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"I want to show you something, tomorrow."

Juvenile: Part 2

Her whole life, Korra has always thought that mornings were evil. She understands they are a necessary evil though. It's a new day and another opportunity, but there's no denying how tired and dead she feels when the sun rises every time. But now, she thinks there's a lot more too it and she can't actually wait to wake up tomorrow again. And the next day after that, because this is her first morning back in the human world, with Asami. And the woman lying next to her, with hair spread out in a black sea on the white pillow, is so beautiful that Korra's heart hurts. There's a thought that strikes her and makes her insides boil with excitement. It is that Asami is hers. She can actually go around saying that to people. They've been alone for the longest time, and Korra just can't wait to show off her girl to everyone because, Look, isn't she amazing?! I love her so much.

Asami is so smart. The smartest person Korra knows and it boggles her mind as to why this genius would pick her, and Korra feels so out of the CEO's league. This wealthy woman can have anyone in the world and I'm the one she picks? The tribeswoman settles back into their embrace and gives thanks in the form of a kiss on a flawless forehead. She kisses thanks for everything. That she can walk again (because she isn't still stuck alone in this home and this room, waking up from nightmares). That she's healthy, and she's found the one to love that makes her happy.

The former heiress is vaguely aware of the arm and lips on her skin giving abundant and affectionate attention. She gives no clue that she's awake and revels in the touches, silently letting her stomach flip out of control. She's mine. The goosebumps that grow on her body quickly vanish as she feels the Avatar pull her closer into her own warm body. Asami barely manages to hold back a content hum. How she managed to find someone so awe-inspiring a person as Korra is beyond her. To think she might never have seen this girl again, all that work she buried herself in to forget... It was worth waiting, that's all she needs to think about. The smile on the short-haired girl's face is absolutely endearing and infectious as Asami peeks with one eye up at her Avatar. It's an expression she so badly wanted to see on the soulful face of the broken girl. Even back then, Asami could read Korra's eyes so easily; they were clear and hid nothing. Not even the ash that had replaced Korra's natural essence could block out the raw emotion from her.

The waterbender's blues aren't just a sea; they're also the sky; the shade of rare sapphires pure from the earth; the scorching heat of intensely heated flames; the omnipotence of the spirits when in the Avatar State. Korra is powerful under the glow of the moon and the stars in the night, under the bright light of the sun and comets in the day. In the shine of the Spirit World, or with animals and children of the earth and atmosphere. There's probably not a place in the universe where Korra doesn't feel at home.

But to Korra herself, all those things she never considers, because this is her home. In Asami's arms. She's grateful that Asami was finally willing to open up about herself more than before. Talk about things she never has and needed to let out, about her father and mother and herself. When Asami talked about her childhood, Korra remembered her own.

She was worried about being a failure, a spiritual failure and now look at her (though not to brag).

Asami worried about never seeing Korra again but still admonished the girl about feeling sorry for what other people did to her. Now look at them.

"I haven't told you or anyone about these things, and I don't know why I haven't earlier, but... One of the reasons I never returned was because I saw something. Something–myself, in the Avatar State, and I thought I was going insane... I was terrified."

Asami hugged Korra tighter in the darkness. "It's okay," the Avatar continues. "I'm past it now, and there's the other thing. I still had poison in me and–before you go mad, it's already out. I got it out, and I'm okay. I felt like I could finally return, obviously I still wasn't fine but... I just thought the world didn't really need me anymore, like I've done my purpose and I could just... die. Whenever I felt like that–when I lost my purpose during those three years, you gave me one. I had someplace to return. I was afraid of being a burden to you all while you helped rebuild the world after I had just left it. I didn't know I'd be one either way with how I hurt you."

Asami listened just as patiently as Korra had when she talked about herself as an invisible child growing up. Then, she spoke. "Korra, I will never stop telling you that I don't hold anything against you, it's more towards the people who held you from me. And, you wouldn't have been a burden to us when we were 'rebuilding' the world, because we just helped build upon the changes you already made. These changes you made to make the world a better place." There was a pause. A deep breath.

"Sami?"

"When you were at your absolute lowest... If you really worried about the world being better of without you, then maybe the world doesn't deserve you. You just keep giving and people keep taking. It just made me so mad and I wanted to give back. I couldn't help but feel slightly hurt that you wouldn't let me come with you, but I pushed past it for you and instead promised to make the city a better place. Now I know that's exactly what you wanted me to do, but my greatest wish was that you would've been there to see it."

Korra admires Asami for being a nonbender; she doesn't know how the woman does it because it was horrible to lose her bending before. Asami had explained that she was just born without it so she never really knew what she missed. She's capable of building cars and cities and inventions without it, and bending might even have distracted or been in the way of her destiny. It makes Korra think that she never really knew her past lives, so it isn't as bad without them (even though it was painful to lose them). She's proven, just like Asami, that she doesn't need them anyways. Maybe they would've even been in they way.

The current Avatar's achievements are never recognized, it seems. Not like Asami's were everyone praises her for fixing their destroyed city while blaming Korra. It's like people put the two against each other. So that's why the businesswoman went out of her way to build a statue in honor of her friend (it probably isn't standing anymore, though). The Avatar is supposed to be this all-knowing god who has the solution to everything, yet Korra doesn't seem to be revered like that, or even respected. The Avatar isn't allowed to make mistakes, and Korra has unfortunately made many of great consequence. People make the mistake of thinking that Korra isn't human.

Just like Republic City keeps getting attacked and threatened for its significance, Korra as the Avatar will too. Korra lives her life like every day is her last because it may very well be. She knows it's better this way than to live in fear of what might be and regret what already has happened. Also, it's just in her personality, and that scares Asami because she doesn't want Korra to get hurt anymore.

The older woman keeps thinking that if the people actually knew Korra – the real Korra and not Avatar Korra – then Asami knows no one could hate the girl.

The Avatar keeps thinking that If everyone knew Asami – not just the rich, genius business tycoon and engineer/daughter of Hiroshi Sato – then no one could stop loving her.

The fact that they understand each other so well might not actually be a compliment. It just means they've both been through too much.

Korra couldn't have loved Asami before she loved herself.

"Good morning."

Asami cracks open her eyes. "How did you know I was awake?"

"You were practically purring under there," Korra smiles.

"And how do you know that wasn't snoring?"

"You don't."

The city-girl can feel the winter landscape chill her to the core. It bites her bones and makes them rattle as she clings to the Avatar for warmth. It's a chance to breathe in the scent that has become familiar to her as Korra. They gallop in clear sun through tundra on the back of Naga. The animal guide's muscle and tendons are strong under thick, pale fur. It thrills the engineer, making her giddy, excited, and afraid, all at the same time. Not much different from driving a satomobile, only she has no control over the direction. Huge front-paws take most of the force from the smaller back ones as this arctic beast pulverizes the snow beneath in a grinding halt. The tribal woman disembarks, taking a freezing woman with her. Asami's gloved hands get cradled in Korra's only lightly-covered ones, and begin to heat up when they feel the effects of firebending. She stops shivering. We're here, Korra's eyes tell her, as if the massive compound doors with a White Lotus seal don't speak for themselves. Naga is thrown a treat behind her back as the engineer inspects massive walls made to keep something dangerous out, or in. Korra approaches her side and locks their hands, squeezes them and silently asks with a lopsided grin, ready?, and Asami nods, smiling tenderly at the girl who wears a parka the same color of her own green eyes. It's cold like always here at the pole and she's glad they decided to put on underwear today, as if that would help.

Her warmed hands in furry gloves are grabbed and tugged along by a very giddy Avatar and the compound is huge. Everything except the buildings are made out of snow and her whole vision fills with white. If she hadn't already been outside for a while then the brightness would make her see stars. Through the snow's blinding reflection she sees colors like red and blue and green everywhere on the grounds. There is a huge sparring area for example. A type of mat that covers the large surface in front of a roofed stage or platform. This is where she had her firebending test, a very excited Korra tells Asami. The older woman gets pulled to the next station.

These are some training dummies for all four types of bending, made to withstand their own element. The water one is just simple wood and can double as something to physically hit. The earth one is hard stone. Rock beats rock. Fire is devoid of any fabrics and...

"This one never got used," Korra says, halting her tour at the dummy with an Air Nation emblem. "I never did learn airbending in the compound, but I might as well try it out now," she says with a smirk.

Korra begins to run through a series of attacks and stances that look very elegant with many fast and extreme movements. She's been doing this for a long time. Her whole life. It's what she knows best, how to fight, and a lifetime of activity can make a person impossibly fit. Asami is still not anywhere near the stage where you stop blushing at your significant other. She wonders if she ever will.

The grace and excellence of which the airbender pulls off one form after the other is a testament to all those years spent in training. Suddenly the younger woman switches to the next dummy with fire and the dramatic change in movements is instantly noticeable. It's hard and it's fast and it's intense. Korra is in a trance like she's lost where she is, yet she's completely in control when that smirk reappears.

She repeats the switch of element, into earth, and she's done all of this a thousand times yet she never gets tired of it. Bending, and the simple, childish, contagious joy in her face when she's doing the thing that makes her happy, doesn't make Asami jealous but it makes her smile. It fills her with bitter sweetness. While these are incredible results and the Avatar wields massive power, it has taken a lot of time to master that level of skill. It means that Korra has not had the time to live. She lost her childhood at the age of four when the White Lotus came and took her away to spend more than half her life perfecting martial arts that would one day save their lives.

The young Avatar was bombarded with rules and being told what to do. Expectations for the future only kept rising as Korra showcased more and more precocious abilities. It's similar to her own experiences, Asami realizes. When the young, emerging inventor first met Korra, that was also when she realized her attraction to women, or to Korra. Korra cared about her public opinion (just like Asami does), so the CEO did her best to support her friend when she only had eight percent approval rating. Now Korra just doesn't care anymore what people think and the former heiress admires this.

The White Lotus protected her from people, when it is she who's supposed to protect the people. They sheltered her from the world that she was supposed to protect. The Red Lotus saw these as mistakes and went after the Avatar. The Order of the White Lotus's mistakes became Korra's and Korra had to live with and pay for those by almost losing her life. A life she had barely had time to live in the first place.

Korra had stopped bending and is showing a thoughtful Asami around to more rooms and places she grew up in. Like the den in which she learned healing from Katara. It strikes her how the humongous size of her childhood home is similar to Asami's mansion where Hiroshi Sato protected her from the world, from benders, from people. Aang wanted her to be protected too, but maybe not in this extreme way. However, everyone can make mistakes. No one is perfect.

Zaheer told her that her powers are limitless, and evidently he's right. Korra thought she knew what she was capable of, but then she learned to take away and restore bending, became a giant spirit, survived poison anybody else would've died of, and created a new Spirit Portal. The White Lotus didn't just protect Korra from people; they protected her from herself. That little four-year old toddler who could bend three elements. People fear what they do not understand. Zaheer understood, and he tried to kill Korra. Zaheer did it because that is way too much power for one person. Korra and the Avatar is dangerous, and she had to be destroyed.

Korra still doesn't know everything that she can do, and power has a tendency to make people greedy. Asami knows this because she grew up around money. People get bored and it lets them break their routine – it's why we have ambition, to find our purpose on this earth, something that means something to us that we can believe in. When they do find their purpose and are successful, it's hard to stop them there. You want more. Both the Avatar and the CEO do their utmost not to fall in these pits, and it helps that they already know the effects of being consumed by the power of flight or billions of yuans earned from satomobiles. You cannot know gratitude without first knowing greed.

Neither Korra or Asami had any childhood friends or siblings. They are opposites in a lot of things and yet Asami knows what it's like to be isolated and sheltered, thus why it hurt to be asked by her only parent to betray her only friends.

Korra doesn't know what it's like to lose your parents (she got a glimpse of it though when her dad fell off a cliff), but she did lose her past lives – a whole era of parents.

If Korra wasn't the Avatar then she wouldn't have come to Republic City and they would never have met. If Korra wasn't the Avatar then she would've been a very different person. She doesn't know what kind, but she's happy that she knows her purpose and in the end they're both thankful for their past because it helped shape who they are and where they are today; they don't regret their life. Their past is part of why they can't be with anyone but each other because they understand each other so well.

What Korra managed to do in one year when she was seventeen and eighteen is astounding and more than plenty of other Avatars. What Asami managed to do with Republic City in three years is beyond what any other industrialist has ever done and she pioneered the infrastructure. Korra and Asami's lives will be measured in not how wealthy they are, but by how much they loved. Each other, their family, their friends. They are so happy together and even though either could die anytime there's danger, they decide not to dwell on it and resolve to make their time together the best of their lives and not waste a minute. Asami wants to let the Avatar be as childish as she wants to make up for lost youth, and Korra wants to make Asami loosen up to make up for having to grow up too soon.

One look is shared and both know what they're thinking of.

While they go otterpenguin sledding, the engineer thinks that the world has been fine without an Avatar for three years. It can handle another two weeks without that gleeful smile and her own happy laughter.

Whenever Korra stepped into a room, her aura and smile was infectious and energetic. Asami was one of the only ones who got to see her girlfriend vulnerable and not keeping up a strong face, or now on the ground with panicked hiccups. Asami confesses right now that she admires how Korra is herself. People want to be her. But Korra doesn't want anyone to experience what she has; how can anyone be jealous of her? Her powers may have brought good for the world, but it's a world of pain for her. She still has PTSD and it won't ever go away. She realizes that in the past she lost her bending, her past lives and Raava, her life, and now she can lose Asami. If she did then Korra's not sure she can keep going; she's already wanted to kill herself before – It was Asami that brought her home. Asami realizes that with nothing to lose, Korra could go down a very dark path and misuse her powers.

Korra's previous fears are minuscule compared to the one of losing her Asami. It's why she had a panic attack in the first place. At the bottom of the hill, surrounded by waddling, flightless birds, Asami cradles her lover.

They're at this point where finally the time has come for them to be together. They know to be patient while you wait, or your life will pass you by. Korra made the decision to do the opposite of what everyone told her to do. When she left the compound, her life began. When she left the healing sessions in the South Pole, she began really healing. When she was told to stay, she ran. Don't fight, she fought. She did everything 'wrong', yet everything turned out so right.

The Avatar doesn't demand anyone's respect, even though a paragon of virtue lives within her. Korra understands why the White Lotus locked her up (she kind of wants to do the same with Asami). People might not like her and she can try to change that but she doesn't because she's happy with her life and doesn't care what anyone else thinks. With all her power she gets to suffer anyway, for other people. While she lost a lot of her life, being the Avatar is her destiny. Korra is compassionate, living a life that's worth a whole lot more than most other's, because everybody else cares about themselves and she will care about them when they stop caring about themselves, about her, or about anything. Because being able to wake up for another day and another morning is worth it, and everyone deserves a chance to not be given up on.