You are the loneliest number

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Disclaimer: I do not own Avatar: The Last Airbender or The Legend of Korra. They belong to Bryan Konietzko and Michael Dante DiMartino, and Nickelodeon Studios.


For A. Who went through hell week with me.


"Run when you can, walk if you have to, crawl if you must; just never give up." - Dean Karnazes

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Family

"Children of adversity! You are all children of adversity!"

Korra drags her litter through the sand as the waves gnaw at her bleeding heels. The long straps of her harness have chapped her shoulders raw. Sometimes a breaker comes in at her abdomen and lifts her off her feet. As she walks her footprints create crescents creased with crimson.

She sees nothing ahead but the curve of the shore, treeless. The surf washes diamond-studded water up its gentle slope, like beads of sweat on an elbow.

"The reason why you're here, even if you don't know it, is simple: you've been born of adversity! You've been screwed from day one – by parents, by lovers, by fate!"

She doesn't know how long she has been limping with her litter. She doesn't dare look back. If she does, she might see that the leather straps have long gone and she's dragging nothing dead weight – rucking nothing but her ghosts for thousands of clicks.

"You have no family except your ghosts! Your ghosts welcome you! Embrace them!"

"I'm have a loving family and friends," Korra intones with each her breath. "They are in the South Pole and in Republic City. I have no ghosts."

Someone laughs: "And yet here you are."


Competition

Before, there were others. At least this is what she recalls.

"What's the matter with you? Can't you kids be happy with a day at the beach?"

There were others, she's sure of it. Young men and women like her humping their sleds and stretchers through the water, walking along with her to a common target somewhere down the coast. She can remember some of them: a lot of Water tribespeople, an airbender with a braille of ache above the arch of his nose, a gaggle of firebenders who sang as they hauled their loads.

There was an earthbender girl who kept pace with her. She had a green gangrenous scarf wrapped backwards around her throat like a noose. She can't remember her face or how she looked like. She just knows she did exist because they led, one and two, or two and one, nothing but wrinkled water from the waves before them.

"Why the long face, sweetheart? Is this day at the beach too hard for you?"

Then, it's just her. No echoing footfalls in the chalky mush. No recoil from exhausted lungs save her own.

Just her and a voice from behind her ear, saying: "We're going to make you wish you weren't alone."


Animal companion(s)

The sun sets, an egg yolk dropping into the sea. Evening turns everything watercolour. Still the eternal drag and pull of the waves, the shuffling echo of the suicidal drift smashing into the coast, remains.

Soon the thin blade of the moon appears in the shifting clouds, hanging over her head.

"Keep up! You don't want to get shark attacked."

She walks and walks. The tide comes in, feasting on her balance. Flotsam spreads across her path like hundreds of beached, incandescent jellyfish. Then, scales scrub against her cheek. A hand reaches out and pulls her into the sea.

"Get up! Get up! Do you want to be shark meat?"

She scrambles up the incline of the shore, running her busted knees onto a blind jag of rocks. She sees by the pale light of the moon a beach dotted with wreckage. A flaming wing of a downed airship, severed hulls of Water Tribe ships, the bloated islands of drowned men. She wants to run back into the water. But she feels the clammy press of scabbed fingers on her legs. The litter won't budge.

So she forces herself to look back. Halfway through the turn, she sees someone rising out of the incoming waves. A person, chain coiled around her arm like a bracelet. Her eyes bloom in the dark.

In her ear, a whisper: "Too slow. The sharks are here."


Colours

"I'm the Avatar. I stand for balance and justice. I stand for –"

"Stand up, trainee!"

Sand floods her gums. She washes it with seawater and nothing but muddy blood comes out. She rights the litter and re-fastens her harness. The orange horizon line looks like an incision across the earth. She breathes. The cool morning air envelopes her. She's made it through another night.

Fog storms the beach. The shoreline fades into grey. As sunshine lightens the cobalt landscape, she sees, for the first time, a dollop of vegetation, a stand of green palms. She's unsure if it's a mirage or she's actually making progress. So she hitches the litter once again and moves. She tries to think about the simple things: one foot in front of another.

"I don't see you putting enough effort!"

"I don't need to convince you," she says.

"Then give up."

She stops. She wants to respond but she knows better. The sky above is azure to the point of shattering and the dots of green have become a cluster. If she looks hard she can even she necklaces of fat red fruit. And far, far away, tracing the outline of where sea meets land, a black blip blinks, the beacon that she knows is her destination.

"Nope. Nice try."

She locks her swollen shoulders and hauls her litter forward.

Then, the voice again: "You actually think you're making progress, aren't you?

"Pathetic."


Water

Even the trees fall away. Smudges of green reappear and then vanish behind her. The sun stalks her, its predatory trajectory beating down on her head. Bursts of fiery wind slap her face. Everything turns yellow and liquid.

It's not long before shadows start to stain the sand.

"You think it's over?"

"You think we'll let you off so easily?"

On the incline leading into the water, she sees the forms of her old instructors. The firebending teacher with his one-eye, the earthbending master from Ba Sing Se, the elder from the Southern Water Tribe wilds who taught her how to form tsunamis. They surround her and she knows she's going to get hell.

"Drop," one of them orders. She can't tell whom.

She does because she's in no condition to disobey. She falls. To her knees, and onto her left cheek right there in the sand. She doesn't care if the currents come and bear her away.

Fingers scrubbed raw begin to tug at her ankle.

"You're nothing but a worm."

But a worm can still inch and she digs her way forward, avoiding the leeching touch. With each breaking swash, seawater slashes across her vision, pooling sand every exposed surface of her prone form. A big one comes in, and blows the sound out from her ears.

Then a fourth image: Tenzin, his face a compass of black eyes and inflamed tissue. It hurts to even look at him.

"Tenzin," she says.

"Get up," he says. "Get up!"

When she's on her knees, his voice comes, like a load of water over her head.

"You couldn't help me. You can't even help yourself."


Character (Not giving up)

The dark smear twitches in the wavy heat. It recedes and nears, and then falls back again. She isn't sure if she's hallucinating. But as she closes the distance, the black shape becomes more distinct. It's not a ship or a pier like she thought.

She's close enough to see waves crest and slam into the breakwater, spraying water into the air. With the falling sun in her face she closes her eyes and humps the litter onward. When she forces her eyes into the dying light, she thinks she sees someone sitting on the breakwater. For a brief moment, adrenaline swirls in her head. She's seeing someone other than the ghosts, sharks and corpses that –

"Loneliness sucks, doesn't it?"

"Get lost."

"I've been here all this while and I'm not going away."

"I don't need you. I'm the –"

"Keep thinking you're special, snowflake."

She struggles. The flushing tides in the wake of the breakwater lure her deeper. When she finally touches the lower edge of the breakwater, she tries to find purchase on the rocks. Out to sea, there's nothing but moonlight-gilded waves slicing in like shark's fins.

Fuzzy in the bruised darkness is someone seated, face turned into the wind. She calls up to it.

"Hello? Are you there?"

Then something drops into the water.

A chain.

When she looks up again, she sees that same monstrous shadow, her eyes brighter than stars, the chain a sinuous snake twisting and unravelling in her arms.

"Stay away!"

She kicks, lets go of the breakwater. Her feet can't find solid ground. She sinks. Hands fasten around her ankle, waist and arms, pulling her under. Water smothers her. A hand paws at her neck. The shadow from above wades into the water. The chain becomes an anchor, and she is falling deeper, deeper.

Then the hot breath of her shadow right at her neck: "Say hello to the sharks for me."

"Say hello to them yourself!"

She throws an elbow behind. She moves her feet and pounds the water underneath her feet until she inhales sweet air.

As the hands creep around her legs again she kicks in reply. She'll kick all night if she has to. Until she's free.


Badass (Avatar)

"Korra?"

"You did it."

The beery foam of the surf licks her face. From the brightness she knows it's morning, but she doesn't want to open her eyes. She doesn't want to suffer through another day carrying her burdens along this endless marine border between –

"Come on, Korra!"

Her eyes open. She knows that voice. She blinks to brush sleep from her eyes. Sand and water spiders her eyebrows and when she tries to rub them off, she gets more sand on her face.

Before her the coastline continues. The ruffle of eternally landward waves and the shift of dunes bleached white in the morning sun. She feels the weight of the harness. She tugs at them and her weary body strokes to life. That voice, she thinks. And so she breaks her own rule and turns behind.

The litter's intact. But there's a person on the breakwater. In the light, she looks like someone she knows. Senna on the day she left her home for Republic City, or Bolin on her first date. When she swipes at her eyes with her arm, it's Mako after they've beaten Amon and Tenzin, his face pink and clean, after she's learnt to airbend.

"You're real right?"

The person dismounts the breakwater and walks to her. She's Asami on the night of Jinora's tattooing. She's Asami with a hundred thousand words spilling like squid ink from her fingertips. She's Asami with Raava rising from behind, her face a halo of white light.

When all the words have fallen away and dissolved into the sea, Asami kneels. Korra feels her hand on her shoulder. Flesh against flesh, contact that isn't water, sand or shark.

"Get up, Korra." She says

"Asami?."

"Let's go, Avatar Korra."

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end


NOTES:

Icon Credit: #63 by glass_sylph on karlsefni on LJ

This was written for Korra Appreciation Week 2015, which had a set of seven prompts (all used above) that ran from 8-14 Feb.

There is a theory, widely accepted by the armed forces in my country, that if you push a person through enough pain and hardship, he/she accepts agony as divine. The trick is to then find the exact sweet spot: the moment when weariness becomes something to be savoured.

This is how I viewed the very profound episode 'Korra Alone' in Book 4. Some people view PTSD, others see Korra facing her demons. But above that, I see Korra taking on pain and defeat to the point she's impervious to it and rises above everything.

Thanks for reading! Feedback is certainly appreciated.