Déjà vu.
Summary:
With the world out of balance, the fading spirits re-order time, and give a second- chance. AU. Korra-centri, pairings decided later.
With panic stifling the air Avatar Aang sat, peacefully among the clamor.
"Is everyone ready to reconsider?" he asked, and the room was silent.
"Your proposal is not something to be taken lightly, Avatar Aang. Time is a delicate force, and to disrupt it-"
"Juji, with all due respect, we have watched time pass. There is nothing left that will save us. Our ties to the world of the living have been severed, and consequently so has our immortality been cut short. If you would prefer our current fate, then let us all sit quietly and watch the world end."
The spirits murmured.
Juji breathed. "No, no," He sighed, and raised his hand, "just this once, it shall be done."
And so it was.
Korra awakens five days before her fire-bending test from a nightmare she can't quite remember. There's something inside her that tells her to delve deeper.
She ignores it, and dresses for breakfast.
The compound is the same as always, but with each step Korra feels unease and eeriness that threatens to overwhelm her. She does her best to avoid human contact after the first few 'hellos' leave something rattling in the back of her mind.
She doesn't each much, because each bite tastes too deliciously familiar for her to handle; instead she goes to find Naga and lightens when her trusty polar-bear dog licks her face.
This time she does her best to ignore the feeling that she has already done this before, because of course she's done this before. Naga has been her best friend since she entered the compound.
There's something insistent about these feelings though, something about everything, and when it follows into the next day, and the next and next, Korra is left feeling slightly paranoid.
The night before her exam Korra meditates.
She's done it before, the White Lotus has struggled with getting her to reach her spiritual self, but this time Korra reaches something.
A flash of fire, a mask, the weight of the word searing through her skull; her heart speeds and then there is a feeling of loss.
A sob breaks through her throat before she has a chance to regain herself, and then for moment, there is Aang, his mouth moving but his words stolen from her deaf ears.
In an instant the feeling of loss blossoms into full on desperation, and Korra's eyes snap open as hot tears trip down her cheeks.
The White Lotus would want to know about her trespass into the beyond, but she doesn't tell a soul. Not even Katara.
That night she dreams of someone telling her to be a blade of grass in the wind. She wakes up frustrated.
The fire-bending exam is easy, or at least it should have been. She's never met either of her opponents, before; she knows she hasn't, because just like her previous exams in water and earth, her teachers have purposely chosen extremely talented strangers.
She almost fails, because of the nagging feeling that she has fought these two men before.
Her teaches whisper about the strangeness of the examination; Korra has always been so confident those three elements, they can't understand the sudden change.
She only really passes when Katara smiles at her "attempt to show control." Those words make the White Lotus members relax, and she passes.
When they tell her that Tenzin will be contacted Korra finds herself sick with tread and guilt and something telling her to put aside some rolls and jerky. She slips some off the dinner table and finds when she feels better when she backs it away.
That night she has a nightmare about pro-bending.
