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Her face, Kuvira’s face – the two blurred together in dream until Korra could only tell them apart by the clothes they wore, by the metal on Kuvira’s shoulders and the gloves on her hands.
(Those gloves felt like the clouds, if the clouds were warm. She had expected Kuvira’s hands to be heavy, solid, hard as the metal she used, but they weren’t; they were solid but they were the solidity of sun-warmed stone.)
She woke gently, half-unaware of the process, the image and thoughts blurring out of too-real and into soft memory and wishful thinking. Before she even really realized she was awake, Korra rubbed her face, waking herself enough to banish the thoughts back into the dream from which they’d come.
With a groan, she stood and shook her head. Her hair swung in front of her eyes when she did, and it made her shake her head again; she still wasn’t quite used to it being this short, especially right when she woke up, wasn’t used to how the ends barely brushed her shoulders. Her hair should be—should be—(should be the length that Kuvira’s hair is when it’s loose and flowing).
As her hair settled, Korra made her way to the washbasin and dunked her head in it. She immediately jerked her head back out and bit off a curse. Before the water had a chance to drip any further down her body, she bent it off her body and back into the basin with a splash. There were showers and baths, sure, but being able to just shove her head into cold water was bracing. Also meant she had a ready supply of water, just in case.
Fully awake, the dream almost cleansed from her mind, Korra moved to the window and stared out over Republic City. It was... it was hard to look at. In the few days since the end of the battle, most of rubble had been cleared away, but the skyline itself was so different now, with so many buildings cut in half or destroyed entirely.
And that was without even talking about the spirit portal.
Korra sighed and dropped her head onto her arms. She didn’t want to think about that. She didn’t know that it had been possible to create a new spirit portal. She didn’t—
She didn’t want to think about the last thing Kuvira had said to her before they walked back through the portal, the whispered “Thank you” in her ear, warm breath and words so soft and vulnerable that she had blushed. Nobody had noticed, she knew, nobody expect maybe Kuvira herself, but with the battle and exhaustion and the physical toll taken upon her, Korra wasn’t sure if Kuvira actually had noticed the effect of her words.
Even if she had noticed, Korra doubted Kuvira had expected her words to haunt Korra’s dreams quite this long. By which she meant at all.
The stars – what few were visible through the twin glows of city and portal – told Korra that it was the middle of the night. Nobody else on Air Temple Island would be awake at this hour, and Korra didn’t want to wake anyone. She also knew that she wouldn’t be able to get to sleep for a while, not as troubled as she was.
It just didn’t make sense, that Kuvira would stay with her this much.
Even as she thought the words, Korra’s lips turned up into a slight smile. It make sense, alright. Nobody else had bested her and gotten under her skin in quite the same way as Kuvira, just through circumstance and mindset. Nobody else had quite the same... sense of power, Korra supposed. The iron strength tempered with fluidity and purpose, even flawed and turned to grandiose ends.
Her face warmed again, and Korra swore, another set of words that she’d learned while pro-bending. “Time to go visit her,” she muttered, face turned up to the too-empty sky. “Maybe that’ll help resolve... all this.”
She stayed up for another hour, practicing kata her first mentors had taught her until her body was too tired to avoid sleep, even if her mind still pored over every second of her time with Kuvira, seeking meaning in everything even when she tried to tell herself that there was nothing but the closeness of battle, and a certain beautiful, ephemeral, vulnerability they had both shared.
She tried.
It almost worked, even.
* * *
When she woke, it was to sunlight in her eyes and the scent of burning metal in her dreams. Korra opened her eyes and breathed in the light scents of wood and soap that permeated the buildings of Air Temple Island. Home, or as close to it as she got these days. Keeping that smell firmly in her nose, she cleaned herself and made her way to the kitchen for a quick breakfast, grabbing her glider staff on the way.
Nobody else was there while she was, for which she was very grateful. She didn’t want to explain to anyone exactly why she wanted to visit Kuvira. None of them would think it strange, exactly, but... that didn’t shake Korra’s belief that it was better to just leave well enough alone until she could sort her feelings out a bit more.
Korra ate as quickly as she could – leftover rice was plenty right now – and left. As soon as she was outside, she snapped open the glider’s wings and launched herself into the air.
In the daytime, it was easier to see the scars in the city that Kuvira and her army had left. Crews of earthbenders and non-bending metalworkers had cleared the worst of the rubble, and crews had attached roofs to the buildings cut in half, but the damage was still there. Asami had told her that it had taken a year until Republic City looked normal with the spirit vines wrapped around it; Korra just hoped that it wouldn’t take longer for the city to feel like itself again with the changes Kuvira had wrought.
The spirit portal was not as obvious in the daylight, at least. Its golden glow faded into the sunlight. The crater it was in was more obvious, though, especially from above as Korra glided towards the specialized jail used to hold metalbenders. The crater was placed beautifully in the center of the city, and the spirit vines that had once lived there were starting to regrow. Korra hoped that they would return to being a small forest, at least; it would help make the crater look less invasive, if it could look more like the spirit wilds it had once been.
As she landed in front of the jail, Korra couldn’t keep herself from wondering again what she was expecting to hear from Kuvira. She knew she wanted clarity; she just... wasn’t sure how she’d go about finding it, or if Kuvira would even be helpful to her. She believed she would, but... there was always that level of uncertainty. What would be, would be, though, and Korra entered the jail with a small smile on her face.
The guards questioned her, as they were supposed to. She gave them truthful answers: She was Avatar Korra. She wanted to see Kuvira. She wanted to ask her a few more questions. No, she didn’t need anyone to come with her. No, she wasn’t asking anything they needed to keep records of; this was more personal, about a conversation she and Kuvira had had. Yes, thank you, you can lead me there, but I want to talk to her alone, alright? Good.
Once in front of Kuvira’s wooden cell, Korra waved the guard off with a word and a smile. Even without directly looking, she could feel Kuvira watching her. Korra turned, and leaned on the wall next to Kuvira’s cell. “I was wondering how you were doing,” she said. The words echoed slightly, hollow, against the walls.
Kuvira raised an eyebrow. Her hair was tucked into its perfect bun at the back of her head, and she was dressed in plain dark brown clothing. It looked strange on her, loose and informal and greatly contrasted to the sharp and clean-lined green and steel she had worn every other time Korra had seen her. Kuvira said, voice soft, “As well as could be expected.”
“Oh. Well. That’s good.” Korra shifted, facing her body towards Kuvira a little more. “I mean, I thought that would be the case.”
She laughed, low and throaty, and Korra swallowed against the sudden heat in her chest. Kuvira leaned forward, smiling, eyes fixed on her. “You came all this way just to check on me?”
Korra met her gaze, eyes wide. It took her a moment to gather her thoughts enough to say, “Sort of.”
“What’s the rest of the story?”
I keep thinking about you. The words hovered in the back of her mouth, just waiting for her to voice them. She opened her mouth, closed it again, and finally said, voice as calm and strong as she could make it, “I dream about our fights, and—and I keep thinking about you.”
She could feel a flush spreading across her face as she spoke, and the way Kuvira’s smile faded and her posture changed to—to something reminiscent of the vulnerability she’d shown in the spirit world didn’t help. She kept herself standing there, facing Kuvira, by strength of will alone, until—
“I didn’t expect you to hold me.” Kuvira folded her arms around her chest. “I expected many things when I fought you, but I didn’t expect you to hold me.”
“You were falling,” Korra said, without thinking. “I had to catch you, make sure you didn’t get hurt any more.”
Kuvira smiled again, but this was a different smile, not predatory or filled with laughter, but... soft, calm, reminiscent of the way Tenzin looked at Pema sometimes, or Opal when she talked about Bolin, or Korra’s own parents’ smiles whenever they said they were proud of her. “I didn’t think you’d show that kindness to me,” she said. One bare hand, vulnerable skin instead of pristine gloves, reached out, spread against a railing near where Korra stood. “I don’t know if I could have shown it to you.”
“I didn’t show it to you the first time we fought.” Korra stepped forward, tentatively placed her hand on the same piece of wood as Kuvira’s, stretched her fingertips just enough to almost touch Kuvira’s; an invitation, nothing more. “I learned a lot, between those encounters. Between every big fight I have, really.” She sighed, looked down at their hands, less than an inch apart. “This wasn’t what I expected, either.”
Kuvira moved her hand, rested her fingers on top of Korra’s own. Her fingers were covered with calluses, but laid there so lightly Korra almost couldn’t feel them for a moment, until Kuvira’s hand clenched – not fierce, not hard, but painfully – and Korra looked up and met Kuvira’s eyes again. They shone, glistened almost, with anger Korra recognized: unshed tears and sorrow she didn’t want to let herself feel.
Korra reached over with her other hand and lifted Kuvira’s until she could hold it between both of her own hands, and smiled her own sad smile. “It’s okay,” she said, voice soft. “It’s okay to cry.”
Kuvira looked like she was going to scream at her for a moment, face tight and teeth bared, and then she fell forward against the barred wall, forehead resting in the space between two poles. Korra stood, holding her hand, letting her shake in silence. After a minute, she slowly pried one hand free, reached through the bars, and rested it on Kuvira’s shoulder. The cloth there was rough; not much, but enough to be noticeable, especially contrasted with Kuvira’s skin. Kuvira held on to her hand there, too, and continued shaking, tears dropping off her face without a sound.
She didn’t know what else to do, so she just stood there, waiting, heart aching because she couldn’t do anything else. She’d given permission, so... Kuvira had let go. Korra breathed in, deep and slow, processing that. All she had needed to do was say that Kuvira could cry. How—why—why did she have so much... power? Was power even the right word?
As she thought, Korra felt her own eyes start to burn, until tears were falling down her face, just as silently. She wasn’t even sure why she was crying; just that she was, and it... it helped, to be able to cry about all the death and damage that they had created, fighting over a city and principles they hadn’t really disagreed on after all.
When Kuvira’s tears slowed and her shakes faded into simple breaths, she looked up again, and Korra wasn’t certain if she was glad or not that her own eyes were dry. They were still red, she was sure, and if there weren’t tracks along her cheek’s she’d be surprised.
“Am I so pathetic?” Kuvira rasped, pulling away.
Korra let her go, though she didn’t want to lose the contact, the connection of skin. “No,” she said, letting her hands rest on the wood, still inside the cell, still within reach. “I hadn’t had a chance – a real space – to cry over all the deaths yet either.”
For a moment, Kuvira stilled entirely, eyes fixing on Korra’s. It looked to Korra like she was searching for something. Then, after a breath that felt like a minute, Kuvira sighed and brushed Korra’s hand. “Go home,” she said. “Come back when we aren’t crying wrecks.”
Korra laughed, surprising herself with how bright and loud it was. “Would tomorrow be too soon?”
A pause, another soft pressure on her hand. “No,” Kuvira said. “I don’t think it would be.”
“Then I will see you tomorrow,” Korra promised. She hesitated, then reached out and clasped Kuvira’s hand. “Stay strong.”
Kuvira smiled. “Stay safe.”
“Always.”
Kuvira released her hand, and Korra smiled, and turned away, and wondered how she was going to explain to the guards that she fully intended to make a habit of visiting Kuvira.
That, she decided, was a problem for tomorrow.
For now, she walked out of the building, content in the clear knowledge of her feelings: She liked Kuvira, liked her quite a lot, and Kuvira seemed to feel the same way about her.