unrestraint | even the hummingbirds will feel the earthquake

"She's going to be here at any point now, Naga, calm down," Korra laughs, ruffling Naga behind both ears as they rest out on the edge of the city, close to the wider terrain that's available in the suburbs. Ever since Korra mentioned meeting up with Abby, Naga has been practically thrumming with energy, and that's on top of the excitement that Naga already gets whenever she has the opportunity to spend a full day with Korra.

Sooner or later, Korra thinks, she really needs to move somewhere with doors wide enough to allow Naga inside. Being away from Naga in a small apartment is just too lonely for the polar bear dog.

"I'm going to teach her how to defend herself, okay, so you're going to help us out," she instructs, trying for a vaguely stern looking expression. "You're twice as big as most guys, but I want to teach her how to protect herself against people bigger and stronger than she is. So when I'm demonstrating to her, it'll be on you."

Naga tilts her head, tail wagging once.

"Stop judging me," Korra says with a sigh. "I would have asked Naruto to help, okay, but he needs to focus on his job and not just break shadow clones off whenever he wants to do multiple things at once. His attention span is terrible—"

Naga interrupts with a bark, then starts bounding towards someone in the distance. Glancing up, Korra grins and waves eagerly.

"Abby, hey!"

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"Depending on how hard you jab, sure. But... I don't think you should underestimate the human body. It can be pretty resilient against things like that," Korra muses, thinking about the many times she's knocked someone in the eyes, and how easy it often is for them to bounce back to full health. She knows that she's no shrinking violet when it comes to her strength, either.

"Also, it's more important that you stay safe. That you stay healthy. You're the innocent party in this situation, right? Your safety matters more than the assaulter's. Completely."

"Right," Abby says, shaking her head like it's the most obvious thing, like she should have realised that she mattered most all along. Again, it speaks for the kind of people that she's drawn to, or was drawn to, that it's them she wants to protect and not herself. It's funny how she can think she's doing so much better, but then remnants of the old her, of the sadder her, come flooding back, and she wonders if she's changed at all. "You're right. Obviously. That makes sense. So, um, eyes. If I can reach them. Got it."

There's something about Abby's countenance that changes a bit. Korra's never really been the best at reading people, but there's definitely something here to dig into with that stammer and the quick shake of Abby's head. It worries Korra, honestly — anyone who doesn't feel empowered to protect themselves always becomes a red flag of sorts to Korra, who has always been capable of putting herself first and seeing that as a greater good.

"Are you okay?" Korra asks, tilting her head and relaxing her body, doing her best not to look imposing. "I should have asked earlier. Have you had any kind of experience where you needed to protect yourself like this?"

"No! No, nothing like that," Abby says with another rapid shake of her head, flushing red. The last thing she wants is to seem as if she's been through more than she has. Most of the shitty situations she's found herself in have been her fault, anyway. The consequences of being drawn to all the wrong kinds of people (because it isn't as if she deserves any better, right?) "Just, my ex-boyfriend could get a little handsy. But never, you know, never anything like that."

Korra frowns immediately. Only a second later does her expression soften slightly upon realizing that Abby might take the expression as being aimed towards her — far fro the truth. More that Korra can't even begin to imagine letting something like that slide from a man. Aggression from a physically larger person towards someone more vulnerable is something Korra just can't tolerate.

"That's terrible. I'm really glad that he's your ex, but you realize that's no small thing, right? When you date someone, you're like... trusting them to be good to you. Or you should be. For him to take advantage of you like that, it'd make me punch him in the face," Korra says, brows knit. "It's just not okay."

It is a small thing, Abby thinks, and goes to argue such, but it would push them into an endless circle of what is and isn't okay, and deep down she knows Korra's right. She's just not sure that she deserves any better. Or did, back then. Biting her lip, she nods. "Yeah, you're right. I don't know why I thought it was okay."

But she does, of course. Asshole that Bryce might have been, he paid her attention, and that's what few people did. Pathetic, she knows, that she'd take being treated like dirt over being treated like she didn't exist. She can only hope she's a little different now. She likes to think she is.

Seeing Abby's expression relaxes Korra's shoulders slightly, and even though she's never been good at it, she tries to understand more where Abby's coming from. Tries to understand what Abby might have been thinking during that whole relationship. Korra hasn't had much experience with romance, herself, but before meeting Naruto, she remembers her interactions with Mako all being fairly disastrous. Neither of them treated the other extraordinarily well.

It's remarkable that their friendship persisted in spite of that.

"Because you loved him. Something about him," Korra concludes with a small nod. "And that makes you want to accept everything else, because next to that love, you think other things shouldn't matter. But there are people who are better and worse for us, I guess. That's what I've learned since coming to this city, anyway. I was pretty set on one person back home, wouldn't let myself think of anyone else, but then you meet someone new and wonder why you were so stuck on that one person in the first place."

"I didn't love him, believe me," Abby says, shaking her head and huffing out a breath of a laugh. For all the fucked up nature of their relationship, all take and no give on his part, she gives herself enough credit to know that it wasn't love. But maybe she's right about the something part, maybe what she loved was to be wanted.

But that doesn't matter, now, and she hates that Bryce even worked his way into her mind. This is supposed to be about starting over. "He was a total asshole. I just didn't have a lot of friends back home. So."

She hesitates and then shakes her head again, looking over at Korra. "I'm sorry. That's so not what I wanted out of today. I just kinda suck at moving forward, I guess."

"Are you kidding me? You're totally moving forward," Korra says, easing into a smile and shaking her head as she reaches out for Abby's hand, giving it a squeeze. "You're able to look back on the situation and see things that you didn't then. You know that you'd make different decisions now if the same situation came up again. And if you say you didn't have a lot of friends back home, that means you have more here, right?"

On some level, Korra wonders if she's thinking too simplistically. But... she believes wholeheartedly in everything she says. Abby doesn't strike her as someone who wouldn't be able to stand up for herself. Maybe she wouldn't do it with a punch and a kick like Korra herself would, but Abby has a resilience that Korra can easily see.

She just needs to believe in it.

"Remembering what happened in the past isn't a bad thing, either. It helps us keep those lessons in mind for the future."

even the hummingbirds will feel the earthquake

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject