it's my duty to help people

After years and years of being blanketed in white and blue, the local costume store is an absolute delight to the eyes.

Truth be told, Korra hasn't really let herself dive too far into the idea of celebrating anything while in the city. There was a harvest festival of sorts some time ago, parts of it even familiar with what she'd seen in texts and paintings archived at the South Pole, but it's taken a while for Korra to find her feet after what happened during the outbreak. And it's taken longer still to let herself go in a manner quite so overt. Plain. Indulgent.

It's different than having an occasional laugh or splurging on dinner. A celebration requires thought and attention. But for the time being, having Bolin grin by her side is enough of a nudge as she tugs on his hand to lead him inside, the both of them immediately surrounded on all sides by bright fabrics and shiny masks.

The festival supposedly coming up is called Halloween, and by the looks of it, Korra's going to have a great time diving right in.

"Would you look at all of this?" she exclaims, turning a smile on Bolin as she ducks between a couple of masks — one of them clearly a dragon, and the second quite possibly just a dog. Weird, as always. "It's crazier than what people would put together for Avatar Day!"

To be a bender is to constantly be aware of the effect that emotions can take on mind and body. Very few people are strangers to a fire suddenly flickering into thin air at the first sign of heartbreak, or of waters only swelling halfheartedly once fatigue has wormed itself deep into one's bones. Though she may have a greater potential to tap into the elements than any other living person, this isn't the first time that Korra's found herself trapped wholly in her body. She may miss the brush of fire and slip of streams, yearn for the thunder of earth moving below her feet, but human hearts are made to ache, and they are made resilient, and Korra knows full well that she can sleep with her senses padded. If anything, that's the frustrating thing about life — it constantly moves on and never begs permission, and to be swept in it all its movement proves far easier than trying to stand steady against its tides.

What she misses most isn't the bending.

The sound of muffled voices beyond the door quickly worms underneath Korra's skin. She's never dealt very well with people speaking behind her back, not from the minute she realized that a person can wear an expression in one direction, then its opposite in another. Removing that slight barrier with a slide of wood forces her to face everything the only way she knows how. Directly and honestly.

Twelve faces are turned to her in that instant, all of them bearing the same look. Korra has as much as any of them, if not more. The wind now brushes through her fingers at will. Before her stand the only four people in the entire world who could even begin to teach her how to wield storms and fly among the birds. If they're playing a game of comparisons, Korra ought to stand tall among them, yet distance separates them all from her in a careful arc, and still their eyes read pity.

Because what good to the world is a disempowered Avatar?

"It's going to be alright, Korra," says Tenzin, and it reads like a lie.

"No, it's not."

Breaking the silence only with the sound of her steps, Korra can feel her eyes grow dry as she weaves through gathered friends and family, not stopping even for the brush of her mother's hand — we love you so much, she said once, but doesn't say now — until she reaches the entrance of the house, preparing to step out, possibly for the last time. The world needs an Avatar, and spending another seventeen years under the stormy gray clouds in the sky just isn't an option anymore.

Only it's the sun that greets her, a rush of breath whistling between Korra's teeth as she finds herself high enough so as to almost nestle in the clouds. The wind snaps against her skin, cold and sharp, contrasting with the force of the sun's rays as she steps closer to the side of the ledge, a shuddering breath tugging into her lungs at the dizzying sight below, vehicles lined up like ants along the thinnest of roads below.

Concrete holds her feet better than ice.