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glyficTitle: Quick-silver, slow death
Author:malurette
Fandom: Avatar: the Legend of Korra
Characters: Korra & Raava, Katara, Asami
Rating: PG-13 / T
Disclaimer: Bryke
Author’s note: ESL author with no beta-reader – if you spot any mistakes please do correct me.
Prompt "Angst" forladiesbingo / translation & slight reworking of something I did previously for "poisoned"
Word count:
*
Several enemies now crossing paths with Korra don't see her for who she is and refuse to consider her as a human being, but treat her like a symbol to be taken down. They attack viciously, sneakily, nothing alike a Pro bending match with set rules nor the well-choreographed duels of her formal training. The White Lotus Order prepared her the best they could to face the worst... and it's still not enough. Facing bending masters abusing their power, she would hold her own. But those who just wish to destroy the very idea of the Avatar...
Facing the real world in all its meanness and pettiness is a slap to the face. Amon killed her bending once, Unalaq did manage to break her Avatarship, if temporarilly. The Red Lotus wants to destroy the very possibility of an Avatar, definitively and leaving the world unprotected, without an Avatar forever.
But what about her? not about Avatarhood but her own person? They treat her like a puppet, something they can manipulate and then discard. She's not a person anymore, she's not even en enemy to fight, she's... a mere vessel.
Now she masters metal bending. She could stand her ground against metal thrown at her in any offensive way, against any sort of weapon... Sneaking under her skin, seeping through her bloodstream, creeping within her very cells, however... she's powerless against that. She can feel it invading, fusing with her flesh to poison her to the core. Here's the worst pain she's ever felt. It burns but without fire's brutal honesty, not something cool water could soothe and heal even under a water beding healing master's hands, it's not the hard, clear impact of metal against bone. It's insidious, awful, and there's absolutely nothing she can do to stop it from progressing, eating her away from the inside.
She's never felt so powerless.
Even after Su Yin reverses the maneuver and yanks the mercury out of her body, even after Katara lays all of her healing science on her, she remains drained, aching all over, constantly exhausted; unable of even standing up on her own, or of taking the most basic care for herself.
Details of her near death are fuzzy--she was in too much pain, she was too far gone to really register. She remembers so much pain she wished she was already dead so it would stop. And, she remembers, or maybe she imagines, being in her father's arms, was used to be a little girl's safest place and seeing, knowing from the look in Tonraq's eyes, that he couldn't save her, he couldn't protect her from anything anymore, not from this--she wasn't safe, she would never be safe again.
She remembers feeling, more than actually thinking,
I want my mommy.
She hadn't felt that way since she was around four years old. She remembers the White Lotus Sages coming to their house to assert her identity as the Avatar; not the attempted kidnapping that followed. She remembers going to leave on the secluded compound built for the express purpose of sheltering and training her, just close enough to her village so her parents could visit... but she was never home anymore. They cut her from the mundane world but also her own family, for her own sake, they said.
Thirteen years later, the Red Lotus finally found her and they're killing her.
Technically, she survided. Her heart is still beating, she's breathing, at some point when they forced her she eats--and Raava is still here, within. But... Korra feels like an empty shell anyway. Shattered. Destroyed. She's in too mauch pain and can't move, can't bend elements. Her spiritual link wasn't severed but her spirit was broken nonetheless.
While she's dying inside Air is reborn. Worse, it's because of that choice she imposed on the world, that new balance that saw Air reborn in the first place, that gave Zaheer power to escape, break out the Red Lotus and kill her. Zaheer may be out of commission and unable to hurt her further, but she's out of commission too and unable to help anyone... or to mess up again--so now the new Air Benders profess they not only don't need her help anymore--and she wonders, honestly who ever actually needed it, needed such a failed Avatar's help in the first place? she feels now she was never up to the task--but on top of it they will overtake her mission of bringing balance to the world.
She feels powerless, and useless. She remembers the depth of despair when Amon tore her bending away and with it her identity as the Avatar; she remembers the cold calculation, should she just die and make room for her successor to be reborn already? She couldn't do that anymore: she's too weak now to take her own life. She could just... stop eating and hope to fade away, she's desperate enough to believe she could actually die from it... but then again she just knows that Katara won't let her and will find a way to keep her alive anyway. Her parents wouldn't give up on her either, by the way. She knows all too much just how much sorrow her passing would cause them.
She doesn't know... what else would matter.
She just... lets things happen. What else could she do? nothing more.
The Red Lotus poisoned her body and her very soul, her sense of self, her will to will. They dreamed of unleashing chaos on the world--they just managed to unleash it within her.
What is left for her to live for? letters sent by friends, old acquaintances, random admirers that don't know her and still wish her to get well soon. What do they know? Their words read empty and false.
Except.
Maybe.
Maybe...
Author:
maluretteFandom: Avatar: the Legend of Korra
Characters: Korra & Raava, Katara, Asami
Rating: PG-13 / T
Disclaimer: Bryke
Author’s note: ESL author with no beta-reader – if you spot any mistakes please do correct me.
Prompt "Angst" for
ladiesbingo / translation & slight reworking of something I did previously for "poisoned"Word count:
Several enemies now crossing paths with Korra don't see her for who she is and refuse to consider her as a human being, but treat her like a symbol to be taken down. They attack viciously, sneakily, nothing alike a Pro bending match with set rules nor the well-choreographed duels of her formal training. The White Lotus Order prepared her the best they could to face the worst... and it's still not enough. Facing bending masters abusing their power, she would hold her own. But those who just wish to destroy the very idea of the Avatar...
Facing the real world in all its meanness and pettiness is a slap to the face. Amon killed her bending once, Unalaq did manage to break her Avatarship, if temporarilly. The Red Lotus wants to destroy the very possibility of an Avatar, definitively and leaving the world unprotected, without an Avatar forever.
But what about her? not about Avatarhood but her own person? They treat her like a puppet, something they can manipulate and then discard. She's not a person anymore, she's not even en enemy to fight, she's... a mere vessel.
Now she masters metal bending. She could stand her ground against metal thrown at her in any offensive way, against any sort of weapon... Sneaking under her skin, seeping through her bloodstream, creeping within her very cells, however... she's powerless against that. She can feel it invading, fusing with her flesh to poison her to the core. Here's the worst pain she's ever felt. It burns but without fire's brutal honesty, not something cool water could soothe and heal even under a water beding healing master's hands, it's not the hard, clear impact of metal against bone. It's insidious, awful, and there's absolutely nothing she can do to stop it from progressing, eating her away from the inside.
She's never felt so powerless.
Even after Su Yin reverses the maneuver and yanks the mercury out of her body, even after Katara lays all of her healing science on her, she remains drained, aching all over, constantly exhausted; unable of even standing up on her own, or of taking the most basic care for herself.
Details of her near death are fuzzy--she was in too much pain, she was too far gone to really register. She remembers so much pain she wished she was already dead so it would stop. And, she remembers, or maybe she imagines, being in her father's arms, was used to be a little girl's safest place and seeing, knowing from the look in Tonraq's eyes, that he couldn't save her, he couldn't protect her from anything anymore, not from this--she wasn't safe, she would never be safe again.
She remembers feeling, more than actually thinking,
I want my mommy.
She hadn't felt that way since she was around four years old. She remembers the White Lotus Sages coming to their house to assert her identity as the Avatar; not the attempted kidnapping that followed. She remembers going to leave on the secluded compound built for the express purpose of sheltering and training her, just close enough to her village so her parents could visit... but she was never home anymore. They cut her from the mundane world but also her own family, for her own sake, they said.
Thirteen years later, the Red Lotus finally found her and they're killing her.
Technically, she survided. Her heart is still beating, she's breathing, at some point when they forced her she eats--and Raava is still here, within. But... Korra feels like an empty shell anyway. Shattered. Destroyed. She's in too mauch pain and can't move, can't bend elements. Her spiritual link wasn't severed but her spirit was broken nonetheless.
While she's dying inside Air is reborn. Worse, it's because of that choice she imposed on the world, that new balance that saw Air reborn in the first place, that gave Zaheer power to escape, break out the Red Lotus and kill her. Zaheer may be out of commission and unable to hurt her further, but she's out of commission too and unable to help anyone... or to mess up again--so now the new Air Benders profess they not only don't need her help anymore--and she wonders, honestly who ever actually needed it, needed such a failed Avatar's help in the first place? she feels now she was never up to the task--but on top of it they will overtake her mission of bringing balance to the world.
She feels powerless, and useless. She remembers the depth of despair when Amon tore her bending away and with it her identity as the Avatar; she remembers the cold calculation, should she just die and make room for her successor to be reborn already? She couldn't do that anymore: she's too weak now to take her own life. She could just... stop eating and hope to fade away, she's desperate enough to believe she could actually die from it... but then again she just knows that Katara won't let her and will find a way to keep her alive anyway. Her parents wouldn't give up on her either, by the way. She knows all too much just how much sorrow her passing would cause them.
She doesn't know... what else would matter.
She just... lets things happen. What else could she do? nothing more.
The Red Lotus poisoned her body and her very soul, her sense of self, her will to will. They dreamed of unleashing chaos on the world--they just managed to unleash it within her.
What is left for her to live for? letters sent by friends, old acquaintances, random admirers that don't know her and still wish her to get well soon. What do they know? Their words read empty and false.
Except.
Maybe.
Maybe...
