Korra flopped onto her bed around midnight after doing her extra fun happy go time endurance sprints around the island for two hours. She wanted to scream her muscles ached so bad, it was like someone put something in the rocks to make them hurt her legs more.
Because of her sore limbs, she was having a hard time getting to sleep. "Maybe I should take a stretch and walk around a bit…" she mumbled to herself, slogging out of bed into the hallway.
While under one of the awnings that connected the buildings of the temple together she spotted two figures out in the courtyard.
"The beds are better than what you'd have had in jail," she heard Mako's voice.
"I haven't fallen asleep without waking up in a weird place in a long time. I might wind up at the bottom of the bay for all I know," was the response, very clearly Mike's voice.
"That's not going to happen, you'd just waterbend out of it," Mako figured.
"I can't, though. And I wouldn't want to be able to anyway." Korra could see Mike's posture shrink, not unlike it had in the interrogation room.
"Why not?" Mako asked. Apparently he held a similar sentiment to the waterbending 'spirit' that had frozen Korra. Interesting.
"…that's not your business, officer," was the quiet reply.
"Right, it's late, probably a bad time to talk about this stuff…" the policeman said awkwardly before glancing behind him and spotting his girlfriend in the light of the temple.
Mike noticed too. "I'm not in the mood to get thrown off the edge of the island right now, so I'm gonna go back inside," he decided. "I'd rather be death glared in the light of day."
"Hey, you might wake up in a bed now," Mako figured.
"Maybe, but I might not be the one waking up there," Mike replied cryptically before walking towards the temple, avoiding the general zone where Korra was watching them.
Mako, on the other hand, approached Korra.
"You know, you shouldn't talk to him so casually," Korra remarked. "He might take it as a sign that he could actually stay here."
"He's not going to, you know that. Beifong thinks this is the best environment for us to learn more about how they do what they do. Antagonizing him didn't work before, clearly, so we shouldn't keep doing it. Besides," he re-emphasized, "he's really not that bad to talk to."
"All I know is that they haven't done anything to warrant my pleasant side. Insulting me, freezing me, throwing things, existing-" she rattled off. "I thought you were on the same page as me."
"I don't think this is something that we need to take sides on, Korra. I mean, the two of us didn't exactly get off on the right foot either, and yet here we are," he pointed out, putting an arm around her.
She lightly blushed. "That's different, okay. You were a jerk at first, sure, but you didn't try to kill me or anything," she pointed out.
"True, but our first meeting wasn't through a forceful police search."
Korra crossed her arms. "I guess not," she muttered tiredly. "But it feels like my identity as the Avatar is being toyed with, and I don't like it."
"You're one of a kind, Korra," Mako reminded her. "You are the Avatar. No one can take that from you."
"I'll mess up anyone who tries," Korra agreed.
Mike was walking back to his room following his conversation with Mako when he noticed a door open ahead of him. No one appeared to have caused its opening, and no one exited the room in the minutes after. "Hello?" he called out quietly, not wanting to wake anybody up.
"Your aura is nothing short of fascinating," a floaty voice made him jump. "It's tangled, like some kind of fishing net."
He turned and looked down; it was one of the air acolytes he'd seen in passing earlier…Dawn, that was her name, or something like that. "Thanks? Is that good?" he asked awkwardly.
"Oh no, it's distressing! I've never seen an energy like it in my fifteen years," she said with a shake of her head, her blonde hair following the motion. "You must be having so many headaches…"
How did she- "All the time," he confirmed.
"You should eat a more balanced diet. Someone had been feeding you too much red meat and skimping on the veggies."
How did she know that? "I-I don't remember my last few dinners." She had to be the aura reader Jinora mentioned…and she was a girl barely younger than he was. He didn't have any experience with aura, although as a child he had been taken to a group of 'spirit seekers' that tried to make the claim he was 'possessed' and needed to be 'cleansed'. He didn't remember what happened beyond the front door, but maybe that was for the best.
"You make that excuse a lot. Do you understand why that happens?" she asked.
He backed himself against the wall. He had noticed an uptick recently, even before the incident at work. He felt less tethered to reality and more like a passive observer who could barely see what his own life was becoming.
She titled her head, looking sad for him. "There's so much turmoil within, you don't realize how much they're keeping from you."
He had sunk to the ground, not liking how easy she was reading him. "What do I do?" he asked fearfully.
She smiled. "Let them know you are ready. Give them a sign. Learn from them."
He'd resorted to looking at the ground. "Ready… for what?" he wondered, peering up to find her gone.