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001.
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When she is a child, she lives in a blur of indigo.
Every night she counts stars tucked beside her father, little hands trying to grasp hold of the velvet sky. Her mother braids dark blue beads into her hair, and Korra gets lost in the intensity of the frosted sea as it crashes against the cliffs.
Somehow, she discovers other colours.
The orange cooking fires spark just a little bit brighter when Korra walks by, and the Earth hums rich secrets into her ears when the spring thaws the ice away from the islands.
Things begin to change, as she is engulfed by these things. Rocks crumble in her grip and water ripples at her command. She's excited by her power, and this is what ends her childhood.
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She is taken away in a blur of shadows, and slowly her world melts away.
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002.
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The compound washes everything away.
White is the colour of loneliness, cold with frost and snow. She feels numb as her teachers drill history and duties and destiny into her skull, trying to change and mould her into something far more superior. Korra begins to wither amongst the grey tiles and white walls, slowly diminishing into shadows.
Katara emerges from a world beyond the compound, snow clinging to her thick grey hair. She has warm smiles and dark skin that is sun kissed, and her words burn bright in the stillness of the compound.
"Ba Sing Se is rumoured to be five thousand years old," she tells Korra at evening, dragging her fingers over the spines of the history textbooks. "It is more of a small country than large city, to be honest."
Her stories burn bright silver, filling Korra with wanderlust and desire.
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For Korra's birthday she receives a map yellowed with age. She spends her evenings tracing over borders and boundaries that make up the world.
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003.
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Fire burns Korra's hands.
She cannot simply control the sheer raw power that bursts at her fingertips, but she drags it to her command anyways.
Her teachers lurk behind her, dragging out her flaws and beating down her into something defenseless.
It leaves wicked burns across her skin, transforming the smooth flesh into something raw and new. It makes her want to scream, but she clenches her teeth and fights.
Korra moves through the motions, pushing out with flames and leaves ashes across the training centre. She dances through the pain, because all that ever matters is that the fire always comes back when she needs them to.
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She could never heal these scars, but part of her never wants to.
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004.
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When she runs away, she doesn't look back.
Her lungs feel as if they're filled with ash and her heart feels heavy like a stone. It doesn't matter though, because the sky is unraveling and the oceans are shrinking. "I am the Avatar." She whispers into Naga's ear, trying to burrow down into the warmth.
She tries to think about her parents, but only remember the way their backs look retreating from the compound. Korra resents them, and that feeling feels unsettled and bleak against her chest.
The sky erupts into yellow and red, and Korra has never seen such colours before in her life.
It looks like freedom, spread out across the heavens and it's never been so beautiful.
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005.
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Frustration is purple.
Wind does not come to her.
Earth rumbles at her call and she has mastered water as a child. Fire burns her up, but wind never comes.
Purple blossoms across her ribcage and makes her feel desperate and weak. Tenzin gives her long stares, and she can see him silently judging her worth by the shadow Aang has left behind.
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006.
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Its early morning when she sinks to the bottom of the bay, a thin layer of air dividing her from the rest.
She's never felt as lonely as she does now, watching Tenzin and his family be a family. Korra can't stop thinking about her home she once had as a child, a mother and father who left her behind and never looked back.
Katara sends her letters often, her looping scrawl covering thick pages front and back. On a rare occasion, her mother writes to her. Her narrow script is sharp and bitter, black ink intense against the white parchment.
when-will-you-come-home and we-hope-you-continue-your-training and we-miss-you-so-much are repeated again and again.
The words taste black and poisonous against her lips.
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007.
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Love is strange.
It makes her heart pound and blood rush, making her cling to words and subtle touches.
Mako brushes by her one day, making her feel so much more aware than she has ever been before.
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000.
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She's five years old when she tumbles down into a bank of snow. She feels like she's drowning, being swallowed amongst all of the sheer whiteness.
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008.
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"Where did you get those scars from?" Mako asks after training, watching her fling water across the walls to wash away the dust.
Korra feels suddenly sharp and rough, aware of her hands. Every scar seems to burn against her skin, and the words turn to ash in her mouth.
Bolin is trying to look over her shoulder to catch a glimpse. "Those look nasty, Korra. Can't you heal them or something?"
She swallows, gazing at her hands. "I'm not a very good healer."
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To be a healer, you need to be smooth. Korra is ragged and violent, pushing at boundaries and trying to discover the world within seconds. She doesn't have the ability to smooth over cuts and burns, mend broken bones and bruised flesh.
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"Is that from fire bending?" Mako's words are sharp, filling up the hollow spaces in Korra. "Is this why you don't fire bend?"
"Yeah."
She feels bright orange, like fire is crawling up her spine. Mako's eyes are golden, and she's never realized how beautiful gold was before.
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Gold is like shooting stars and setting suns, all promises and wishes.
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009.
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War is grey like smoke.
It is clinging to the city, rotting it from the inside out.
She realizes this as the cameras swarm her, being propelled out to the slaughter of words and ink.
She is a horrible Avatar, she realizes, grasping for the right things to say.
Eventually, the words do come, tasting hot and sour.
She challenges, driving each word with rage and determination, trying to pretend she is more than she really is.
Smoke is filling her veins.
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010.
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Korra wants to die.
She wants to flee and runaway, find her way somewhere deep in the North and lose herself to the emptiness of the world beyond civilization.
The city is spiraling down into chaos, each side lashing out wildly.
Fire is eating away at her world, devouring it completely.
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011.
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Katara stops writing.
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012.
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Winter takes over the city.
Tenzin and his family leave, seeking refuge in a shelter made up of an Air Temple. Korra remains, because this is her role-her damn duty. Bolin and Mako stick to her shadow, backing up her wilting force with their own forces. She flings daggers of ice and Bolin rips the ground from beneath the enemy's feet, driving them deep into the caverns of the city. Mako burns away the streets, looking filled with an numbness only she can understand.
They hide in the ruins of buildings, trying to keep themselves from breaking apart. The night is always alive with the sounds of the dying, and the day is always filled with the screaming of the unlucky.
She stops trying to summon the winds, trying to be someone more than she will ever be.
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The skies look like indigo, and the world is becoming shades of blue. For some reason, it looks like a reflection of her childhood, just filled with broken glass and rusted hope.
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"What is this?" Mako is holding an unopened letter. The wax seal looks black against the parchment, and she cannot bear to crack it open.
She takes hold of it and burns it, feeling the fire creep up her wrist.
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013.
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For the longest time, Bolin stops smiling.
Maybe that is what hurts the most about this entire war.
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014.
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Amon holds her by the wrists, pinning her against the rough brick wall. His mask looks hard against the evening sky, and she is exhausted of wars and children soldiers who go running around covered in blood and dust.
"Was there any other outcome?" He asks her, his voice sounding plastic through the mask. "Did you really hope to defy me?"
She thinks about golden eyes.
His grip is crushing her, breaking her bones and making her cry out sharply.
Every breath hurts. There's something terrifying about being just a girl with the weight of everything on her back, and she can feel her spine splintering and feet slide beneath the bulk of her burdens.
Every second feels like an hour, and she can't do anything.
Except burn.
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015.
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The world pools into the ruins, gawking and pointing at the charred remains of their nightmare (hero, the other side might claim) and scream.
It's horrific, his skin blackened and blistered, thick smoke clinging to the walls.
The Avatar is gone, and no one knows how to feels anything.
They fly a white flag when morning comes, the symbol of peace.
Korra watches from the distance, the white flag flapping at her. The white looks angry against the broken windows and burning buildings, and she remembers the compound and her childhood, wrapped up in ice and frost.
She takes off on foot, skin burnt and life a mess.
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She's almost three cities over when she finally staggers into some village, gasping and trying so hard not to die. The occupants surround her, gasping at her bleeding, burnt form. Someone is calling for a healer, for someone who can fix her. Korra wants to simply laugh and tell them that no one can fix her; she's simply too far gone to be fixed. But she can't, because she is too busy screaming.
A hundred hands pick her up so gently, keeping her head up and her spine straight, carrying her into a small blue tent.
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016.
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Water engulfs her.
It swallows her form, a nameless woman dragging it around Korra's near dead form gently. For a while, she becomes the water itself. Colorless and smooth, and she begins to lose her connection to this world.
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By nightfall she is fixed, and by morning she runs away into the nothing.
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017.
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She has a scar on her hip from being rammed up against that brick wall. Her arms are a mess from the fires, scars crawling up over her shoulders. There are deep marks on her back from glass, a monument to the moment when she shoved herself in front of Bolin to keep him safe, to keep him smiling.
She's abstract, covered in her history.
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There is one scar that hurts the most, however.
On her thumb, there is a thin, silvery line.
She'd been fishing with her father when she nicked herself from the lure, and thought she was going to die because she was bleeding. Her father had bandaged then cut and pressed his lips over it, winking.
"Everything is all better, princess." He had told her, his voice filled with a warmth.
All that vanished when the fires began to spark at her touch and the earth had begun to rumble beneath her stride.
She hates herself for missing it.
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018.
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Korra makes her home beneath the sky.
She sleeps in the trees and bathes in the water.
It makes her small, living amongst the vast expanse of silence.
She starts to dream of the days of probending, and afternoons spent loafing in the boys apartment. She thinks about Bolin and his ferret, wondering whatever became of the tiny orange creature. She thinks about Mako and his golden eyes, his rough hand taking her by the wrist.
Korra remembers the time he draped his red scarf around her neck. It had smelt like smoke and peppermint, and it felt like home in a strange way.
Here, she lets herself cry.
She cries for her wasted wreck of a childhood, and the times spent lonely within the compound. Korra remembers the way her parents walked, retreated from the shadow of her prison. She thinks about the time she found Naga, slipping in through the open gate.
White and blue are melting into one another, forming a single colour. Grey.
She remembers the dead in the streets, crashed satomobiles and the constant drone of machines in the sky. She thinks the way the children looked, eyes hungry and burning.
Children shouldn't be soldiers, and they shouldn't have to be the hero either, Korra thinks one morning.
The world has gone to hell, and she's just trying to find herself amongst the wreckage.
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019.
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Mako finds her.
Or, better yet, Mako and Naga finds her. It takes them months to find her, and when they do winter has settled into the woods and she is slowly freezing to death.
"The world's been looking for you." He tells her. She can almost hear I amongst his words.
"I had to clear my mind." Korra tells him, casting a glance over her camp.
She has made a home in the thick branches of the trees, a campfire near the small river. Fish had been hung up to dry, and now Naga is chewing on them, all floppy white ears and big eyes.
"You should have given us a note. Or something."
"There wasn't enough time." There never is enough time in the aftermath.
Suddenly he has his arm tight around her waist, and she can feel the world halt. "I missed you."
"I missed you so much," she whispered, squeezing her eyes shut to keep the tears in. She's cried enough, Korra decides. "I killed him."
"I know." There's nothing he can say to make her feel better, but that's okay. There's nothing she wants him to say.
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020.
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Bolin greets her with a bear hug that almost breaks her back, and she feels like she is drowning in the brightness that makes Bolin Bolin.
They've made a home in Ba Sing Se, an apartment crammed within a thousand apartments. It's tiny, but that's fine. Her entire world has been reduced into three rooms, and she can live with that.
She gives Mako a pair of scissors one day and lets him snip away at her hair, watching the brown locks fall to the ground. It's the lightest she has ever felt.
She pretends afterwards that she doesn't see Mako steal a lock of hair and tie it up with a piece of string.
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She finds it years later, nestled amongst a red scarf and a family photograph.
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She discards her image as the Avatar, and slips into the blessing of a massive city (or small country, Katara once said). She finds work in a factory, and Mako opens up his own food stall in the market place. Bolin teaches earth bending.
They're making their own ways in this life, no longer knotted up by duties and the past.
Mako gives food he doesn't sell to the children on the streets, and Bolin is smiling again.
War hasn't touched Ba Sing Se, and that's what makes it beautiful. Naga lives content amongst the small apartment, lounging upon thick pillows. Every evening she waits for Korra to return, and on those evenings they take off beyond the city.
Mako waits up at night, waiting for the night Korra doesn't return. That night will never return, she thinks to herself as she twists around and waves at him.
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She never stops looking back.
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021.
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They never return to Republic City, because they have nothing to return to.
Korra does not need to exist next to the statue of Avatar Aang, does not need to drown in his massive shadow. Bolin has the shadows of war that he will never escape from, and Mako only has the burnt sprawl of childhood and a maze of streets that he grew up in.
Tenzin returns with his family, a fourth child among the bright orange clan, to try and straighten out the smoking mess Korra has discarded. Lin is plunging herself into the streets, looking older and harder, trying to fix her mother's legacy.
The world is crying for the Avatar, but Korra does not reclaim that lost identity.
Maybe the next one will be better, she imagines, but for now she does not care.
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022.
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It takes Mako months to summon the words, but Korra's known for far longer.
"I love you." He tells her one evening, watching the sunset turn gold.
She thinks of shooting stars and promises.
Her lips curve into a smile, and it's the happiest she's ever been.
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000.
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She's five years old when she tumbles down into a bank of snow. She feels like she's drowning, being swallowed amongst all of the sheer whiteness.
She's eighteen years old when she tumbles into love, and she feels like she is flying, being exalted by golden eyes and rough hands.
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100.
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She's happy.