====Grown-Up====
Drop down in the snow and roll around like the otterseal you've become. Be one with the nature that birthed you and gripped hold of your heart for the rest of your degraded life. What are you? Nothing but a sad excuse of an animal. This was supposed to be a day off, one where the normal worries were not bothering you. Today was a special day, marking the moment when you left your mother's and entered the world, fresh and clean like the frozen water gathered around you. Ovals stare back at you hugely blue, barely contrasting with the surface they were reflected on. Those were the eyes of a person you once knew. Those were the eyes of a person you wish you knew again.
Unlike the place you ran to, this corner of the world never stopped blowing and sucking and biting with harshness. But, you love it. It's different from the human bitterness of the Republic. You miss it so, and you should be happy to be back in its violent grasp, but you're unfazed. Thoughts of the ones you left behind, blind you like the whiteness filling your mind. At least it's better than the complete darkness of your room in the temple, or in the palace. Beginning to liken prisons made of platinum, unbendable and unescapable.
Here, you're in control. The elements are at your command if you wished to move, but it's more comfortable here with your face buried beneath ice. You couldn't imagine being back in the city only three months later, and two months more than you promised. Not that you had a choice. What a let down for your friends if you came back in this state. It should only have taken a couple of weeks like you said.
It began to sting familiarly. In one side, then the other. Thinking it was the cold numbing your senses, you decided to at least get your cheek off the ground. Then you saw it again. Eyes split open, a vicious glow. Twas your hunter, your chaser, your demon. You closed off again. And reopened in coincidence with a resumed heartbeat and constrained intake of perpetual winter air.
Even here so far away, from the sites of different horrors plaguing your tired spirit, they can follow you. They can come where you can go, and can taunt you where you can't go. They laugh and spite and holler at you, to let go and join them even. But you couldn't forgive yourself enough to do that. You're not even good enough for them.
You resign to lie down once again. There's no reason to fight anymore. Why die trying, when you can just die? Again, as if you could choose to not give up. The wheelchair was several feet away, lodged in the increasing snowfall. Stuck in your element, you might aswell not have powers of bending. You might as well not be the Avatar.
Especially since the voice that defined you as such had left ever since saving their life.
You're finally alone, you got what you wanted, why aren't you better? You feel less strangled than inside over there by the Palace and all the people. Saying they wished you the best but simply wanted you back to do their bidding and save their world. You were theirs, not yourself. So even without that pressure of maintaining a barely supported mask of fake reassurance, you still didn't feel like yourself. You figured you never would again, thinking back to the amount of time already spent, and the time yet to be wasted.
No one could help. Not Katara, not mom or dad, not Naga, not even... Asami. Who else but her that was left could possibly understand at least a tiny grain of the troubles held in that massive bag that you constantly carried around? That massive sack of unreal responsibilities, un-met expectations, and foul truths about your existence as a cripple.
Your promise of responding to her amiable letters, faded away to be remembered another day as you gave into your animal instincts. The fear subsided and left a soothing sense of recognizable cold, it washed over you like a frozen flood, taking you with it out into oblivion.
"Korra!" a voice cried out.
"Korra!" it repeated. "We were so worried about you!"
"Mom?"
"Don't ever do that again, Korra!" she said and hugged her warming daughter.
When she pulled back ever so slightly, Korra got her bearings and identified this as her parents' room. There was a fire brewing and she was wrapped numb in cloths, or maybe she was too cold to feel. Not that there was much to sense, for the lower half of her had essentially become intangible and unmovable. Her attention returned to her mother and she took to a soft, almost apologetic tune that she often used when with Naga. It was just their way of communicating.
"I'm sorry, mom. For everything."
Senna pulled back somewhat now as well. "What do you mean, Korra?" she asked, concerned. With the dimming pairs of blues that were shared between them. One of them were becoming grey, and the other, older, still had the vigor no longer inhabiting the young. She wished she could give Korra back her life.
"I'm sorry I wasn't a better Avatar."
"What?" The tone her own mother produced took Korra aback as Senna continued. "You were the best you could be and no one can ask for any more, Korra. We love you sweetie," she said, becoming gentle mundane oceanic waves once again.
"I know, mom," Korra choked. But she was much too weak to hold back a whimper and clung to the fabric of her mother's robes in lieu of alabaster fur.
"Happy birthday, dear."
They cradled each other, letting the intimate home of snow embrace them both. She was eighteen and still couldn't walk, but she could atleast cry once again.
A/N: Does anyone wanna Beta-read?
This was just a short little flashback story of an idea I had, where Korra celebrates her birthday. Alone, in a wheelchair, in the south pole.
Thanks for reading!