Author Note: The idea for this story emerged from the Book One commentaries, particularly Bryan's statements about Korra's ego-attachment and how it relates to the unlocking of her airbending and the finale. Truthfully, I had always been fine with the way the season ended but have always struggled to explain to people why I thought it was consistent with the larger spiritual themes of both series. The idea of needing to lose "self" through brokenness is deeply resonant in a number of religious traditions, so I thought I would explore that in story form. I blend Buddhist, Hindu, and Christian references because Bryke tends to do the same. Sorry if that offends anyone.
Chapter 1 - Korra
Korra was flying through the air with fire surging from her fists. The heat of the flames matched the heat of her body, throbbing with life and making the sweat on her body turn to steam in the frigid antarctic air. When she touched the platform, triumphant, pulse still pounding in her ears, she felt the life force reach deep into the ground, into the snow, out toward the sea, up to the sun, connecting her to the elements. She was body and she was earth, and she was fire and water all at once. And she vibrated in harmony with the world around her, relishing the lingering fatigue in her muscles, in her lungs, as she breathlessly cheered, "Three elements down, one to go!"
She clung to the remnants of her own ringing voice as it was joined by the metallic thrum of the United Forces ship, refusing to open her eyes in hopes of returning to sleep and to a time before cities and masks and terror. In some ways, the good dreams were better than the nightmares of hands reaching out in the dark, but to come out of a nightmare is to find relief, whereas to wake up now, facing the grey steel wall of her lonely room in the officer's quarters was to feel the dull fog of reality descend like a heavy curtain. It penetrated her body and wrapped itself around heart.
She wondered how long she had slept this time. The clarity of her senses and the agonizing sharpness of her mind suggested that it had been a while, but her body still felt weighted with a languid, persistent exhaustion. It wasn't pain, exactly. In a sense, it was the opposite of pain, just a dull numbness, a lack of sensation, as if she was reaching out to touch the world through a veil. She remembered their last day on Air Temple Island before setting sail for the South Pole. She had reached to the ground and picked up a handful of dirt, and it was just dirt. It no longer pulsed with energy for her. She had lain her whole body down on the ground, her arms spread on either side, but she feel of it no longer radiated through her nerves, joining its life to the flow of chi within her. The hardest moment so far had been the first time she bathed and realized that the water was just temperature, a substance that cleared the grime and tears from the surface of her skin but went no deeper. It was no different to her than the steel wall next to her bed. Lin, she thought for an awful second, must be in agony in this place, surrounded by metal but unable to feel what made it up, unable to perceive the fragments of earth that once pulsed in tandem with her will and connected her to the world. Korra felt her eyes well up as she curled in on herself and tried to go back to sleep.
What she could feel, of course, was air, but she was new at this. And air is a slippery element. It lacked the substance of earth, the reliable ebb and flow of water, the intensity of fire. If she concentrated, she could feel the air moving through her and with her, but when she tried to gather it in her arms, it glided away. Yet that one fragile thread connecting her to a universe outside brute flesh kept her at least somewhat tethered.
Air had been there for her, though not exactly in her greatest moment of need. She, after all, had already been destroyed. And when she recalled that moment when he was twisted and breaking in front of her, it was like she had been looking at the whole thing from outside her own body. Her mind and her flesh were briefly sundered as she forgot her own helplessness, her fist blazed forward, and something she couldn't name opened.
Realizing that there would be no more sleep, Korra sat up, brushing her feet against the anxious polar bear dog sitting vigil beside her bed. Walking across the room, climbing up on a stool, and looking out the high porthole, she saw icebergs. They would get there today.