#korraweek

[korraweek]

Korra Week Survey

Hey Korra fans! It's getting close to the end of the series, so we were thinking of having another Korra Week after the finale as a sort of ending celebration to give one final thank you to Korra and everything she's done for us. If you have time, it would be greatly appreciated if you could fill out the survey above to let us know your thoughts on another Korra Week! Thank you!

[korra-naga]

Korra Week 2014- Day 7: Triumph

"The strong survive, but the courageous triumph."

[ikkinthekitsune]

Korra Week -- Triumph

"So how did the talks go?" Tenzin asked. He sounded tense; he knew what failure meant when tribes like the Zhangs and the Gan Jins were at odds.

"They went great," Korra said, still a bit surprised by her own success. "I don’t know what the airbenders told them, but they all seemed like they were waiting to hear what the Avatar had to say. Once I suggested a compromise, everything fell into place."

"That’s great to hear!" Tenzin said. "You might have just averted a war."

Korra smiled.

It was kind of ironic. For nearly a year, she’d been deprived of a proper victory. Whenever she won a fight, she either lost something else or realized she wasn’t even fighting the right battle, to the point that she’d almost forgotten what success felt like. And now, when she was finally given a chance to triumph, she did so without throwing a single punch.

Clearly, the universe had a sense of humor.

[dreamfingerstyping-blog]

Korra Week- Day Seven (Triumph)

It was taking Korra awhile to adapt to the small victories.

She was determined to call them victories, because she didn’t know what happen to her if that once blazing but now smoldering competitive flame went out. She couldn’t stop trying, and sometimes (most of the time), she reallyreally wanted to stop trying.

So she set up a means to prove to herself that she was still fighting. Eating half of the breakfast Pema brought in-that was a battle won. Saying hello back to Mako, Asami, or Bolin when they lingered uncertainly in doorways- that was a tide overcome.  Looking somewhere else other than that damned wall- it was ground gained.

Over the last year she had fought for a lot more than herself: the benders, the world, the world again only two weeks later. She’d been fighting and fighting but this was a different kind of fight.

She was fighting to reclaim herself. People argued that the world needed her, but it really didn’t. Not with all these air benders doing her job for her. (It was so horribly ironic because when Korra had come around the people had wanted another Avatar Aang, and well, now they had the next best thing.) It had taken chunks out of the foundation she had built to tell herself so what if they don’t need me? I need me.

Winning back territory was the hardest part. Clenching her fist without the muscles up and down her arms shivering was infuriating. Stumbling around like a drunk on unsteady legs was demeaning. The whole thing would have been rather embarrassing if she hadn’t already been stripped down the barest form of humbleness that she could possibly be.

The alternative to losing was one she couldn’t let herself imagine because then she’d become lost in it and she’d never find her way out. She followed the checkpoints one shaky step at a time. She’d been defined by her victories before, but now she was coming to realize that this victory would be made up of the smaller triumphs along the way. 

[dreamfingerstyping-blog]

Korra Week- Day 6 (Wisdom)

Korra was caught in a strange kind of balance of being expected to know absolutely everything and nothing.

She was the Avatar so it was given that she would know which plan of action to take, which way to lead the not so compliant world, and how to handle every single problem ever. (Half the time Korra didn’t even know what she wanted for breakfast.)

On the other hand, Korra was the ignorant girl from the middle of a big ice hunk that had nowhere near enough experience to fulfill the duties expected of her. (How many times, exactly, did they expect her to save the world until she was experienced enough?)  Critical eyes would drift over her biceps and her forced grin and it would be determined that this girl was not to be trusted.

Korra was no scholar, but she had come to learn that being well-read didn’t have a whole lot to do with saving people

The first thing Korra studied with eagerness in the new world outside of the compound was human nature. It had taken her awhile to realize people were different here. They were rawer, bolder, and they would have been intimidating if Korra hadn’t loved them so much.

She sat for hours in restaurant alcoves or park benches just watching. She examined the way their faces flowed from one emotion to the next (she was certainly no stranger to emotion), quirking and shifting into new forms. It reminded her of a kind of bending. In order to be a good Avatar, she’d have to understand people bending. Something told her that she’d never really be a master.

She couldn’t really sit and watch anymore. Wherever she sat, people would recognize her and they’d come and thank her for one thing or another. But she still tried.

What had scared her so much about Zaheer’s ideas was that she may have agreed with some of them. His ideas were like the blood bending of people bending. In the end, he hadn’t understood either. He had tried, but he had been trying to shape the people into a form of freedom that none of them really wanted.

All the politics and philosophical ideas aside, people wanted two main things: safety and happiness. That was what Korra was born to give, and give it she would. Korra knew how people worked and what they needed. That was more than enough for her. 

[korra-naga]

Korra Week 2014--Day 5-Growth

"Your responsibility is to bring balance to the entire world."

[dreamfingerstyping-blog]

Korra Week- Day 5 (Growth)

The first word that came to Korra’s mind when she thought of the White Lotus Compound was confinement.

At first it had been so large and strange, with people looking at her in a reverence that she couldn’t quite fathom as a kid. They looked at her like they were searching for something in the eyes of the young girl (it’s ok, we all miss him) but she didn’t quite know what to give in order to meet their expectations.

As she grew up it became suffocating. It was apparent that they were all waiting for something. From what she had learned about her predecessor, she assumed that they were waiting for her to shave her head and go off meat. Yeah right.

The pressure lay on her back heavily because it seemed that she was just about everything she wasn’t supposed to be. Oh, great, you mastered water bending-how about air bending? Then came earth bending and then fire bending and the question grew and grew until she saw it plastered on the faces of everyone in the damn place- What is wrong with Avatar Korra?

Nothing. There was absolutely nothing wrong with her. Except for the fact that she was being crushed in this iron grip of expectancy that stifled absolutely everything she could have, would have, or should have been. It’s like she was clay and they had put her in an Avatar Aang mold but she just wouldn’t fit. There was too much, too little, and far too many imperfections for her to belong.

On lonely nights in her room when she really did start to wonder- is there really something wrong with Avatar Korra- there was that fierce voice that was all her own than snapped no. There is absolutely nothing wrong with Avatar Korra but there are thousands upon thousands of things wrong with this.

She had outgrown this place. And it was time to get out.

~~~~~~~~~~~

Korra was too much for the Compound but she was practically drowning in Republic City.

It was easier to muster up the bravado when there was no one else but her keepers to see it, but here she was on display. She was in the newspapers, the radios, the thoughts of all the people- she didn’t know if it was more exhilarating or terrifying.

But part of her (most of her) was absolutely loving it. When she stood in that pro-bending stadium, sore arms raised as blood pumped fiercely under her skin, she was free. Slowly turning to take in faces lit by the glow of constant camera flash and a sweaty smile stretched wide on her face, Korra felt larger than life.

~~~~~~~~~~~

Hollowness had always been a term to describe something physically tangible until she had felt it with such a potent ache inside of herself. They always said that she hadn’t been connected to her past lives, and she may have allowed herself to believe them, but now it was obvious that they all had been fools because there must never have been an avatar after Wan that felt this empty.

Maybe she hadn’t noticed them but they had always been there. Like the sense of another’s presence in an adjacent room, they were always there, ready, waiting, empathizing. She hadn’t recognized the feeling until it had been torn away with such brutal abruptness and she was left in the snow as a sliver of the human being (Avatar) she had been.

Her face was raw pressed up against the ice and she couldn’t even find it in herself to scream (notrealnotrealnotreal). Korra felt very, very s m a l l.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“Korra, you will be ok.”

His voice carried the solemn weight of an assured promise and she tried to smile but really, it was just a kind of grimace with sore lips and tired eyes. She was just so tired.

Tenzin sighed and they looked in silence over the balcony at the air benders training. “You know, you did this.”

Korra let her eyes drift over the happy faces below and wondered how on earth this could have attributed to her. She felt like she was looking back on memories from another lifetime that she hadn’t made.

“You revitalized a culture, Korra. You’ve not only saved the world, but left it changed for the better. You’ve balanced the nations and fulfilled the hope that had rested on a single family. You have left your mark on this world and I don’t believe that it will ever forget you.”

Korra smiled and this time it was genuine. The connection was slow but it was coming back with more and more success every day. She was- is Avatar Korra. She tilted her face up into the sunlight and thought that yes, she had grown to be much more than anyone had imagined.

And she wasn’t done just yet. 

[iruka-2013]

Fanfic: Korra Week, Day 7--Triumph

Summary: The restoration of Korra's bending and her return to Republic City during and after "Endgame," as told from Lin's perspective. (Approx. 3,000 words.) 

_____________________________________

Lin Beifong was in despair.

  “I cannot restore Korra’s bending,” Master Katara had said. She hadn’t mentioned anyone else, but the implication was clear: No hope for Korra meant none for Lin, either.

  Korra still had her newly discovered airbending ability, of course. But how much consolation could such an insubstantial element be for a girl who was so stubborn and immovable—so obviously a born earthbender?

  And Lin had no bending ability left at all. She didn’t know whether to feel sorrier for Korra or herself.

The flight to the South Pole had been miserable enough for the rest of them—the better part of a week with eleven people and one large polar bear dog crowded onto the back of a sky bison, Tenzin pushing them on by day and night at top speed, with the minimum possible number of stops. But Korra had seemed unaware of anything at all. When she wasn’t curled up asleep with Naga for a pillow, she was sprawled across the edge of Oogi’s saddle like a seasick sailor, staring down at the ocean far below with a blankness in her eyes that made Lin distinctly uneasy. Only with difficulty could she be coaxed to eat, and Lin couldn’t recall her speaking once during the entire trip.

  It was as though Amon had stolen the Avatar’s soul along with three-fourths of her bending ability. Even Lin’s metalbender police officers, enervated as they had been after losing their bending, hadn’t tuned out the world so completely.

  Now that Katara had made it clear that neither of them could expect to bend anything ever again, Lin was beginning to understand how Korra felt. She certainly understood why Korra had turned her back on her parents and friends and taken off on her own.

  The Grand Lotus himself had been present alongside Katara when they arrived, but had quickly made himself insufferable with his barely concealed smugness at Korra’s fate. The man’s tone and manner practically shouted “I told you so,” until Korra’s father finally lost his temper and threatened to throw the man out the door if he didn’t leave.

  With the exception of the terribly crowded front room, the building was deserted. While most the others were still staring after Korra, Lin slipped into the main hallway and found a back room where she could be alone. It appeared to be a sparsely furnished guest room containing little more than a bed, a few decorative wall hangings, and a small trickling fountain in one corner. 

  Lin sat down on the edge of the bed and put her head in her hands. And there she sat for she didn’t know how long, feeling as if she was witnessing not just the end of her own career, but the end of an entire world.

  Republic City was in shambles. For all Amon’s talk about how much better off the world would be without benders, it was hard to see how the city could function without earthbenders to maintain roads, waterbenders to run the waterworks, and firebenders to provide electrical power. They would be lucky, when they got back, if the place hadn’t yet dissolved into the chaos that was surely coming.

  As Tenzin would say, the world had fallen out of balance again. And could it even be said, this time, that there was an Avatar to restore it? Avatar Aang had never quite overcome the sense that he had failed the world by disappearing from it for a hundred years. Now it looked as though the same feeling would dog Korra for the rest of her life.

  Lin didn’t pay attention, at first, to the commotion outside her room. People were speaking with raised voices, though she couldn’t be bothered to decipher what they were saying. Surely no one would come to disturb her so soon; Tenzin, at least, would understand her need to be alone after Katara’s announcement. Whatever the trouble was, the others could sort it out themselves for a change.

  No such luck. The commotion seemed to be heading her way. It resolved itself into the sound of voices and footsteps coming down the hall, quick and purposeful.

  The loudest set of footsteps stopped outside her door. Lin sighed and braced herself for the inevitable knock and demand for false reassurances that she was all right.

  Instead, the wall to the left of the door blew itself apart in an explosion of loose stones and rock dust. Over the resulting pile of rubble stepped a fur-parka-clad figure that Lin took several stunned seconds to recognize as Korra.

  Lin rose from the bed and stared open-mouthed. She hardly recognized the young woman who had disappeared into the tundra a few hours ago. That Korra had been slump-shouldered and dead-eyed, an emotional wreck fleeing the place where she had lost her last hope of regaining her old identity. This Korra radiated confidence and power.

  But not even that—not even the fact that Korra’s eyes were supposed to be ocean blue and not glowing with unearthly golden light—shocked Lin as much the shattered pile of rocks and rubble on the floor.

  Could Korra have done that?

  As though in answer to the question Lin couldn’t bring herself to ask, Korra raised her hands and gestured toward the fountain in the corner of the room, drawing a stream of water to join the lines of fire and bits of stone flying in tightly controlled, crisscrossing orbits around her body. She gave Lin a few second to take it all in, then blew away the three elements with a burst of air that left everything in the small room except Lin licked by fire, drenched with water, and bombarded with pebbles.

  Though she didn’t doubt the fineness of Korra’s control, Lin instinctively stepped back and raised her arms to shield her face. When she looked again, her heart leaped into her throat. A hand was reaching toward her—so like Amon's hand, coming to strip away her earthbending…

  Lin tried to step backward again, stumbled against the edge of the bed, and barely remained upright. With an angry sweep of her arm, she struck Korra’s outstretched hand away.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” she snapped, irritated less by Korra’s behavior than by the furious pounding of her heart.

  Korra stepped back as well, her eyes fading to their normal color and meeting Lin’s with an unusually contrite expression. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to freak you out. But… see, I think maybe—”

  Lin impatiently tore her eyes away from the Avatar’s, shaking her head as she looked around the room. “How?”

  “I talked to Aang. Whatever bloodbending thing Amon did to me, Aang fixed it. I can work all four elements now.”

  Talking to spirits was something else Lin knew Korra had never been able to do before, but her surprise was overwhelmed as an emotional dam burst somewhere inside her.

  “Well, that’s wonderful for you,” she said bitterly. “But what about the rest of us—the ones who don’t have hundreds of past lives to draw on for healing, or wisdom, or whatever you got from Aang? Do you think you can run Republic City by yourself? Even if the Avatar is back, Amon was right—the era of bending might as well be over. Too many of us are useless now.” Lin looked down at her hands, fighting the urge to break down and weep for the unfairness of it all.

  Korra waited with uncharacteristic patience for Lin to finish her rant. Then, jarringly, she smiled—her old cocksure grin, the one Lin had been certain none of them would ever see again. Lin had to resist the impulse to wipe that blasted smirk off her face.

  “Chief Beifong… do you remember seeing a big domed building in the middle of a circle of tall stones on the way into the compound—the Avatar temple? I want you to get everyone together and meet me there as soon as you can.” She reached out to grip Lin’s arm briefly. “I’ll show you guys something cool, okay?”

  Without waiting for a reply from the dumbfounded ex-police chief, Korra walked out through the hole in the wall—not toward the front door, but farther down the long hallway to the rear. For the first time, Lin noticed Tenzin, Mako, and the rest of Korra’s teenage friends standing in the hallway.

  “‘Something cool’?” she asked none of them in particular. “What did she mean by that?”

  Mako looked at her calmly. “Not to be rude or anything… but if you’d let Korra get a word in edgewise, she’d have told you that she thinks she can restore your bending, just like Aang restored hers.”

  Before Lin could take in this incredible statement, the sound of more earthbending explosions echoed from down the hall.

  Rubbing the back of his neck, Mako peered after Korra. “She’s sure in the hurry to try it. Looks like she just made the healing hut a new back door.”

  “Or two,” sighed Tenzin.

  “Really?” For the first time in days, Lin began to feel like smiling. “Good for her.”

  *****

  At first the others—Tenzin’s family, Korra’s parents, Mako and the kids—hurried to keep up with Lin as she strode toward the stone circle behind the compound, but they kept back once she reached the steps to the temple platform where Korra waited.

  As she ascended the steps, Lin was overwhelmed by an unpleasant memory: being dragged as a prisoner through the captured Air Temple by Amon’s thugs, to be shoved to her knees at the feet of the monster himself. The man had loved to make his victims kneel, and Lin suspected that it wasn’t just to get a better angle for his bloodbending grip. He was tall enough, compared with most of them, to make height a moot point in any case.

  Korra, on the other hand, was a good few inches shorter than Lin, and could use a little help in the height department. So when Lin reached the top of the steps and faced the Avatar, she dropped smoothly to one knee.

  Lin shut her eyes as Korra stepped forward. There was a warm hand gripping her shoulder, and a warm thumb pressing against her forehead, followed by a slight sense of disorientation, though nothing like as bad as the effects of Amon’s bloodbending. Lin blinked uncertainly as she stood up, and her eyes came to rest on the circle of gigantic stones.

  She raised her hands, and smiled at the blank astonishment on the faces of Tenzin and the others as she effortlessly lifted the stones into the air.

  *****

  Lin’s first inkling of just how different things were going to be for Korra in Republic City came after they had landed Oogi at Air Temple Island taken a ferryboat to town.

  It was just after sunset, and the busy harbor was quieting down for the night. Though they had wired ahead with word of Korra’s new power, Tenzin thought it would be best if they checked in personally at City Hall, and none of Korra’s friends wanted to be left behind.  

  They stepped off the boat and onto the wooden dock, heading for the city building a few blocks away. They hadn’t even reached the first cross-street when a voice from the small customs house at the head of the dock stopped them.

  Lin looked over to see the building’s door held open by Officer Song, one of her former metalbender police officers. The interior of the building behind him was crowded with people, and the hope in their eyes was heartbreaking to see.

  “Chief Beifong! Is the Avatar with you?”

  Korra jostled her way clear of the mostly-taller people surrounding her and raised a hand. “Hey.”

  Song held up one of the city’s yellow telegraph forms, grubby and wrinkled with much handling. “A friend at the city wireless office gave me this message. Is it true?”

  Lin already knew what the message said. Tenzin had written it to convey the most information in the smallest number of words: “AVATAR’S BENDING RESTORED—CURE COMMUNICABLE TO BEIFONG AND SHOULD WORK FOR OTHERS—RETURNING FOURTH EVENING.”

  To answer Song’s question, Lin shot a metal wrist-cable straight upward, where it wound around the cross-tie of a power pole. She retracted the cable and pulled herself upward into a graceful gymnastic flip over the electrical lines and back to the ground, the sort of thing that was basic technique at the police metalbending academy. For effect, she let the pavement crack just a bit under her feet as she landed.

  Her men watched, entranced. As one, they turned to look at Korra.

  Korra looked at Tenzin, who shrugged. “I suppose if anyone deserves to be first in line, it’s them.”

  Lin retracted her cable. “Let’s take this inside.”

  Everyone in the small building—several dozen people at least, with White Lotus guards and a few other types of uniforms mixed in with the police—backed away from the door to admit the Avatar and her friends. The room was packed so full that the occupants had to be careful not to trip over each other as they made way.

  “Sorry about the close quarters,” Song murmured, “but it’s really hard to keep something like this a secret.”

  Korra stared blankly at the crowd, and the crowd stared back at her. Nobody seemed to know quite what to do next.

  Standing a half-step behind Korra’s shoulder, Lin beckoned Song forward and pointed to the ground at the Avatar’s feet. Song, always quick on the uptake, immediately knelt down. To an outside observer, it didn’t look as though Korra actually did anything much—a grip on the shoulder, a light touch on the forehead—though her glowing eyes and hands did elicit a gasp from those watching.

  Song leaped to his feet with a whoop. Lacking a convenient set of monumental stones, he had to content himself with ripping a chunk from of the barren postage-stamp of dirt that was the building’s yard.

  Lin hadn’t thought of that. We’re going to have to be careful where we set up our re-bending operation if we don’t want property damage on a massive scale…

  The crowd began murmuring at this proof of the Avatar’s power, and she heard a few scattered whistles and claps. Song moved out of the way of the officer behind him, almost forgetting Korra in his haste to get outside and back to his element. But at the last moment he stopped, snapped to attention, and raised his hand to salute the Avatar.

  When he was gone out the door, Korra stared after him dazedly. The next ex-metalbender was already kneeling in the spot Song had left. “Korra,” Lin hissed. “Turn around. You’re on!”

  Korra faced the crowd and squared her shoulders. 

  After that, things moved along quickly. It took the better part of an hour to get through everyone in the room, but as most of them were people whose job it was to maintain public order, they knew how to wait their turn. One by one they knelt at Korra’s feet, then headed out the door behind her; most contented themselves with a formal bow or salute as they left, but a few of the more emotional benders couldn’t restrain themselves from trying to hug the startled Avatar.

  When the room was finally empty, Mako turned to Korra and put a hand on her shoulder. “You all right? You look a little freaked out.”

  Korra was watching out the door. Some of the restored benders had already gone home to spread the good news. But most of them, being earthbenders, were gleefully participating in an enormous dirt fight that had turned the building’s yard into a pit several feet deep and covered everything and everyone with what Lin’s mother would have called “a protective coating of earth.” Lin’s metalbenders, in particular, were slinging ever-larger clods at each other with abandon, whooping like kids.

  “That’s the same bunch of cops who chased me down and arrested me the first day I arrived in town.” Korra looked down at her hands wonderingly. "It's just kind of hard to believe I did that.”

  A few of the metalbenders caught sight of Korra and beckoned her outside. The moment she stepped through the door, two of them grabbed her by the arms, ducked down, and hoisted her onto their shoulders. 

"Woah!" she cried, clutching at them as she got her balance... but soon she was grinning with the rest of the earthbenders she had healed, flushing red from their cheers and applause. She put an end to the awkward moment by vaulting to the ground and throwing herself into the dirt fight, knocking half of Lin's force off their feet with one well-placed tidal wave of earth. 

As her men picked themselves up and organized a playful counterattack against the triumphant girl, Lin smiled and shook her head. "Welcome home, Avatar." 

__________________________________________________________

A/N: Because we all need some happy Korra in our lives right now (and because I'm sure Bryke has something just as awesome as this up their sleeves for her in Book 4!).