enough to move bars of his jail and without earth anywhere near (his guards consisted of waterbenders and firebenders only), what harm can he cause? He snickers back, pretends it’s for whatever silly, vain reason they may think of.
Certainly not the fact that cracks and creaks of his cell is the closest he can get to feeling his element, undoubtedly preferable to sounds of water everywhere around. Wood infuriates him - not nearly enough traces of mineral particles for him to manipulate - it makes metalbending, something he never could get a proper grasp of, seem laughably easy. He probably would have learned it after three months in here - the White Lotus never took that chance.
And anything but the fact that he hopes to be strong enough to carry the incessant weight pressing into his lungs and chest, threatening to suffocate him; to have enough power in his punches to beat out the lethargy echoing its resigned why inside of him.
Certain days, it overwhelms him. His guards find him lying inside his cell, mistaking him for dead at first. At moments of particular hopelessness - like when the sea just won’t calm down and he can’t stomach food or water - he considers begging him to end his misery. Then, remembers the rest - especially her - what they must be going through, and keeps his mouth shut. He recalled P’Li’s tormented look, louder than any scream she could let out, as they kept hitting Zaheer in front of her to force her to talk. Ming-Hua’s eyes in a haze caused by strong setwall liquor forcibly fed into her. Promises and threats alike, they withstood it all. He has to keep going - for what, he wasn’t sure - wait for it to pass, numb his mind with alcoholic beverage they offered him for the seasickness.
His thirteen years in prison were a masterfully crafted torture - far from causing severe physical harm or bringing him close to death; enough for him to be left marked for good, even if during first days after Zaheer broke him out, his high on freedom seems to last forever. Those usually mean a crash is looming just around the corner, waiting for its trigger.
With familiar faces, time and pain written into them, at least he has the luxury of distraction and knowledge they too are still fighting their shadows - much stronger after thirteen years of isolation and torment. With them, he can ignore the ache seeping into his bones, turning them into lead - and truthfully, metal was always outside his capabilities - just a little bit longer.
The easy plan to get the Avatar in Republic City and remove Raiko ends in complete failure. Once again, they’ve made themselves known, breaking the invisibility crucial for their success.
What good was it ever for? All the preparations, planning, Zaheer’s assurances… only to start up a chain reaction of mistakes, once again, barely getting away; and then what?
They had been there before, ended up with thirteen years stolen from their lives, the devastating inkling of repeating the same path was creeping up on him.
In his barely thirty-four years, Ghazan already feels as old as a mouldering oak covered by moss - green and lively as first glance goes, but hollow and rotting inside. Just the thought of going through any of it again is enough to send him into dark thoughts again.
He asks Ming-Hua to take the night guard instead of him while the couple gets busy arguing and then soothing the sting of their harsher statements - both loud enough he usually needs to immediately find anything else to do - and it feels like double the effort it should be.
She measures him in a careful look. Not for the first time he feels vulnerable in ways he never experienced even stripped of his humanity in his prison. Just her effect on him, now of all times.
“What’s going on?” she asks, her raspy voice still carrying an uncharacteristic softness.
“Just tired. It’s not that deep, Ming-Hua.” He should know better than to think this would fool her.
“So you’d rather listen to our friends going at it. No comment, no groaning, you’ll just lie here?” she arches her eyebrows, reproach clear in her eyes - not for his actions, but for lying to her.
“Why do you even care?” he mumbles, his words dull, yet still stained with bile he knows she doesn’t deserve.
No flinch, no change in expression, yet her acerbic reply shows him he hit a sore spot. “If you think hard enough, maybe you’ll figure it out.”
She leaves him alone, already on her way to start her watch.
That actually makes him stand up and follow her further from their camping site and away from noises from one of the tents.
She doesn’t speak, just keeps eyeing him from the corner of her vision, trying (but failing) to keep inconspicuous, busying herself with healing her numerous burn marks.
She keeps silent, clearly waiting for him to start. A routine of theirs - the one who comes to the other talks first.
“I know what we stand for,” his voice is tired, so so tired, “and I’d never stray from that. But as we go on, I can’t help but ask what will be the cost.”
Her eyes stay locked on his, expectant. Gray and deep, thousand times more hypnotizing than the poor image he had been trying to conjure up in his cell, never hoping to live to see the real thing again. The sight bring him to stunned silence while urging him to talk his heart out at the same time - he continues.
“We keep telling ourselves everything will change, for the better. But will we be alive to see it? I don’t think so. They,” he paused, bracing himself. Only instead of the White Lotus could such a short word sound so frightened and hate-filled at the same time; for what they did to him, for what they continued to do even as he slipped from their grasp.
“They know about us. They’ll protect their own interests again. We hold even less advantage over them as we once did - so why?”
That word is stretching his ribcage right above the heart. Just like when rain was hitting his face in sharp tiny needles and he was reminding himself of her. The woman who keeps standing by his side yet shies away from his touch he cannot live without - leaving him to crave something she’ll never let him have…
“Why do we hope that our efforts will amount to something? The world isn’t willing to change unless we force it. Do you think we’ll get any thanks when we do?”
“They’ll get us, sooner or later,” his biggest fear shakes itself out of his lips in a choked sound. “They won’t kill us if they haven’t done it so far, but throw us inside our cells to rot. I can’t go back. I’d rather kill myself alone. I-”
“I know how you feel,” her raspy voice interrupts him. She seems to struggle to find words. Understandable. He saw what her kind of torture chamber looked like - such cruel twist of fate his element had been used to cause her irreversible trauma, as hers had been for him - no words would ever come close to encompassing thirteen years of that.
“I still wake up… thinking of another burn I have no chance of healing. Of being treated worse than a dog, mocked, denied my humanity and autonomy all over again. Everything I was helpless to do.”
Her confession silences him, for all he knows her cell was the most humiliating, most degrading to her character, rubbing salt into the wound after a lifetime of proving to others the same thing all over again: she can and she will; she continues to survive even despite those wishing her nothing but death; she doesn’t need anything but respect.
“I can’t wash that away, as long as I live,” her voice is almost too quiet to catch, a rare moment when she allows someone to glimpse past the ice barrier protecting her fragile heart.
“But that’s why we’re here. We need to move forward. So that the past can’t catch us.”
“I know that!” he lets out a frustrated shout because she still doesn’t get it. “But I can’t fight myself forever!”
Then, he’s quiet, afraid to admit his own weakness and of her judgement even more.
“I was sick before, you know that. After those years… it’s so much worse than before.”
He had long forgotten how to cry. Thirteen years of refusing White Lotus to see any kind of vulnerability on him keep his eyes dry even as something inside him keeps breaking.
He grits his teeth and his breaths turn labored instead. The weight is heavier than ever, and for a split second, he almost hopes it will finish the job and his lungs and heart won’t withstand the crush - no more fighting, no more resisting, make it go away-
She keeps silent, her eyes empty of judgement, of anything at all. She adds more water to cover her legs up to the knees with healing layer of glow.
“I know,” she almost whispers, as if just as afraid to voice out the truth. “I’m hurting, too. But I’m still here. They haven’t defeated me.”
He loves to watch her when she turns reflective and silent like the surface of a lake, calm on the first sight, yet blooming underneath. He loves the contemplative haze in her eyes, the rare moment of vulnerability when she becomes a soft tide, drifting to meet earth, almost close enough to reach. And just like the ebb, she will slip away just as swiftly, he knows that.
“Each breath into my lungs burned, I couldn’t move anywhere to find release, I begged death to set me free of it… but I’m alive and I’m never going back,” she finished and slumps, tired and defeated, a sharp contrast to her statement. When her eyes meet his, they’re glittering with all she won’t let herself dwell on.
“We can hurt together,” she adds, almost hesitant. Her face turns away from him a bit, illuminated by soft mint glow, somehow softening the sunken hollows under her cheekbones.
“And when all of this is over, we can heal together, too.”
Here she is, likely with thousands of reasons to keep her distance, offering him the simple comfort of her presence, even if he can’t promise the same back. Even if he can’t ever promise to not lose himself and give in. Even if she can’t promise to trust him with anything else, she’s letting him have this.
Did it really have to be thirteen years of being cooked alive in a volcano to melt her frozen heart to him? In a rare occurrence, he finds himself flabbergasted and out of things to say.
“Shut up. It’s unlike you to get sappy.” A witty retort, a quick save. Just like old times.
“I know. That’s usually your specialty,” small squint lines around her eyes deepen. “Not my fault you’re too busy with an existential crisis.”
Some things, like joking and snarking about everything that hurts or scares them, remain the same.
He could tease back, but there’s no need to. She reads it in his glance and instead of a dry reply of her own, she smiles in that rare way that reaches her eyes more than her mouth and all that follows is silence.
Being on the same page and not needing anything more, just quiet and each other, is something entirely new, though. If it took thirteen years of pain and misery to end up here, then he guesses he may one day learn to live with that, breathing just a small bit easier.
Until another reminder of how short-lived all of it was. How failure again cost them their success, luckily not freedom. How despite being labeled freaks and dangerous criminals, they were not invulnerable.
Their dear friend fell first, what Ghazan just couldn’t accept in his mind. She and Ming-Hua always pulled through, no matter what. Their strategist lost all of his heart and only clinical detachment remained, somehow, not without flaws on its own.
He battles the intense fear that this is the dead end they’ve been running from all this time. Such thoughts don’t belong into a heat of a fight. They can still save this. Not her, though, the most feared and despised out of them, now simply another breakable human in her death. But something, at least-
That firebending kid emerges from his fight with Ming-Hua, with her nowhere to be seen while his brother just had to counter him with the biggest amount of luck in this most crucial moment. Thin thread of his composure snaps. If she’s not coming, then she’s-
As brothers urge him to give up, the image of prison is the final piece that sends him spiralling down.
No. Anything but.
Years of maintaining his physical condition only to bury himself in his own element without any will to fight back against it. Why struggle? Everything he had is breaking apart at the seams and all he has left is enough freedom to end it on his terms. He placates himself with the thought he avenged her death - numbly aware the Bolin kid’s newly acquired skills will probably keep both of them alive - it makes the ache a little less throbbing.
As he falls through another layer, water fills his nose and as he swims up - why not just stay under, why - he hits something soft. With sharp pain like a stab right through his ribs, he realizes and takes her into his arms, first and last time. Only to feel her body convulsing and gasping for breath, clinging to life he himself was so quick to give up on.