We start with a long, somewhat rambling explanation of my justification for Korra being able to connect to the past Avatars again. It'll probably be disproved in later canon, so feel free to ignore it and insert your own ideas if you so wish.
After that, I have a little fun at the expense of the characters, something I've been planning for a while, and it fills out the second half of the chapter.
There will be feels.
Talking About The Past
"Okay, so I'm still trying to get my head around this myself." Korra sat in Opal and Bolin's living quarters in the Southern Air Temple, which had thankfully gone undamaged during the battle, with Asami, Tenzin, Opal and Bolin sitting around her, "I think the link to my past lives is coming back, but not all at once. Right now, I can only connect to the past three Avatar's, and only in the Avatar State. Well, except one time..."
She looked around the room; it was clear from the look on everyone's faces that she had their complete and undivided attention.
"When I was trying to get over my drinking, and I locked myself away for a week, I had some kind of... experience, something I've been trying to make sense of ever since." She took a deep breath, "Avatar Kyoshi appeared, but it wasn't like a vision or a memory. She was there; I could feel her touching me, doing something to me that helped clear my head, helped get me over the depression I was feeling that had started me drinking in the first place. But she did something else, something to my body, that allowed me to fall pregnant. At the time I thought it was just some hallucination brought on by lack of food, sleep, and the lingering effects of the alcohol in my system. But the more I've thought about it, and in the wake of what happened today, I've come to realise that it really was Kyoshi, reaching out to me."
"I don't think we fully understand the true nature of the Avatar Spirit. I think its more than just a connection to Raava; there's something else, something I think comes from the human side." Korra searched for the words to put the idea in her head into words, "When Unalaq and Vaatu tore Raava from me, I didn't die, which I should have done if she's all there is to being the Avatar. I think she's a part of my soul, a very important part, but I also think that there's a part that's just me; Korra, the daughter of Tonraq and Senna. I think that's how it's always been, since Wan first bonded with Raava; two souls in one body. I could be very, very wrong, but it's the only thing I can think of that makes sense of everything. Because I think that there's been this second part of what it is to be the Avatar, some fragment of the soul of everyone who's ever been host to Raava over the last ten thousand years. And now this other spirit is reaching out to me to try and re-establish the full connection. So far, I can only connect to Kyoshi, Roku and Aang, but I can feel the others, so hopefully it'll just be a matter of time."
"That's... remarkable." Tenzin looked shocked, "If what you're saying is true, then we'd have to revise everything we know about the Avatar Spirit."
"Hey, I could have hallucinated it all." Korra waved him away with one hand, "After everything I've been through, my head is all kinds of messed up in places."
"She still has nightmares. She doesn't like to admit to them, but she still has them every so often." Asami sat perfectly still, her voice calm and level, "And she's still not as fast and agile as she was, not without pushing herself to the point where she's in pain afterwards."
"Korra?" Tenzin turned to look at his former student.
"It's true." The Avatar's head fell, "I... I still have nightmares about what Zaheer did to me, and if I push myself too far, my back, my arms and my legs hurt like hell for hours afterwards." She looked up, "But not this time; I feel... better, stronger than I have in a long time. I'm still not back to how I was back before what happened, but better than I have since. I think that reconnecting with some of my past lives helped."
Asami stood, walked over to Korra, pulled her to her feet and enveloped her in a fierce hug, tears running down her cheeks. Korra returned the hug, overjoyed that she she could share such a monumental moment in her life with the woman she loved.
"Damn it." Asami pulled back slightly, wiping the tears from her eyes, "Just when I think I've got you pegged, you go and do something else to remind me just how truly remarkable you are."
"I'm still me, and nothing about us has changed." Korra assured her, standing up on tip-toes to rest her forehead against her wife's, "I know that this is something I have to deal with, but right now, I all want is to spend some time with you and our children."
"I can understand that." Opal smiled as she lifted her daughter onto her lap as Bolin stood behind them, resting a bandaged hand on his wife's shoulder.
Poppy giggled, then casually drew the tears away from Asami and Korra's faces and spun them in the air above everyone's head.
"Opal, honey," Bolin looked up in utter surprise, "why is our daughter waterbending?"
"Crap: I was kind of hoping that I'd dodged the bolder on this." Toph stood in the doorway, a surprised Lin behind her, "She gets that from Opal's side of the family, from her great-grandfather. Suyin's father, to be precise."
"You know who Suyin's father is then?" Tenzin asked.
"Watch it, air-boy; you're not too old to go over my knee!" Toph shot him a deadly look, "Yes, I know who Suyin's father is. I've always known who he is." She crossed the room and sat down, a conflicted look on her face, "But there are reasons, good reasons, why we kept it a secret."
"We?" Lin asked, shocked to see this side of her mother.
"I only ever told four other people the truth, and of the five of us, I'm the only one left now." Toph thought deeply for a moment, "Send a message to Zaofu; tell Suyin to get down here. If I'm going to air my dirty laundry, I'm only going to do it once, and she deserves to hear this from me."
It took four days for the Metal Clan airship carrying Suyin to arrive at the Southern Air Temple. At first Suyin had been unwilling to travel so far on such short notice, but once Lin told her exactly what had happened, she had dropped everything and grabbed the first available ship. After assuring herself that Opal and her family were safe, she demanded the truth from her mother, so Toph called them all together again the main dining room, one of the few places with room enough for everyone to sit together. Lin closed the doors and windows, making sure they had privacy.
"The reason why we, why I, kept the identity of Suyin's father a secret was because he was married." Toph explained, then held up a hand to silence all the questions that were being asked, "Yes, I know; you all think that I'm a terrible person for having an affair with a married man. But it wasn't like that."
"Who was it?" Suyin asked, forcing herself to remain calm, "Who's my father?"
"You father was," Toph took a deep breath and closed her eyes, even though it made no difference to her, "Sokka."
"WHAT?" Everyone gathered around the table spoke as one.
"I think you can now understand why we kept it a secret for so long." Toph managed a shy smile, "Yes, Sokka. He and Suki were two of my best friends, and believe me, I never had any intention of trying to come between them."
"Then what happened?" Tenzin asked, trying to deal with the news, "How did the two of you end up... with Suyin?"
"Well, like I said, Sokka and Suki were two of my best friends. They were very supportive when I had Lin, and we use to spend a lot of time together, just hanging-out like old times." Toph explained, "Don't get me wrong; I loved your parents, but you can remember just how your mother and I used to rub each other the wrong way. I never really had that problem with Sokka or Suki. And one night, when Lin was about five, they came over for dinner. Later on, after I'd put Lin to bed, the three of us got talking, and drinking. And then there was more talking and drinking, until we got onto the disaster that was my love-life." Toph blushed, "The exact chain of events is still a little hazy, but I suddenly felt Suki kiss me, and everything got really complicated really quickly."
There was a moment of pure silence as everyone around the table dealt with the image that was now lodged firmly in their minds. Lin and Suyin shuddered, while Opal looked decidedly pale.
"It was a one-off, something that we agreed to never talk about again when we woke up together in my bed the following morning. Which was fine, until I discovered that I was pregnant." Toph shrugged, "Given how long it had been since I'd been with anyone else... well, it was clear who the father was. I told Sokka and Suki, made it clear to them that I didn't expect anything from them, but that I was going to keep the baby. We told Katara and Aang, figuring that it'd only be a matter of time before they worked it out for themselves. Given the fact that Sokka was the father, we figured there was at least a chance that the child, that Suyin, would be a waterbender. If that had been the case, we all agreed that Sokka and Suki would adopt her, but when she turned out to be an earthbender like me, it was decided that it would be better if she stayed with me."
"But why keep it a secret for so long?" Korra asked, somewhat unsure if she had the right to speak up.
"Things were... different, back then. Less forgiving. We were trying to build something new, and I'd already gotten a lot of trouble in the press when I had Lin and wouldn't tell anyone who her father was." Toph raised a hand to silence her older daughter, who was about to speak, "And that's a story for another time. There were a lot of people back then who still saw the United Republic as a house of cards that could come crashing down at any moment, and none of us wanted to rock the boat by allowing the truth to be public. We weren't ashamed, not my any stretch of the imagination, but at the same time, we didn't want the press to blow it up into some kind of scandal if we could avoid it."
"It... explains a lot." There was a thoughtful look on Suyin's face, "Uncle Sokka and Aunt Suki were always there for me when I was a kid. They always had time for me."
"They wanted to be close to you; Suki couldn't have children, despite everything Katara and Aang did to try and help. I sometimes think it might have been better if I had let them adopt you, earthbender or not." Toph sounded sad, "But the five of us had made a pact to take the truth to our graves. And we would have done, had Poppy not decided to throw a spanner in the works and bend the one element that couldn't be easily explained."
To Be Continued...
(I'm ending this story-arc here, as I want to move on to something else)