fall before you fly

"He can take people's bending away. Permanently."

Pema lies on her back in the dark, cool stillness, not exactly uncomfortable but not quite comfortable either. She prefers to sleep on her stomach, which of course is out of the question right now. The island is quiet at night, with the children asleep and the rumble of the city hushed by the harbor surf. It's not the weight and vague always-present twinge of her belly and spine that are keeping her awake, nor the soft, slow sound of Tenzin's breathing, nor even the same fear that is now plaguing the poor young Avatar, which kept her husband awake long into the night.

He can take people's bending away…

Korra's cracking voice lingers in her mind, tangling around and through a horrible knot of half-conceived ideas and guilty longing.

There's always been so much pressure on them—on her and Tenzin, that is. The full brunt of the pressure that was on Avatar Aang was passed on to them, when he and Katara failed to produce any other airbending offspring. And Pema knew that, she did, when she and Tenzin married, how important it was to keep airbending alive. To have children who were airbenders.

But is it so wrong to want just one for myself?

Katara's assurance of another bender had delighted Tenzin. And Pema should be happy. The world needs more airbenders. And Jinora and Ikki and Meelo—of course the bending gets out of hand sometimes, but she loves them more than anything in the world, and would never want them to be anything other than what they are.

And yet. And yet.

He can take people's bending away.

It hadn't been her first thought, but it had certainly occurred to her soon after Korra delivered that horrifying news: if Katara could tell her unborn child was an airbender already, could Amon take that child's bending away? Before it, or anyone else, had a chance to know what it had lost?

Once the thought happened, she couldn't shake it off. Pema is used to the now almost-constant faint nausea that has accompanied this pregnancy, but this is a different feeling of sickness, of shame and want and more disgusted shame.

The wind ruffles through the shutters. Inside her, the baby shifts.

AN: seriously, I cannot see this whole [Tenzin being back on good terms with Lin, who is a bender, thing] + the [Pema wanting a nonbender child thing] not leading to some kind of domestic trouble down the road. oy