A/N: Legend of Korra + pangender + nonbinary woman.

True Spirits

Korra sighed. Though the place she'd chosen was peaceful, though it was quieter than wind, though she could hear her heartbeat and meditate without problems…she still couldn't touch it.

Rising, she padded up the stone path, surrounded by towering bamboo—which was perhaps why she didn't notice Asami until the woman was touching her shoulder.

Korra yelled and leapt sideways.

"You really didn't see me?" Asami laughed.

"What are you…deploying some new trick for being extra quiet and invisible?" Korra asked.

Asami smirked. "No. You're just distracted."

"Yeah." Korra smiled at her. "I am now."

Taking her hand, Asami led her up the path.

"Don't try to use flirting to get out of real conversation," Asami said.

"What did you want to talk about?"

"So…you couldn't contact them?"

Korra stopped.

"I should be able to talk to them on command by now. They're my past lives: they're me. I've done it before. Maybe I just have to be in mortal danger. Maybe because everything is okay right now and the world is more enlightened…"

"Maybe," Asami said.

"But that's not it," Korra said.

She'd been trying for two months. It had turned into a daily ritual, trying to contact past avatars. Not because she needed to, but because she should be able to when she needed to. She could once. And now she couldn't.

She was broken.

Asami sat on a large rock and leaned back. Despite her talk about distractions, the way she stretched put her long body on display. Her bare arms were strong and attractive.

"Maybe taking a break would help," Asami suggested.

"I'm already taking a break," Korra grumbled.

Asami raised an eyebrow.

"Sorry." Korra hung her head and crossed her arms. "Let's go back. I'm hungry."

Asami rose and took a step, but Korra stopped her with a kiss on the cheek.

"I'm sorry for snapping at you," she muttered.

Asami grinned. "Apology accepted."

They headed back hand-in-hand, Asami jumping from one rock to another and eventually getting Korra in on the game. Her spirit seemed less gloomy than she'd been in weeks, but as they neared the edge of the woods, Korra looked up and saw civilization through the trees, men and women walking by. She paused, an ache twisting in her chest.

"What's wrong?" Asami asked, jerked to a halt, their fingers still clasped.

Korra let go of her and stared at the normal people. It was strange. Something swirled at the back of her throat. She wasn't one of them, and it had nothing to do with being the avatar.

"It's just…" Korra clenched her fists. "I should be better than this."

"You're still on about that?" Asami asked, voice sharp. "You don't have to be perfect. In fact, you can't be perfect. You can be upset, and feel those emotions, but don't expect things from yourself that you wouldn't expect of other people."

"But I'm not other people," Korra said darkly. "I feel like a failure of an avatar."

The words caught in her chest and froze in the air, terrifying. She shook her head.

"I refuse to accept this."

In a quiet voice, fingers tapping her lips, Asami said, "Maybe that's the problem."

"That I don't give up?" Korra growled.

"That you refuse to accept your gender."

The silence after that statement was even darker, warmth fleeing the bamboo forest like scared birds. The cold made Korra shudder.

"I admitted it, didn't I?" Korra whispered, expressionless. "I told you I'm not just a woman. I said it aloud."

Asami waited until Korra looked at her before running her eyes pointedly over Korra's body.

"You still dress exclusively in women's clothes. You use female pronouns. You let everyone else think you're a woman and call you a woman. And don't think I haven't noticed how you speak higher-pitched lately in order to sound more feminine."

Choking, Korra put a hand over her mouth. Asami saw her, always saw her. All of her. There wasn't anything she could hide.

"Gods, I'm so self-hating, aren't I?" she whispered, staring at the earth. "How can you still love me like this?"

Asami made a noise of surprise, face appalled.

"How could I not love who you are? I'm not exactly cisgender either. I don't care how you identify."

"I didn't—that's not what I mean," Korra admitted brokenly.

"Oh."

Asami took a deep breath.

"I guess I feel bad for you. I understand; I hated myself too. All those years, I fit into all the female boxes on the outside, and couldn't explain that the inside of me still wasn't a woman. My inner voice was something more than woman. But how do you tell that to people who don't get it?"

"Exactly."

"The answer is, you don't." Asami sliced the air broadly with her hand. "Screw other people, Korra. If they don't know what pangender is, that's their problem. You can explain or not, but it's not your prerogative to make them understand."

"But I'm not even sure that I am," Korra said, her voice wobbling on the edge of desperation.

Asami cocked her head. "Really?"

"I don't mind feminine pronouns."

A pause stretched.

"That's it?"

"If I'm really pangender, I'm supposed to mind! The male, agender, androgynous, trigender, fluid, genderqueer parts of me should mind."

"Pronouns are a tiny part of what it means to be nonbinary—or any gender. They're a small facet of your identity, and maybe for you, the pronouns part belongs to the female part of you. The other parts of you might own other things—maybe the fluid part of you handles your wardrobe, judging from how you used to dress. Your physique definitely belongs to the masculine or androgynous parts of you, because only testosterone fuels that much interest in having the biggest arms out of everyone," she said with a little laugh.

That small sound tugged a smile onto Korra's face, making her hard posture go soft. Reaching across the gap, she hugged Asami, molding into the comforting shape of her body.

"Is that really how it works?" Korra asked against her neck, running fingers through Asami's hair. Asami's arms tightened around her.

"For some people."

"It scares me," she confessed. "My gender does."

"Why?"

"I never know what will surface next. I shoved it all down for so long, because there were wars and political battles to focus on, and in that time, I grew up. Now I'm finding out I don't really know myself. I don't know who I'll become if I let myself be me, and that's terrifying."

"Since when are you afraid of the unknown?" Asami asked softly.

"Since everyone started relying on me."

Pulling away, Asami framed Korra's face with her palms.

"I won't say people don't rely on you, because that would be lying. But you have two—and only two—choices. Either you maintain the status quo for others' sakes, or you keep your soul from dying. There's no middle ground."

At Korra's wide, shocked gaze, Asami's tone lightened a little.

"I personally want you to choose your soul," she said, smiling, "because I love you, and I can't stand seeing your spirit dying like this. I also think that people will learn to deal with change; and people and situations change anyway, so you can't know that they'll still rely on you the same way in a year or a decade.

"But some people take the first choice: for them, faithfulness is all-important. They choose to sacrifice the source of their passion for the object of that passion. Sacrifice themselves for others. For them, it's worth it. There isn't a right or wrong choice: just two hard choices."

Korra wiped her face, not that she'd been crying, but she could feel the emotion pounding under the skin, and reached out to play with Asami's hair again.

"I can't believe we got here from talking about avatar issues," she chuckled.

"It's related," Asami said, though she smiled. "I think if you choose others over yourself, you'll still be able to help and support them, but you won't be able to contact your past lives. Maybe you have to be comfortable in your own soul in order to follow the thread of reincarnation."

"Yeah." Korra's hand dropped to her side. "Probably."

When she glanced at the street again, she saw the people, a blur of life out past the trees. Every person was a different color and speed of movement.

Turning, she headed back toward the ancient shrine where she'd spent her morning.

"What are you doing?" Asami asked.

"Come with me," Korra said. "I'm trying again."

When they reached the flat stone space around the shrine, they sat down leaning against one of the spirit lanterns, not in a meditative pose, not sitting primly in the middle of the circle: just relaxing side-by-side.

With Asami pressed against her, Korra closed her eyes and drifted into the space she'd once had so much trouble finding. Now she had no problem getting there, but the space was empty. Nothing but her mind.

I'm me.

When she reached for them, they were there: Aang, Roku, Kyoshi…on and on. The space inside Korra expanded: she was all of them, and she was more than them; she was every avatar yet to come, and she was also just her, Korra of the Southern Water Tribe, all genders.

Hi again, she said, smiling. Were any of you like me?

A/N: Not my best writing hehe, but I love these two, and I love the idea of them being nonbinary even more.

Nonbinary people can use binary pronouns. Your identity is still valid. xoxo