Disclaimer: The Legend of Korra and its characters belong to Bryan Konietzko and Michael DiMartino.
Asami Sato had a story for every scar riddling her body. She could tell you that the small, jagged scar just above her elbow was from being attacked by a dog which inevitably led to her inept fear of dogs. She could describe in detail that the puckered scar on her knee was from a bad fall down the steep drop from a hillside and that she made an unhealthy habit of picking at the stitches. The line of pink that marked her shoulder was the result of a fight she had with a girl who had made a comment about her deceased mother. With some hesitation, she could tell you that the scar on her side was due to a waterbender's bold counterattack shortly before paralysing him with a succession of precisely aimed blows.
She could even tell the very recent story of how she got the gaping wound in her left calf, the result of a skirmish with a rather skilled earthbender. She could recount that, while she tended to rely on shadow, she had foolishly let him lure her into an open area of the Republic City Central Park before striking out and sending a shrapnel-shaped rock soaring towards her. Mournfully, she would add that she barely had the time to dodge and it had dug into her skin, tearing a chunk that was at least two centimetres deep.
As capable as she was to tell the harrowing tales of her life, she preferred to keep everything hush-hush. Though she had leagues of friends from varying backgrounds, not one knew that she was visited by the family doctor every day to patch up her latest wounds. She went through great pains to cover her past, to blanket it in a veil of taught lies and tactical evasion of the truth.
"No one is to know your battles," said the masked man, his voice carrying far and wide in a room of only five dozen. "To fight for equality is to be spat on, to be abused, by the very establishment that has contributed to the deaths of thousands."
And so Asami relentlessly studied the scrolls of non-bending scholars, went through forms until her muscles burned under taut skin, toughed the slice of ice and the burn of fire and the weight of rock on nights when her peers would be sound asleep in their beds. She did it not for herself, but for the fools who wielded powers that never belonged to them.
Asami breathed in sharply as a swab covered in orange paste laid itself thick along the newest gash on her leg. Certainly, that would leave a scar.
Yes, Asami had tales to tell. Very many, in fact. But she voiced none.