Life, like making stuff wrapped with more stuff, is complicated.
TRIGGER WARNINGS for blood and other upsetting things.
She wakes up the next morning and immediately vomits over the side of the bed.
She wipes out her mouth with the edge of the bedsheet and grimaces at the acrid, pungent taste of half-digested soup, tea and far too much water than a person can conceivably drink in a lifetime.
She is pleasantly surprised to find that while her body still feels like a complete disaster, her pain has lessened significantly and on top of that she can actually move her limbs without feeling as though a thousand knives are jabbed under her skin.
She gingerly swings her legs out of the bed and immediately tenses when her feet make contact with warm, moving cloth instead of soft fur.
She looks over the edge and seizes up when she realizes that Amon is still in her room.
Painful though it is, she manages to slide off of the mattress and kneel down next to his unconscious body.
"Amon, wake up, wake up!" She hisses.
He moans and his eyes flutter open and she silently thanks the spirits that he's a light sleeper (unlike her).
"Why the hell are you still here? And how are you not in a jail cell?"she yells as quietly as she possibly can (both for health reasons and, you know, the obvious).
"I..." His eyes flutter with uncertainty, as if he wants to hide something, "I may have pushed myself past my limits by coming here."
"Obviously," she says, staring at the door as if it could burst open at any moment. "But what about-"
He sits up and brushes what looks like white fur off of his jacket. "If you're referring to the perpetual inability for law enforcement to apprehend me, I briefly awoke during the night to discover your monstrous hound on top of me. I suspect that is how I avoided discovery by the temple staff." He glances around. "I suspect she sensed your wakefulness and figured her services were no longer needed."
She doesn't bother hiding her surprise. "Naga trusts you?!"
"Apparently so. And I seem to remember that she and I did not have a favorable first impression of each other." He stares at her intently. "Perhaps you could learn something from her."
She can't have this debate right now. "You need to go. In about fifteen seconds I'm going to cry out and plenty of people will come running to see my miraculous recovery." She hesitates for a moment, then leans down to give him a soft kiss. "Thanks for the soup. You'll have to give me the recipe sometime."
"Are you asking for another naked cooking lesson, Avatar?"
She blushes but answers defiantly, "Yes. But you'll be the only one who's naked."
"I can agree to those terms," he responds knowingly.
"Fine. Good. Now get out."
"Get back to bed."
"I will. Out."
She watches as he shambles over to the window, peers out, and crawls over and out the frame.
She clambers back into bed, pulls the covers over her head and retreats back into herself.
So the fever is no longer an issue. That's good.
Of course, there's the tiny problem that she's three months pregnant.
(***)
When she was late for a second month, she knew.
She had spent the whole week waiting in agony for the telltale stains in her smalls.
When the day came and went and there was no blood to be found, she spent a good three minutes hyperventilating in a storeroom before remembering her breathing lessons and using them to calm herself.
There wasn't too much analysis to be done. She knew who the father was, obviously. She could figure out about the time she had gotten pregnant.
The only problem was how.
You know how.
She went to find Asami inside the Air Temple; she spotted the heiress sparring with Mako just outside the courtyard. She walked up, unceremoniously grabbed her friend by the arm and dragged her away, leaving an utterly confused Mako behind in her wake.
Once they were in the privacy of Korra's bedroom, she explained the situation to Asami and endured a host of questions.
Was it Tarrlok's? No.
Was she assaulted by someone? No, she was quite willing.
Was she taking any herbs? No, ironically because of health reasons.
Was she taking other precautions? Yes, but obviously they hadn't worked.
They talked about keeping the baby, and not keeping the baby; Asami even suggested leaving the city (which she shot down immediately). Finally they decided that it was still early on and there was time to spare. Asami agreed to make discreet inquiries about doctors and would prep a few of her hiding places around the city. They also agreed that they needed to have far more conversations involving things other than man troubles.
Asami smiled and got up to leave.
"Hey Asami," she blurted out, her voice cracking slightly, "what do you think I should do?"
There was a pause. "As your friend," she began softly, "I think you should keep it. I know what people say about you – about both of us, really – but you are smart, determined, and kind and I think you'd make a wonderful mother." Her brow furrowed. "As a citizen of Repbulic City…I think stopping Amon is your first priority. Anything that distracts you from that goal is just an obstacle not worth having."
Asami left the room, and Korra was alone.
She lay down on the bed in silent thought for several hours afterwards.
No one knew how or where the fever started – it could've been rats, it could've been merchants, it could've been unsanitized food – it could've been anything, really. That didn't matter – all anyone was concerned with was tending to the sick and figuring out how to end the outbreak before it turned into a pandemic; with the world's rapid industrialization, it wasn't just information and goods that traveled with surprising speed. The already increased police presence about the city made it easy for the council and newly appointed Chief Saikhan to declare quarantine. Any conspiracies about the fever being artificially introduced by the council to control the non-bending populace were quickly squashed as the disease hit everyone in the city with equal impunity and equal ruthlessness.
She quickly volunteered her healing talents to the unprepared and scrambling Republic City health services. Pregnant or not, she was still the Avatar, and thus duty bound to help the citizens of Republic City in any way that she could. Besides, she'd always been a healthy girl who rarely got sick.
And that was the reason why, eleven days after the crisis began,, she went to bed with a headache and some mild nausea and thought nothing of it.
She threw up several times throughout day twelve and brushed it off as morning sickness (though she told everyone else she'd eaten some bad noodles).
When she tried to get out of bed on day thirteen and her body responded with searing pain, she knew that she'd misjudged the state of her health. Pema preemptively confined her to bed.
When the sun rose on day fourteen, she was a sweating, feverish wreck slipping in and out of consciousness.
Sometimes she dreamed of the ice.
She was home, the place to which she'd always return.
She was sitting astride Naga as the dog bounded across the frozen landscape, the biting wind stinging the eyes of both man and beast.
A sizable glimmer on the path ahead went unnoticed by either party.
Suddenly Naga stumbled and she tumbled off her mount and fell onto the frozen terrain. But she just laughed and laughed until the tears of cold became tears of joy and celebration.
After all, she was home.
Nothing could harm her here.
And so she and Naga lay there until the sun vanished from sight and thought, and as Tui and La did their nightly dnace she snuggled into Naga's fur and watched the Blue Spirit and the Painted Lady make love in the sky.
She didn't worry about the cold.
She knew the ice, and it knew her.
Sometimes she was alone.
She stumbled through the desert, bedraggled, abandoned and forgotten, her swollen belly her only remaining companion and comfort. She was no longer the Avatar, no longer the favored savior of Republic City nor the gifted daughter of Senna and Tonraq. Instead she was the whore who'd slept with a terrorist and been seeded with his corrupt offspring.
No towns welcomed her with adoration.
No doors were opened to offer shelter or respite.
No one offered beast or car or cart to speed her on her way.
She would have wandered forever were it not for the rush of blood and water that trickled from between her legs.
The birth was agonizing and terrifying and so tiring, and when the bloody bundle of flesh had finally torn its way out of her, silence was the only answer to her pitiful pleas for the child to cry.
Sometimes she was a god.
They were on their knees. Everyone she'd ever known, ever loved, ever feared. Now they all feared her, for she was invincible, infinite, immortal.
A storm raged overhead. The waters churned below. The earth shook in agony. Fires danced in ecstasy. She felt the energy of all living things, and their spirits trembled with trepidation.
She was the Avatar. She was everything and they were nothing.
She raised her enemies up before her and clenched her fists, and they dissolved before her eyes with screams and blood, and it was pleasing to her.
Amon's death was the most satisfying. He looked so pitiful, so hollow, so broken in his final moments. Why had she ever been afraid of him? Why had she ever given him that power – given him any power over her?
It didn't matter anymore.
She gazed out at her kingdom and her subjects; her eyes filled with the energy of the stars.
"I AM AVATAR KORRA, AND I NOW USHER IN A NEW AGE UPON THIS EARTH."
Sometimes she was dead.
Being a corpse was cold.
She was standing right next to her body, but she could still feel it – the lack of warmth, the absence of those minute pulses in her neck and wrists, the silence of the elements – but the last one had been taken before her death. Her lover had seen to that.
There was Lin Beifong, her body badly burned and still twitching from the electric shocks the Equalists had given her.
Tenzin lay next to her, his body mangled from impact. The sky might be freedom for an Air Nomad, but it's hard for one to fly once one's bending has been stripped away.
She doesn't know where the bodies of the brothers or Tenzin's family are being held. But she knows they're dead. He told her so. And she knew he wasn't lying – she'd seen the same look of satisfaction far too many times during their nighttime meets.
And of course, there was Asami. Poor, poor Asami.
She turned to the wall to see the pallid corpse of her friend and confidante, now staked to the stone by her father's mech.
She had been fighting on the roof when she heard Asami cry "Father?!" before the sounds of sharpened metal and the sickening squelch of punctured organs reached her ears. She looked down to see Hiroshi Sato's hatefully staring at his dying daughter.
She deserved better, she thought wistfully.
And then everything went dark, and a crawling, suffocating oblivion took its place.
It was less painful than reflecting on her own death.
Sometimes she was his.
It was the thing she feared more than anything else. Yielding to him.
Every meeting, whether in bed or otherwise, had been a struggle for something: power, control, trust, truth. Some battles had been subtle. Others were more clearly marked.
But he was older than her. Probably smarter and wiser too, though age was no guarantee of intelligence or reason. He had a lifetime of reading and knowing people that she had yet to master. He was persuasive. Charismatic. Principled. Driven. Passionate.
When they were together – his fingers tracing the scars along her shoulders, her hand gliding over the arches of his feet – when he was moving inside her, fingers pressed on hips and spines, the primal rhythm of their bodies in motion – it felt so right. And the uncertainty
So in her dreams, she surrendered to the feelings, to the emotions, the experience, her mind, body and soul rising and falling as he consumed her in every way she knew possible, in the ways she most desired, the ones she dared not to tell him, in all the ways she feared most.
Sometimes she was willing.
Sometimes she was not.
Sometimes she wasn't sure.
Sometimes she just didn't care.
And then the dreams were interrupted, and Amon was in her room with sweet words and savory soup and silken embrace.
She had one final dream before she woke up for the last time: she was a puppet, her body wooden and contorted, and through her painted eyes she could see Tarrlok and Amon yanking and pulling on her strings, sending eerie sensations throughout her body.
At the time she thought it was the dream was merely psychological.
She would not learn the truth until much later.
(***)
The morning after her recovery, she wakes up with blood covering her thighs. Too much blood.
She rushes to the toilet and sits there as pain rushes through her abdomen and thin trickles of blood periodically run down her skin.
After an hour or so, the ordeal is finally over.
She wipes herself and the bathroom down with the bed sheets, balls them up and hides them in the closet. She finds some clean underwear and puts a simple blue smock over it.
When Temple staff come to check on her, find her sitting up and smiling, they call for Tenzin, Pema and the kids. Together they congratulate her on her recovery.
The nurses quietly ask to collect her old linens for disposal. She says that she'll burn them herself, adding the most maniacal grin she can muster in her current state. Everyone laughs (because it's such a Korra thing to do) so with winks and (brief) hugs and happy tears they leave her to her...grief? Relief? Uncertainty?
She isn't sure what she's supposed to feel.
She goes into the closet and stares at the bloody sheets until she nears Naga scratching at the door, finally back from a delivery and desperate to see her master.
She keeps the ashes in an urn. The ashes of her child. Their child.
There are a lot of ashes in Republic City right now. Burnt sheets, burnt bodies. Burnt buildings. Some parts of the city were hit so hard that whole neighborhoods are being burnt down and rebuilt for health and safety reasons.
This only makes tensions worse, but she doesn't care right now. She can't care.
She doesn't have the strength to care.
She's standing in front of the Bay in an area that usually remains deserted. The ashes are tucked under one arm, and the other arm holds a small box filled with rice and dumplings.
At least, it's supposed to be rice and dumplings. The meat is bland, the dough is torn everywhere, the rice is still hard and it's way too greasy. But she made it. She had to make it. It wouldn't feel right otherwise.
So as the city mourns the loss of many, she mourns the loss of one. She gently pours the ashes out into the water, and recites the Southern Water Tribe funeral rites for children and infants, and watches as the grey patch disappears into the glittering reddish gold of the sunset waters before throwing the urn into the sea and heading into the city.
It seemed the right thing to do.
And now no one will ever know.
She finds Amon bent over his desk, his face weary and withdrawn. He looks up and brightens when he sees her, and the box under her arm.
"You're back," he says breathily, relief palpable on his face.
She holds up the box. "Don't get too excited. It's funeral food. And I made it."
His expression falls again.
"Disappointed?"
"Yes."
"I'm pretty sure you'll live," she adds sheepishly.
"About it being funeral food. I've had enough of that shit to last a lifetime." Amon's eyes soften when he sees her crestfallen expression. "But for your sake I'll suffer through another helping."
They eat together in silence. She notices how often he grimaces but is quick to steel his face whenever she looks directly at him.
Afterwards they clean the dishes and when she asks Amon about how the Equalists fared he always whistles and feigns deafness, but their earlier conversation was telling, and she drops it.
The Avatar in her rejoices at getting more time to finally cut the crap and end his threat.
The person in her is hurt to see him so dejected.
Everything is finished. She gives a surprisingly sincere condolence to him about his soldiers and turns to leave.
Then the words just spill out of her mouth.
"I was pregnant."
There is a crash and she turns to see a white-faced Amon standing over the remains of a drinking cup. The look in his eyes is guilt-filled and haunting.
"I was three months along and…I...the day after I woke up I was covered with blood…" Her voice quavers. "It's not like I could've kept the baby anyways. Or that you would have wanted it – can you imagine, you and me with a baby? Spirits, what a fucking joke that would've been…I can't even handle the terrible trio for half-an-ho-"
The laughter, like the tears, erupts from nowhere, and she finds herself on her knees with frantic giggles escaping from her throat and water dripping from her chin and she doesn't even know why this is happening it's so ridiculous and the laughter gives way to wracking sobs and she looks at her shaking hands.
"I'm sorry, I'm sorry," she says to no one in particular. "I don't understand…I wasn't even sure, I didn't even care…why am I even-"
But then she hears Amon's footsteps coming across the floor, and he gently scoops her up into his arms, carries her over to the bed and places her down. He snuggles in next to her, wrapping his arms around her and gently pressing her face to his chest while he kisses her hair and whispers "shh, shh, it's alright, you'll be okay," until time loses all meaning and sleep overtakes her.
When she wakes up and sees the wall clock, she realizes that she stayed the whole night, something she has never done before.
She glances up at her sleeping lover, his face still framed with concern for her wellbeing.
And habit and instinct tell her to run away, to start forming an excuse for an undoubtedly worried Tenzin and Pema, she draws closer to Amon and closes her eyes.
If she ever remembered the dream she had that morning, it would break her heart.
Author's notes: This is the (first) turning point of the story. They will still have a few issues to work out (like the bloodbending bombshell and the Season 1 finale), but this is the "hump," the halfway point, as I see it.