tushanshu_logs | Catch-all for October

His is a small dry laugh.
Oh yeah, he'll do great.
Look how great he's been doing already.

Missed 100 years.
Has no one to show him how to do his job.
Oh yeah, and was struck by lightning and barely escaped with his life.
He's doing fantastically!

"I just hope it's enough."
Because have died, and will continue to do so, because of him.

"Hey." Her voice is a little louder and she straightened up from her slouch. "It’s enough."

After a moment, she realized just how long they had been there talking.

"Did Toph already stop by?"

Edited 2013-10-15 19:27 (UTC)

"Thanks Korra."

Aang briefly looks up and offers her a small, forced smile.

"She's been around, yeah. Why? Is everything okay?"

No.

"Yeah, I was just wondering if she’s been keeping you company. Aside from the art room, this place can get pretty dull." She mentally tacked on even for volunteers at the end of her sentence.

"When your waterbending’s back up to full strength, maybe we can go to the beach." Beach on the edge of a turtle’s shell, and she referenced it so casually. Clearly she had been here too long.

"She is, it's just...she likes being cooped up in one place less than I do, and I'm not a big fan of it either," he says with a shrug. Poor Toph, Aang remembers how unhappy she was living in her parent's house, behind tall walls and locked doors.

Aang is thrown from his dour memory of the Bei Fong estate by the mention of...

"There's a beach?"

A slightly sardonic smile spread across Korra’s lips at the mention of being cooped up in one place. If she could only tell him the irony of that statement, how his order was what made her spend the last thirteen years of her life practically locked up in a giant training facility.

"Yeah. There’s a ton of sand shell side, it’s where we had a party last time." That was actually a lot of fun and Korra’s smile grew genuine when she thought of how she Nita went overboard with the water games and the food she ate by the grill. "It’s a good place, so we can do that."

"And this is all on the back of a giant turtle.

...

I have to see its face someday."

He just has to.
And he says it with such conviction that there's little room for doubt that he that he won't succeed.

"He probably won’t see you." She couldn’t hide her laugh behind her words. "Tu Vishan’s eyes are huge. But if you make it up to his head, you’ll feel how it’s different from the rest of his shell."

It was a place she’s been to only a few times and not for very long. "But if you meditate there, you might meet him." She said it as if she were reminding herself of that.

"Hey, we should go do that, too."

Tu Vishan's eyes aren't the only ones that are huge right now. The more information Aang gets about him, the wider the boy's eyes get in awe.

All that wonder an awe shifts though, at her request.

"You want to meditate with me?"

His questions actually confused her for a moment until she realized that is basically what she said.

"Uh, sure. I could use the practice." Not a lie in the least. Korra had meditated sparingly with sub-par results and only managed to do so with some degree of success after talking with Bruce Banner.

"Not exactly going to get a lot done here." The clinic wasn’t the coziest meditation spot.

"Yeah," he pauses to look around the room. "It's not exactly the calmest environment here. Hard to stay focused, though...I've found focus under worse conditions."

The bandages wrapped around his chest and foot are a testament to that.

So did she. Trapped in a metal prison in a cabin far outside the city.

"Doesn’t mean it’s easy to do." Struggling had been all she’s accomplished since then. Maybe if she just did finally meditate at the head of Tu Vishan, maybe it would finally click.

"Your back healing up is more important than that though."

"No it doesn't," he agrees with a deflating sigh.

"How bad does it look, honestly."

"Well, if you really want to know." Korra stood up from the bed and mimicked holding a small ball, her fingertips a couple of inches away from each other. She held her hands up until she could see Aang’s face perfectly within it.

"It’s already starting to scar over." Were it not for her healing, it would probably still be bleeding a little bit. "Even with some more of that water, I won’t be able to get rid of the scar."

He winces and attempts to roll his shoulders, but the skin pulls and so he stops.

"When they were tattooing me there, it felt like it took forever. And now it's all..."

Ruined.

"It’s why you’re alive." She lowered her hands back down and put one hand on her hip and pointed at Aang with the other. "Better a ruined tattoo than a ruined Avatar." This was true enough for her, because if that lightning did kill him then she wouldn’t have been the next Avatar.

That was a sobering thought for her, since it had been an important part of her self-identity.

"Besides, you won’t be able to see it without a mirror." She said it lightly and with a half-shrug. "So there’s that."

"Yeah, I guess you're right," Aang says even has he shifts uncomfortably on his bed. He always was a terrible liar.

But she isn't right, is she Aang? You were entrusted with the Avatar Spirit...and you let it be killed. That's the same thing as killing it yourself.

You are a Ruined Avatar, she just doesn't know it yet.

She smirked. "Of course I’m right."

I’m the Avatar.

"Trust me, I know stuff." Korra was pretty sure Toph already explained that she was from their future, so she didn’t feel that was going too far.

At first it's the way she says it that catches his attention, with the kind of bravado that Sokka was a master of, but then the words themselves find purchase.

"...you really do, don't you."

It's less a question than a stark realization.

Bravado is written all over her very being.

"Yup." She said nodding, and then that nodding slowed down when she too realized that wasn’t a question.

"I can only answer some things. There’s some stuff you’re probably best learning on your own." Of course, her first thought was that he was going to ask if he would be able to get the Avatar State back.

"I don't know that I want you to answer anything at all," he says after a prolonged moment of silence.

First Aang looks away, then he looks up and sighs.

"time is an illusion," he reminds himself. "Just by you being you I can already guess at a lot of things, but I think I'd rather not know anything for sure. If that's okay with you."

"Me being me?" There was a pause between her words as she reminded herself that Toph had told her Aang didn’t know about her being the Avatar.

"I- sure. I’m good with it." That was a lie, but she had to keep it under wraps for now. At last until he was all healed up. That knowledge might spur him to refuse her healing.

Even seventy years from his future she was here, alive, well, and unburned. Surely something had to have gone right. Maybe even his way.

He had to hope. He owed her that much.
He owed them all that much

"Thank you. I know that must be really frustrating for you, but I...I'll make it up to you some how. I promise."

A wry, dry thought invaded Korra’s mind at the promise of making it up. The first thing in her head was ‘How? By having me locked up in the South Pole?’ and she actually bit down on her tongue.

Restraint wasn’t Korra’s strong suite and it took all of the self-control she’d been learning to stay perfectly, silently still. Somehow, she refrained from snapping that out.

"Don’t, worry about it. I mean I promised not to tell anything to Toph too, so it’s nothing new."

"That you've done it before doesn't make it any less of a sacrifice. If anything it just makes the both of us that much more grateful."

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