Creation began on 06-11-14
Creation ended on 10-05-14
The Legend of Korra
Restoring the Ties
A/N: Takes place a year after the end of the second season, when the world has had time to adjust to the changes of the spirits being allowed to traverse into the mortal realm and humans being allowed to traverse the Spirit World.
Brother Correction channeled cosmic energies from a supernova that occurred in two days' time to restore power to an ancient relic that he had taken from another universe that was abusing its power for greedy purposes. Eventually, he would return this relic to the universe and allow the race it was associated toward to thrive once more.
"Giants made of living metal," he told himself, carefully streamlining the power so that it wouldn't deteriorate the physical properties of its vessel, shaped like a massive cube. "Those that strive for peace and equality will need this power for the benefit of all sentient beings…while those that desire the power for tyranny will never have it."
With a little more effort, he infused the cosmic energies into the object, endowing it with an astronomical source of power until it required another charge. But thanks to his careful manipulations, the beings that drew their life energy and historical roots from the relic wouldn't need to seek a means to do that for at least thirty centuries, ensuring that their power needs wouldn't hinder them for generations to come.
"Okay, now that that's been taken care, it's back to the inventory for you," he expressed, and willed the colossal relic to disappear, being transported back to where he kept the larger talismans that were removed from their worlds to prevent further misuse. "What is next?"
A crystal sphere manifested in front of him in the vastness of space and showed him something that could've warrant his special attention. Within the sphere, he saw a young woman facing a relative of her family that made a faux-Devil's deal with a spiritual being that existed long before human beings did. The woman was the latest in a series of men and women that served as the reincarnations of a young man that had fused with another spiritual being that served to ensure light would shine in the world alongside the darkness represented by the opposing spirit. He then saw the man fuse with the spirit of darkness and separate the woman from the spirit of light…and cause it to disappear by hitting it dozens of time until it couldn't maintain its existence. What occurred moments after its demise was a world where, even if the sun shined, darkness would cover everything for ten-thousand lifetimes until the light returned through the darkness.
He almost thought it to be very bad, until the sphere showed him the hope that existed through the small window of opportunity where the darkness reigned. The woman, encouraged by her instructor who taught her how to harness the gift of the winds (and was her son in a previous life), realized her true strength through an ancient tree and defeated her uncle and the spirit of darkness, restoring light to the world for another ten-thousand lifetimes and restoring the unity between herself and the spirit of light. Unfortunately, however, what her uncle and the spirit of darkness did to the light spirit's connection to those it was connected to in the past, even the restoration of light couldn't undo.
But I could undo it, he thought, seeing how the world was changed with the return of free-wandering spirits and balance between light and darkness in the light's favor. I could restore this severed link because it's a necessity for the future.
Floating amongst the stars, the nigh-divine being began to traverse between the dimensional planes toward his new destination.
-x-
It was a whole year since the Harmonic Convergence occurred. A whole year since the day that was the anniversary of the same day, ten-thousand-one years ago, that Raava, the Spirit of Light and Peace merged with Wan, the original Avatar. While there were peaceful days, Korra, who had long since recovered from her ordeal with the Red Lotus organization, couldn't help but feel hollow with her status as the Avatar reduced by an astronomical degree. She could still bend the elements and energy due to her years of hard work and effort, but she didn't have the ability to tap into the memories and experience of the Avatars that came before her, and the worst of it was that, even if she tried meditation, she couldn't make contact with their spirits; it was as though their spirits no longer existed, despite their history still being known to various degrees.
"Korra," went Tenzin, causing her to cease her training in the traditional art of Airbending (now that she took the time to study the original style), "someone's here to see you."
"Who?" She asked him.
"He says he's not from around here, but he's come a long way to see you."
Korra set down the Air Nomad glider on the ground, the Avatar of the Water Tribes followed her Airbending instructor towards the front of the temple and stopped in front of a man. He appeared to be a young adult, older than herself, dressed in a green shawl and purple trousers. His face was of a similar tone as hers, but his eyes were a primordial darkness that concealed a light that only those with hope could perceive.
"Avatar Korra," the man greeted her with a bow. "Such an honor it is to meet you."
Korra bowed back and then asked for his name.
"Brother Correction, and I've come a long way to see you…and the light spirit known as Raava," he expressed, which caught Korra off her guard.
Not many people of the Four Nations or the United Republic of Nations knew about Raava or her opposite, the dark spirit known as Vaatu. Those that did knew that Vaatu would've driven the world into ten-thousand years of darkness with no hope until Raava returned to balance the darkness at the end of that lengthy period, by which human beings probably wouldn't have been around.
"I'm sorry, but why have you come a long way to see us?" She asked him.
"I'm here…of all places in this world…to restore to you…your link to your past lives, restoring the Avatar's multiple pasts to the individual present." He answered her.
"What?" She gasped.
"But that's not possible," went Tenzin. "The Avatar's link to the past was permanently severed a year ago by the dark spirit Vaatu. The Avatars of the past are no more."
"No, they're not," Brother Correction told him. "The Earth remembers them and the Spirit World was saturated in their presence after they passed away. So long as they existed before, they can never be washed away from the world like the smallest traces of dirt on our skin that is carried by the air when we bathe in water."
"Are you some sort of spirit?" Korra asked.
"Yes…and no," he explained. "The only history that relates to me…is an eternity of undoing past mistakes and trying to ensure such mistakes are never repeated. And severing the Avatar's connection to the past by cutting away the past lives lived…was a grand mistake that had been made. To ensure the past remains alive in the present and the foreseeable future, you and the Avatars of the future need to be reconnected to the past lives lived, and the only way that can be achieved…is for you to reconnect with the spirit of the Avatar that was before your time, Avatar Korra."
"You mean…to restore the connection to the past…I have to reconnect with Aang?" She questioned.
"Simple…yet with its own difficulty," he expressed. "Are you up to traveling to the Spirit World with me? That is where the reconnecting begins…and ends."
Korra's eyes had a different variation of hope in them. It wasn't everyday that you were visited by a man with a tie to the spirits that offered you the chance to restore your connection to your past lives. If there was a chance to reconnect to Aang, Roku, Kyoshi, Kuruk, Yangchen and the others that came after Wan fused with Raava, then how could she say "no" to such an opportunity?
"Would we need to travel to the North or South Pole or to a spiritual place?" She asked him.
"There's no need for such a long journey…when a spiritual setting…is already where we stand," he told her. "Air Nomad Island, created by Avatar Aang himself, soaked in his presence, bathed in his power as the last Avatar of the Air Nomads…is very spiritual. Meditation is all that is needed to enter the Spirit World."
-x-
Tenzin wondered if this Brother Correction could really help Korra in reconnecting with the Avatars of the past by reconnecting with Aang. If so, perhaps he could aid him in entering the Spirit World through meditation.
"You're welcome to join us, Tenzin," Brother Correction offered him, letting the Airbending Master know that he was aware of his presence. "The more, the merrier."
He joined in the meditation…and then, within a few minutes of ignoring the world around them, the three had found themselves in a different environment. It was a dense, forest-like setting filled with vines and a light rain.
"We're here," Brother Correction expressed, and they walked through the forest.
"Um, do you know where Aang is?" Korra asked Brother Correction.
"No," he answered her, "but like any spirit that resides in the Spirit World after a period of time in the mortal realm…and those that aren't around the Spirit World, anymore, an echo, a shadow of their presence, their existence, will always be near…if you know where to look."
"And it's by finding Avatar Aang that Korra's connection to the other Avatars will be restored?" Tenzin had questioned.
"That's right. It's a chain that will work in reverse. If Korra, the current link in the chain that represents the Avatar's connection to the Water Tribes, reconnects with Aang, the previous link's connection to the Air Nomads, the other links, the other Avatars of the other Nations, will follow, reaching back to Wan."
STOMP! A loud series of footsteps came, and the three stood still.
GROWL! Something large and angry came through the trees, revealing itself to be a large, red dragon, looking down at them.
"A dragon spirit?!" Korra gasped; because they had entered the Spirit World through meditation instead of one of the Spirit Portals, neither she or Tenzin could use their bending to defend themselves from any threats.
Brother Correction walked up to the dragon and performed a Fire Nation greeting gesture.
"You're displeased by what happened last year, Firebending Master," he said to the great beast. "You feel a great emptiness within your heart. You miss Roku very much."
"Avatar Roku?" Tenzin asked. "This dragon belongs to Avatar Roku?"
"This is Fang, the animal guide of Avatar Roku, the last known predecessor of the Avatar cycle to hail from the Fire Nation," Brother Correction introduced them.
Fang lowered his head to the three and looked at Korra, feeling some familiarity from her, but couldn't place a fang or talon on how or where.
"You remind him of Roku," Korra was told by Brother Correction. "The spiritual connection is small, but still strong."
Fang then brought his whiskers down to Korra and showed her an image.
FLASH! Korra now stood in front of a large temple atop a mountain, identical to the Southern Air Temple, but in a state of disrepair, like it had been after the Air Nomad Genocide instigated by Fire Lord Sozin over a century ago. Within the courtyard of the temple was a man in the attire of an Air Nomad, but his robes were tattered and his face unkempt. The only thing about him that was unchanged was the blue arrow on his head.
"Aang?" She questioned, but the image of the man faded away. "No! Aang!"
FLASH! She was returned to where she stood in front of Fang, realizing what had occurred.
"What did you see?" Tenzin asked her.
"A temple, maybe the Southern Air Temple," she explained, "and a man was there. I think it was Aang. But he looked different, like he was in a terrible state."
"The cycle of the Avatar still exists, but with the links of the chain scattered, the echoes of the past Avatars deteriorate…until they can't wander freely like before," Brother Correction realized. "Did you see any other details of the temple? Mountains? Trees, maybe?"
Korra thought for a moment and recalled one other detail of the temple.
"There was a large tree," she revealed. "A large, gold and silver tree."
"A gold and silver tree? I think I saw that in a dream once when I was younger," Tenzin expressed, recalling a dream he had when he was fifteen where he saw a gold and silver tree. "I think it represented…the wealth of the world."
"The wealth of the world?" Korra asked.
"Not monetary wealth, but cultural wealth," he explained. "The different directions of knowledge and association that have transcended time for thousands of years."
"We need to find that tree, then," Brother Correction declared.
-x-
"…I wonder how long we've been meditating?" Korra wondered, as they wandered across a large expanse of a canyon.
"Time is an illusion, Avatar Korra," Brother Correction told her. "But…since you asked, it can't have been that long since we got here. Maybe three hours…or even a day or two. I find Air Nomad culture to be therapeutic when it comes to meditation. A person can find calmness for long periods of time without losing focus. Some of the greatest of Airbending monks could meditate for days at a time."
"But there was one guy that developed Airbending abilities after Harmonic Convergence and he abused his abilities every chance he got…and as much as he claimed to respect the culture, he violated one of Airbending's most stressed-out disciplines," Korra told him.
"I'm aware of what he did," he assured her. "All life is sacred, even one as awful and cold as the Earth Queen, may the spirits save her soul. Zaheer will pay the ultimate price for his misdeeds with his final breath, and I promise you that the Earth Kingdom will be restored to its previous state of being before the destruction and anarchy that has plagued it."
"How can the Earth Kingdom be restored to its previous state?" Korra questioned. "The Earth Queen was killed, ending the line of Earth Kingdom rulers."
"There's more to the Earth Monarch than the current lineage. The late Earth King's daughter may be gone, but the ties of blood haven't diminished the fact that there will be a new ruler descended from the same line as her. There is a nephew of hers that will need guidance in order to rule the Earth Nation with a heart his predecessor lacked because of a resentful nature."
"Ceding Earth Kingdom land for the United Republic," went Tenzin.
"It wasn't a change she was comfortable with and took out this resentment on the people, which would help to explain her lack of devotion from the people. She wasn't a person of change or acceptance like her father was. She viewed ceding the lands of the Earth Nation as a sign of weakness, which it wasn't in any way perceived by others. It was more of tolerance and accommodation. Change will occur, whether you want it to or not."
Suddenly, it felt like the air got colder around them.
"Brrr," Korra felt the drop in temperature.
Brother Correction stopped them from going any further, as a large wall appeared in front of them. It seemed to reach high into the sky, breaking through the upper atmosphere and into space. He then placed his right hand on it and closed his eyes.
"It looks like we've reached the base of where Avatar Aang resides," he expressed to them.
Then, he pressed forward and disappeared into the wall.
"Aaahh!" Korra and Tenzin gasped.
Brother Correction then popped his head out of the wall and in front of them.
"It's okay," he assured them. "It's safe to go through. Just be calm."
Tenzin then placed his hands on the wall…and slowly phased through it.
Korra was about to follow suit, but she was unsure whether to believe this stranger or not.
Brother Correction then held out his left hand and said, "Don't give in to fear."
She nodded and accepted his hand, being slowly pulled forward and through the wall, and out onto a grassy field that surrounded the base of a tall mountain. At the peak of it, one could make out what looked like the branches of a large tree.
"Whoa," the current Avatar shuddered at the sight of the mountain that the temple had to be on.
"Please," went a new voice, and the trio saw a young woman with white hair and blue eyes, dressed in a flowing, white dress, "help Aang."
"Princess Yue?" Tenzin asked, recognizing this spiritual being.
"Princess Yue?" Korra questioned. "Of the Northern Water Tribe?"
"Aang's been up there at the temple by himself, in a heavy depression, feeling that his life has lost all meaning," Yue explained, which increased the severity of the current Avatar's need to be reunited with the Avatars of the past. "He won't talk to anyone, and continues to worsen with each passing day."
"That's why we're here," Brother Correction assured her. "Restore the Avatar's connection to the past…and you restore the balance within the chain of Avatars of the past to the present."
They began to climb up the present path toward the Air Temple, which, to them, felt like a harrowing ordeal, mainly due to the cold air.
"I'll never understand how the first Airbenders could live up on mountaintops this cold," Korra expressed, which earned a chuckle from Tenzin.
"Years of Airbending practice," he told her.
"It's not so different from years of experience from living at the Water Tribes," Brother Correction added in. "You get used to it after an extended period of enduring and adjusting."
"Grrrr!" They heard a growling sound, and saw a large bison floating in the cloudy skies above them.
"Oogi?" Tenzin asked, but realized that the bison wasn't his…but an older and larger bison from the past. "Appa!"
It was Aang's Flying Bison, but he looked like he had lost a lot of life in him. His fur was ragged, receding or falling off in large patches, and it looked like he was going blind.
"Oh, no," Korra gasped, not expecting a Flying Bison to look like this.
"This is worse than what I had anticipated," Brother Correction expressed. "We have to hurry."
-x-
The temple that resembled the Southern Air Temple looked as it had when Aang had returned after his century in the iceberg, covered in snow, weeds, and in a state of disrepair. A clear result of being unattended to for one-hundred years by its former inhabitants and left to rot away. But the sight of the gold and silver tree was a sign to the traveling trio that they were getting closer to their goal.
"Can you feel Aang's presence, Korra?" Tenzin asked the young woman.
She approached the statue of an elderly Air Nomad that must've been well-respected like the past Avatars were, and he seemed familiar to her, even though she had never met him before.
"He was here," she revealed, "but then he disappeared. This man's statue… This man was someone Aang cared about as a great friend and teacher."
"Monk Gyatso," Tenzin and Brother Correction explained at the same time.
"Who was he?" Korra asked.
"He was the Airbending instructor in charge of Aang when he was younger," Tenzin explained. "He served as my father's guardian."
"Aang had also revered him as the greatest Airbender of his time, since everything he was able to achieve with his Airbending, he learned from a master he had great respect for." Brother Correction added in. "It was also a sign of how some friendships were so powerful, they were able to transcend more than a single lifetime."
"Because Aang's predecessor, Roku…was a friend of Gyatso," Korra realized.
"That's right."
They separated to search the temple grounds, hoping to find Aang.
"Aang?" Korra called out to him, but didn't get a response from around the Southern Wall of the temple. "Aang, where are you?"
"Father?" Tenzin called out through the empty rooms that used to house the young Air Nomads when they were training. "Father?"
"Avatar Aang?" Brother Correction called, searching around the gold and silver tree. "Avatar Aang? We're here to help you!"
When the three got back together at the door to the temple's sanctuary where the statues of the past Avatars were kept, each one having no luck in finding the man they were looking for.
"This is the last place we haven't searched," went Tenzin, "so that means he must be inside."
"But the gates are closed, accessible by Airbending alone," Brother Correction expressed, and this was something (while he could've done, chose not to when there were two Airbenders present) impossible for him to do.
"I don't know how to use Airbending to open gates yet," Korra sighed.
"I do," Tenzin revealed, and did just that, releasing two streams of wind at the two holes on either side of the gates.
In a matter of seconds, the gates opened, revealing a large room adorned with statues, representing the Avatars of the past. But they had been just as weathered as the temple itself, showing cracks and pieces of their bodies missing, and some were in piles, like they had been shattered where they stood, with only their heads left intact.
"What?!" Korra gasped. "I don't believe this! Not a single one of them is untouched!"
Brother Correction walked over to where the maimed statue of Avatar Roku stood, facing the stone figure that was missing the upper left side of his head, fearing that these statues, representing the incarnations of people that led to the current incarnation that was Korra, were representative of the damage that Raava's connection to each of them had received for each blow from her opposite and his medium, representing the brutal maiming the Avatar Spirit had that needed to be undone. But when he looked to his right, to where a statue of Aang should've resided, he saw nothing there, not even a pile of stone fragments.
"Aang should have a statue of himself right next to Roku over here," he uttered, walking to the empty space. "This temple is being perceived the way…Aang had seen it before the maiming Raava took when her link with him and the others had been severed."
"So, then this is a past setting," went Tenzin, "but it's been devastated because of the maiming."
"Yeah. Come on, Aang. It might be part of your culture to detach yourself from worldly concerns, but as the Avatar, you can't do that…and you shouldn't. That would mean you've detached yourself from the feeling of hope, one of the strongest feelings in existence."
Thud! They looked at the center of the room and saw something had fallen on the ground.
"Brr…" They heard it chirp, revealing that it was an animal of sorts.
Slowly, it moved until it was up on four limbs, barely the size of a Fire Ferret, shaped like a lemur, with white and brown markings and greenish eyes. But unlike the lemurs Korra and Tenzin had seen, this one looked in just as much a state of past its prime as Appa was seen in. And as Korra approached it, a feeling of familiarity took hold of her like it had with Fang and Appa.
"Momo?" She asked, picking up the withering critter.
Momo looked at her, feeling a sense of familiarity with her, and licked her right cheek.
"Eh-heh-heh!" Korra laughed. "It is you, Momo. But…where's Aang?"
The lemur raised its tail up and pointed toward the spires where the other damaged statues were, indicating that the man they were looking for was up there.
"Let's go," she told Tenzin and Correction.
Walking over and past either a damaged statue or a pile of rubble of someone that used to be an Avatar, the trio had gone halfway up the tower that housed these past embodiments of Raava and Wan (of whom they had past a wooden statue of that, unlike its stone successors, remained unchanged).
Clank! Korra had kicked something on the path and looked down at her feet, seeing an older version of the Air Nomads' gliders with its orange wings out.
"Aang?" She called out, seeing something further ahead of the glider, cloaked in the shadows, sitting against the wall. "Aang."
The last Avatar to hail from the Air Nomads looked worse than he did in the vision given by Fang. He looked older, much older than Roku had looked prior to his death, dressed in rags that looked like pieces of Air Nomad clothing, and his face looked withered to where his head hair made him look like Roku with an arrow on his forehead. But what really caught them off their guard were his eyes, which were comparable to the Earthbending Master known as Toph; Aang looked like he had gone blind.
"Father!" Tenzin gasped, shocked to find the spirit of his father in such a state of decrepitude.
But Aang didn't respond to their presence in the slightest degree. It was like the world around him was a silent place. Everything that moved, everyone that spoke…was meaningless to him.
Brother Correction walked over to Aang's left side and picked up his arm.
"Avatar Aang, you can't give up on your role as a link to the past and future. The past and future reside within the eternity that is the present, that is today, right now." He told Aang, but all the past Avatar did was raise his head up, looking away from him. "He won't hear me, not with a damaged spirit. But maybe he'll hear you."
Korra knelt down beside Aang and picked up his right arm.
"Aang, I was told by a stranger that the Avatar of the present could be reconnected with the Avatars of the past," she stated, "but that's hardly the reason for why I'm here right now."
Aang, as if hearing her words just now, slowly turned to face her, revealing that his right eye still had some clarity left in it.
"Why…are you here?" He asked, sounding bitter and depressed.
Korra thought about the reason, really thinking about the reason to why she was here, and answered, "I'm here because I need the guidance of my past lives. All of my past lives. To avoid repeating past actions, the Avatar needs the wisdom of those that came before her, to ensure that balance and peace remains the way it is between the two worlds. People…and spirits that bring disorder, threatening the balance between light and darkness…don't realize how important it is for there to be stability and harmonious co-existence. And…an old friend once told me something that is very true. 'When we hit our lowest point, we are open to the greatest change'."
Aang remembered saying that to a young girl that he met once before, finding her at her lowest point.
"I failed in my duty as the Avatar," he told her. "I severed my link with Roku. We had a falling out due to my inability to deal with the Fire Nation colonials or Fire Lord Zuko."
"As the Avatar…and as an Air Nomad, it was never in your duty to harm others, no matter how much they may try to harm you. You have always tried to solve matters by being quick or clever, using violence as a last resort. You stayed true to your beliefs, even when there were times that things needed to change. Things have changed…but we still need our roots from the past. You're still needed in the world, Aang."
Korra then grabbed the glider and closed it up, handing it to Aang.
He gripped onto it as best he could, feeling a good feeling from doing so.
"Brr," Momo chirped, which caught Aang's attention.
"Momo," he uttered, a small smile forming on his face.
A moment after, the hair on his head fell off, revealing the rest of his arrow tattoos.
-x-
"…It's been four days now," went Jinora, concerned by the fact that her father, Korra and this stranger have been locked in meditation ever since the stranger arrived with the claim that he could help Korra reconnect with her past lives.
She, Meelo, Ikki and their mother were worried that they would be like this for too long, as her experience still had some negativity after the incident with Unalaq and Vaatu, which was why she didn't try entering the Spirit World for an extended period.
Suddenly, their glowing eyes returned to normal.
"Korra?" Pema uttered, as the young woman got up.
"We did it," she responded.
"What do you mean?" Ikki questioned.
"We found Aang," explained Tenzin.
"It was a close call," added Brother Correction, clarifying everything that happened. "When we found Aang, he was about ready to give up. But Korra saved him. The link to the past has been mended."
"Really?" Meelo asked.
"Why don't you show them, Korra?" Correction suggested.
Korra focused on Aang…and then a body of smoke manifested from her and assumed the form of a man in his early-forties, dressed in the same attire as Tenzin, but with a smaller beard.
"Aang?" Pema and Ikki asked.
"Hello, everyone," the spiritual projection of the deceased Air Nomad greeted them.
-x-
Returning to his domain, Brother Correction sat in his wooden throne and recalled the joy of seeing the souls of the past Avatars reconnect with their present incarnation.
First, it was Aang…and then Roku…and Kyoshi, Kuruk, his predecessor, that Avatar's predecessor, all the way back to the original Avatar that was Wan. Each one salvaged from the depths of despair and the abyss of forgotten lives.
"Thank you," he looked up from his throne and saw a young man that appeared to be in his early-twenties, dressed in clothing that seemed to embody the Four Nations before they became the Four Nations in the ancient past.
It was Wan, the very first Avatar, accompanied by the spirit Raava.
"You're welcome, Avatar Wan," he responded, bowing his head to them.
Then, the two spirits disappeared.
"To ensure the future is full of balance, the present must stay connected to the past…for a better world," he told himself, looking through a glass sphere into the world of the Avatar, seeing Korra assisting in the construction of a new Northern Air Temple for the Air Nomads, just as more people with Airbending abilities elected to join the Air Nation to learn the ways of the original Air Nomads.
End
A/N: I feel proud of this story now that I've finished it. I hope that when they progress the final season, that Korra will find a way to reconnect with her past lives. Please, read and review when you read this.