A/N: Written for season 3 of the 2016 Pro-Bending Circuit.
Challenge: Clubs (write about a soldier/fighter who is no longer able to serve)
Prompts: "It's funny how things turn out the way they do" (easy), restriction - no words starting with the letter 'm' (hard)
Word Count: 980 words (excluding author's notes)
Disclaimer: ATLA/LOK are property of Bryke forevermore, all characters and settings mentioned herein belong to them
Don't Cry For Me
The seconds between sleeping and waking are the worst.
In your dreams, you are at the pinnacle of your greatness. You leap effortlessly in the air, bend all the elements as one, and when your friends call your name in the distance, you run to them with a smile of delight on your face. The light within you shines like a beacon and everyone is illuminated in its glow.
Because you are the light. You hold the darkness at bay.
Time and time again, you've proven that.
When Amon came close to tearing the foundations of Republic City apart with his Equalist propaganda, you were the one that stopped him. You tapped into a center of spiritual reserve you didn't even know you had in you in order to do it. Within seconds, airbending, and then energybending, came to you as naturally as though you'd been born with them.
And then, when Unalaq and Vaatu tried to end you once and for all, and ripped Raava out from the depths of your soul in order to stop you, that still wasn't enough. In the end, you took them down, Harmonic Convergence ended, and you carried on.
Not everyone agreed with your choices, but you've never been one for pleasing the crowds anyway.
The important thing is that the world depends on you. It looks to you for guidance, and protection, and balance. You were born with this heavy weight on your shoulders, and rather than buckle under it, you were determined to lift it twice as high.
From the stories you hear, you gather that your enthusiasm for your duties far outstrips your predecessor's. For Aang did not have the spirit of a fighter. Not like you. Though born in the body of a waterbender, you share the spirit of a polar bear dog, like Naga. You will always yearn to be wild and strong and free.
And so you are, until the dreams change and suddenly you're falling to the ground, your body out of your control, the Avatar State out of your control, the poison creeping slowly through your veins as the air is sucked out of your lungs –
Zaheer's face leers down at you, the nightmare becomes real and then –
Your eyes snap open wide, wide, anxious and blue, and before realizing it, you're sitting up in bed, a hand against your chest as though you can still feel the tightening band of suffocation there. Your heart drums away wildly as you gasp for breath, fighting the scream that's welling up inside you.
It's okay, it's okay, you try to say, it'll be okay.
But as the nights wear on and the terrors cease to wane, you begin to question if it's really true. Even an Avatar has limits.
But you're so young and there's still a lot of work left for you to do, and every time your parents tell you about the chaos in the world struggling to right itself, the knot of shame in your stomach ties itself a little bit tighter.
It's funny how things turn out the way they do. Because instead of strength, you are now weakness.
Instead of freedom, you are now constraint.
Gone are the long days of hard training. Instead, you while away your hours in Katara's healing huts, fighting the rising tide of despondence and hopelessness that threatens to consume you even as she bends the glowing water around your broken, useless body.
She works tirelessly to heal you, day in and day out. The water swirls around you, pulling on the disrupted chi flows, trying to restore some semblance of function back to the paralyzed limbs.
But every time she comes close, you remember the terror the Red Lotus unleashed, and then you retreat from the world, hiding from your fear and your self-loathing and your failure.
No one else gets it, either. They offer kindness and sympathy, but those are such gifts you cannot bear to accept.
"You're going to get through this," Senna promises one sleepless night, holding you tight to her chest.
"There is no shame in taking the time you need," Tenzin – Tenzin! – tells you. "Being the Avatar can wait."
You haven't let him down, you realize. But his kindness rankles and gets under your skin anyway.
"It's not the same in Republic City without you. How are you?" writes Asami in one of her letters.
You treasure the letters your friends send you, but you cannot bear to write one in return, not yet. You don't think it's possible to find words that convey the depths of the void in you.
Because weeks and weeks have passed by and you've only succeeded in visualizing the wiggling of your big toe, and somehow you never thought that healing would take this damn long, and whenever you put your guard down for a second, it comes crashing back down. The scalding heat of the poison burning into your skin. Zaheer's face floating above yours as he draws the last breath out from your lungs.
You've never felt such hatred in your life before, for what they've done to you.
"Whenever you're ready," Katara says in her soothing voice, but you're ready to give up.
So you do.
"Let your anger and frustration flow like water," Katara advises you.
"I'm tired, Katara," you whisper at last, defeated. "I'm so tired."
And when you finally snatch a chance to leave your prison, you choose to wander instead, because you are lost, hopelessly lost without a cause.
"You kind of look like that Avatar girl!" the small-town Earth Kingdom arena announcer tells you excitedly as you disinterestedly inspect a fresh black eye. "Whatever happened to her anyway?"
"I wouldn't know," you reply with a shrug before walking away.
The shadows beckon to the darkness that overwhelms you.
You don't know if you'll ever be okay again.
A/N: When I saw the prompt, I knew I had to write about this aspect of Korra's journey. I apologize if it gets you down, and if the 2nd person writing style is off-putting. Also, writing without the letter 'm' is surprisingly challenging! That is all.