Korra realises, soon after she returns to Republic City, that the place never really was the centre of peace and balance after all.
It's all right for the first few nights, when Tenzin allows Korra a few days to settle back into city life—or at least Air Temple Island life, as they decide it's best to keep her arrival secret until they are ready to announce her ability to return bending to the entire city. Korra slips out of her room after evening meals to head barefoot down to the ferry (it's hot now in the spring, hotter than she's ever experienced in the South Pole), and Tenzin lets her go even when she doesn't return until long after hours when the air acolytes in the dormitories have already called a lights out. Sometimes he even watches out the window of the bedroom he shares with Pema and Rohan: two dark figures along the shore, the melding of shadows and the barks of laughter that Korra makes only half-hearted attempts to hide.
Tenzin doesn't even hint to Korra that he knows about her poorly-hidden nighttime walks with Mako on the shore. When Pema asks, Tenzin responds, "The life of the Avatar is never easy, and things will always be changing. For now, she should take in the moments that she can."
(He remembers, even when he was still an airbender in training, how often his father was called out of the South Pole. He remembers, when he was old enough to do so, noticing the shadows under Aang's eyes, the way Katara would touch his cheek and give him a smile Tenzin didn't understand then, urge him every night to come to sleep. He remembers one of the few times he ever heard Aang raise his voice: "Thereisn't a right choice here, Sokka, but I have to make the right one anyway.")
On the day Korra makes her announcement before City Hall, she's nearly bursting with energy, fidgeting as Bei Fong is reinstated as chief of police, turning from camera to camera, voice proud as she proclaims to the city that she will save it and restore the balance that Amon tipped from the scales of Republic life. And for a while, she still feels the the glow of her newfound power, the initial rush of returning the lifeblood to the men and women who lost their bending to Amon, that energy remains; and Tenzin wonders if he was simply too pessimistic, and that Korra is going to be all right.
***
Korra asks to work with Bei Fong.
The decision must have come as a result of her insistence, with Lin's approval, that she return everyone's bending. Some—tellingly, none who had his or her own bending taken—protest when Lightning Bolt Zolt arrives at City Hall, dead-eyed but for a tiny smirk that tugs on his lips when he sees Korra. They cannot arrest him (they have noproof of his crimes even though they know them), and Korra shoves the protests aside and asks Zolt to kneel.
The news that the Avatar gave back a dangerous power to one of the most notorious criminals in the city is all over the headlines the next morning. Despite the easily-given criticism for both her and Bei Fong splashed on every page of the papers, Korra only balls up her morning copy with a derisive "Ha!" and tosses it in the corner of the temple dining hall during her breakfast. The press isn't so quick to dismiss it, though, especially as other triad members take their cue from Zolt to approach her, and begins to label her as "clearly too young and unfamiliar with city life to comprehend the dangers that plague the ordinary citizens of Republic City."
Korra tries to act as though it doesn't affect her—she knows it's only right to return anyone's bending, no matter who the person is or what he or she has done—but her pride is her weak point, as is her duty as the Avatar. "I can and I will protect the people, and I'll show them that," she bursts one night at dinner, and the next morning she's in Bei Fong's office.
And then she grows quieter. Her chatter at mealtimes slows; she spends less time playing with Ikki and Meelo; she eats less; she leaves earlier; she spends more time alone. Tenzin notices this, but he never pushes her to talk to him. Instead, when she returns home in the evening, he gives a firm grip to her shoulder—a squeeze, a silent message of support—and simply tells her with a smile, "You're doing well."
***
She comes home late one evening, too late for Tenzin and his family to wait for her to join them for supper before the food gets cold. They hear her come in, though, when the whole family jumps at a thud that sounds very much like Korra has just kicked a wall. Jinora claps her hands over her mouth, and Pema looks at Tenzin in alarm. He shakes his head, let her be, but doesn't stay to help Pema and Jinora clear the table and dishes when they are finished. Instead Tenzin makes his way down the long, narrow hallways of the house, stopping just outside the thin paper doors of Korra's room when he hears low voices through the walls.
"I didn't know," Korra's saying, "what things were really like. I've been underground with Gommu, I know what you said before, but—there was nothing about that that made it seem really that bad. Not like now."
"Nothings changed," Mako begins, and Korra interrupts, "I know," and though she doesn't say that's exactly why she's so ashamed, even Tenzin can hear that in her voice.
***
The tipping point comes with the turf war.
The end of the Revolution was not the end of poverty or gang life for the triads. There has been time to lick their wounds, to regroup as the city dealt with the aftermath, but they still have no money and life goes on. Old rivalries and territory disputes return slowly, but steadily, to the streets, falling back to the old patterns of the only way of life the triad members have known. It's just skirmishes, at first—only those involved are hurt. As they start to grow, the police can keep them mostly under control, but they cannot be everywhere and they cannot predict every move. The triads know this, and they plan. And eventually they succeed.
Korra makes it on scene in time to stop the flames of the burning buildings on the edge of Dragon Flats Borough—the Agni Kais' work, left uncontrolled—and to clear the area, effectively ending the disaster by presence alone, but she only corners three triad members out of the many that are involved. The police arrive with handcuffs, and as Korra turns her attention to the locals who had been forced out of home, out of shops, in the blaze of the fire and the violence of the fight, she sees the bodies: curled and blistered, or bleeding from the head, or simply flat as though they've fallen asleep, and Avatar Korra is sick on the street.
***
The media splits opinion: some praise the Avatar for interfering before too many lives were taken; others say that it was because of Korra's dealings with Zolt and the other once-bending-less triad leaders that the riot happened at all. Korra doesn't want to comment on either, but she's the Avatar, a public figure who's ended a revolution once before, and she cannot ignore the cameras and pressing questions forever.
The most frequently-asked question is not about social instability or gang motives. It is not about poverty or the kinds of people who join the triads. It is not about hints that might have predicted and prevented the incident at all, and it is certainly not about the unnamed bodies left still on the street. The most frequently-asked question is about bending—an "issue" still, it seems, left unaddressed in the minds of many after Amon's almost-success.
"It wasn't the bending that made them do it!" Korra finally explodes in the police station lobby, and except for the clicks of the cameras the room falls silent. She doesn't continue, though, as they expect her to—she turns on her heel and storms from the room.
***
"Zolt and others like him kill, Avatar," Saikhan says.
"And a knife can't kill?" Korra bites, a finger to his chest as she pushes him, and it's set to get out of control if it isn't for Mako's hand on her shoulder, for Bei Fong's step forward and arm in front of Saikhan.
"You know as well as we do that the Equalists were perfectly capable without their bending—that they just use what they have, as much as we do," Mako says, and he's uncomfortable and short and won't look either earthbender in the eye but he continues. "Triads form because they're poor—it's all they know to do so they caneat," and he clenches his jaw and curls his fingers just a little more tightly around Korra's arm. She looks at him—he's done speaking.
"You want me to keep something that makes them a part of who they are so you can feel like you have a little more control over your city," Korra says to Saikhan. "Well, newsflash, bucko: you're looking at the wrong problems, and as long as I have the power to help anyone, you can't stop me."
"We're not talking about benders any more," Bei Fong says shortly. "We're past Amon and it has nothing to do with what's at hand now. Send Chen to interrogate the triads we pulled in yesterday and increase patrols around the outer south line of the Dragon Flats. That's the end of this discussion."
***
It isn't the end of the discussion for Korra, though. She doesn't return to Air Temple Island that night; instead she goes home with Mako, where she can lie on his couch without speaking while Bolin uses Pabu for his charades that always make her laugh.
"It isn't about the triads for you," Mako says once Bolin has drifted to bed, addressing Korra directly for the first time that day. Korra doesn't look at him, plays with the loose threads on the arm of the brothers' couch, curls her toes over the cool wood floor.
"It is about the triads."
"But it's the claim that bending was the cause that made you snap."
"Because it has nothing to do with it," Korra says loudly, and she shifts in her seat, back stiff as though she's prepared to physically defend herself, and the two lock eyes, unblinking gold on blue, until she drags her gaze away. She still remembers—the empty feeling in her chest, the sense that always something was missing, the way she could no longer feel the heat in her body or the water that constantly reached, reached, even when she was miles from the shore.
Mako doesn't have to ask.
"I want to help," she continues after a silence, "really help, and not just because I'm the only one who can do it. This isn't the kind of place that Aang wanted, not where people can't eat and—and children might watch their parents die on the streets." Her voice quiets, and she watches him, but he does nothing but dip his chin—just a tiny shift into the red scarf that always, always, stays wrapped around his neck.
"I'm turning in a job application to the police department," Mako says, and it's his turn to turn his head, arms crossed over his chest and gaze firmly trained on the ground.
At first Korra says nothing, only stares at him. But then she's crossing the room to slide her arms around his waist, drop her forehead against his arms. "We'll put Republic City back in balance," she promises, "and this time we'll do it right."
Mako curls an arm around her shoulders and presses a cheek to the crown of her head.