The patter of bare feet and Baatar's shouted "Amika!" was all the warning Kuvira got. Locking her elbows and tightening her core, she braced herself as fifty pounds of child scrambled onto her back. She winced as a toenail scraped across her bare calf. Time for a trim, it seemed.

"Drop and give me twenty!" her daughter yelled, way to close to Kuvira's ears for her comfort. She settled herself cross legged in the small of Kuvira's back and grabbed onto the straps of her tank top.

"Hold on," Kuvira warned, then lowered herself slowly. One. Two. Three. Her muscles burned. Four. Caught in her daughter's iron grip, the neck of her top was beginning to choke her. Five. Six. Seven. Amika swayed, threatening to upset her balance. Eight. Nine. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see Baatar approaching. Ten. Eleven.

"Oh, for the love of—" Amika's weight was lifted from her back. Kuvira inhaled deeply and powered through nine more push-ups before she lowered herself carefully to the floor, pressing her face to the cold tile.

"I think you're getting too old for this," she mumbled at the floor.

"I'm not getting old!" her seven-year-old crowed from somewhere above her head. "You're getting old!"

Rolling over onto her back, Kuvira looked up at her husband and daughter. There was a distant look in Baatar's eyes.

"What's wrong?" she asked.

He shook himself. "Nothing. Just having flashbacks to that first week when you tortured me."

For a second her blood ran cold, bright purple spirit vine energy filling her mind's eye. She blinked furiously, and then remembered. "That wasn't—that was training."

"I was sore for the entire first month!"

"Because you'd never done the tiniest bit of exercise before leaving Zaofu," she retorted. Baatar held out a hand and she let him pull her to her feet, laughing when Amika ran around and gave her a little boost from behind.

"You two are back early," she remarked. "What happened?"

"The test worked, so I decided to make it an early day and sent everyone home." Despite the fact that she was sweaty and probably smelled like a moose-lion, Baatar wrapped an arm around her shoulders and pressed a kiss to the corner of her mouth. "It's been a while since I got to see you work out."

"Mmmm," she smirked, turning to meet his lips with her own. "You know, you could always join me."

Baatar made a face and shook his head. "I like my soft, cushy life as it is."

"Dad likes being soft and cushy!" Amika piped up, and poked her father hard enough in the gut that he grimaced.

"Please, Kuvira, take your daughter."

"Oh, she's my daughter now, is she?" said Kuvira, crouching so that Amika could scramble onto her back, where she clung like a monkey lemur and stuck her tongue out at her father.

"When she spends the whole day poking her nose in my work, breaking my tools—yes you did, yes you did—" he said as Amika chanted "No, no, no," in Kuvira's ear.

"And when she's asking me to make things blow up, then yes, she's very much your daughter." Baatar booped his daughter on the nose, then Kuvira, though he followed up the second one with another kiss. "I'm going to take a nap."

He walked off to their bedroom. Kuvira looked over her shoulder. "Did you really break your father's tools?"

"Maaaybe?" said Amika, her face a picture of innocence. "It was an accident. And it was dad's fault for not putting it away properly."

Kuvira pursed her lips. "Did you apologise?"

Amika heaved a deep, exaggerated sigh. "Yes, mom. And then I helped dad fix it." She began to wriggle, and Kuvira slowly crouched down again so she could slide off her back.

"Can I come to work with you next year, mom?"

"Well, my work's not very interesting—"

"But you work with Auntie Korra!" Amika began running around the room, her torso leaning forward while she windmilled her arms. Kuvira wasn't sure if she was pretending to airbend or if she was mimicking one of the new bending forms.

"I don't always work with Korra."

"Then you have to ask her to come! Pleeease!" Amika jumped onto the sofa, but after a pointed look from her mother, jumped right off it again.

Kuvira began unbinding her wrappings from her hands and wrists. "I can't ask the Avatar to come visit just because you want to see her."

Amika skipped over and began wrapping her own wrists with Kuvira's discarded bandages, only to succeed in tangling them together. "But dad called her today, and she's coming tomorrow."

"What?"

"Yep!" said Amika, nodding vigorously. "He called after the spirit vine test succeeded."

Kuvira stormed off to the bedroom, still trailing cloth from her left wrist, her daughter scampering after her like an excited kitten. "Baatar! BAATAR!"

Her husband jackknifed upright as she opened the door, already alert. It was one thing that hadn't changed from their three-year campaign, despite the years that had passed since then. He jammed his glasses back on his face. "What's wrong?"

"You forgot to mention that Korra is coming by tomorrow." Him being in bed gave Kuvira the chance to loom over him for once, and she took full advantage of it, crossing her arms and squaring her shoulders.

But Baatar was used to her intimidation tactics. Assured that they weren't under attack, his shoulders relaxed. "Oh right! Sorry dear, I forgot." He smiled up at her, a little sheepish.

"Is it about the tests?"

"Well, yes," he began, then fell back with an oomph as Amika plowed into him. "Sweetie, mom and dad are talking."

"I'll be quiet!" Amika promised. "Just…" she held up her hands, now bound together by the tangled bandage. Baatar sighed and set to picking them apart. Kuvira, meanwhile, gave up on looming, and sat down at her vanity across from the bed.

"Anyway," he began again, "though I've been allowed to resume my work on the spirit vines, I'm supposed to alert the Avatar about any breakthroughs I have. In case, you know, they might be weaponized. Again. By me." He smiled crookedly at her.

Kuvira groaned, dragging her hands through her hair. "You should have told me about that before you called her." Her fingers caught on a snarl, and she began tugging. "I don't have any reports ready, and Governor Chu still hasn't gotten back to me yet about—"

"Kuvira. Kuvira," Baatar got out of bed, gently pulling her hands away from her hair. "Deep breaths."

Kuvira closed her eyes and inhaled. She felt Baatar lean over her, heard him take something from the vanity. Brush bristles ran gently over her hair. "She's here to check on my work, not yours."

A full body shiver ran down her spine and she slumped back against him. "You know Korra, she'll drop by and pester me anyway."

"You mean she'll just commander the kitchen, cook stewed sea prunes, laugh at us as we pretend to enjoy them, spoil our daughter, and ask about how you're doing." She could feel him carefully work over the tangle, brushing it free. "Everything will be fine."

She took another deep breath, exhaling forcefully through her nose. "Yes, you're right."

"You okay, mama?" Small hands crept into her lap and she opened her eyes. Amika's wrists were still wrapped together, now tangled even more since her father's attempt to unbind them.

"Yes, sweetheart," Kuvira assured her, unwrapping the last of her own bandages and dumping them on the vanity. "I'm fine. I just…" she chewed her lip, unsure about how to express to her young daughter the roiling mix of guilt, anger, anxiety, and annoyingly abject gratitude that surged up in her every time the Avatar dropped by on her check-ins.

Luckily Baatar came to her rescue. "Your mother and Korra once had a big fight and your mother still feels bad about it."

"Oh," said Amika, holding up her bound hands. Kuvira began searching for one of the loose ends to untangle her. "Was that when dad built you the giant mecha and you trashed Republic City?"

Kuvira tensed. "Who told you that?"

"Hanak!"

Catching Baatar's eyes in the mirror, Kuvira made a face. Hanak was Korra's eldest, but he reminded her very much of former Commander Bumi, who had overseen her for a year of her sentence. An hour in his presence was as exhausting as a day full of fighting drills.

It was somewhat unfortunate that Amika liked the boy so much. "And I told him dad isn't allowed to make mechas anymore, and you help build cities now! Like this one!"

Guwei wasn't quite a city yet, but since that was something she was working on, Kuvira decided not to correct her.

Amika went on. "When I become the Avatar, I'm going to build the biggest city ever!" She began bouncing with excitement as her vision took shape. "It will have aaaall the elements! It's going to be on a volcano that floats on spirit vines over the sea!"

Baatar chuckled. "That's not how the Avatar cycle works, sweetheart. Or spirit vines."

Kuvira began to tune him out as Baatar went on to explain the physics of spirit vines to their daughter. The abstract physics concepts of his work often went over her head; she worked better with other kinds of numbers, the ones that took better shape in her head. Back then it had been armies, now it was just a lot of statistics. She closed her eyes and allowed their chatter to wash over her. Amika's hands finally slipped free of the bandages and she scurried over to her father.

"Want to help braid mama's hair?"

"Yes!"

As two pairs of hands began working on her hair, grounding her, Kuvira closed her eyes and slipped into a light meditative trance. She was all right. They were all right. And Korra's visit was going to go just fine.