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Korra's heart is still pounding, head throbbing, by the time she finally crawls beneath her sheets. It's nearing 3 am, but the moonlight swathing the surfaces of her room makes it seem like she's hovering in some limbo world, not night, but not quite dawn either. She's lying spread-eagled on the pallet, an arm slung across her eyes in an attempt to create the illusion of true darkness. Spirits, she's tired and her body is aching and she wants nothing more than dreamless slumber, but Korra knows already that it's futile. She's paid penance in tears and vulnerability enough to feel she deserves it, but sleep will not come to her tonight.
Too much has happened. She shouldn't feel this way, so utterly helpless and small. She shouldn't feel like this because she can't afford to be weak. She's the Avatar, the Avatar, the Avatar, she repeats to herself like a mantra. But it does nothing to help and right now she just wants to drop all pretenses and be as miserable as she feels. She aches. There are too many images playing over and over in her mind's eye in an unrelenting loop for her to adequately process: cold waves lapping at Avatar Aang Memorial Island; the red ghosts of the Equalists swimming around her; Amon's eyes flashing from behind is mask, merciless and brimming with hate; Aang and Tenzin running, blurring into one. They're all pounding inside of her skull and Korra can't shut them up.
Korra thinks her head might split and she lets out an exasperated, angry noise as she loosens her hair from its ponytail in an attempt to alleviate the pressure. She runs a hand through her hair, kinked where it has been bound, and lets it fall around her bare shoulders. She catches the scent that lingers there, pressing a silken lock beneath her nose and it smells like smoke and something more that she can't remember, something lingering on the tip of her tongue. Maybe it's the combination of the scent and how her body looks as it's being caressed by fingers of moonlight, but a different feeling begins to work its way inside her. Homesickness that is palpable and achingly familiar, a feeling that only sinks into her bones during moments she can never anticipate. And suddenly it's eating her up, this emotion piled atop so many others, and it's all she can do but to curl up on her side and draw her knees to her chest. Home for Korra has never been housed by four walls; she had left her parent's house so young, the compound she spent the bulk of her training at only ever felt like a shelter. And so, folded in on herself in the milk of the moonlight she is yearning for snow, for her mother's singing, for her father's deep and bellowing laugh.
Her eyes close and the memory washes over her unbidden. Korra at nine, enduring the first few days of full-time training at the compound without her parents, unable to sleep on the hard bed awash in waves of loneliness. Feeling somehow empty but full of longing for her mother's smile and the glint in her father's eyes. Trying to be strong and bite back the urge to flee, and failing. Leaving, stealing away in the cover of night when her sentries are turned the other way. Arriving at her parent's doorstep--was it hers anymore?--to the light of dawn spilling over the horizon. Tonraq's hand on her shoulder, Senna clucking her tongue, eyes filled with empathy and love. "You wanted so badly to go."
"I want to be there, I know I'm supposed to, I'm brave, I just wanted to hear you sing," nine-year-old Korra blurts out in one breath. Her cheeks redden and she is ashamed, embarrassed for leaving, because she's tough as nails, she knows it, so why couldn't she stay? But her parents understand and Korra is in Tonraq's arms and enveloped in his scent. The scent of winter, smoke mixed in with freshly fallen snow. The smell is tangled up in memories of that day, her mother holding Korra to her, placing her daughter's head in the space between her breasts as she rocks. Senna sings to her then, a song about the moon spirit in her raspy, slightly off-key voice.
They give her that day and then take her back. Before parting with her at the gates of the compound, Tonraq plants soft kisses on Korra's crown and nuzzles her cheek in a way that makes her nose wrinkle against the scratching of his unshaven chin. Senna's lips are at Korra's ears, whispering. It's a memory Korra didn't think ever she would relish with sweetness on her tongue as she does now, instead of embarrassment. But the lonely pangs of shame and homesickness have given way to something different, and it's warm and encompassing and tastes like sugar.
Korra shakes her head and snaps out of it, crashing back into the present. She feels torn in half, plagued by the events of the night, yet almost lulled into security and sleep. Waves of panic rise up and threaten to assuage her as she sees Amon in every shadow in the room, but she makes it stop. She forces herself to inhale, exhale, slow and deep. She has given herself enough time to be scared. She drinks in the moonlight and the faint scent of smoke in her hair. Her eyes close and she fights back Amon's voice ringing in her ears with her mother's, who sings to her before whispering to her daughter, "you are the bravest girl I know."