After dropping that angst bomb on you all last week, I tried to make this one a little fluffier. Senna is challenging because we don't know that much about her in canon. I tried to give her feelings about family layers, taking into consideration what it might be like to watch your child essentially be raised by other people.
Tonraq used to brag that Korra could bend three elements before she could walk. But Senna knows better. She remembers helping Korra totter on her chubby little legs before she could make a wave in the bathtub, much less bend earth and fire. With tiny fists gripping each of Senna's index fingers, she would labor forward on uncertain ground, struggling until she found her balance.
Her daughter learned to walk once, and now she is learning again. Except now Korra is the taller of the two of them, and her weight is heavy on Senna's shoulder as she clings to her mother on one side, Kya on the other, Katara urging them forward.
"You've done well with her so far, Kya," the older woman says to her own daughter.
"Thank you, mother," Kya says, and Senna feels her adjust Korra's right arm over her shoulder for better support.
"Now Korra, we're just going to walk across the room today, alright?"
"Okay." Senna is pleased to hear the resolve return to her daughter's voice, something that was missing during those two weeks of the most startling fragility. Korra grips her shoulder hard and Senna watches as her bare foot nudges forward a few inches and stops.
"You can do this, sweetie." She tries to feel as certain as she sounds.
"Thanks, mom," Korra says before she inhales deeply and then puts as much weight as she can on the forward foot and tries to advance the other.
Fifteen minutes later, they are three steps from the door, and the sweat is pouring off of Korra's forehead and seeping into Senna's clothes where their bodies are in contact.
"I think maybe it's time to stop," Senna says.
"No," her daughter gasps, but her face is bright red and strands of hair are sticking to her cheeks.
"We'll let Korra decide," Katara responds, though her face is as serious as death, and Senna feels her stomach clench a bit as she wonders what the healer is pondering inside her head.
Korra lurches forward again, dragging Kya and Senna with her. And when they stop for another breather, Senna hears the sound of unburdened footsteps coming down the hallway. In the time since they left the bed, she almost forgot how quick and natural walking could be.
Soon her husband's giant body looms in the doorway. Senna watches his face light up when he sees Korra standing, looking far past the signs of effort written on her face and body. Tonraq only ever saw his daughter's strength. From the moment she was born, his pride in her made him blind to any human weakness. When Korra would cry of hunger or exhaustion or loneliness, he would crow about the unmatched power of her lungs.
"Hey Dad." Korra's mouth turns upward in a rare smile, and Senna feels her summon a final burst of energy to surge forward and brace herself against her father's chest.
Tonraq practically lifts her off her feet into a hug, giving Senna a chance to relieve the tension in her own shoulder.
"She did well today," says Katara. "But she needs rest now."
Tonraq scoops his daughter into his arms—clearly relishing the strength that has returned to his own body—and makes the journey back to Korra's bed in a few easy strides. "I'm so proud of you, sweetheart," he says, kissing her on the forehead before stepping back to let the two healers near her.
Katara's ancient hands move with practiced ease over Korra's body, and Kya's move in tandem. As Senna watches, she thinks back to the first time she met the two of them and thought that she had never seen a mother and daughter so much the sound and echo of one another. The bent of Kya's wrist as she completes a waterbending gesture is the perfect imitation of Katara's, and painted on the faces of both women is a shared expression of wisdom and compassion hard-won.
Senna has often looked at her daughter's face and tried to find the pieces that are hers, but all she can ever see is Tonraq and a presence that feels as old as time itself.
"Korra, is there still pain here?" Katara asks as her hands come over a spot that's given her persistent trouble.
Korra's eyes flit to her father, who is still smiling over her. "Not as bad," she says, though Senna hears tension in her voice.
"She's a fighter," he says approvingly.
It's when Tonraq leaves that pain returns to Korra's face, as if she has been keeping it back at some great cost to herself. Senna takes her hand and feels her daughter squeeze it tight as Katara manipulates her knee and stretches muscles that have grown hard and inflexible.
"Tell me a story or something, Mom," she says. "Take my mind off it."
It's this part of her daughter that is uniquely hers, this part that needs her and only her. Tonraq knows the soldier, but Senna knows the girl.
…
As Korra sleeps, Senna sips her tea in the family dining room and runs her hands over the pages of the book she grabbed at the very last second before leaving the South Pole. And she is thankful that she did. In it she has kept every memory, though some of them are not even hers. Senna didn't watch her daughter grow up, at least not like other mothers do. She lived most of it vicariously, through reports from Korra's teachers and guardians.
There is a picture of Korra being held by Katara and all three of Katara's children. Senna never met Avatar Aang, and she always thinks of them as their mother's. The four of them together rattles the image of perfect harmony that Senna gets when it's just the old master and her waterbending child. It's a reminder that all families are a messy coming together of contrasts as well as affinities.
She doesn't hear the footsteps until they are right on top of her. "Oh, I'm sorry," a voice says, and Senna turns to see the tall girl with the beautiful hair. And close on her heels are the two brothers, the one with the open face and the quiet, serious one her daughter cried over last time she was in the South Pole.
"It's alright," she says to the three of them as they stand awkwardly, like children caught eavesdropping in the doorway.
"We were on our way to see Korra," the younger boy, Bolin, says.
"She's asleep. It was her first time trying to walk, and it wore her out I'm afraid."
Three pairs of eyebrows go up in unison, and she sees a touch of disappointment register in each face.
"We missed that?" asks Bolin.
Senna knows the feeling.
"Come in and sit down." She isn't anxious for company, but she is curious about her daughter's friends, who exist for her only as stories and a few brief hellos.
They shuffle around the table. The boys look like they are calculating an appropriate distance, but Asami settles in fairly close.
"Can I ask you what you're looking at?" the young woman asks.
Senna smiles and pushes the book toward her. Asami turns the pages with perfectly manicured hands and smiles. "My mother kept a book like this when I was little."
"When did she stop?"
"She died when I was six."
Senna's stomach drops, and she instinctively reaches a hand out to rest on Asami's forearm. "Oh, I'm so sorry. I didn't…"
"It's ok!" The girl's green eyes are warm. She gives Senna's hand a squeeze, and her grip is gentler than Korra's. "I take out that book every once in a while. It makes me feel connected to her."
Senna looks to Mako and Bolin, who are leaning forward slightly in their seats, trying to get a look, and she remembers that they are orphans and wonders if any of this bothers them.
"Come over here and see this," Asami says.
Bolin scoots around the table. Mako strains at first but finally gets off the pillows to hover behind them.
"Look how little Naga is," Bolin says, pointing a thick finger at a photo of Korra and a white pup that rises roughly to her waist.
Senna hears a laugh behind her and looks back to see Mako's face all brightened up, a sight that sort of helps her understand what her daughter saw there.
Asami flips the pages backward in time, back before the White Lotus, when they were a normal family. And Senna feels a twinge as a selfish part of her wishes she could carry her shattered child back and care for her in that tiny igloo like she used to when she was an infant.
"So she has always worn her hair like that," Asami says, pointing to the stubs of pigtails that frame the chubby three-year old face.
"She wouldn't have it any other way," Senna responds, remembering the first and only time she tried—and failed—to put her daughter's hair in braids.
"You look a lot alike in that picture." This from Mako, who stares at the book thoughtfully, like he is trying to solve some nagging mystery.
Senna looks at Korra and sees the shape of Tonraq's face and the curve of his mouth in their daughter. And then she peers at the image of herself nearly two decades younger—not that much older, truth be told, than the young people gathered around her. Her hair is mussed, and exhaustion is evident in her face. Korra was a lot to keep up with back then. But there is something, something in the shape of the eyes and nose that seems familiar, and Senna understands that the Korra Mako sees in his head is the Korra of now. And it's then that Senna realizes that when she closes her eyes, she sees the four-year old, the one who was taken away.
They flip forward through the years, past the annual photos taken on Korra's birthday, one of the few times a year the two of them would visit the White Lotus compound. There are pictures of Korra's various bending masters and even a shot from six or seven years ago of Tenzin and his wife and their two oldest children.
Sometimes Senna wonders what it would have been like to have more children. She doesn't remember when they decided not to, but she feels sure that at some point, it was decided. Physically present or not, their one daughter took up every corner of their hearts.
"There's nothing from the last year, " says Bolin, coming to the end.
"Because she was here," says Asami. "With us."
…
When Senna sees them again a couple of days later, they look like they are all sharing the same secret, their faces conspiratorial and wary.
"Here," Bolin says, his smile wide, thrusting a thin stack of paper towards her.
"Bolin." Mako's tone is exasperated, his arms crossed over his chest. "Don't just … push them on her."
Asami clears her throat as if to start over. "We thought you might..." she draws an unsealed envelope from her purse. "We thought you might like to have these."
Senna looks at the fistful of paper in Bolin's hands and realizes they are newspaper clippings. "FIRE FERRETS FACE WOLF BATS IN TOURNAMENT FINALS," the top one screams with a quarter page photo of Korra and her teammates beaming into the camera.
In Asami's envelope is a set of photos on glossy paper: one of herself and Korra at a race track, one of the four of them in a strange metal city.
"You don't have to put them in the book or anything. We just thought, you know, since you weren't here for any of it."
Senna rarely gives into emotion except in times of extreme stress, but she feels a familiar burn in the back of her throat and at the edges of her eyes. She looks up and sees Mako reach into his jacket and draw out a photo that is slightly creased and worn at the corners.
"I wish we had more," he says. "But you should definitely have this one."
…
A week later, Senna watches as Korra makes it halfway down the hall, this time with Asami on one side and Bolin on the other while Mako looks on, his arms still folded but with a corner of his mouth turned up.
Bolin keeps up a running commentary: "It's the Fire Ferrets - wiiiiiith one substitution – heading toward the finish line. They are way in the lead. No one else even comes close!"
Korra nearly topples over from laughing, and Senna nudges the wheelchair a few inches forward so that she can collapse into it.
"And… huff huff… VICTORY!"
Once Korra is safely seated, Bolin throws himself on the floor and raises his fist in triumph. Mako nudges the boy with his toe almost irritably, but when he looks at Korra, Senna thinks he looks just like he does in the picture he gave her.
Over tea, Korra begs Senna to drag the book out again. "I'm sorry, I just love this old thing." And Senna smiles contentedly to herself as she watches her linger for a few seconds on the photos of their family and then skip quickly to the end. The deep past doesn't hold the same meaning.
"Ugh, I remember this," Korra whispers, tracing a finger across the headline of the newspaper clippings, her face a mixture of emotions Senna can't quite decipher. The three of them gather around her close—Bolin kneeling next to her chair, Asami sitting on her other side, and Mako hovering above, his hands gripping the chair just above her shoulders. Korra turns the new pages carefully, and when she comes to Mako's contribution, Senna sees her reach back and hook the tips of the tall boy's fingers with her own.
This is also her family, she thinks, but not bitterly. Soldier and survivor, Avatar and child, hero, friend, beloved: they all have a piece of Korra, but she is no less whole for it.