Disclaimer: I do not own Legend of Korra and its characters.

Book Air

Premise: To regain her bending, Korra must make a choice, go back to the past and either kill a teenage Noatak, or save him.

Chapter 1: A Crossroad

The event that started everything for Korra began with a simple request.

"Walk with me Korra"

Aang told her one winter day on the South Pole. Korra watched him turn his back to her and walk away wordlessly. Sunlight drew a patch on his back and followed him in a dance of shadow and light. Step. Shadow. Step. Light. The dull roar of the sea down below swallowed the sound of his feet trekking through the snow.

For all the things Aang seemed to be, a spirit of the past seemed the least likely. He appeared as any man would, fleshly, solid, tangible. If it weren't for the hundred times the White Lotus grannies had drilled into her head about her past reincarnations (history, politics, deeds, because apparently some thousand poor souls would die if Korra didn't know which year the treaty of the North Sea was signed, watched over by the concurrent Avatar), Korra might have mistaken him for an ordinary Air acolyte who just happened to be stranded on the wrong side of the continent.

She stood stock still, studying him in her awe-stricken stupor, not really believing that she had made contact with her past life for the first time just yet because just how many times had she yelled at Tenzin that 'No no no, spiritual thingamajig ain't my thing' over the past few months? And now all of sudden, Aang was popping right out of the blue, right in front of her face, without her doing any of that 'Oooommm' spirit mumbo jumbo they had taught her to. Like 'Hi Korra, I guess you should have cried a little more then we would have had this conversation waayy sooner' kind of popping out of the blue. Totally unexpected and kind of… what was that term Shiro Shinobi used… deus ex-machina-y when she stopped to think about it.

A mere five minutes ago, she was still standing on the edge of the cliff, facing the frozen South Sea, contemplating things she shouldn't be contemplating in her head, and trying to overcome the shock of being bereft off her bending. Now she was having a conversation with her famous past life, Avatar Aang, Avatar Excuse-me-Ima-take-your-bending-now-Ozai-hun Aang, and being invited for a stroll through the snow with him.

Surprised? Yes. Yes timed a million.

She probably would have stood there a good while more if it weren't for her Air Nomad Incarnation.

"Korra?" Aang looked over his shoulder at her, one eyebrow arched. Immediately, she snapped out of her silent daze.

"Right. Coming" She trekked after him through the snow, rubbing the cold tip of her nose. She was suddenly giddy and light-headed. She had made first contact! That meant she was still the Avatar.

Her heart thumbed wildly in her ribcage. Maybe… she didn't dare voice it just yet… but maybe, there was a way to fix this… this freaky bloodbending Amon had put on her. The moment the thought came alive in her head, she couldn't help but let it bring her heart soaring. The place where her bending once was was a gaping wound, still warm and oozing, and she so very dearly needed the balm this one single thought brought.

Aang and his Zen-y beard thing. Aang can energy-bend. Aang can go into the Avatar State, a state which kicked Yakone's psychic bloodbending ass seven ways from Ba Sing Se to princess Yue's snazzy house up the skies. And if it can do that to Yakone, then she could just guess what it would do to Yakone's son's bloodbending. Say buhbye to your bending Amon. The thought rang in her ears and an image popped into her head - a drawn and crayon-colored cartoon version of her sticking her tongue out at a sad-face Amon (Suck on it. I win!) while cartoon Aang in orange and yellow spandex with Super A plastered over his chest stood over them and flexed his muscles threateningly at Amon – and she couldn't help but relish on it.

"Where are we going?" She blurted out the moment she caught up to Aang, breathless from the barely contained excitement in her chest.

Aang glanced at her sideway, smiling gently and wearing an expression she couldn't remember ever seeing on her face in the mirror. Wow, but was she a total lily-liver in her past life? She finally got what Chief Beifong was going on about her and Tenzin's dad all the time now.

"We are going… to the place where it all began." Aang said simply.

"Where it all began?" She echoed. And before she could elaborate her question further, the snowbound landscape of the South Pole suddenly faded away. The sun blinked out above her head, replaced by the bluish whiteness of electric-charged light bulbs. The ground gave way to marble floor. Blue skies disappeared in the face of a courtroom full of people.

"This…" She stopped short.

"Yakone's trial…" Aang finished her sentence.

"Yakone's trial?" Korra repeated, a hint of incredulousness in her voice. "This… is where it all began?" Seriously? Psychic bloodbender, Republic City crime lord, Tarrlok and Amon's father as well as their bloodbending master? Just what else did this guy do? Pluck the moon from the skies?

"No. Not where it began, but where I made the choice."

The scene changed. People moved in ghostly afterthoughts of the past, flowing and ebbing in wisps of light. Korra watched the story unfold as she did mere days ago in the metal cage Tarrlok had imprisoned her in. The trial, the defense, the discovery of Yakone's bloodbending ability, the subsequent disastrous confrontation. She shivered involuntarily. When she had first seen this, she had only had the dubious pleasure of being bloodbent by Tarrlok, the younger of the two brothers, the weaker bloodbender. Now, though…. now she had known what it felt like to be held, limp and helpless as a doll in the grip of Amon's psychic bloodbending. Seeing Yakone bloodbending for a second time, seeing all those people, Aang, councilman Sokka, Toph Lin's-mom Beifong held in limbo in the air, and knowing he was the root of Amon's origin was planting something very unpleasant in the pit of her stomach.

"What choice?" She asked, cutting the thought in her head in half. That was a place she didn't want to revisit, a sensation she didn't want to taste again.

"To kill… or to spare" Aang replied succinctly. The motion stopped as he finished, freezing at the exact moment where past-Aang held Yakone down with Earthbending, one hand on his head, one on his chest, right above his heart.

Energybending. Korra ran her hands up and down her arms, trying to smooth away the goose bumps breaking out on her skin. A dark and empty place in her ached at the sight.

Aang turned to face her and as he did so, someone stepped out from inside him, a woman, tall, intimidating, and wearing the most outlandish makeup. Korra recognized her right away. Avatar Kyoshi. One of the most successful Avatars of the past, whose methods she had been forced to study at great length under the tutelage of the White Lotus.

Kyoshi eyed the frozen Yakone coldly and when she spoke, her voice came out clear and certain as if she was stating the fact that the sun rose from the East and set in the West.

"It would have been easier if I had killed him."

I? Oh, right. They were all essentially one and the same, the Avatar, the one single soul reincarnated countless times. Moments like this made Korra feel as if she was the person with the worst case of MPD on the planet.

"I stand by my decision. Violence is not the answer." Aang crossed his arms almost petulantly while Kyoshi looked down at him from her far superior height.

The next thing that happened ranked very high on Korra's scale of things she didn't believe she would ever see in her lifetime, right below Katara using bloodbending to prank fire lord Zuko and a bit above Tenzin and Lin Beifong having a tongue wrestle which must have happened at some point in the past but thankfully Korra had never had to bear witness to. She was seeing her past incarnations, the two facets of a single soul, hers, having a staring battle over a dead bloodbender crime lord and abusive dad extraordinaire. She briefly revisited the assessment of the severity of her multiple personality disorder before butting in between the two Avatars.

"Well, violence may not be the answer, but it sure is looking very tempting right now to me." She fixed Aang a look, subtly taking Kyoshi's side in the argument. "Aang, I can't bend."

She heard the childishness in her own voice and almost winced, then she saw the look that crawled past Aang's face and all of a sudden she felt like a hole was opening up under her feet.

In another lifetime, Aang would have appeared before Korra along with the thousand lives they had lived in the past. In another lifetime, he would have returned to her what was hers by birthright but what she never truly earned for herself with a simple touch to her forehead. In another lifetime, she would have returned this same gesture, rebestowing the gift of bending to Lin Bei-fong and many others after her.

This was not that lifetime.

"You… you can't return my bending… can you?" Because if Aang could, he wouldn't be looking at her with pity in his eyes.

Aang had no answer to her question. Instead, he threw his own at her.

"What does being an Avatar mean to you, Korra? What is an Avatar?"

There was a disbelieving silence for a full minute as Korra stared at her predecessor uncomprehendingly, her brain still in the process of dissimilating the meaning of his question.

"What do you mean being an Avatar mean to me?" She exploded. Helplessness and frustration gave way to anger. "It means everything!" She threw out her hands. "I was the Avatar when I was four! I was the Avatar all my life! If I am not the Avatar, then what am I? Some Southern Water Tribe girl fated to grow up, marry, produce a child then die? If I am not the Avatar then I am nothing!"

As soon as the word left her mouth, she felt her strength seeping out of her chest, leaving her cold and empty. It was as if she had unknowingly opened the floodgate to the reservoir of her own mental fortitude and now that she realized it was leaving her, flowing out of her in unstoppable streams, she didn't have the slightest clue how to close it. "I was the Avatar before I even knew who I was." Her own voice surprised her. So weak and small, and nothing like the girl who had once fearlessly announced to three White Lotus members that she was the Avatar and they gotta deal with it when she was four years old. "If I am not the Avatar, then I am nothing." She repeated and listened to the sound of her own words being swallowed up in the silence that followed.

A sob was forming in her chest, slowly breaking out but she held it in, gripping onto it with her teenage pride. She willed her eyes downward, glaring balefully at the asphalt road of Republic City as her nose went wet and tingly.

"This is the reason why we are only let known our true identity when we reach sixteen years of age." Kyoshi laid a hand on her shoulder. "Each incarnation must be allowed the time to form their own sense of self or they will break under the weight of their Avatar identity." Kyoshi's hand went up to her chin, pushing her to look up at Aang in front of her. "For thousands of lifetimes, this rule was upheld, with two exceptions."

Of course. Aang who had known at twelve years old under the pressure of war, and she who had smashed the Avatar anonymity to pieces with her self-taught bending at four years old.

"Desperate times call for desperate measures." Aang said simply. "Indeed they do." Kyoshi agreed. Then he took her right hand as Kyoshi took the other. "Come, Korra. It is far from over." They walked forward simultaneously, pulling her with them.

Her heart jumped again in her chest. Far from over, he said. She chanced a glance, flitting in between her two predecessors. Something warned her though, not to get her hopes up so naively like she had done the first time around.

They walked, the three of them, as the world warped and churned and transformed. The ground swallowed Yakone. Republic City became something else. A long corridor stretched out into the distance, endlessly undulating into an empty space.

"Do you know the meaning of the word Avatar, Korra?"

She looked up, unsure which one had asked.

"The true word is Avatāra. It means to cross over, to descend, in the ancient Sanskrit script." It was Kyoshi who answered.

"… I've never heard of that before."

"You wouldn't. It is a dead language. It has been for thousands of years. You only hear the sounds of its children now, in the dialects of the four nations." There was a wistful note in Kyoshi's voice. "The Avatar once meant something different but time has changed its meaning, distorted it. The people now see the Avatar as simply a bender, the ultimate bender, but we were once far more than that. As with energybending, the true might of the Avatar has been forgotten… not only by our people, but by ourselves."

Kyoshi eyed Korra as she said the next sentence. "We have forgotten who we were."

Korra recoiled under Kyoshi's gaze. She knew she was bad with all these spiritual things. No one needed to remind her of that, least of all her past life.

"It is no fault of ours." Aang came to her rescue, directing her gaze away from Kyoshi with a gentle tug. "We have lived many lives, wearing the thousand faces of humanity. It is inevitable that we forget." She flashed him a weak smile in thanks. Always count on Aang to come to her rescue. She can see from which side of the family Tenzin had gotten his groove from. Then she noticed something else.

Pale blue light crept along the wall of the darkened corridor and Korra saw for the first time the rows of statues on both sides. Stone people, men and women, old and young stood tall, erect, staring at her with glowing eyes. The Avatars of the past. Korra drew a nervous breath. There must have been thousands of statues, standing in lines as endless as this corridor. She had never seen so many before.

"The ravages of war have robbed us of our knowledge. The Fire Nation feared the power of the Avatar and in curbing their fear, they destroyed all recordings and written knowledge of the Avatar cycle they managed to get their hands on during the hundred year war. I too was ignorant for much of my life. For a long time, I too did not know what being the Avatar meant."

It was extremely reassuring to hear the man, the Avatar, whose deeds she had heard about and looked up to all her life, made this confession, to know that she was not the only one feeling lost and unsure of herself at times. Still, that did not answer the one question she had asked from the beginning.

"Where are we going?" She peered into the unfathomable depth of the hallway, feeling the pull of excitement and nervousness both in her chest and in the prickling of her skin.

"To the beginning."

"Yeah, I got that the first time. The beginning of what?"

She skidded to a halt as both Aang and Kyoshi turned to face her. The hallway ended all of a sudden with the appearance of a nondescript door. Nervousness jumped in her chest, dealing a mortal blow to excitement.

"The beginning…" Aang and Kyoshi said at the same time, voices twining like bells and drums in an ancient and primordial hymn she had heard long ago but could not remember clearly. "… of the Avatar."

"… what do you mean…" They laid their hands on the door and cut her off mid-question, and pushed. The door yielded under their combined force, opening. And what it opened to wasn't something Korra could describe with a few words.

There was a sea. There was the sky. There was land, somewhere in the peripheral of her vision, and a vast expanse of space. The door opened amidst the skies, like a scene out of a bad dream in which Korra was going to plummet to her death in the next second or two. The visceral sensation of falling lanced through her like a spear and she very nearly screamed when a hand gripped her across her stomach, pulling her backward.

"Steady."

"Wha… what is this? Where is this?" She breathed through her mouth, puffing out heavy pockets of air, tasting salty sweat on her tongue. She had both arms around the other two older Avatars. The incredible vistas of the ocean below pulled her gaze in and kept it captive in the dark depth beneath the roiling waves. She could hear the water, pulling, pushing, and felt the cold moisture of humid air on her face. If this was a memory, then it was the most life-like she had ever experienced.

"The beginning." Kyoshi reiterated, keeping one hand around Korra's waist and her other hand gripping the door lining. Held like this between them, Korra could have sworn they were just as fleshly and living as her. She released a nervous laugh, her anxiety reaching an uncomfortable peak. The worst case of MPD. Ever.

"They're coming." She heard from one of the two Avatars. They who?

The answer to her question appeared scant seconds later. Something was moving in the black depth. Something big, big enough to make her step back instinctively, cowed by its sheer size and implied danger on a subconscious level.

It was a tree that first broke the water surface, dripping heavily, then a forest, then what looked like a small island. Two nervous frantic heartbeats later, the thing emerged entirely… no. Not entirely, more like half. But only even a half was more than enough.

"A lion turtle?" She breathed disbelievingly.

"The lion turtle." Aang corrected. "The oldest and most powerful being of the planet, also my energybending master."

Korra perked up. So that was how Aang learned energybending. Energybending, the mysterious epitome of all bending arts. In no documents was its origin and method of teaching ever recorded. The one mystery of Avatar Aang - from whom did he learn this bending art? - that was never explained, not even to Aang's friends and family.

"Is it…" She started only to be shushed by Aang. "Quiet. Listen."

…going to teach me to energybend? Korra finished in her head, making a face as she did so. The next second, she schooled herself. Something was happening down below.

The Lion Turtle moved and a humongous paw the size of two buildings combined bobbed up and down on the waves. Korra leaned in. There was a figure perching haphazardly on it, facing the Lion Turtle. A tiny fleck of white robe and long dark hair in the brown expanse of the Lion Turtle's paw.

Before she could so much as open her mouth to voice another question, the Lion Turtle opened its and out came something that couldn't really be called a voice.

"Do you know what will happen?" It spoke in a language she shouldn't be able to understand but somehow understood anyway. She had a split second in which she contemplated whether this was the dead Sanskrit Kyoshi was talking about when all of a sudden, Korra was not peeking out from a sub-space corridor, sandwiched between two older Avatars, but standing on top of the Lion Turtle's paw, eye-to-eye with a lion face so big it blocked out the skies. She felt the almost familiar awkwardness of a body she wasn't used to, eyeing white robes that she shouldn't be wearing and free dark hair that she shouldn't have flying in the wind.

"You shall be born to face the shadow." The Lion Turtle's words rumbled in her hearts, filling her eardrums and her veins like thunders. "Born once more as you were born before, and shall be born again, time without end. The Avatāra shall be reborn, and people will both weep in terror and rejoice at your birth, for in the flesh you wear resides the soul of a God and this God is neither gentle nor merciful. There will be those who stand in your way, yet more will lie down and give their life to pave your road. It is the way of the human heart to hold both shadows and light. You will stand at the crossroad and choose, and choose again and again for each time your soul wakes in a new face."

"My friend." Korra buckled under the gaze of the Lion Turtle, her heart beating frantically under its weight. "Do you comprehend the price?"

Korra felt her mouth opened involuntarily and the beginning of a 'I do' formed in her belly, floated up her throat, filled her breath, and was on the verge of escaping into sounds when she was pulled back mercilessly.

The next thing she knew, she was lying on her back, staring at a dark stone ceiling. The sound of a door slamming shut cracked painfully in her ears, sending echoes down the corridor. She sat up, desperately trying and failing to stop the tremors quaking through her body.

"What… what was that?"

"A memory of ours…" Said Aang. "… from our very first mortal life."

Korra gawked for a full ten minutes, during which her mind struggled to come to terms to what she had just seen. She licked her cracking-dried lips and let her question slip out from her mouth.

"Wh… why… did you show it to me?" She felt nervous. She felt like a kid who'd just stumbled her way into something way over her head. She might have lost three of her bending, but as far she could guess (and she fancied she guessed correctly), restoring her bending shouldn't involve showing a memory like this to her… right?

In place of an answer, Kyoshi pushed her hand against the right wall and a door materialized from the stone, then opened.

The sensation was different this time. She wasn't looking through someone else's eyes but flying and looking down through a bird's eye view. The world she saw was not a pretty one. She saw people fighting, walls being built around cities and armies tearing down walls. The skies were filled with airplanes bearing a symbol she had come to fear and hate. The Equalist symbol. The United Force Battle Ship covered part of the sea. People killing. People dying. Benders and non-benders alike. A child crying in the night, lost and alone, huddling against the broken and burned down wall of his house. The skies darkened. Ash fell. The world burned, and she was nowhere to be seen.

Kyoshi closed the door and it was over. The silence in the hallway was almost too much to bear.

"That's not possible." She said after a couple of shaky breaths, petulant as a spoiled child who didn't get the birthday gift she wanted. "Amon is gone. He turned tail and ran. I beat him. I won. I showed the world the fraud and liar he is. I won!"

"Is it?" Kyoshi arched an eyebrow, then she leaned down so close the top of nose almost touched Korra's. "You won. Really?" Korra turned her head, planning to rope Aang into taking her side, but Kyoshi gripped her face with a hand and killed that plan right off the bat. "You can lie to just about anybody, but not yourself, Avatāra. I have seen your heart, and it is filled with 'him'" Korra struggled, feeling a feverous blush erupting on her face. She wanted out, right now. Her past life or not, she wanted as far away from Kyoshi as possible, but the older Avatar was relentless, and possessing of a strength verging on supernatural. "It is his shape you see in the dark. It is his voice you hear in your sleep. Your skin remembers his touch. Here…" Kyoshi's hand moved to her chest, directly above her frantically drumming heart. "… and here." Then her forehead. "He haunts you, even now. You fear him and because of your fear, he is alive still, even if it is only in you, through you."

Her point made, Kyoshi released her. She stumbled back, down on her haunches, angry, frustrated and ashamed. She turned to Aang, expecting to find comfort but got something else.

"You can't solve every problem by head-butting it and throwing it out the window, Korra. Amon is simply a symptom, a symptom and a catalyst. Even with him removed, the conflict between benders and non-benders is still there as you have done little to address it. There is more to being the Avatar than just fisticuffs and bending your way out of your troubles."

"Then tell me what to do? What do I have to do?" … to get my bending back? She completed the line in her head, her anger and frustration simmering.

This time, it was Aang who opened a door from the left-side wall. Korra was quickly getting tired of doors in general but she inched closer, peeking warily. On the other side was a snowbound landscape achingly similar to her home. Arctic wind came in through the door, blowing in her face a familiar plethora of snowflakes, ice-drops and the tangy scents of high-altitude ozone that could only come from a Water Tribe territory.

"Where is this?" She pushed her question, shouting it through the sound of the wind.

"Amon's childhood home." Aang replied succinctly.

"The Northern Water Tribe?"

"Twenty-six years ago."

She gawked openly, incredulous. Aang cracked a smile at her face, his Air Nomad nature breaking through his solemn expression. "The power of the Avatar is immeasurable, but can only be called on in time of need, as I called on Energybending."

Oh, right. Of course. Physical god and all associated baggage. How could she forget that?

"Alright, what do I do?"

"Make a choice, as I made mine." Aang replied, sounding as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. Then, in a completely unexpected move, he shoved her out the door. It was her only reflex that saved her from the fall. 'What?' She gripped onto the doorframe with both hands and feet, staring open-mouth at a completely unapologetic Aang. In the next second, before she could react, Kyoshi took Aang's place and the voice that came out of her mouth was Korra's own, completed with mocking sarcasm.

"Don't be a wuss, Korra…" She said. "… you want your bending back, you have to earn it." And sent her falling with a kick.

End Chapter 1.

And Korra's last thought before everything went black was 'I have the worst case of MPD ever!' Really, did anybody stop and think about the case of the Avatar's multiple personality disorder? For a single soul, h/she sure has many facets, some completely at odd with each other.

Weird beginning, but yeah. My Amorra fixation is not going away… not going away… not going away.

This will start out bleak, but it will be mostly a story about learning something new… and rebellious teenage love (in which Korra at first tries to murder Noatak (unsuccessfully) and he becomes kinda fascinated then smitten with her).

Me being the bona fide Asian living in Asia that I am (and a Wuxia fan), these are the things I want to do in this fic: Korra learning Airbending and its sub-skills (sound bending, an atmospheric counterpart of Toph's seismic sense, a mild form of emotion manipulation via sound waves), Korra learning the martial art form of energybending (which is called qicong in the Wuxia genre Atla and LoK draw heavily from)

Also… Yakone… for such a bad guy, why do you have such good genes? Your sons are a menace to ovaries everywhere on the planet.