As the Avatar, Korra's chambers in Republic City are like her office. There isn't much room for secrecy. Whether it's Tenzin or Bolin knocking, there is no time for relaxing.
Her private cabin is another matter. It sits atop the cold peaks like an obdurate warrior, old and rickety. Yet the fires she conjures inside are suitable enough to ward off the cold.
Naga likes it better there. Sure, there aren't the street stalls full of the plump peaches and mangoes she likes, but she has freedom. It reminds them of home.
It's safe.
(Though everything changed when the bloodbending brothers attacked, Korra now thinks, hopelessly amused.)
It hadn't been long after the revolt ended. Alongside Asami, she planned how to stop discrimination against nonbenders, worked with Iroh to rebuild the city. Always having the suspicion that she was too inept. Reluctantly, she never started a relationship with Mako; her duty will always come first.
She and Asami visited the hospital. In her blessed life, Korra removed herself from the pangs of outside problems. Here, they were real and crippling. The people she failed to protect while she chased boys and played probending. A five-year-old with his head bloodily wrapped in bandages, only seeing her out of one green eye.
And there she encountered two unconscious "friends" who almost perished in a "fishing accident." Even with the rise of new technology, there was only so much a healer could do. They couldn't restore limbs or sight, could only lessen the scarring of especially awful wounds. Barring expensive corrective surgeries, it was a hard deal. Nobody else was doused in cold fire when they saw the man with the skin peeling off of his back. They didn't know his face.
"They haven't been conscious for awhile," a nurse says worriedly.
Korra stays after Asami has to depart, pretending to have a figurative bleeding heart. Not that she lacks compassion after speaking to those with sad stories. A sad story here, a sad story there. Tragedies she couldn't prevent.
(Can she correct them?)
There's not much they can do, the doctors say. They'll bandage them up and let them leave when they are able. They don't know their identities, but nameless people stumble in every single day. Hungry, destitute, hoping for a hand that will lift them up like the loan that saved the shoe-shiner with a vision.
When the doctors go elsewhere, leaving this small room as the halls empty, Korra launches into action. She leans over Noatak's shoulder and shakes him, careful not to hit any healing injuries.
"You have two options," she whispers softly in his ear. "I'll tell them who you are—or you can come with me on Naga." Nobody will care when they disappear. As if anyone missed them the first time. To that, Noatak retorts with something uncharacteristically sarcastic about her poor choice of words.