Epoch

By: The Hatter Theory

Disclaimer: I don't own the rights to Legend of Korra

She knows the truth, sees the future that he doesn't. He sees only the people, only those staring in awe, or terror. He sees a victory that has been ordained, knows change is coming. Whispers from the sea and sky and smoke are wrapped around him, woven through him, and his own hatred easily twists them to something insidious to suit his own purposes. She knows the truth, sees what he does not.

"I'm here," She declares quietly. She is there, and ready, and waiting.

"So you are. For all of the world to see."

Not all of the world, but enough. Her teachers, the order, the people she has loved. The people he has broken. Nothing can save her now, no one. And she does not want to be saved.

Cycles, whorls of patterns that echo through eternity, beyond memory. A thousand spirits, incarnations she has never known, cannot respect or love, cannot relate to, hold their breathe, their anticipation weighing heavily on her.

"Our world is out of balance," She tells him, voice so quiet that only he can hear. But she knows that he can hear, can see his eyes narrow in that hateful mask. It is a simple truth, one she watches him twist in the shadows of his pale eyes.

"It is. Your reign as benders is through."

"I know the truth," She whispers. "I know what you are."

The strike is blinding, pain blossoming in her skull and echoing sharply, a throbbing that cracks like lightning and reverberates all the way down to her toes like thunder falling and rising around her.

"Will you try to save yourself?"

"Make me," She demands, because it is the only way.

The torture is ghastly, and it is cruel, but she endures. She can, so she must. There is no other way. She cannot die, not yet, not as a simple girl, a normal bender. She cannot leave the mess without cutting through the knot so gnarled and twisted by time that there is no hope of finding it's beginning or end. She can, and she is the only one. So she must, and so she does.

"This was destined to happen," He mocks, another bolt of lightning stabbing through her from the baton of his general. She wonders if the others realize that the baton has no battery, that he feeds it with his own power, fire purified into electricity.

But they don't. Everything is smoke and mirrors, masks and misdirection.

"It is," She admits. Because the world has been out of balance for a long time, and there is only one way to fix it, to end the struggle.

"Why won't you die? Just give in," He croons, voice soft.

She has always been curious what was behind the mask, but it no longer matters. Within moments, she knows he will be exposed to the world, and who he is, what he was before his transformation matters even less than the meaning he gives his chosen design. People will not care about the rising of a new sun, a bloodier sun. That meaning will be lost, and she wonders if that will enrage him as much as the future he has guaranteed.

"Never." She spits, and blood splatters the wood of the platform. Red blood mixed with spit. She could bend, if she wanted to. But she doesn't try, because she has already said goodbye.

"There is only one choice," He threatens.

"I dare you," She goads.

His hand comes to her forehead, and she knows the trick for what it is, knows the technique and knows that he can not be allowed to succeed.

Wisps of energy.

Ironically, he was the seed that proved the world had come to it's end, and needed to be born anew, starting with him.

Light blinded her as the elements collided in her blood, in her throat and heart and flesh, bones splintering as she was shattered and made anew, as the feared and awe inspiring avatar state took her over. Power sang, a heady call promising fulfillment in the wholesale destruction of the world around her.

For once, she tethered it, chained it back, kept herself from losing herself in that song.

"She's entering the avatar state, she'll kill us all!"

"Kill her!"

The knives slipping into her flesh turn red hot from the energy thrumming through them as they touch her, her blood leaking out as less than liquid but more than air. But they pierce flesh true, sinking deeper into vital organs.

She holds on, just long enough, as another, and another are pushed in. Liver, lung, heart.

"You will get what you want," She whispers, but the whisper is a booming echo that is heard by the gathered crowd, a flood of sound that vibrates in the air, resonating with command and censure. It fills their ears and washes through their minds. The deaf hear and even the blind see her within their minds, the image forced into their hearts so that all will know the end, will see it and comprehend.

Because it is an end, a destruction, and all will face the new beginning.

"There will be no more elemental bending."

It is a declaration met with cries of despair and cheers of joy.

"Instead all will have the ability to bend again."

Because the world has been out of balance since the first avatar came into being. A disruption in the earth's natural order. Energy bending died that day, and elemental bending, fractured and divided was born, with only a single person to ever hold a balance. It was not enough, would never be enough for a world. Every thing that they have ever known has been a lie.

Except for the avatars.

They have known, and once that truth is passed down, from spirit to living, it cannot be unburdened, cannot be ignored.

But it could be stopped.

"You win. And lose," She says, looking down at him.

Because he will not be a major power, will not be special, will not be any more or less than anyone else. And the mob, she sees, will kill him within moments of that realization.

They will share the same platform in death, a sacrificial altar to the new world she will create and bestow upon everyone.

The world around her is silent, but the song within becomes louder because she is dying and the Earth is settling back into it's natural order. Chaos is sure to follow but she is taking away the inequality, the imbalance and granting people the right they have always carried, locked away.

She knows, even as the power to bend, the gift of every elemental manipulator on the planet, flows into her, that the people will lose it, because they have already forgotten the meaning of spirit, and know only divides. Walls and barriers and separation. Few will maintain the gift, and within generations it will be lost. Magic will cease to be in the world.

She almost regrets what she is doing as her material form is torn asunder beneath the sheer will and force of the power feeding into her, filling and flooding and spilling over until there is nothing left, every atom of her form glutted on light.

But she has made the choice.

With no avatar, there is no elemental bending. Ultimately they were the key to the disruption, the beginning, and now the end.

Chaos will ensue, mobs and madness, murder and hate. But it will settle into memory, then fade altogether. She wonders how far they will regress before they stop.

Her choice.

The energy gathers, coils, snaps and shatters, consuming her.

A thousand spirits, incarnations she has never known and cannot respect, breathe a sigh of relief.

And vanish in the span of a moment.