Disclaimer: I own nothing.
KorraxLin
Set post LoK season finale. AU
The fight Tenzin and Chief...ex-Chief Beifong were having about her training had come to a head when Beifong had called Tenzin a "hardheaded Airbender". Only, this third time it was specifically in rebuttal for having her do an exercise she had clearly honed elsewhere—the Pro-Bending ring, the fights with the Equalists.
Korra wondered if they knew that she could hear them. Going through the gates required her legs, eyes, and general coordination—not her ears. And even she didn't require all of those things at full strength for her old friends, the airbending gates. Not that she was bragging, but she wasn't bad for an Waterbender and she had been particularly untouchable for the last couple of days.
She went around one particular gate a few times and emerged on the other side, no worse for wear, her breath coming out of her mouth in puffs.
"Have you not been involved in some of the same fights she's been, Tenzin? Are we not watching the same person?"
At least Chief...ex-Chief Beifong was on her side for a change.
"I know you won't understand, Lin, but this exercise is very important for Korra's progression. She has shown vast improvement in learning the movement and agility that Airbending requires of a user. Not only that, she exudes a lot of newfound dedication to learning what the exercise has to offer."
"In no way am I contesting the growth of her skills; I've seen them...but you're sure that her dedication is only because her skills have grown with experience and practice, and not her also thinking that if she doesn't come up to us and complain about something she's pretty much showing us she's perfected, you'll finally move on and give her a new challenge?"
She didn't hear Tenzin say anything, but she knew him well enough to imagine the disapproving glance he was giving her. Her eyes stole a quick glance at the two to find them walking over to her and she went back to the pose she had been doing for the last hour: muscles taut, gaze focused and calm, stance crouched to jump through the fray once more.
"Korra."
Thank Spirits she could get out of that; she was still sore. She straightened up. "Oh...hey, Tenzin!"
"Take a break, please. There is something important I would like to say." He cleared his throat importantly. "Since adopting the training regime I've created for you, you have shown a great amount of growth and progress. And I am not only referring to your physical improvement, but in harnessing the patience and clear-headedness the exercise required of you."
"Thanks."
"It because of this improvement and Lin's evaluation of your skills that I have, just now, decided that..."
"Yes?" She leaned forward a bit in anticipation.
"...that you have reaped all that the airbending gates have to offer you..."
"...Yes?"
"...and it is in your best interest as a growing avatar that I..."
"Yes?" She didn't understand why he was drawing out this part.
"declare this stage of your training finished. And allow you to move unto the next."
"YES! YES! YES! WHOO-HOO!" After their first night on the docks when he had allowed her to stay, it took her a lot to make her pick up her guardian, but her trainer had just given her a reason. "Thankyouthankyouthankyou!" She began to twirl them around in a poorly-learned waltz, not really caring that there was someone else witnessing her do so.
"Yes. You're welcome. Now, if you would like to put me down, I can introduce the next step to you...Alright," he brushed back his shawl, "as you're aware, the first stage of your training has been learning Airbender movements. This is strongly influenced by you feeling the wind as it blows towards or away from you.
"The next stage involves you learning to distinguish which wind currents, if any, are of use to you. And the way you will learn this skill is by learning to listen to the wind."
Lin's eyebrow rose.
"Listening...to...the wind?" Korra echoed confusedly. "But I can already hear the wind just fine."
"Hearing the wind and listening to it are two differing actions. When you hear it, you are receptive to many different currents and breezes all at once. However, listening enables you to distinguish which current or breeze is useful to you in airbending. It is much like listening to music—when you hear a song, you hear it as a complete thing; but when you listen closely, you are able to hear specific, lyrics or instruments and to the trained ear, those instruments are classified by loudness or harmony.
"Listening to the wind and learning to understand which currents are the most powerful or which have the ability to blend into a more powerful force, enables you adjust your movements to carry the air towards you or strengthen the air around you." He took a calming breath and his eyes closed. His hands moved in position. "For example, the wind in the trees is stronger than the little breezes around us now..."
Korra couldn't really hear or feel either. There was virtually no wind today, just dry and humid. They wouldn't even get snow until next week.
"...but the little breezes can be blended into a current that is just as strong as the ones in the trees. Combine that with the movements you learn, you can make a move that helps you gather those breezes." He spun in a circle and a gust of wind spun around him and he pushed it towards the trees, the branches and leaves titling away as if they were maneuvering to escape the sudden assault.
"This will be harder because listening to the wind is not a natural movement for you, but I believe that once you learn how to do so, you will be able to adapt the skill quite quickly. But for the moment, take a quick break and come back here. I will be escorting Lin to the docks."
"It is best if you initially practice this exercise by mediating in the forest where the wind can be heard best. Try to find the current or currents closest to you. Listen to the sound each of them make..."
Those had been Tenzin's instructions after lunch. And she had been following them. And she could feel them...all around her, mixing and swirling around her.
The one in that tree isn't as strong as the one in that tree and that tree isn't really moving because, she opened an eye and peeked around her, because of that building...which was outside of the vicinity she was supposed to be listening to. She groaned.
There's one by the airbending gates, one of them is creaking—"No. No, no, no. The wind near me."
She inhaled and exhaled under the canopy of shade they made, ignoring the snow that was soaking her butt little by little. The tree on my right, the tree on my right...The bush? The bush beside me?—Blue eyes opened and hopeful to have gotten it on the first try (...okay, fine—she hoped to get it before the day was done), that when a lemur popped out, she screamed a little, surprised and gave it a dirty look. And it gave a screech of its own before running up a tree to take flight, gaining altitude over her head.
That was probably the current closest to her, but of course she certainly couldn't use it now that it was flying away from her.
Her teeth clenched in frustration. Once again, when she thought she was one more step closer to being a master Airbender, it was like she had taken a step back. She had been at this for what? An hour?
How could she listen to each separate current swirling around her, let alone find the one that she was supposed to be looking for?
And beside the obvious, why did she even have to do this? These were baby steps, especially when she remembered that she was fully capable of bending air and had done so when she had called forth The Avatar State. It had been scary; the most desperate part of her had watched herself outside of herself—the stage shaking and blowing apart around her and under her and she remembered seeing the flag with Amon's image rip apart from whatever was tying it down and she remembered shooting fire forth and it burning and she remembered the men the Equalists and the soldiers that had been abducted with her and Mako trying to push against her and them falling away and she remembered seeing Amon trying to reach her and her flicking her finger her finger and him flying away at the current no no no the hurricane she sent him and she remembered her body and hands twisting around her and her bending everything around her that had an element and sending it to anyone who dared to touch her and she remembered air and the rainwater she had bent into tiny ice daggers swirling around her like a coil—
She shook the thoughts away, the snapshots and kaleidoscope of memories that served as reminders that rested in the corners of her mind. She was doing this because she had time. She was frayed, and had only been healed for a week, but in a position to go into her training more and to be better.
Amon had been hurt; she remembered slamming him against one of the broken stage beams and him holding his sides. The Lieutenant picking him up. He was resting his broken ribs somewhere and in her dreams, she knew he was binding his time, trying to heal. The police hadn't found him yet, and they had lost so many in the process...but not to energybending.
No, it was a much simpler, brutal, and more horrible loss than that.
He wasn't holding back—as if he had been the first time. And he was getting ready to begin his second assault on Republic City, she knew it to be true, but she had time to learn Airbending, even the tiniest bit.
This was the first step.
She gave one more deep breath, inhale and exhale, and closed her eyes and concentrated on listening.
They're...nowhere. She felt her head shake, stubbornness building up inside of her. It was like the wind had figured out that it was being spied on and decided to move away from her and she knew how stupid that sounded. They're nowhere...not the trees, the gates, those fallen leaves, over Yue Bay. Wait, wait, wait—there's one!
It was the sound of her pissed off breathing.
"ARGH! THIS DOESN'T MAKE ANY SENSE!"
"I thought so."
She opened her eyes to see Beifong walking towards her a case in arm. "May I come in."
As if it made a big difference; if she wanted to come, she'd come in regardless. "...Sure."
The older woman walked over the bushes and settled into the grass with her, not bothered by the specks of light that broke through the entwined branches above head. "I take it the training is not going well thus far."
A dark look passed on the Waterbender's face. "No."
"You wanna share what 'doesn't make sense'?" The older woman settled down unto the hardened and patchy snow across from Korra until their knees touched, no room to really move in the small space. She placed her case on the outside of the diamond they were making.
"I'm just not getting this whole 'listening to wind' thing. It sounds easy and I know that somehow it is easy, but the wind it's just...hard to grasp. It's...a bit too free."
"It iswind. There aren't a lot of instances of it being able to be captured."
"I know. I know what that sounded like, but I just can't get my hands or my mind around it. I don't understand why this is so frustrating—the water is right there; the ground is right here; air is everywhere and I still can't hear it."
"You could always get Tenzin to show you."
"I could...but I know he wouldn't because he'd say that it's better that I do this by myself. Besides, what if it's complicated? Like, what if wind sounds different to different people? Tenzin's doesn't even have to try to listen to different currents of wind because he does it all the time..." She leaned back until she was aware of the shorn branches of the bushes near her head.
Lin's cat eyes stared at the young girl. "Tenzin is a good a teacher and you have learned a lot under him, but sometimes his head really is harder than the dumbest Earthbender I know... I'm no expert on what goes on in your head, but I do know that you're used to using the elements as weapons. You do it for every element except air, and the reason why you might not be able to is because it's hard to at this point is it's hard to think of air as a weapon.
"I've only seen it three times my whole life. Avatar Aang, Tenzin, and..The Kyoshi Warriors."
Korra looked up. "The Kyoshi Warriors? The warriors in The Earth Kingdom's army?"
"The one and the same...When I was first starting on the force, The Earth Kingdom used to send some of their brightest warriors to train under the police department. Officers could pay to participate; I asked for recommendations to participate because I remembered the stories Tenzin's aunt Suki used to tell us about The Kyoshi Warriors and the tools they used. I learned how to use them and when the training was finished and we had the option of paying to keep our weapons, I paid for the fan; it was better than the katana in some ways."
She looked over at Korra and then reached for her case and clicked its clasps open.
It was a little worn with a few scratches on the surfaces, but still...beautiful. Korra could see why Lin kept it; it was all metal, the handles heavier than the flaps themselves. The sound they made as she slowly, gingerly, opened them was similar to hearing swords being pulled out of their sheaths. She stared at the reflection of her face warped in the gold.
"The Kyoshi Warriors, much like the warriors of the past, use the fans in homage to Avatar Kyoshi, who used a fan for airbending herself. And even though none of us Earthbenders and Metalbenders could airbend, my instructor taught us that the fan is used as boomerangs or a way of uiding a warrior's hand when they earthbend, to the point that the earth can be cut in thin lines. And when opened, the edges," Lin touched them gingerly, "have razor-thin blades on them, for cutting an opponent at close range. But the holes are the most important—or at least they're important to you."
"Why is that?"
"The holes in the fans are still kept so the warriors aren't working harder against the wind, but we all learned that if you swung them hard enough, they made these whistling sounds. Eight of the most intense week of half of our lives, and we just became...hyperaware of it. It was good because we knew where all were so we wouldn't cut each other's faces in the beginning, but it was to the point that our final exam had to be done one by one in another section of the academy grounds." She demonstrated to the seventeen-year-old, making a move that weaved the fan around. A series of sharp, disharmonious whistling sounds sliced through the air.
"There's only one reason why I dug it out when I got home this afternoon." Lin looked at Korra silently and tellingly, not finding it important to say anything else to the young girl.
"You...you're giving me this."
"Temporarily. Until you can listen to the wind without it. This means that you'll keep in the condition I'm giving it to you, and it's important that you don't use this all the time—alternate between using it and not using it, and do it often." Lin closed the fan and handed it to her, handle first.
Korra took it, its weight heavy in her hand. "Thank you."
Lin stood. "You're welcome. ...I'm not sure how you'll find a wind today, but...you're a smart girl, Avatar. You'll figure it out." She turned about face and walked out of the space, her boots heavy against the ground as she walked away.
Korra opened the fan again and twisted it until it was parallel to the ground. And settled in the grass with the silent and dry air around her, she waited for the first note to pass through the fan.
The Gift
Inspired from many different things: my anticipation on that season finale (10 episodes Nickelodeon? Really?), that Kyoshi Warrior in the beginning sequence. This was supposed to be part of "Shots of Green, Red, Gold, and Blue, but I didn't get it out long enough to add it, so now it's AU.
I am an avid music fan, so the idea of wind being something that could be heard to an Airbender isn't canon, but I think it's interesting. It was especially important since Korra isn't a born Earthbender; how does Tenzin begin to teach her to manipulate the wind around her?
Voila, an answer to the questions—my answers.