Disclaimer: There are many things on this earth I do not own, and the Avatar universe is one of them.

Rating: M, soon.

Pairing: Korvira.

A/N: Sorry, all. Let's just say Kuvira and I could both use some coaching in the whole work-life balance thing. There's one more chapter. I'll get it to you ASAP, which might be… Christmas?

"I never thought I would be standing here again."

Clear, cold light reflected off the metal armguards on Kuvira's wrists, the hard plateaus of her shoulder guards, the gleaming cuff on her boots. Wind whirled through the charged crowd and set the great green banners hanging down the face of the Ba Sing Se armory flapping wildly against the granite—fwip fwip fwip fwip fwip. The neat bends of Kuvira's braid, however, seemed immune, only the faint stirring of the hem of her robe and the proud arc of her voice over the assembly marking her as an entity of flesh, not a statue of gilded stone.

Just behind her right shoulder, Korra's throat was tight.

"But I have been given a second chance—and I do not intend to waste it. Welcome, all of you, to an Earth Kingdom reborn. An Earth Kingdom changed; an Earth Kingdom whose borders will be open to all—past citizens, refugees, and immigrants alike. An Earth Kingdom who will set aside its history as a conquering nation, a boundless power of victory and might, and turn instead to a future of peace."

A cheer washed over them, a wall of sound, and Kuvira let it break around her, fade into the distance, before she resumed.

"I cannot begin to say… what it means to be your elected leader. I ruled once before, but the power behind my throne was an empty one, built on the shells of armor and the husks of mecha suits, tools of war that said nothing about our history, our purpose, our pride. To stand here today with the power of your will behind me, I can only now see what it is to be invincible. The strength of this Kingdom is not our armies and our technology, but our people."

Another wave broke over them, but this time, Kuvira spoke directly into the white-capped froth of sound.

"The will of this Kingdom will be heard! We will be respected—respected without the shadow of threat cast by a history of conquest."

The roar rose, eddies of shouts and an undertow of applause and Kuvira stood against it all, a cliff dashing water into spray.

"And this, this is why I can stand before you now, without fear, and give up our armies! Give up our weapons! Give up the empty power of future war!"

Kuvira's hands raised and, behind her, the great stone doors began to open.

"From this day forth, we are a nation of peace!"

Her boot struck the step beneath it and dug deep, twisting right with the screech of metal against rock, and the doors cleaved from the walls as easily as paper, crashing down to either side of the dais, just behind the two rows of world leaders seated there. Korra saw, with no small degree of satisfaction, that Raiko jumped clean out of his chair with an undignified yelp. She had only flinched. A little.

Okay, so maybe more like a side-step away.

Kuvira turned her back on the crowd, facing the gaping wound in the armory wall. Her eyes found Korra and a faint, private smile curled one corner of her lips. Then her hands began to move, slowly at first, turning as though she held the world between them, then faster, arcing left and right as a great clamor began to emerge from the depths of the building before them. Rending squeals and colliding crashes roiled closer and closer to the door, and the city held its breath.

A mass of misshapen metal emerged, so large it scraped the walls as it came through the vacant doorway, held in midair by Kuvira's outstretched hands and trembling, rigid fingers. The size of the conglomerate made it nearly incomprehensible, but not so much that Korra couldn't recognize protruding scraps of mecha suits, fragmented bits of spirit-weapons, uniform buckles and metallic cuffs, dotting and cratering the surface of the man-made meteor.

For a moment, Kuvira looked poised to split the world. Her hands were lost in a wash of blinding sunlight, her feet planted so deep they sunk into the step below. She may as well have been Kyoshi reborn, determined to pry her homeland from its past by whatever force necessary, even rending the earth itself in two.

Then, instead, her wrists twisted delicately. She took a step—toe-first—and turned, the mass spinning with her. She didn't stumble on the wounds she'd left in the armory walkway, dipping the tip of a shining boot in and out of the dents and cracks as precisely as though she walked on ice.

And for five, ten, fifteen seconds—she was dancing.

Korra flashed viscerally back to her first glimpse of a long braid in a metal-petaled flower. Both then and now, she'd been transfixed by the signs of strain channeled into eerie grace. Kuvira was breathing hard, her arms still trembling, lean cords of muscle outlined in the sweat-slick shadow of green cloth between her shoulder blades, but otherwise, she was the picture of composure. Korra's mouth was so dry, she couldn't help but remember the taste of sand.

By the time Kuvira stilled, transformed once again into the unyielding lines and facets of the world-bearer, the earth-render, the Great Uniter, Korra realized she'd forgotten to watch anything but Kuvira herself. Tearing her eyes away from the rapid rise and fall of Kuvira's breath, she saw what appeared to be, at a glance, a gleaming metal kite. As it lowered slowly to the stage behind them both, balanced on curling tendrils of the thinnest steel, Korra realized she now stood before a statue of Raava as tall as the mouth of the armory itself.

Peace and light.

She'd seen something like that once. Over the rise of a dune in a desert. Something that wasn't there.

Korra wiped at her temple with her sleeve.

The mix of metals had resulted in an imperfect shine, the ripples and swirls of darker copper rendering her patterns and ribbing asymmetric and eerie in the cold light, but the silhouette was unmistakable. Artistic visions of Raava were not uncommon in the five nations, though it was only in recent years that ancient carvings and paintings of her spirit form had begun to be recognized for what they were and studied in modern times. It had been so long since Raava walked among them, uncoupled from the Avatar, that Korra doubted many in the crowd would understand the significance of a difference she noticed right away. There, at the center of the widest point where the shadow of Vaatu should linger, lay a golden medallion with four green petals. The green was too dark, the deep forest of the plating from the corporal mecha suits rather than the rare, pure Earth Kingdom jade, but Korra recognized the inlay in an instant as the Kyoshi Medal of Freedom, the greatest military honor of the nation.

Korra shivered. She hadn't been there to witness it in person, the smallest destruction, that spark of treason, but she'd seen Kuvira crush that medal in photographs, heard her declaration of a new Earth Empire on the radio. Two years ago, that medal had been a threat.

She fought to swallow. Peace and light… she repeated to herself. This is a new start. And that? That's a reminder.

A strangled sound to her right made Korra tear her eyes away from the near-impossible feat of artistry and bending towering over them. She scanned the world leaders quickly, looking for trouble.

Instead, to her astonishment, her eyes settled on Su.

Her throat flexed against that sound again. Tears streaked both cheeks.

/

The streets around the steps had devolved into celebration, shop carts and performers appearing to transform the crowd into a festival and liberate the revelers of their pocket change. Korra had an uncomfortable feeling in the pit of her stomach, something pinched and straining behind her ribs, so she'd lasted all of ten minutes in the fray before retreating into the nearest haven, the half-lit emptiness inside the gaping maw they'd left behind.

It was very quiet inside.

The building had been made to house an army, or at least its tools of trade. The great stone walls now stood empty of all but engravings, the floor exposed from front to rear.

Or, almost.

Every fifteen feet or so around the perimeter, a lonely mecha-suit stood, probably just over a dozen in total, with cannisters and uniform guard-plates and piles of broken glass scattered here and there like eggshells.

Korra stepped closer to the nearest mech. It's dead-eyed dome looked just like those that had invaded Republic City two years ago, as shiny and new as the day of the invasion. She gave the wrist joint a light tap, wondering if she'd find platinum, but it felt as malleable under her fingertips as everyday steel. Why had it survived the carnage?

She stepped further into the shadows towards the next suit, frowning. This one looked different, the glass a dull yellow, joints blockier, clunkier. She circled behind it, eyeing the lack of a grappler.

"I was thinking of turning this into a museum."

Korra yelped and whirled, hand half raised to loose a burst of fire before she came face-to-face with Kuvira's unfazed expression and faintly twinkling eyes. Her hands were clasped behind her, feet shoulder-width. Military stance. Professional. Still, as Korra struggled to calm her heartbeat and steady her breathing from half jumping out of her skin, she could sense the amusement radiating from the new president.

"Hasn't anyone told you it's a bad idea to sneak up on the Avatar," she coughed at last, glaring.

Kuvira offered a half-mouthed smile. "Apologies." She stepped closer to the mecha suit, running two gloved fingers along the bend of its metal wrist. "An earlier model. This one may live to see its sixth birthday. We took them over the Kolau Mountains… where the addition of the grappler was conceived."

"Uh-huh." It was a noncommittal sound for information she wasn't sure what to do with. She couldn't read anything in her voice, remote in the wake of her fiery speech, but the words themselves seemed to hum with the controlled ease of the dictator, the tactician. A flash of worry lanced through Korra's gut, the same worry as when she'd first spotted the Kyoshi medal in the face of their new peace emblem.

Kuvira didn't look at her, didn't turn under the intensity of Korra's stare. Instead, she paced ten more steps along the wall, deeper into the bowels of the Armory. She trailed her fingers over the arm of the next suit— "Gaoling. We were welcomed as heroes." —and the next, painted beige, the glass scarred a foggy white by hundreds of hair-thin scrapes and cracks— "The Si Wong Desert. I lost more men there than any city, and not a single drop of blood spilled for it." Her braid swung in the dim light as she shook her head.

Korra trailed cautiously behind, suddenly unsure whose solitude had been interrupted. Should she leave her in her graveyard?

Kuvira had gone quiet. She nearly vanished in the darkness against the back wall, a blur of rippling ink and the occasional flash of silver. When Korra stepped close enough to see her eyes, she found herself under inspection, being weighed by that impenetrable stare. Kuvira quickly turned away.

"I think a museum would be great." She bit her lip, reevaluating the word. "Important."

Kuvira reached towards the last suit in front of her. The old, rusted shell had a few lines of paint on its right breast, an insignia Korra suddenly recognized as the captain's rank in the guard of Zaofu. Korra shivered, and a flicker of something like pain passed over Kuvira's face. Her hand fell back to her side. "I would leave, you know."

Korra frowned. She waited for more words, then asked, "Leave?"

Kuvira waved a gloved hand at nothing. "All of this." She breathed in sharply through her nose. "I meant it when I said I never intended…" She made a strangled sound of frustration that tugged behind Korra's ribs. "This isn't any second chance I'd have asked for. I don't know how to do this. I'm a soldier, a commander, not a face on a coin."

Understanding struck Korra with the shocking, unseen force of a blast of air. This room, these quietly spilled memories of conquest weren't the musings of a dictator over her trophies, but a soldier over her tools, wandering the ruins of her workshop, wondering how she would practice her craft with nothing but shadows and memories.

Without warning, she turned and clasped Korra's forearm tight, grip a step too rough for imploring, a step too light to bruise. Her eyes stabbed into her as surely as the metal strips running up her forearms could have, fierce with a feral light that threatened to overwhelm that always-controlled exterior. "I wanted to say, 'Come with me. Forget this, all of this.' Everyone always on their knees, begging for favor, while they dig their nails in and pry the floor up from under us, hoping to watch us fall." She drew in a deep breath through her nose. "I wanted to say…" She breathed out, slower, less shaky. "I wanted…" Her other hand rose, hesitant, like she was afraid to touch her. Two fingers fluttered against her cheek, a ghostly caress of leather, then fell back to take the hand whose wrist she still held, soft cream against her skin, so supple it bent into every crease of her palm, tough gray over her knuckles, dull beside the silver glint of metal at her wrists. "But I know you would never leave."

"Neither would you."

Kuvira offered a sad smile. "We are a pair, you and I. The Avatar and the Great Uniter." She said her own title like a curse. "Too many people depending on us, too many of them wanting us dead, and we just can't make ourselves stop caring about their lives."

Some part of Korra bristled at the pronouncement, the equivalence, but it faded away at the warmth of Kuvira's gaze. She turned her palm up, twining their fingers. "Someone has to."

Kuvira sighed. She turned back to study her machine, spine stiff, shoulders set, but she didn't let go. "I must have aged twenty years in that cell to say this, but I wish it didn't have to be us."

Korra stared at her in surprise. When she'd first so quietly announced that she'd give it up, it hadn't sounded… real. But this… this did.

She shook her head again. "Don't mind me. I'm… I feel good, Avatar. I feel good about today. Hopeful." Her stare slid sideways again, raking slowly up from their joined hands until she met Korra's eyes. "But I know I'm going to be sitting in meeting rooms and signing papers and listening to squabbles for at least the next three years, dawn to dusk to dawn again. There are no vacation days when the whole world has its eyes on you. You'll have your hands full at the United Republic border, pending any… bigger disasters." She paused. "We've been all tangled up. Ever since that day in the spirit world."

Korra's eyes widened, stunned to hear Kuvira admit something she'd thought of herself, more than once. Even when Kuvira had been locked away and the world moving on without her, those frozen minutes inside the portal they'd ripped open had felt like a beginning, not an end.

"But I think this is where our paths part ways," Kuvira continued. "And I—I'd have liked us to have more time alone."

The low, even rasp of Kuvira's voice slid over Korra's skin as tenderly and impersonally as her gloved fingertips. Korra shivered, suddenly feeling twice as warm as the air. She sucked her bottom lip between her teeth, biting and dragging, like she would find sand if she chafed hard enough. She closed her eyes, admitting with little resistance that she wasn't hoping for sand.

"Me too."

Her words sounded too loud in the cavernous armory. When her eyes opened, Kuvira was right in front of her, had turned as silent as a wish, and Korra reached out, feeling a metal shoulder-guard warm under her fingers as she pulled, feeling Kuvira's gloves slide easily beneath the fringe of hair at the back of her neck, tasting lips—clean, free. Tasting desire.

It was less panicked than their first, less bruising, less rushed. And despite what her dreams had been saying for the last half year… it was so much better without sand. When Kuvira drew back, Korra almost didn't let her go. She put only an inch between them, just enough space for an intent stare and a whispered, "I did try to kill you."

"Why do you keep bringing that up!" Korra sputtered the second her brain absorbed the words.

Kuvira smiled. "Just want to make sure you didn't forget. Last time…"

Korra didn't need the sentenced finished to fill in the gap. Last time, you were asleep on your feet. Last time, I was half dead. Last time, you grabbed me.

Well, this time, they'd both done it. Korra let out a nervous laugh and stepped back, almost tripping over a belt buckle on the ground. She kicked it, sending it scraping across the floor and clunking to a halt between the legs of another mecha. "Not that I usually go around kissing people who try to kill me, but I didn't forget." She shrugged. "It's been two years. A lot changes. Besides…" she added, reaching out, almost touching Kuvira's ribs, but letting her hand drop before she reached the old, healed wound. "I gave as good as I got."

Kuvira's soft smile turned into a smirk. "Almost."

"Hey!" Korra started to protest, then remembered the first beating she'd taken on the clay flats outside Zaofu. She rubbed at her wrist, resisting the urge to look down and make sure a band of metal hadn't wrapped around it while she wasn't looking. "Okay, maybe that's fair." Her cheeks stretched tight into a grin. "I would love a rematch."

Kuvira's gravelly laugh sounded exactly like her old self. "We'll add it to the 'time alone' list, then."

That laugh was dangerous. It made Korra's heart pick up, made her skin break out in goosebumps, and sent a low, teasing heat coiling low in her stomach. It made her restless. "We're alone now, you know…"

Kuvira scoffed, but the smirk stayed. "What, you'd challenge me when I'm less than three weeks off a prison boat?"

"You kicked my ass the day I got back to being the Avatar!"

"You had the Avatar state."

"And you've had nothing to do but pushups for the last two years!"

Korra flinched the second the taunt left her mouth, but Kuvira's smile didn't falter. "Afraid you slacked off in all those meetings, Avatar? Peace treaties making you soft?" She stepped closer, that smooth beige leather rubbing back and forth against the metal at her wrist—a casual, friendly threat.

Korra dropped into a crouch, feeling her grin take over again. She called fire into her palm, just enough to send light dancing over the firm, ready set of Kuvira's jaw and cool, easy gleam in her eyes. "Never."

"Madam President?" A nervous voice and the bark of cleared throat from the entryway shattered the tension.

Korra groaned, closing her fist around the flame as Kuvira snapped to attention, hands clasped behind her back.

The voice continued, "Master Tenzin, President Raiko, and… someone else, I know I've got it, er, right here… definitely wrote… somewh—whoops!"

Korra couldn't make out the face of the man speaking against the backlight from the outside festivities, but she could see a flurry of papers drift down the stairs as he dropped them in every direction.

"Um," he squeaked. "Er… Well… A number of your esteemed guests are waiting to say their goodbyes."

"Thank you," Kuvira called. "I'll be with them in just a moment."

She turned back towards Korra as the man scurried away, scrambling to pick up papers as he went.

"Where'd you find that guy?"

Kuvira let out a truly regretful sigh. "Zhu Li's are once in a life time, aren't they? I'm beginning to think there's no such thing as a good assistant who doesn't want to marry or kill you."

Korra's laugh came from her gut, loud and real, but Kuvira's smile, when it returned, had turned bitter again. "Another time, Avatar?"

The laugh died as quickly as it had come, and Korra couldn't find her own smile. She'd lost it somewhere between the summons of "Madam President" and the realization that Kuvira was probably right. This was the first interruption of many. There would be very few other times for the next several years.

Korra set her jaw.

Unless she did something about it.

"Yes."

She was going to do something about it. Glancing back towards the doorway, she saw no sign of the paper-dropper, so she stepped close again, ignoring the commanding mask that had settled back over Kuvira's face to press a quick, hard kiss against her lips. Still warm. Still here. When she pulled away, Kuvira's smile looked all but real again.

"Soon," Korra said, and meant it.