"And that's why you have to be extra careful when directing blood through the large intes-"
"AGGH!" Korra suddenly yelped. She fell down on her side, clutching her swollen stomach. It was a large bump now, and anyone would recognise that she was pregnant. She had already finished her third trimester, what she felt was a few days ago.
"Are you alright?" Katara said, grabbing Korra's hand. "Do you feel it coming?" Just as that was said, a midwife who'd spent the last three weeks with Korra burst into the room.
"I'm here!" Yama exclaimed. "I'll get the bed ready!"
Korra slowed her breathing with the help of Katara, but after about a minute she was fine again. "Sorry, Yama, not just yet. It'll be very soon though, I just don't know when."
Yama sighed, getting slightly impatient over the number of false calls over the last few days. She'd originally spent the first month tending to Korra's every need in the attic of the palace, but the palace started to be searched practically every fortnight from the Republic City Police after that. They were forced to move Korra into a secret hideout in the mountains, far away from the city. It took half an hour to reach on a ski-bike, and the tracks were covered up almost instantly by the constant snowfall.
"It's fine," Yama said, and walked back into her room. Katara helped Korra push herself up and helped her back into her own bedroom. It was spartan, as anything bright or decorative was set on fire by Korra in her fits. There was a bed, and a dim oil lamp was attached to the wall. That was it.
Korra rapped her fingers in boredom against the bedframe when she lay down. She'd spent six months holed up in this bunker. There were five rooms; a kitchen, her room, a bathroom, Yama's room and the room Korra spent the majority of her time in, the 'classroom', as she'd come to call it. It was a room which was sprawling with countless posters and diagrams of the human body. In the centre, there was a pool dug into the ground which a see-through mannequin was always floating in.
She had avoided bending whenever possible, and anytime she did was when she was emotional. Katara had come down once a week as promised, and Korra had genuinely learnt so much while hidden away about bloodbending. It had so much potential medically, but Katara had made it clear she was only teaching Korra because she had to.
Katara had stayed with Korra on full moons while all other servants left her for their own safety. She emphasized with Korra greatly, and Korra hadn't bloodbent anyone since that awful night with Asami, thanks to Katara's help. Korra had kept true to her promise and not brought the question of how to remove someone's bending using bloodbending.
But little did Katara know, that Korra reckoned that she had a fair idea on how to go about it. She vividly remembered the awful feeling of how Amon blocked hers, and in all those lonely hours with nothing to do she'd recognised the various points on the diagrams where she'd felt the sudden cut-off of chi. Before Yama had decided to stay with Korra, a servant only came once every four days with food, so she just did her own thing.
There were a lot of questions still left to be answered, and she never intended on using bloodbending again, but… She just had to explore the idea. She was the Avatar, she reasoned, and she couldn't leave any stone unturned.
It has nothing to do with Zaheer, she kept on saying to herself.
She sighed, rubbing her temples. She wished she could talk to at least one of her past lives or something. An Avatar that had been in her position, preferably, who had been ostracized by the public. She'd never talked to anyone other than Aang, apart from the time she'd learnt about Wan when she lost her memory, and while he was great, he never really experienced how it meant to be an enemy of the public like she had.
There was no way she was going to bloodbend involuntarily now though. Absolutely no way. She didn't know when she would be able to apologize to Asami, or even tell Mako the news, but it was one thing she knew for certain.
Then why are you learning so much about it then? The annoying voice in her head kept nagging.
She ignored the question and walked over to the oil lamp. She threw a cloth over it, which blacked out almost all of the light. She made her way back her bed and slowly sat down, before gently resting her head on the pillow. She hadn't slept on her side ever since the bump got noticeable, as she kept on getting stomach pains. She couldn't really ask her mom for advice because everyone suspected that her parents knew where she was, and if they were spotted going on a random trip into the middle of nowhere, it would raise questions, according to the servants.
"I can't wait to meet you," she whispered to her belly. "Any day now." She closed her eyes. After a few minutes, she fell asleep in the near pitch-black room. Her body clock had been done away with ages ago, and she just slept whenever the mood hit her. Which was a lot, recently.
Korra woke up screaming. Yama, who'd been resting quietly, nearly got a concussion from falling off of her bed. She kicked Korra's door open, which was never locked, and knelt down beside the Avatar.
"Korra, what's wrong?" she said loudly but clearly. "Is the baby kicking again?"
"NO!" Korra bellowed, unintentionally, but she couldn't control herself. "It's coming! The baby's coming!" Katara had left, seemingly.
"Are you sure?" Yama asked. There'd already been two or three episodes like this.
"YES! 100% SURE!" Korra screamed, and a sense of nervousness and relief washed over Yama. It was finally here. Three weeks of being cooped up with an irritable woman was coming to its climax. She grabbed the bowl from under the bed and held Korra's hand as she writhed in her bed. Small cracks started to appear in the walls, which were made of rock, obviously.
"Please, Korra, stop bending, just squeeze all your frustration into my hand," Yama said, afraid that the room might collapse on top of them. Korra looked at Yama weakly, and nodded. Yama got into position and gritted her teeth as Korra practically crushed her hand. Thankfully, Korra hadn't been exercising while locked away, so her arms were a fair bit skinnier than before she was pregnant.
Korra screeched, wanting the pain to stop so badly. It was nearly more painful than the time she was poisoned, which was saying something. It felt like someone was trying to cut open the inside of her womb with a hot butter knife as recklessly as possible. She tried to push as hard as she could, but every convulsion felt like a disc of earth landed in the middle of her spine, and rolled painfully all the way down to her lower back, crushing everything in its path. When it got to the bottom of her spine, it was double the initial pain. Every. Single. Convulsion. So every three seconds.
If the Avatar State hadn't locked itself away, she would probably have caused a deep-sea volcanic eruption. That's genuinely what it felt like.
"Just focus on the sound of my voice," someone told her through the mist. Who was that? Was it-
Korra shook in agony and all coherent thought went out the window. All she could focus on was the pain.
Just put me out of my misery, she thought after only a few minutes. Anything has to be better than this.
"Put me out of my misery! Please!" Korra wailed. She wanted to black out, but couldn't. Still though, she pushed. She was going purely on her instincts by this point, and the only way they saw fit was to plough through the pain. It felt as though her insides were being ripped up like paper. Her face was red from exertion and her eyes were flowing with tears. After what felt like hours, she asked how long it had been.
"Just over fifteen minutes," Yama replied.
"Fif… teeh… min-" Korra tried to repeat, but cut her own sentence off with what felt like her thousandth cry of gut-wrenching pain.
"Korra, I know it's tough, but I need you to hang in there," Yama said. Korra gave Yama a look of pure contempt, but Yama ignored it. She gotten that look from women in labour dozens of times before, and would probably get it dozens of times in the future. She had also managed to slip Korra's hand onto the bedframe, as her hand was white from the pressure. She still kept her hand around there though, so Korra didn't notice anything from the corner of her eye.
Then, after two and a half hours of cursing Yama every name under the sun and more, Korra felt like a bucket of cold water was poured down her spine. She mustered whatever energy she had left, and her bellow echoed louder than any other scream before as she pushed. She felt a searing pain and a huge loss of weight. Her eyes glowed with the light of the Avatar State, and she let her shoulders sink into the mattress.
A sound she hadn't heard for a long time, ever since the Equalists had invaded Air Temple Island, crept into her ears. The Avatar State faded, and Korra looked up meekly. A new-born baby crying.
"Beautiful, Korra. Just beautiful," Yama said. She was cradling a small baby in her hands. She looked up and gave Korra a heartfelt smile. Korra reached out wordlessly, and Yama gently placed the child into its mother's arms. Korra stared breathlessly in awe.
It was a girl. All the pain of the last two hours vanished in an instant. She certainly had the skin tone of her father, but as soon as the baby opened her eyes and peered at Korra with sapphire-like eyes, Korra started to cry tears of joy. This baby was definitely hers. Pure love and pride flooded through her heart, and although there were nagging thoughts about Mako, she pushed them into the back of her mind for the time being.
"Have you thought of a name?" Yama asked, and Korra looked up. She had thought about this so much before, and hadn't fully decided yet, but now she only had one thought in her mind.
"Come closer," Korra said, and Yama knelt down beside Korra. Korra whispered her decision into Yama's ear. It was too precious to be throwing around. It was her baby's name!
"That's a wonderful decision," Yama agreed, and Korra turned her attention back to her baby, humming softly and rocking her as gently as she could.
Back at the Southern Palace, Tonraq's eyes widened as a beam of very dark blue light, but still undeniably the light of the Avatar State, shot up into the sky from the Southern Temple. "Senna!" he shouted, and his wife burst into the room. Their eyes met, and they wasted no time in getting to their ski-bike outside. They tore through the snow, intent on one thing and one thing only.
Back in Republic City, Mako raised an eyebrow from the top of the rooftop of the station as a beam of light shot up from Air Temple Island. He took another swig from his rum container, something he'd been coming up there to do every day during work hours and what he did most nights at home. It had started roughly four months ago. He didn't really go drinking out, just at home. He didn't invite anyone over with him. They were too busy with work, apparently, so he'd stopped asking a while ago.
"I'll drink to whatever that is," he said, downing the rest of the container, not giving the light a second thought. He just felt so tired recently, so he didn't give any thought to something that didn't affect him. It didn't cross into his mind that it could have anything to do with the Avatar State, or even Korra.