Thanks for coming this far with me.

END

She sits in her room and watches life go by outside. Not her old room, full of memories and a different Korra, but a new one. It's airy, and the sun streams through on two sides for most of the day, bathing her in lightness. A lot of the time she cries. There's not always a reason. For the first few days, just being home was enough to make her cry. Once, it was tripping over her sheet. Another time, it was not being able to finish her dinner. Food is difficult, after deliberate starvation. It takes so long to learn to love it again as something that brings pleasure rather than just relief from an ache.

Asami comes to visit every day and holds her while she cries, miserable and raw and choking. Asami wipes away her tears and hums gentle tunes to soothe her. The days slip by until Korra feels able to talk about it, and she offers up the darkest parts of her heart to be heard. How alone she felt, and still feels, unable to see any of her friends. She's ashamed. She can't see them while she's like this. Asami whispers that it's her choice when to see them, they love her no matter what, and rocks her back and forth softly.

One day she feels able to talk about Amon. Her feelings are so confused. She knows what he did to her, how painful it was, how miserable it made her, but the fact that she can't stop wondering if it was… her somehow, if he was just misunderstood—those last moments of my Korra haunt her—keeps her awake at night. Is she weak? She must be defective to feel this way. Days later, hiccupping in the aftermath of a particularly strong crying fit, she hesitantly shows Asami how she's been punishing herself for that by rolling up her sleeves. Asami asks what she wants, and brings new bandages every day, applying appointment and not chastising her when new scratches appear. She simply understands.

Sometimes she feels like that man was a tragedy; so clever, so determined, so driven, and he channelled that into hatred. She replays that scene again and again in her head. Could she have saved him? What would have happened? Could he have become a better person? Then she feels guilty for thinking that way about a man who ripped her apart, and her friends as well, and punishes herself.

Sometimes she hates him so intensely that she screams and doesn't stop. She would kill him deliberately, consciously; finally get revenge on him for ruining her life. Even when he's dead, he's still so present. At those times, she practises her forms until she bleeds and bruises, feeling that it's appropriate she hurts. Sometimes she burns things but, though the temptation is strong, never herself.

Achingly slowly, she starts to get better. Her conversations with Asami tentatively begin to talk about what's happening outside her room without giving her panic attacks. She learns of the new council being set up; the city being rebuilt as a communal effort. There are malcontents, of course, and every few months there's a new scare from Equalist sympathisers, but the infrastructure is up and running and gathering steam. As much as some people sympathised with the ideas of the Equalists—the Triads too often picked on those that the law seemed to be disinclined to protect—the reality of their reign had changed everything.

Korra nearly smiles when she hears that the pro-bending arena is being rebuilt. She's sober but glad when she hears of monuments being built to those who died in the revolution and the counter-revolution, and of services being set up to help those brutalised by it. She doesn't ask how long it's been, but the time begins to gnaw at her. The Avatar should be out there helping to rebuild, to return people's bending. Asami doesn't tell her of the daily visitors—overwhelming, at the beginning, when news was still fresh—to the Air Temple with gifts, presents, cards, flowers and fruit. All are thanked and turned away by a rota of Air Acolytes, and they've kept the presents that won't spoil.

The city still loves the Avatar.

Perhaps a year after the overthrowing of the regime, Korra receives a visitor to her room. Tenzin steps in gingerly to find her on the veranda, curled up on the cushioned bench watching the garden move with the wind. She turns to him tearfully, dreadfully ashamed that she'll see blame for what happened in the end, and is shocked to see her mentor's eyes simply full of tears, love and pride. She pretends to cough, and it turns quickly into a flood of tears.

This time, they're not coming from a place of misery. They feel cleansing, and healing, and good.

She holds onto Tenzin as if she's drowning, and finally anchors herself to the real world. Korra's determined to live in a way that she hasn't been for longer than she can remember.

After that, they cautiously try more visitors, careful not to overload her still delicate recovery. The children—not so much children anymore—visit her for half an hour daily, bringing her flowers. They decorate her room, chatter to her about their studies and their lives, and hang cheerily off her arms. Tenzin comes to chat to her every few days for longer periods about the city. Lin comes to spar. Asami is nearly always present, now having her own chair set up in the corner where she reads, or sketches, or chats with someone. Pema brings the baby for Korra to gingerly hold.

And long, long after she's become comfortable with everyone else, Korra finally asks for Mako and Bolin.

They walk into the room almost as strangers, and she's staring at the floor, holding her hands together to keep from scratching at her arms. One sits either side of her, and slowly, giving her time to react, Bolin puts an arm around her shoulder and draws her closely into a warm, affectionate hug. "Korra," he says, and she can hear the love in it.

They're still thin, like she is, and they still bear the scars as she will. Mako is haunted in a way that Bolin is not, but she feels the difference in their dynamic has been changed by all of them having changed. They are not the same people, and that's all right. Their recoveries were probably as painful as her own, and she knows that it's not a simple matter of days, or weeks, or months, or even years.

It will take a lifetime to rebuild, she thinks, holding on tightly onto them and beginning to speak. But it's so, so worthwhile. She can't be who she was, and that is sad, intensely so sometimes. She misses living without fear. She misses her carefree life. Maybe… it's time to let go of that and begin moving forwards.

She holds them close, feeling warm and loved and not ashamed.

Whoever Amon was, regardless of his deep personal tragedy, he ruined her. He hurt her so deeply that it took months to understand that it was not her fault; that she didn't, somehow, make him hurt her. It was never a healthy relationship, so perhaps… perhaps this confusion is natural. Perhaps she doesn't need to sort out what her feelings are, but just accept that she did see a brilliant, charismatic leader who was also an abusive, cruel and twisted man. Those two facets could exist at the same time, and he showed both to her.

Korra closes her eyes, and steps outside, really outside, for the first time into the courtyard of Air Temple Island. Each hand is held by a brother, and Asami leads them forward. None of them want to be separated.

The revolution is, at last, over.

But this fic is, in fact, still not! I feel like this is a place of natural closure, but people on Tumblr requested things when I finished GTR, and I wrote three drabbles—an AU where Korra becomes pregnant, a section from Amon's point of view and a section from a civilian's point of view between 1-2k words each. Debating whether to go ahead and upload those together now and have a grand finish tonight, or update in another three days and finish then… this is up early before I fall asleep altogether!