Disclaimer: I don't own the Legend of Korra!
Title: And we ain't never cross the sea
Summary: A series of vignettes for season 1, where the 1920s be 1920s-ing.
...
"Welcome to Republic City"
They said that Avatar Aang smelled like wet bison fur and fresh linens. Korra doesn't know how true that is, but she manages to clock the same scent all over Air Temple Island as the last of her things gets brought by the White Lotus. Avatars packed light, y'see, so it only took one trip. One trip to bring everything she'd ever gotten to own.
Korra took a sharp inhale of her smoke and flicked it up with her tongue. Air Temple Island was warm compared to the South Pole; so warm it was suffocating. Tenzin didn't seem to notice as he plonked down on the stoop beside her. Airbending perk, she supposed.
"Puffer?" she offers. It feels like a step in the right direction for an adult, mature relationship between the two of them. She'd been passing puffers between herself and her guards since she was twelve.
"No, thank you. Monks don't partake of indulgences." He waved a finger at it like it was a particularly nasty cockroach-badger. "And neither will you, while you're here. Consider it part of training."
Korra pulled the puffer from her lips with a frown. "What happened to Airbending being all about freedom?"
"You're living with a monk, my dear. You're lucky I don't shave your head." Tenzin stroked his beard as if she were something fascinating and worth studying. He wasn't the first. "No smoking, no drinking-"
"Bullshit!" Korra states.
"No swearing-"
"C'mon, Tenzin. Be real with me. I bet I'll find a tiny bottle of baijiu under the floorboards. This isn't my first rodeo."
He gave her this tiny, silly little smile, as if goading her. "You're welcome to look."
"Alright!" calls Pema, heavily pregnant, as she pulls out a dusty camera and stand. "Let's all crowd in for a photo. Korra, honey, that means you too. Snuff that out."
She flicked her pinkie and the embers suffocated themselves. Korra pulled herself to her feet and stretched. "Alright, let's get this over with. I'm sure the news'll love this."
"Who said anything about the news? This is a family photo, silly."
Korra stood front and center above the fireplace, her arms wrapped around Jinora's shoulders. Meelo demanded to be on a stool to stand beside her; and Ikki, not wanting to be outdone, had climbed her father's shoulders. Tenzin bent at an awkward angle while Pema flashed a little smile and this felt familiar somehow, like something she and her parents might've done in another life.
"A Leaf in the Wind"
It was with a heavy heart that Tenzin gently placed a brand-new radio between the plush chairs he and his wife used in the evening. He sighed and perched his elbow on the stained wood. "I'm starting to wonder if this is a bad idea."
"Nonsense," Pema chided him, running her hand across his head soothingly. "The Avatar needs to learn Airbending. Besides, this will give me something to do while I fold laundry."
"Yes, but..." He sucked some air in between his teeth. "200¥?"
"Ah, it'll outlive us by decades! It's worth it, honey, I promise."
"But I wanted to take us on vacation," Tenzin whined. He took her hand and interlaced their fingers. "I had this marvelous idea of visiting the Air Temples with Korra."
"They'll still be in there in a bit," she reminded him. "You know the rule, sweetie."
He sighed and echoed the aforementioned law. "Kids before trips."
"Exactly! We need to support Korra in this. Pro Bending is a big deal!"
Ikki and Meelo air-scootered in the room with raucous cheers. Like a wolf-orca smelling chum, they circled the new instrument, twisting the knobs with reckless abandon. Tenzin felt like he was having a heart attack as he gently batted their hands away. "Gently! Gently, children. This is a delicate tool."
Meelo giggled. "Daddy, you're a delicate tool."
Tenzin felt as if he was being mocked. "This is for family time in the evenings. We'll..." He sighed and said, with no relish. "We'll be listening to Pro Bending after dinner."
Ikki gasped. "We're gonna listen to Korra's matches!" She eagerly bounced on her heels. "Korra's so cool. She swam across to the city! Daddy, why can't I swim across the ocean like Korra?"
"I'm really starting to regret this," he told Pema sincerely.
"The Revelation"
He doesn't tell her about the smell of burning flesh. Mako isn't interested in reminiscing on the boiling of eyeballs, or the thick oil that becomes of the tongue. He lights a puffer with his thumb and tells her the same basics he's told everyone else. What would the Avatar know of losing parents?
Mako can't imagine explaining how they'd looked at her Firebending son and wondered if he was a bastard child of a mugger. That even his mother, Fire Nation in blood, hadn't been enough to convince them to rule out an ex-boyfriend. How the Cinders had asked around for parental bonds instead of finding clues. How they never caught the guy, all because they were focused on his amber eyes.
Because the Avatar is the culmination of the entire world, that means some small, not-so-nonsequential part of her is built of the same stuff that stole his family away. Because she's built of every sin man has ever made and must somehow fight to bring balance to a messy world. Because he barely knows her but she's got a helluva laugh.
He squeezes his brother- the last of his blood, the only thing he has- closer and thinks of a familiar speech by a man in a mask. And he smokes. Because Firebending took them away, but it's kept him alive, and he thinks that must be that balance shit they were always talking about.
"The Voice in the Night"
Korra wanders the halls at night. It was a habit that started as a child exploring a lifeless compound, nursed by issues sleeping before big exams, and egged on by White Lotus men who wanted a six-year-old to magically turn into an element-throwing typewriter. That has, marginally, calmed down since she started Airbending. She's been feeling pretty excited about the city, and yellow-eyed boys who wielded flames like they were alive, and maybe even a little by the family itself. She's never been allowed that before. Tonraq and Senna had only been able to visit so very rarely.
Amon woke the urge with a vengeance. Korra wandered Air Temple Island in nothing but an undershirt and boxers, needling her hands with urges for things she's not been allowed. There's a shadowy figure in the courtyard. There's a man with a funny mustache in the attic. And there's a man in a mask, coming for the only thing that makes her life okay, the things that made them put her in that compound in the first place. Without bending, Korra has no title, no name, no purpose. What is a knife without a whetstone?
"You're silly," Ikki tells her late one evening, having woken up from a dream of her own. She'll take Korra's hand and lead her down the hall, cracking the sliding door. "Momma, daddy, we're doing sloth-seal patrol!"
Tenzin snorts and pulls Meelo closer. Pema waves over her husband's stomach. "C'mon, in, in."
Ikki pulls her around to Pema's side and then pulls her onto the bedroll. It's not a big bedroll. Three is clearly pushing the boundaries, and when Jinora sleepily tumbles in after using the bathroom Korra is safely squished between two children. "Now what?"
"Now we go back to sleep," Ikki says cheerfully.
"Um," says Korra, suddenly feeling ever so much more out of her depth. Sleepovers were not a thing she did in the compound, and this was a familial occurrence. Two things a knife never needed. "Pema, I'm so-"
"Hush," Pema mumbles, hand falling across Korra's face. "Sloth-seal patrol includes all the kids, silly."
Korra sleeps a little easier, then.
"The Spirit of Competition"
The problem isn't that Asami is into Mako, per se. The problem is more that Asami is a genuinely nice person.
Because Korra can handle a no. It's just different when the no is because there's a gorgeous girl waiting. And Korra has eyes- she sees Asami's beauty with detached, clinical understanding. The White Lotus didn't want the Avatar to look pretty. The White Lotus wanted the Avatar to be powerful. She's all muscles, and sinew, with broad shoulders to weather the blows. She's the picture of her father. Asami is, well, not that.
(Asami is fine lines and delicate cheekbones and Korra doesn't understand how to work makeup, never had, but the lipstick she wears is such a good shade. She looks so kissable, with slender shoulders that would fit perfectly in the groove of her arms, and Korra files that in the box of things to ignore, because girls were even less likely to want a muscle-bound meathead than boys.)
It's not fair. Asami should be a terrible person. Someone Korra could actually fight against. But one look in her green eyes and she's so far gone it's a miracle she can keep a sentence straight. It's no wonder Mako is into her.
Bolin offers her a smoke and Korra takes it, singlehandedly destroying the work Tenzin has put in trying to break the habit. She just wants a bit of fun tonight. She just wants to be enough for someone. And if that means ignoring Bolin's puppy dog eyes, she'll do it.
"And the Winner Is..."
Lin BeiFong is known for exactly two things. Putting away bad guys, and her pipe. It was brutally efficient, perfectly swabbed so the dark wood shined, and almost entirely made of metal. She'd won Cleanest Cop four years running- and it wasn't, ironically, a competition for her pension of capturing evildoers.
She paced outside the arena, puffing ominously. Avatar Korra followed close behind, the edge of her lip burned from a bad explosion radius. "There's got to be something you can do," she huffed. "Track the blimp!"
"Kid, half my men are incapacitated, and the other half is busy scouring every inch of this city." Lin blew a line of smoke through sharp cheeks. "Any chance that polar bear dog of yours could follow the scent?"
Korra hesitated. "Across water?... Probably not."
"Then get the hell out of my face, Avatar. You're beat up from the match as it is."
"I'm going to look for them!" she calls after, as if begging for Lin to stop her. "I won't sit around and let people get hurt!"
Not for the first time, Lin knew Tenzin was full of crap. Korra was nothing like Lin at her age. She was everything like Suyin, and Lin had no energy left to stop her. Not tonight, anyway. "Do what you've got to do."
Korra yells and slams her first into the wall before thudding away. Lin takes the time to inspect the dent as Tenzin comes over, looking for all the world like a kicked puppy. "I'm going to have to pay for that, aren't I?"
Lin managed to quirk her lip a little. Any other day and it'd be funny. "It's not coming out of my paycheck, asshole."
He sighed and stroked his beard. "As a teacher, I respect her ability, but as a father..." Tenzin sucked his teeth. "I don't want her outside this late."
"She really is nothing like your father," Lin marveled. "Is it weird?"
"No, actually." He sounded just as surprised. "I thought it might be. I kept expecting to see him every time she looked at me, but it's more like I just happened to get another child."
"As if you don't have enough of those."
"I'm quite proud of the family I've built, Lin. I'm sorry you weren't part of it."
"Not the time," Lin said simply, and they moved on.
"Endgame"
They fish the bodies out of the harbor when they float too close. Chief Lin BeiFong is on the scene, hounded quickly by Avatar Korra. She holds out an arm and the teenager stops. She hops over the embankment and strolls casually over to the corpses. She takes a long look. She takes out her pipe. Walks back to Avatar Korra fisting a bag of tobacco.
"It's him," she says with an air of casualness, as if this isn't the most relieving thing they've heard all week. She pulls out a lighter and lights a pipe full of cherry puffers. "It's Amon."
"I need to see," pleads Korra.
"No," says Lin, hands in her pockets, "You don't."
Hours later and she's in the same spot as the sun creeps lower and lower in the sky, watching them clean up the scene. Team Avatar crowd around like it's a day for fun. Mako and Bolin share a pack. Korra- doesn't refuse, this time. Korra's eyelashes flutter closed to fight off the smoke.
"I'm thinkin' of applying to the force," Mako says conversationally, the words like glass in his teeth, so close to shattering something. "The world needs more good bulls, you know?"
"Couldn't be me," Bolin says in reply, heartfelt but calm. "I like what we have now. Don't you?"
Korra reaches up to kiss Mako on the cheek, and it doesn't feel hollow. It feels good. "You'd look good in uniform."
Asami finishes digging around in the trunk of the car to pull out a camera. "C'mon, everybody! Let's get good pic of Team Avatar."
"This late?" Korra asks, but puts out her smoke anyway. It's more about forgetting the bodies on the sand. Korra flexes her muscles alongside Mako and Bolin as Asami flashes a peace sign to the far left, and they look impervious in the afternoon sunlight.
Author's Note: So! This started out as a "drabble per episode" concept, only with me having the 1920s being an important part of the background. It was gonna have a lot of infodumping about the movers and shit. I just kinda. Lost interest? But I did season 1, so I wanted to post it somewhere. Here it is!
Fun fact! I looked for a proper converter to yuan that worked for the 1920s. It did not work. So anyway, a new radio cost around two hundred US dollars at the time, so I just said fuck it.
-Mandaree1