Where I End and You Begin
by SMYGO4EVA

It was impossible to right the wrongs of a whole empire instantaneously. Kuvira seemed to grow calmer, more tinged with regret, every time that Korra saw her.

Korra was reluctant to see her, to see how Kuvira was holding up after all of this time, after what had happened in Republic City. She knew why, but, as it was, there was already too much threatening to shatter.

"How the mighty have fallen," Kuvira spoke finally, her voice bitter and guileless. She gazed through the bars outside her window, the warm colors of the sun going down. "And here I thought things would be different by now, with still so much to be taken away from me."

"I know how you feel," Korra responded, hesitating for a moment, before she lifted her head. "Really, I do. I just hope that you'll understand that soon."

Kuvira gave her a half-hearted smiled before looking back at the window. "That's just it, isn't it? Where I end and you begin. That seems appropriate." She muttered, leaning her head back, tired and pensive.

Korra looked away, her hands still by her sides. "No. No, it doesn't."

They had both said this before, but it needed repeating; they had never seen eye to eye, and Korra didn't feel that they ever would. They had fought each other, bared their teeth, hollow and vicious, and they battled with all they had, with both bending and from within themselves. They couldn't take that back, from seeing the inner beasts that unveiled before them.

Kuvira's ambition and straightforwardness was refreshing in Korra's eyes. They both knew that they were alike than they cared to admit. The Great Uniter and the Avatar were heralded as impossible beings who rose to the top, and beings who had fallen. They had descended and couldn't reach to what was close until it was either too late or just when all was dire.

Kuvira was getting better these days, far from who she had become during those three years Korra was on her own journey, ensconced and breathing in deeply for the first time. Sooner or later, they would both be far from the instances, those split seconds when beauty became the beast.