Disclaimer: There are many things on this earth I do not own, and the Avatar universe is one of them.

Rating: T, momentarily. That will likely change.

Pairing: Korvira.

Author's Note: I'll be honest, I don't really know what I'm doing here. I was dragged (with minimal protest) into another Korra rewatch recently, and found myself once again fascinated with the ending dynamic between Korra and Kuvira. I've been wanting to explore that since... forever... so here I am. Where it goes from this… we'll see.

"You're not supposed to be here," Kuvira whispered, breath ghosting in air lit by the fading sunset.

Korra could only see her silhouette. The Great Uniter didn't so much as turn her head to check who had arrived.

"I've already had dinner."

Ah. She was expecting a returning guard. "I'm not here to drop off food."

Kuvira's head whipped around, eyes wide, but she quickly regained her composure, and that fierce, collected mask Korra had seen staring out at her from Earth Empire propaganda posters all throughout the city descended across her face.

"You aren't supposed to be here, either."

Korra scuffed her toes, glad Kuvira couldn't see the nervous motion through the small, chest-high window in her wooden cell. "Why not?"

Kuvira turned away again, staring through the opposite window and out across the sea beyond. "Because it's only been a month. Because you have better things to be doing. Because you're the Avatar."

Korra shrugged. "Well I… I've been on vacation. I got back not too long ago and I thought…"

"Thought what?" Kuvira chuckled, the rasp in her voice more pronounced than Korra had heard before. "Thought you needed to come by and check on your handiwork?"

There was little malice in the words. Korra wished Kuvira would look at her, sure there must be more anger in her eyes than there was in her voice. "No, I…" Korra trailed off as Kuvira slowly turned towards her, stare just as empty as before.

"I came to ask for your help," she finally said. Her voice cracked.

Kuvira arched a single eyebrow. When Korra looked away, silent, she asked, "And how might I be of service to the Avatar?" There was a dry, almost cruel humor in the words, a self-depreciating reminder that there was no Great Uniter here, only a woman just older than the Avatar herself, locked in wooden cell, afloat in the Eastern Sea.

"How did you do it?" Korra asked. She didn't appreciate the desperation she heard in her own voice. She clenched her fists, nails biting into her own palms. "At first. Before all the… reeducation facilities and border walls and… giant mecha suits. You… you were just… you. You had a couple airships and a few guards and a bit of money and you put Ba Sing Se back together in a matter of weeks."

"I had an army, you know." Korra wasn't sure, but she thought she heard a hint of amusement in Kuvira's voice.

Korra shook her head. "How did you get that, though! In the time it took you to fly from Zaofu to the capital, you had a following as huge and loyal as the military in the Fire Nation! No one questioned your command decisions, no one doubted your abilities, no one asked you what qualified you to rebuild an entire city of scattered refugees and looters and bandits and wreckage and—"

"Republic City giving you a bit of trouble, Avatar?"

Korra stopped in her tracks, only just saving herself from cracking her knees into the railing. She hadn't even realized she was pacing, but she was halfway across the ship from Kuvira's cell, now, and her arms were hovering awkwardly mid-air, so she had probably been waving them around. Stuffing them back in her pockets, Korra kicked the railing. "What makes you say that?"

She could practically hear the smile in Kuvira's voice. "I made a bit of a mess, did I not? Besides, you weren't talking about me just then. Abilities? Qualifications? Ever since you disappeared, you've been fighting two separate wars: one against me, and once against your own damaged reputation."

Korra gritted her teeth. She didn't appreciate it, hearing those words come out of Kuvira's mouth like that, but she couldn't afford to get angry at Kuvira for getting it right. That was why she was here, after all. "How can I fix something this big? How did you… How were you so successful?"

Korra walked slowly back to the window, resting her hand against the sill between slats of platinum grating, but it was completely dark within the cell. Night had fallen, and Kuvira could be trusted with neither the fire of torches, nor the metal wiring of electrical light.

Kuvira's voice was uncomfortably close when she spoke, and Korra flinched. "Are you absolutely certain you should be asking me? You know very well I have no qualms when it comes to reputation."

Korra stepped back a pace. She could feel Kuvira's breath against her fingers. "No. I'm not. It's probably the worst idea I've had yet, and I've had a lot of those these past couple years. But I'm here, and I'm asking." Korra took a deep breath, shaking her head. "I'm out of the loop. I should never have left," she muttered, glaring down at her own feet. She would never forget how strained it had been in the Spirit World. Asami just wanted them to relax, to take a break, but as hard as Korra tried, she couldn't forget everything they had left behind, the mess of so many lives, and her responsibility to fix it. Instead, the "vacation" had been a short and stilted affair marked by more half-distracted conversations and barely-dodged arguments than peaceful moments. "Now, I'm back, and I keep trying to help, but the world leaders still tip-toe around me like I'm some supercharged mess of spirit vines ready to explode in their faces if I touch anything!"

She looked away from the cell, away from the ship, out across the star-spotted darkness of the calm, empty sea. "I don't know what else to do," she added quietly. "Half of the refugees have given up on the city and gone back to the Earth Kingdom. The rest are fighting for remnants of their lives in a mess of rubble and vines. A new gang of firebenders is terrorizing anyone who even sets foot downtown with homemade lightning-powered spirit vine weapons, and between them and the looters and bandits, it's impossible for anyone to rebuild. I want to be involved, but Raiko keeps blaming me for making the portal in the first place. He doesn't want me—"

"—Don't fight two wars at once."

Korra's gaze was drawn back to that voice. It had haunted her dreams nearly every night as she slept next to Asami in the Spirit World, rasping out half-heard taunts of failure and neglect, a ghostly challenge that had her waking in a cold sweat, determined to prove the voice wrong, prove herself capable of returning balance again, capable of keeping herself as unaffected as she had been the last time she had confronted Kuvira, kneeling in the very fields of spirit flowers she would have to walk through to get home. Now, though, hanging heavy in the dark night air, Kuvira's voice held a more earthly power, reminding Korra of the sure, cool strength it conveyed as it echoed through the streets only weeks before, carried by radio waves, but feeling as though it could have been carried by will alone. Even now, Kuvira sounded like the Great Uniter.

"Don't divide yourself. Choose the one that matters more: your city, or your image. You can either fight against your own past, or you can fight against mine. If you try to fight both, you will lose."

Korra shook off her distracted thoughts. "But how can I expect to clean up your mess if Raiko won't let me help!"

"Let you? You're the Avatar."

"I—Well—Yeah. But I—International law says I—"

"That's another war. Raiko has no nation. He has heaps of rock and spirit vines. I made sure of that."

Korra silenced her own protests by biting her lip. Kuvira… she wasn't wrong. If she couldn't bring balance back to the city, she would lose what respect she had regained in defeating the Great Uniter. She couldn't keep waiting around playing politics and arguing with the President about who to blame. That was a war that no one was going to win. "Two wars. I'm fighting two wars," she whispered. It was an uncomfortable realization. She knew Kuvira's story. No one had told the young captain to fix Ba Sing Se. She hadn't sat around Zaofu waiting for someone to take the place of their leader or arguing with Suyin about her decision to take command. She stepped up. Alone.

Korra's wandering feet had started to pull her away from Kuvira's cell, but that inescapable voice pulled her to a halt. "Be careful, Korra." If she wasn't mistaken, there was a strained hint of genuine concern in Kuvira's quick words. "Even one war can be too much for one person. I did what I had to to keep control. You aren't willing to do that. Don't get in over your head."