"Do you think she'll be excited to see us?" Senna asked fretfully as she takes up folds of the tattered blanket she was sharing with her hulking bear of a husband into her hands.
"Yes, dear…" Tonraq muttered sleepily.
Senna could literally hear his voice slump over and drift back into slumber but she continued to stare up at the ceiling, her fingers tracing idle patterns on the rough fabric of the blanket. "Oh, I wonder if she's made any friends. I hope she has! Our poor baby hasn't had anyone to play with except for those White Lotus guards her whole life. Do you think she's mastered airbending yet? You know how hot headed she is…"
A grunt was the only thing Tonraq graced his chatterbox of a wife with.
She frowned as she slowly surveyed the scorch marks Korra had left on the ceiling when she had been in a particularly stubborn mood when she was seven. Senna had chased her around the house and cornered her in their bedroom, Korra angrily going down in a blaze of firebending glory before being dragged away for bathtime. "Do you…do you still want to visit Republic City?" she whispered, almost barely audible in the quiet dark of their bedroom.
Her heart literally fell into her stomach as she was met with simple silence and steady breathing. She felt the familiar knotting in her chest as her hand instinctively went to gently pat the spot Korra used to occupy. The headstrong young avatar had a whole separate room to herself when she turned ten. No scratch that, Senna inwardly laughed to herself, their stubborn daughter had insisted, begged, and pleaded that she should have her own room like all the other big girls in the South Pole until finally Tonraq caved and built up a partition. But somehow Senna and Tonraq still woke up every day with their snoring daughter sprawled out on top of them.
It had been so quiet ever since Korra had left for Republic City. The days that had followed that fateful night Korra had suddenly departed from the Southern Water Tribe were filled with awkward, hollow jokes about how they finally would get some peace around the house. But there were times Senna would come across Korra's old torn parka from when she was a child and she had scraped her elbow. Senna had to sit her whiny daughter down and heal her wound since Korra was much too restless to do it herself, much rather preferring to let it scab over and ooh, maybe it'll even leave a scar, man, wouldn't that be cool, mom?
Or she would catch Tonraq eyeing the makeshift spear he had quickly thrown together after Korra had clung to his leg for almost an hour, groveling at his feet to pleeeeease, teach me how to fish like you and all the other fishermen, I promise I won't be a distraction! He had laughed at Korra's futile, angry stabs at the fish until she let out a piercing shriek when she finally caught one.
The whole time, Senna had thought that Korra's catch and release personality had prepared her for this. That Senna wouldn't have to deal with the empty nest syndrome she had seen so many other mothers go through after their little ones had grown up and moved away. Because it was easy for Senna and Tonraq to reel their daughter in before Korra wriggled herself out of their grasp and flung herself back into the big, wide world. It was easy for them to fool themselves into thinking that it was truly this easy. But they ignored how the big, wide world for them was as far as the guards' perimeters allowed their daughter.
So it wasn't fair that Senna had to feel like there was a gaping hole in her chest and in her day to day life. It wasn't fair that Senna had to live in a house that was just the tiniest bit too quiet. It wasn't fair that she wasn't prepared. What would happen when all the fanfare of training the avatar died down? What would happen to them when their daughter left to begin her duties as the avatar? The Order of the White Lotus was well versed in laying down a thoroughly detailed plan for Korra's course of action in her training, centuries upon centuries of lifetimes and experiences dictating her responsibilities. But why wasn't there a set of instructions for what the parents of the avatar were supposed to do next? Who was supposed to remember them once they were left with only memories?
Senna wiped the tears from her eyes and tried to will herself into the comforting arms of sleep.
No one ever cared about the collateral damage.