"Umm, does it rain in the spirit world?"

When Korra looks up, Asami is holding up black rain jacket that looks like it probably cost more than Naga's custom-made saddle and looking at her in confusion.

"Never when I've been there," Korra shrugs. "I know the weather can change based on your emotions—or my emotions at least—but I've never seen it rain. We don't really have room for a lot of extra stuff anyway. Just pack a couple changes of clothes."

"But what if we get caught in a blizzard?" Asami asks, pulling a heavy, fur-lined coat out of her overflowing bag.

Korra raises an eyebrow. "Did you have that when we were in the South Pole?" she asks. "I don't remember it. You definitely won't need anything heavier than you wore at the South Pole."

"It's new," Asami answers stiffly.

"Well, you're going to have to carry everything you bring on your back," Korra replies. "Pack what you want. I'm just going to wing it."

"You're going to die out there," the engineer sighs, shaking her head.

"Somehow, I doubt you'd let that happen."

Asami laughs, and then Korra laughs, but their laughter lapses into a silence that would have been comfortable before Korra left three years ago but is not anymore. They parts as best friends, and their absence triggered something more, something that Korra was not aware of until she found herself alone in South Pole wanting to talk only to Asami, finding even her parents poor substitutes.

"Okay, okay." Asami dumps her bag out on the bed and begins to shuffle through its contents. "Only the necessities." She looks up at her companion. "Don't you need to pack too?"

"Already done," Korra answers smugly, tossing a small backpack onto the bed.

"When did you do that?" Asami narrows her eyes. "You got here five minutes after we left the party."

"Right," Korra shrugs. "A minute and a half to get to my room, two minutes to change, a minute to get here. That leaves…" she pauses to do the math, "thirty seconds to pack."

"Let me guess." Asami begins to fold clothes and place them back in her backpack. "You grabbed whatever was on the floor and shoved it in your bag."

Korra folds her arms in defiance. "I'll have you know I got a pair of pants out of my closet."

"My mistake." Asami smiles as she pushes a lock of hair behind her hair and refocuses back on packing, and it is breathtaking. Korra sometimes wishes she had realized her feelings sooner. Maybe if they had been together when she fought Zaheer, maybe if Korra had allowed her to come to the Southern Water Tribe with her like she wanted to… maybe things would have turned out differently. At least she would not have spent six months alone, fighting in broken down arenas in the slums of Earth Kingdom cities just to try to win a fight, to prove to herself that she could still be the Avatar. At least she would have had someone to vent to during her productive but infuriating time with Toph.

"I guess that's everything I need," Asami mutters, buckling her bag and throwing it over her shoulder. "You ready?"

"Let's do it!" Korra exclaims, already halfway out the door. She needs this vacation. They both do. It has been years since either of them were carefree. Korra has even caught herself missing her days in the compound, where the biggest problem she had was trying to lose the White Lotus in the tundra so she could have a minute alone to talk to Naga. She wanted her freedom. She wanted to be treated like an adult because Aang was treated like an adult at the age of twelve, and Korra has always been competitive. She did not realize until she, herself, had been forced by Amon and Unalaq and Zaheer to take on much more responsibility than a teenager should how hard it must have been for him.

"Shouldn't we tell someone where we're going first," Asami points out, following at a pace that Korra thinks is painfully slow.

Her smile falters slightly. She just wants to go. "I guess we should. What happened to Tenzin after I talked to him?"

"How would I know?" Asami shrugs. "I've been with you the entire time."

"Oh yeah." Korra rubs the back of her neck. "Well, it doesn't have to be Tenzin. We just need to find someone. Just so they know we're not dead or anything."

"Fine," Asami agrees. "We'll tell the first person we see, and then we'll head out."

The first person they run across is Meelo, in the kitchen trying to persuade Rohan to take a bite out of a lemon wedge. "Maybe we should wait and see who the next person is," Asami decides. Korra nods in assent.

The second person they run into is Lin. "A little early to be dressed back down, isn't it?" she comments without greeting, her eyebrows raised.

"Lin! I'm glad we ran into you!" Korra begins, somewhat over-enthusiastically, and Lin's brows raise even higher if that is possible. "We're taking a vacation."

"A vacation?" The police chief's eyes narrow.

"Yeah? Haven't you ever been on vacation?" Korra replies. "We're going to the spirit world. We'll be gone a few weeks. Can you let Tenzin know? Thanks, Lin. You're the best!" She grabs Asami's hand and pulls her down the hallway before the police chief has time to protest or further question them, but Lin simply stands in place, watching in confusion.

"That's a relief," Korra sighs as they round the corner. "I thought for sure she was going to stop us."

"I think she would have if she hadn't been so confused," Asami glances back around the corner. "You'd think she'd never taken a day off in her life."

Korra smirks. "She probably hasn't." Her eyes trail down to their still joined hands. She clears her throat and releases Asami's fingers, and the other woman smiles at her gently, patiently.

"Well, are you ready to go?" she asks, and Korra loves her for her ability move past the awkwardness so quickly.

"I couldn't be any more ready," the Avatar answers, summoning back her determination. "This is going to be the best vacation you've ever had."

"What's this about?" Lin asks as she enters the dark, nearly empty dining hall where the air acolytes usually eat. She remembers eating in here sometimes too, but that was so long ago that it feels like another lifetime. She joins the mass gathered around a table on the far end. Her sister and Bataar, Prince Wu, Tenzin, and, for some inexplicable reason, Mako, all look entirely too concerned for her liking.

"Rebellions in the Earth Kingdom," Su answers, her forehead creased in worry. Lin wishes she would not carry the entire weight of her nation on her shoulders. Their mother was not royalty, and Su has no real responsibility to anyone, no matter what Kuvira thought. She is going to make herself old before her time. Lin does not want to outlive her sister because some rogue decided she was some sort of honorary president. "We just got word from Gaoling. Civilians are rioting in the streets."

"What do they want?" Tenzin asks, tugging at his beard the way he always does when he's thinking. The way he has since he first grew a goatee in his late twenties.

"They're asking for their rightful leader back," Su replies solemnly. "Kuvira."

"What do they want with her?" Lin barks. "She was their conqueror."

"Actually, a lot of the earlier cities joined her willingly," Su explains. "Gaoling, Omashu, the fishing and mining provinces in the southwest, they saw her as their rightful ruler. Some of them still do. I was hoping once the Prince took the throne and announced his plan to install democratic governments in each of the provinces, things would calm down, but it looks like we might not be able to wait that long."

"What are you saying?" Mako asks, and Lin wonders once again what exactly he is doing in a meeting of prominent Earth Kingdom figures and world leaders. He is the Prince's bodyguard, but surely he does not feel the need to follow him into a meeting with people he has known for years. Then again, she reminds herself, Mako has always tried to involve himself in matters above his paygrade.

"We may have to go down there," Su replies.

"What, you mean with an army?" Mako sounds aghast.

"No." Su shakes her head firmly. "Taking the city with force will only make the problem worse. We need to restore order peacefully."

"How do you propose we do that?" Tenzin asks, folding his arms behind his back. The only one of them who has always known he would one day carry a nation.

"Prince Wu and I will go to Gaoling," Su decides. "We'll urge them to stop the riots until we can implement the Prince's plans for the new government."

"I can't go to Gaoling," Wu argues, speaking for the first time since Lin entered the room. "They want my head on a gold platter down there. I won't make it a day."

Mako shakes his head. "It's like you have no faith in your bodyguard."

"No offense Mako, but one near death experience is enough for one lifetime." He sounds like he is bordering on hysterics, and the police chief rolls her eyes.

"You didn't have a near death experience. You were locked in a trunk for less than an hour," Mako points out, sounding equally as exasperated as Lin feels.

"I'm claustrophobic!"

"That's enough, you two!" Lin barks, holding up a hand to quiet them. She rests her knuckles on the table and takes a breath to recollect her thoughts.

"Su, you can't expect the people of Gaoling to stop rioting and return to their houses just because you ask them to," Tenzin comments. "People can be impossible to reason with when they're emotional."

"You're right," Su admits. "We need something more. Someone they'll listen to."

"Where's Korra?" Mako asks. "She can come with us. Maybe they'll listen to the Avatar."

"Korra left," Lin answers dismissively.

"What?" Tenzin's eyes widen in panic. "When? Where did she go? Why didn't she tell me? I just spoke to her."

"She said something about vacationing in the spirit world." Lin shrugs indifferently. "She was with the Sato girl. Seemed like they were in a hurry."

"Can you still catch her?" Mako asks, looking around at the rooms other occupants. "How long does it take to get to the spirit portal on Oogi?"

"No." Su shakes her head. "Korra has been through enough for the Earth Kingdom already. She deserves to take a break. We'll figure this out ourselves."

Tenzin looks deep in thought, and when he speaks, Lin can sense by the ominousness of his voice what he is going to say. "You know who else they would listen too?"

Su and Wu look up at him hopefully.

"Kuvira."

The tense silence that falls on the room is stifling.

Finally, Su crosses her arms. "Absolutely not. She can't be trusted."

"I don't see another option," Tenzin insists. "I agree that we shouldn't rely on Korra for this. I just don't know who else they're guaranteed to hear."

"I agree with Tenzin," Lin says. "Kuvira is still a prisoner. Confine her to a bedroom. Keep someone outside her door at all times. But you have to take her to Gaoling with you. There's no other choice."

They appear near the other two spirit portals, directly in front of the Tree of Time. Asami gasps and pulls one of her hands from Korra's to bring it to her mouth. The sky swirls with the brilliant blues and purples that she remembers from this part of the spirit world, during her time here at harmonic convergence. The area still looks completely desolate, just as it did when Wan and Raava fought Vaatu and merged to become the Avatar. At least she still has the memories from previous Avatars that she accessed before her connection was severed. They are not much, but they are better than nothing.

"This is where the battle with Unalaq and Vaatu was," she murmurs, tugging on Asami's hand and leading her away from the portal. "Until it got relocated to Yue Bay, of course."

"Of course," Asami repeats absently, as if she is in a daze. She is still looking around with wide eyes, looking everywhere, like she is afraid to miss something.

"That spirit portal leads to the South Pole," Korra explains, pointing to the left. "That's the one I opened during the solstice." She redirects her finger to the right. "And that one leads to the North Pole. Unalaq opened that one from this side." She hears her voice darken, though she did not intend for it to, and Asami squeezes her hand.

"It ended up working out though, didn't it?" she asks, and Korra can tell by the uncertainty in her voice that she is trying to be comforting and is not quite sure if she is going about it the right way.

"Yeah, it did," Korra smiles reassuringly back at her. "I miss my past lives but I guess I'm still getting used to them not being around anymore, and it brought the Air Nation back, so it was probably worth it." She hides her uncertainty. Sometimes, she wishes more than anything that she had Aang or Roku or Kyoshi to talk things out with, but there are good things that have come out of what happened at harmonic convergence as well, and she knows that she is selfishly wishing them away.

"This is the Tree of Time," she directs them over the uneven ground to the twisted, old tree. "Avatar Wan trapped Vaatu inside it for ten thousand years."

"And… now we're going inside?" Asami asks as Korra steps into the trunk.

"It's perfectly safe," Korra calls over her shoulder. "This is where I meditated when I projected my spirit to Republic City to fight Unavaatu. The dark spirits pushed Tenzin and Kya and Mako and Bolin all the way inside the trunk before I got back. We were all minutes away from being done for."

"All while I was back at the compound with Oogi," Asami mutters, running her fingers along the inside of the trunk. Korra is surprised to detect resentment in her voice, though she does not think it is targeted at her.

"That's probably better anyway." she shrugs, turning toward the other girl. "We all would have died if I hadn't figured out energybending at the last second. It was really just luck that saved us. That and the cosmic energy in this tree. According to legend, its roots connect the spirit world to the physical world. I guess that was a bigger deal before I left the spirit portals open though."

"Cosmic energy?" Asami repeats, still carefully studying the inside wall of the tree. She does not sound skeptical, merely curious.

"Yeah, this tree retains all memory," Korra explains. "Here, let me show you." She sits down and focuses on remembering the day she passed her firebending evaluation. She has to suppress a smirk when she hears Asami gasp.

"That's remarkable," the other woman exclaims, pointing to the image of a girl wearing red pads and jumping up and down in victory. "Is that… is that you?"

"Yeah." Korra looks up at her. "That was right before I came to Republic City. I'll do another one."

This time, she focuses on a solemn day from when she was eight years old. She appears as a child in front of them, dressed in her best furs, holding her mother's hand and standing beside a softly sobbing Katara. They are on the edge of land, looking over the water as a boat bearing a large wooden box and a torch floats out to sea.

"This is Chief Sokka's funeral," she informs her companion.

"Why are you showing me this?" Asami asks, her voice constricted, and Korra suddenly realizes in horror that she only lost her father a week ago. The memory fades.

"I'm so sorry," she cries, palming her face. "It seemed important—I forgot."

"Lucky you," the engineer sighs, but she does not sound angry, and she takes a seat beside her friend anyway.

Korra rests her hand hesitantly between the other woman's shoulder blades and is relieved when she does not pull away. "Why don't we try something happier? Maybe something you'll remember too?"

Suddenly, they are staring at a vibrant party scene. Dozens of people mingle in front of them, dressed in their best formalwear. Korra can pick out greens of Earth Kingdom citizens, reds of the Fire Nation, blue furs from Water Tribe natives, and even Tenzin's Air Nomad yellow.

"There you are," Asami says, pointing to Korra in her blue dress, appropriate for banquets in the Southern Water Tribe but rather plain compared to Republic City's elite, ambling around the party. She remembers how awkward she felt. "And there I am." Asami narrows her eyes and Korra watches her put the pieces together. "This is the party honoring your arrival in Republic City." She straightens claps her hands together. "This is the first time we met."

"Yep," the Avatar affirms as the memory fades out. It is nice to see her friend look so excited, especially right after Korra's massive lack of tact in selecting the previous memory.

"Can I do one?" the engineer asks.

"Absolutely," Korra replies. "Just pick a memory and concentrate on it."

"Okay." Asami nods, and after a moment, a young girl is standing in front of them. She is wearing a lacy black dress and a red petticoat, and her long, sleek hair is pulled back into a bow. Asami. There is no one else it could possibly be. She hugs a woman wearing a long, silk robe who could only be her mother. The woman smiles at her daughter and runs a hand through her hair. A man Korra recognizes as a younger Hiroshi Sato walks up behind the girl. He is wearing a fine suit, and the woman stands up to kiss him. Then, he takes the young Asami by the hand and leads her away as she waves to the woman over her shoulder.

They are silent for a moment as the memory fades.

Korra is the first to speak. "You look just like your mother."

"Thank you," Asami replies quietly. "That was the last time I saw her alive." She sighs and drops her eyes into her lap. "We'd been planning that dinner for months—it was my birthday dinner—but she was sick that, so she told us to go without her. When we got back, part of the house was on fire. She was still alive but they wouldn't let me see her. There wasn't anything anyone could do for her. She was too badly burned."

Korra pulls the woman beside her into a hug. It is a little awkward in its positioning. One of Asami's arms is trapped between them, but she returns the hug with her other arm and buries her face in Korra's shoulder.

"I'm so sorry," Korra murmurs, rubbing slow circles into her back.

Asami takes a long breath. "That's okay. It was a long time ago." She pulls away, wiping a tear from her eye. "It's just so strange to think that I'm the only one left in my entire family."

"I can't imagine." Korra shakes her head.

Asami places a hand on her shoulder. "I'm glad."

A strand of hair tickles the engineer's cheek, and Korra desperately wants to reach out and tuck it back in place behind her ear, but she cannot seem to make her arm move the right way, so instead, she sighs and leans away to press her hand to the wood of the tree trunk, abruptly changing the subject. "This tree is supposed to retain all memories, but for some reason I can't get it to show me the memories of my past lives."

"That's strange," Asami comments, furrowing her brow.

"Tenzin doesn't understand it either," the Avatar groans. She looks up at her friend and a smile spreads across her face. "But we're here to relax, not to mope about my past lives," she adds, much more cheerfully. "Where do you want to go first?"

"I don't know," Asami replies with a smile and a shrug. "I've never been here before, remember?"

"Oh, that's right. Sorry," Korra answers feebly, dropping her eyes down and to the side. Smooth, Avatar Korra, very smooth.

"That's okay." She is relieved that Asami sounds unfazed.

Korra gasps. "I know where we can go." Without thinking, without giving herself time to doubt her actions, she seizes Asami's hand again and pulls her toward the opening in the tree. "Come on. I have a friend here."

"You have a friend in the spirit world?" Asami repeats, raising an eyebrow.

"It's a long story. I'll tell you over a cup of tea when we get there."

The only way to tell time in the windowless cell is when the guards drop off rice. It happens in the early morning and early evening, right before the shift changes. Kuvira is in an isolated wing of the prison, and receiving rice from the guards is the only human interaction she has most days.

Today, she fumbles the wooden bowl as it is handed to her through the platinum bars. No other type of metal is allowed in her wing. "Oops," the guard mumbles when some of the rice spills out onto the floor, even though she knows it is her fault. He is young, probably new. He has not been taught to hate the prisoners yet. Kuvira imagines the guards' jobs are easier when they hate the prisoners. It cannot be easy to watch someone you like rot.

She scoops the rice off the ground and back into the bowl as the man's footsteps echo away and tries not to think of how dirty her hands are. Her entire body is filthy. Her greasy hair hangs limply around her face. Her uniform—green lined with grey to mark her as a metalbender—was new when it was given to her. Now it is in tatters. Every few days she is supplied with a wooden bucket of soapy water, a rag, and a washed uniform. One is nearly due, but the prison was among the buildings damaged in her attack, so some of the services are irregular. She knows she is set to be moved to a prison in Ba Sing Se when the situation in the Earth Nation stabilizes, but somehow she does not expect the conditions there to be any better, especially if the Prince she usurped is on the throne. Irony is a bitter thing.

She is halfway through shoveling a handful of rice into her mouth when the heavy door at the end of the corridor opens. A man and a women enter. She can see their silhouettes before she can make out their faces. She has never seen the man before. She can tell by his uniform that he is a guard and by the amount of gold strips lining the cuff of his sleeve that he is the most senior guard she has encountered. The woman's grey-streaked hair is pulled into a severe bun. Her glasses sit low on her nose. Kuvira recognizes the woman. She does not like her. She does not like what she does, but at least her presence means Kuvira will be leaving her cell. She does not know how long it has been since she last saw the outside of her cell. Days, probably.

"Stand," the man commands. He sounds bored, and it annoys her. He does not know the meaning of boredom. "Clasp your hands on the back of your head. Turn around and back toward the bars."

She does as she is told. It should be humbling—she was a world leader, head of the Earth Nation, for however brief a time, and now she is following orders without complaint—but with the exception of the past three years, her life has been mostly humble anyway.

She gasps and tries not to recoil when the woman jabs her knuckles into her side and the center of her back. Being chi blocked is not a pleasant sensation by any means, but the guards will not risk removing her from her cell without it, so she does not complain.

"Lower your hands and clasp them behind your back," the man sighs.

She feels the cuffs latch around her wrists. They are made entirely of wood, down to the hinges. The first evening she was here, her hands twitched and fidgeted within them, and she spent the night picking splinters out of her wrists. Now she knows better. Now she holds her arms completely still, out far enough from her body that the cuffs do not catch on the fabric of her uniform.

The door of the cell swings open and Kuvira steps out. The man immediately seizes her upper arms as the woman locks the cell door behind her. They guide her up the hallway. It feels good to be outside of a cell again, even if she is only in the corridor that she spends her days staring at through the bars.

They pass through the heavy door and are in another long hallway. This one is better lit and lined with doors instead of bars. She knows that each door leads to a different line of cells. Some of them are full, some of them are empty because the roof or walls were ripped away or caved in on themselves during her battle with the Avatar. She thinks hers is the only one that only holds one prisoner.

At the end of the second hallway, they enter a tall, narrow spiral stairwell. The woman descends the stairs in front of her, the man behind, still holding tightly to her arms. She flexes her fingers to keep the feeling in them.

"What does your neighborhood look like now?" the woman asks as they walk.

"Not so good," the man answers. "The roof in my son's room was destroyed, but we were lucky. My neighbor's house is completely gone. What about you?"

Kuvira thinks they are having this conversation in front of her on purpose. It has been at least a week since she invaded Republic City. Surely they have asked each other these questions before.

They stop far from the bottom of the staircase, but when they step into the next hallway, there are windows and they are at ground level. She wishes it was not dark out. She has not seen natural light since she was admitted to the prison the afternoon after her final battle, after a hasty trial for crimes in both the Earth Kingdom and United Republic. It was not exactly protocol, but she supposes it was in the interests of the people trying to restore order to the continent that she be discredited quickly.

They enter a room that Kuvira knows to be the warden's office, but the person sitting behind the desk is certainly not the warden.

"Kuvira." Lin Beifong says her name like she is speaking to a foul-smelling slug.

"Chief Beifong," Kuriva bows her head respectfully. It is the least she can do after trying to kill nearly everyone the older woman knows.

"Sit." Lin nods to the chair in front of the desk. Kuvira drops into the rickety-looking chair and the chief looks at the man and woman still standing above her. "Leave us."

"But, Chief," the man begins to protest. "This prisoner is highly dangerous—"

"You think I don't know that?" Lin's eyes flash dangerously. "I helped take her down myself."

Unwilling to argue the matter further, the man and woman scurry from the room. Lin lowers her eyes to the prisoner in the chair. "I'm here on behalf of Suyin," she informs her as Kuvira picks at the torn upholstery. "We need something from you. President Raiko and Prince Wu are willing to talk about commuting your sentences."

She bows her head. Anything for Su. Anything to have the woman who raised her to be willing to look at her again.

"Anything."

A/N: Hey guys. So this will be my first novel length Legend of Korra fic. Super exciting. Anyway, I'm planning on twenty chapters and roughly 100-120k words. The rating will eventually go up to M, definitely for violence and possibly for lemons. I'm planning to do regular updates on Saturdays, and I expect future chapters to be a little bit longer than this one.

Please take a second to review! I'll see you all next Saturday hopefully.