disclaimer: disclaimed.
dedication: erm?
notes: I'm in New York.

title: weak spots
summary: Could you be any worse at this? — Mako/Korra/Asami.

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The air doesn't sing.

Not the way she wants it to, at least.

It sings for Tenzin's children, rocks them to sleep at night through the rafters warm and easy as putting her face in the water. It sings old hymns that some part of her recognizes, kisses along her skin so soft that she could almost hold it but it—it's not like that, for Korra.

For Korra, the wind howls.

For Korra, the wind winds up long ropes of ice between her fingers. It is a wild thing in her hands, furious and dangerous, and it hums along her bones in a way the other elements prefer not to. For Korra, it curls in the spaces between her fingers, in the spaces between the seconds, in the spaces between her friends.

Air is her killing weapon.

"I could kill you," she says, one day, after she's come home from searching the world for her soul. "I could kill everyone."

"But you won't," Mako says. He hasn't even said hello.

Korra slumps back against the wall next to him, careful not to touch. Things with Mako are still, still, still raw. They are still raw and the wind howls when she reaches for it because she knows, she knows that she never did a single thing right. Tenzin looks at her like he doesn't even know her these days, and when she sleeps, all she dreams of is Amon's hand closing around her throat. All the elements left her that night, except the stale air struggling in her lungs, and she thinks i never wanted any of this. She wakes up shaking, vomits over the side of the bed.

She never knows how to feel about it.

"I guess not," Korra says. "Miss me much?"

"Yeah. You, too?"

"Sure."

The word comes out bitter. It is only a little bit of a lie.

—

The Air Temples strike something deep and dark within her. They are empty, ancient, full-up with ghosts of a people that Korra both does and does not belong to. She touches the white stone, and her hands shred with the weight of the sorrow.

Republic City feels like a whole different life.

The wind here mourns, but it pushes her along, too. Walks her through, tugs through her hair, and though it doesn't do anything near so joyful as dance, but it's better than nothing. If Amon—and he is Amon, he will always be Amon, no matter how many times she reminds herself Noatak—rends her to pieces (and he did, he does, he will), then Korra will sew herself back together.

(She thinks about the brink sometimes.)

Not here, in this ancient temple where a people lived and breathed their last. The fear quiets to a soft murmur at the back of her skull, and she is a whole person for once.

When she finds the scrolls, she is honestly not even very surprised.

She can't read them. Or, at the very least, she shouldn't be able to, but when she touches them, the knowledge is already inside her. She understands the mechanics behind it—it's as much a murderer as bloodbending ever was, maybe more-so.

There is a grace to killing the Airbender way; no blood, no muss. It's almost elegant.

So much quicker.

She wonders if Tenzin knows about this last, horrible Airbender secret. Probably not. He's sorta a stiff that way.

And the ghosts go: suck the air from their lungs, my dear, rip and tear and destroy! we will not leave you, we will never leave you, because the world needs you but who are you to need who are you to want who are you?

She shoves them away, breathing hard. The scrolls crumble into nothing. The knowledge disappears on the wind, just as it came.

Korra thinks that it's probably for the best.

She sleeps on stone, and for once, she doesn't dream.

—

She doesn't tell Mako.

She doesn't tell anyone.

Asami looks at her with old tired eyes, the only colour in her white face. When she kisses her that night, their mouths slide slick and wet. "Could you be any worse at this?" she asks.

Korra draws spirals on Asami's shoulder blades. They are so sharp they could cut glass.

If she steals Asami's breath on the comedown, neither is really paying any attention.

"Probably," Korra sighs, and kisses her again.

—

"Do you hate me for leaving?"

"No."

"Okay."

"Okay? You're not okay, Korra."

"What does okay even mean?"

"Sure as Spirits the opposite of you."

"Was I ever okay, Mako? Even before everything? Even when we met?"

"…"

"Yeah," and the breath comes out of her like a tempest. "That's what I thought."

—

She bends herself a hurricane, one day.

Mostly just to prove she can.

There's more power wrapped up in her pretty fingers than any one person should have. Korra has a theory that the Avatar spirit gets stronger with every reincarnation; but she doesn't tell anyone that. People would listen, probably, but she has a sneaking suspicion that that would only make people resent her more. She's a little too dirty, a little too unbalanced.

She's not the Avatar they want.

And so she calls the wind and the rain, stirs the air over the bay until it's churned itself into a howling spiral-twister that, given the freedom, would rip Republic City in two. She throws power and power and power behind it, power for the Air Nomads, power for her grief, power for her childhood and her fury and the acrid taste of Asami's cigarette on her tongue.

She hovers over the storm, and calls it training.

Tenzin doesn't say anything, Pema doesn't say anything, fucking no one says anything. It's just that Asami looks at her like she's a jagged bit of danger that she wants to smooth over, and Mako looks like she's something to save.

But Bolin's stopped trying, and Lin never tried in the first place.

Korra's grateful in increments, swears not to crush their lungs under the weight of gravity or turn the oxygen in their lungs solid.

Because, yeah, she can do that now.

Sometimes, she thinks that if they'd wanted to, the Air Nomads could have ruled the world. Fire doesn't burn without air. People can't move rock if they can't breathe. The Waterbenders might have had a chance, but only in the poles, and they still needed to breathe.

The Air Nomads could have stopped the war.

She doesn't wonder why they didn't.

(Jinora clings to her hand, and Korra burns, burns, burns. Someone expected this. Someone had to expect this.)

She knows exactly why.

—

Air Temple Island is muggy, thick with sweat and foliage. Asami's skin is sticky where it touches Korra's on one side—she's naked, but whatever, Korra hates sleeping with clothes on anyway. Mako's mouth has left marks at her throat that won't go away for a week. His windpipe is so fragile.

The wind howls through the rafters.

It is not gentle.

Korra smells the squall on the horizon, and waits.

—

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fin.