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Korra

Stillness

It was early. But she was awake again.

It was a more than a little past dawn. The sunlight that had been creeping through her window suddenly brightened; it practically bled through the sheer curtains. Chilliness crept its way through the opened gap of her windows and hung in the air with the notes from the birds. From far away, she heard the familiar noise of the window hitting the trees and carrying the smell of previous rainfall, the same one she had been listening to fall outside her window.

Everything for the moment was…still.

She was still.

She was…she didn't know what she was doing really. Sometime during the night, or that time before dawn when the sky changed blues, she had found herself suddenly being awake—gasping and sweaty with tears in her eyes, strands of her dream already ebbing away. It was starting to become a familiar pattern.

She had grappled with herself to reclaim her sleep, but just like the other nights, she had failed. At one point, she had taken off her nightclothes and then her bra and thrown them wherever to make herself comfortable; she didn't apologize when Naga stirred at the noise the teen was making. And she herself didn't move to find them when she started feeling cold. Her body felt the bed sheets under her mostly bare skin. Her heartbeat thudded in her chest. And her limbs preserved her want to maintain her restlessness; she ignored the desire to wriggle her fingers and turn in bed.

She was being still, pretending to be like another inanimate thing in her room…minus breathing and blinking.

It felt right to be still. It felt important. Nights of waking up before dawn and she couldn't explain it.

She felt her heartbeat's rhythm.

The world was waking up outside and it felt lonely in her room. It felt empty. And still.

The stillness felt like a void within her. And she could trace its origins now in the space where her soul existed inside her but separate from her…where it hadn't just been her before.

She had won a war against evil. And she had lost so much in the process. And in the stillness of the morning, she couldn't shake off that feeling that lied in the stillness of herself.

Knowing for her entire life that she wasn't just one person, she was a person that kept the memories and lives of other people, people better than herself that were there to help her. Spending her entire life wanting to do what she couldn't naturally do and reaching out to parts of herself she wanted to know. Feeling hopeless when all of her strength had been lost only to find herself standing before them. To know that they had been waiting for her too, and they had given her what she needed to be The Avatar. And those moments in the morning, being aware of them in the space of her soul. The warmth of Aang's smile. Or sometimes a sneer directed at her because Kyoshi was an early riser and a presence that didn't understand or condone laziness. And even Kuruk in snippets that came in dreams that put a smile on her face: a memory of a trick he performed, or an early morning surf in the cold polar waters. A million things she had witnessed…

Her body remembered the part of her battle that stayed with her the most: the fading of all of their faces and memories and the strands of their own souls they had given her. Her mind and her heart remembered that in spite of how she tried, in spite of how she had felt herself grasp for them—all of them. It had been necessary at the time to shrug off that those feelings—indescribable sadness; desperation; helplessness and emptiness—when the worlds she brought together had depended on her to fight, when she had been encouraged and urged to find it in her to fight and triumph. And she had done so.

But something that wasn't supposed to happen had happened. Something that she had always known it was her duty to preserve and protect was gone forever. And it had been invaluable.

And it was never going to come back.

And she missed it.

And it was in the stillness of the morning that she felt those waves of emotions wash over her and that empty space. And it was the stillness of the morning that made her incapable of hiding from them.

The breath she drew was deep, shaky. Her eyes prickled, and she didn't fight what was coming: a tear, hot and wet, slipped from her eye and slid across the bridge of her nose, landing with a soft sound on her bed. And then another fell, and then another, and then more until there was a trail running down both sides of her face.

"…Korra…"

She finally gave in to that urge to move: her body curled into the fetal position. Her arms hugged herself. She sniffled, and despite herself it was loud and wet-sounding. She drew in shaky breaths. Part of her felt, for whatever reason, that she should stop, but she shook her head to disagree with that. Maybe the moment had passed to feel these things…"Korra"…but now that she couldn't run from them or put them aside, she didn't want to.

She had lost a lot.

Her hands wiped at the hot tears across her cheeks; she didn't fight to stop them from coming down her eyes.

"Korra," somewhere in that space inside of her, Raava stirred and moved through the stillness. Her voice was ethereal and infinite-sounding, echoing inside her mind and growing stronger. "The end that we perceive is never the end that exists. You are no longer an Avatar, but The Avatar. You and I are here, and it is your soul and my presence that will again bridge humans and spirits together. We will maintain the balance between good and evil for lifetimes to come.

"…But your soul cannot be strong if it is not allowed to address what troubles you. You are right to mourn and you are free to mourn." Raava's voice softened. "So in this moment, truly allow yourself do so."

She nodded her head. Her body moved, her arms propping herself up. She shuffled under her covers, moving to rest her back against her headboard; the cold surface made her skin prickle. She curled up again, this time, her forehead resting on her knees. She heard the trees shake in the wind, and the air on her back; from far off, she heard the sounds of the island coming to life. And Naga, now fully roused from sleep, rested her head on the bed, making a keen whining sound, sad for whatever reasons she was sad.

The stillness of the early morning was ending.

She sobbed.

When watching the season finale, the part that struck me most was the end of The Avatar Cycle and the lost of Aang and all the other predecessors. I understood how losing them was necessary to the plot and Korra's own development, but Korra is a person that is so in tune with her emotions that it almost seems wrong that the moment she had to mourn them was so short. So, keeping that in mind, I wrote this to allow that a lengthening of that time.

I also wanted to allow Raava's presence into Korra's life. Now that the other Avatars are gone, it really is Raava who Korra can turn to for guidance and comfort, and it would be pretty cool to see how the writers will develop that relationship now that it exists.