Korra shifts on the steps, draws her coat tighter around her shoulders. It doesn't help. The chill is within, ice that has settled in her stomach. She doesn't expect anyone to answer. After all, the house must be haunted now, and people don't like sharing rooms with hated ghosts. But the door swings open anyways, and Korra finds Asami there, looking tired and worn, dark smudges under her eyes. She no longer carries herself with poise, just slumps her shoulders in defeat. Korra is no better. No words are exchanged, Korra simply follows Asami into her mansion. The door shuts with an audible thunk that echoes throughout the foyer, emphasizing just how empty a place this home is now. Or is it a coffin?

Asami leads her through winding hallways and spiral staircases, past any familiar landmarks, pointedly avoiding anything her father's hands had touched. They end up in a forgotten study at the far end of the home. It's dark inside, and the lamp Asami turns on only casts a dim, artificial glow. The bookshelves lining the walls are covered in dust, cobwebs dangle from the ceiling. No one has been here for a very long time, at least, judging by the relative clean of the desk in comparison to the rest of the place, not for the purpose of working.

Asami sits in a plush leather chair behind the desk that seems to swallow her up, and Korra sits across from her. Asami leans down, pulls out a half empty bottle of amber liquid and two glasses, offers her some. Korra accepts. Asami never used to drink, at least not hard liquor. Well, Korra never did either, so times have changed them both. There were a lot of habits they've picked up recently. "This a recent haunt?" Korra asks, as Asami pours out two glasses.

"Recent enough." She hands a glass to Korra, who graciously takes it. "One of few places untouched."

Korra stares at the glass, the amber drink that smells strong up close, and her hands are too big for such a tiny thing. They're foreign to her now, she doesn't recognize them now. They used to be familiar, a part of her body. Now they feel like extensions she never wanted, sometimes she wishes them gone. Korra sneers at the floor, raises the glass to her lips and tips her head back. The alcohol is warm, and she hates the taste, but it burns like liquid fire all down her throat, it's flaming tendrils snaking around her insides and taking root. She understand why Asami has taken habit with this. Maybe the lava will burn her up from inside, a fiery metamorphosis.

"The ferry's don't run this late." Asami says. "How did you end up on my doorstep?"

"One very irritated Sky Bison."

Asami managed a smile, and it was as close to a laugh they'll ever be for a while. "Tenzin may have your head for stealing his bison."

"Maybe not," Korra gave a shrug of her shoulders. "Everyone's been giving me space, free reign to work everything out. I'm a walking plague to them, but at least I don't have to look at them." She sighs, pinches the bridge of her nose. "Tenzin has this wounded look to him. I can see it in his eyes. He's so disappointed in me."

"People will find fault in your heroics if you don't solve problems the way they anticipated."

"What was I supposed to do? I'm not Aang, and he doesn't understand that. I'm am not like his father and I never will be. I did what I had to. Why does he have to look at me that way? My bending is gone, I- I couldn't do what Aang did, I couldn't stop a conflict by taking away his waterbending, I don't know how! Tenzin hates the fact that I am nothing like that previous Avatar, that I could never end this fight with compassion and nonviolence."

"Korra."

Korra smashes the glass on the floor, the liquid splashing up and over her boots. She pushes the chair back with violent force, knocks it over on her way up. "I had nothing!" She slams her hands on the desk, and Asami, to her credit, doesn't flinch. "I couldn't let Amon walk, and I was so mad. I just-" Korra's hands work their way into fists and she pounds on the table once more, sends the bottle of whiskey tipping. "Fuck!" Her forehead hits the desk and she hisses in pain. "I didn't mean to kill him. But when I finally caught him, and I saw him, really saw him, I remembered everything he'd done. What he took from me. I-I snapped." Her nails gouge shallow holes in her palms and she can feel blood welling up from the wounds. "My fists connected with his face over and over and over and when Mako finally pulled me off Amon was dead."

Korra draws a shaky breath, unbidden tears dripping down between her eyes. "I wish I didn't do it. But I wish people stopped treating me like an animal. I can't take it back. I can't even sleep, I see his splintered face every time I try. I've lost everything. I wish everybody stopped punishing me."

"People can be narrow minded. They expected a fairy tale ending, and when one never surfaced, they blamed the person they believed responsible."

"But I tried! I wish I didn't kill him. I wish I could give them all their bending back... I wish I was still the Avatar." Korra looks up. Asami's jaw is clenched, muscles along her neck straining. "Do people blame you?" Korra asks.

Asami scoffs. "The masses will only take out their anger on favored individuals. Many people hated my father for aiding the Equalists and for creating the machines that helped cause so much destruction. They don't look to close at his' unfortunate demise'."

"Mako and Bolin never visit."

"They still believe there was a better option. But they weren't in the pilot's seat. My father tried to kill me, and I acted accordingly. There could have been no other end. One of us was going to be buried that day. I ensured it wasn't me."

"You sound so clinical. You've only ever killed one person, and it was your father. Doesn't that bother you?"

Asami leans back in her chair, sets her glass on the desk. "The man I killed was not my father. I buried him days before. I will not reconcile his actions with the man I once knew. If I separate and quarantine the two, I can manage." She pauses, shoulders slumping. "On good days."

"I never thought it would haunt me. I try to rationalize, he was a bad man, but it doesn't work. Does anything work?" Korra stares at Asami, who always seemed to be so put together. Like she had all the answers to life in the palm of her hand and she was riding the highway through the world.

"Alcohol blurs their faces and cigarettes choke out their voice," Asami offered, voice flat and exhausted. "But I can't get my ghost to go away, and I'm still not sleeping. I don't think I can help you."

"How can you stand to live here?" Korra asks. "I look at the arena and I feel sick."

"Not all the ghosts that reside here are bad," Asami admits, the words a soft sigh. "This is the only place my mother exists, the only place she's touched."

"Oh," is all Korra manages. She misses her own mother sorely, but she still has the same look Tenzin does, as if her very soul has been bruised and battered, every heartbeat an agony when her daughter is near. Her father, at the very least, understands what it's like to take another's life, and that sometimes, in dire circumstance, it is a necessary evil. But Korra won't subject herself to wounded looks. She's not dead, just broken and slowly regenerating.

Asami stands, chair scraping against the hardwood flooring and drawing Korra's attention. "It's rather late," she says, moving around the desk and towards the door. "You should head back if you don't want anyone to notice your absence."

"Wait!" Korra grabs Asami's hand without thinking. It's cold and calloused beneath her fingertips but she clutches it like a lifeline. "Can I-" She clears her throat. "Can I stay the night?"

Asami fixes her with an indecipherable stare. Her eyes are dead, endless stormy green seas that make you feel small and cold in the wake of them. They're the end of everything, the final resting place for eternity itself. Her eyes promise death and a thousand vile things you try to shield yourself from. But Korra has never felt more at home than she does under such a hollow, consuming look. Because she knows, staring back, she is the same.

Asami's nod is almost imperceptible, but it's all the confirmation needed. So they end up on the balcony outside Asami's room, Korra draped in blankets and one of Asami's spare jackets, Asami herself nursing a cigarette, the soft glow blinding against the dark. Korra leans against the railing, the city sprawled out in front of her, alight with artificial orange, a never ending man-made sunset. "Death was so abstract, before," she says. "It always happened somewhere else, to someone else. But now, it's like..."

"It's everywhere." Asami finishes, exhaling smoke. "The air you breathe, the clothes you wear. It's replaced your skin, crawled into your lungs. It's in your bones, so close to your heart, like an old friend. You know it intimately, and the world doesn't seem the same."

Korra rests her head on her arms, chin digging uncomfortably into muscle. Just remembering the whole affair, the blood, the sound of breaking bones, the horrific rage that ran through her veins like disease... She wanted to cry and throw up at the same time. She manages a sigh that has crawled up her throat. "They're keeping an eye out among earthbenders for the next Avatar."

"Will they find one?"

Korra rolls her shoulders, chewing on her lower lip until she tastes copper. It was a thought she'd turned over at night, though she knew the answer, and it was no better than being replaced. "No," Korra answers, after an uncomfortably long silence. "He suppressed my bending, but I'm still, in essence, the Avatar. In order for the cycle to continue, I-" Her throat seizes, cutting off her sentence with an ugly half-sob.

The last words hang, unspoken, in the air. Korra will have to die for the cycle to continue. With her bending gone, the world is essentially without an Avatar, and it's means of balance. The populace doesn't know, not yet. The White Lotus makes sure to assert the lie that another Avatar had been born, and would be found. She doesn't know what will happen when they find out. Riots? Will she be put to death?

An Avatar is expected to protect and guard, in whatever capacity necessary. Korra knows she must die, it's the only solution, and could she talk to her past lives, surely they would say the same. It's for the greater good, a little violence here, one suicide, and the world would begin to right itself, and the new Avatar could be trained. But-

"I don't want to die," Korra whispers. 17 and not even a year outside of the compound, she hadn't even truly lived. The newspapers would make her a martyr, an honorable sacrifice for humanity. They'd spin her tragedy into a tale of hope. But Korra never wanted martyrdom. She only wished to live, even if she lived with insidious guilt.

Asami snuffs out her cigarette on the railing. "Then don't. Don't let them pin this bullshit on you. You gave everything for this city, we can't even understand what it's like to lose your bending. So fuck 'em. You don't owe the world anything, least of all your life."

"It's awfully selfish," Korra says. "Putting my life above everyone else's."

Asami laughs bitterly, the sound resonating in Korra's chest, an odd harmony to her heartbeat. "Honey, we're all selfish here." Asami's gaze flickers briefly towards the city artificially alight in the distance. "It's why we're alive, and they aren't."

XXX

A/N: Who needs happy endings, anyways?