date posted: 2024-03-28
summary: Her pride hasn't died yet, she knows; she clings to it every moment in these visits from the Avatar. But a part of it died the moment she and Korra burst into the Spirit World, and she hasn't tried to reach for it, not until she's out and on the stand, defending herself for the good she knows she did during her time as the Uniter.
word count: 1,552 words
content warnings: prison setting
notes: this is i guess the same universe as converging halves. title from the song of the same name by tanpopo, and also the cover by oomori seiko that is forever in my heart.
She sat cross legged on the ground, the stone cold against her ankles, exposed by the short, threadbare pant legs of her uniform. The Avatar mirrored her, studying her calmly. Kuvira can't tell if she wants to pick her apart further or put her back together.
A moment stretched out too long between them. Kuvira felt the ache of wanting to say something, anything, to fill the gap, to plug the hole in the space, but her pride took over, that she shouldn't give the Avatar more of herself than she already gave, that day in the Spirit World, laid bare and weak with tears down her face, her hair let loose and strung out, ratty and knotted from the fighting.
Kuvira keeps her gaze on the floor, the Avatar's crossed legs briefly entering her vision as her gaze involuntarily slides up, until she looks back down, at her hands in her lap, one laid atop the other, palm upward, calloused and scarred.
The knife sat diagonal beside the Avatar, rusted and dull, but not enough for it to be useless.
She hears a weary sigh from the woman before her, exhaustion and frustration lining it, but Kuvira knows she won't let those feelings cloud whatever she's about to say.
"Why did you cut your hair like that?"
Kuvira looked up, her mouth slightly ajar.
"What?"
"Your hair. It was long, before the..." Korra briefly paused, trying to find the right words, trying to skirt around her own trauma and Kuvira's wreckage, pointlessly, "before I came back," she decides.
Kuvira tilts her head back down, looks at her hands again, curls and crushes her fingers in an empty grip.
"It was a burden," she says.
Korra scoots closer, her boots scratching and squeaking against the ground. The sound cuts through Kuvira like a blade, like metal shirked out by her own hand from her uniform, sleek and sliding and scraping against the rest of it, yanked apart and clasping over someone's wrists, neck, mouth, the flick of a wrist, as simple as exhaling.
Korra seems to want to push this time, wants to ask her pointless questions that she'll never get answers to, answers as to why Kuvira is this way, even though she knows full well, since that ever so brief time with the Spirits, staining her with their purples and magentas and pure energy, as her shoulder screamed in agony, as her knees crumpled to the ground, she felt the pure power and peace emanating from the Spirits, and in that moment, she didn't want their forgiveness, because she knew she had wronged them, with her wretched abuse of their power; more than that, she knew that she did what she had to do, and that the Avatar stopped her in her tracks and showed her mercy.
"I remember," Korra starts, calm, and Kuvira looks up at her, and sees Korra's looked downward, her eyes half lidded, reminiscing, "when everyone came to rescue me," and Kuvira knows this will be a difficult conversation, a cold one, one lined with memories Kuvira has no part in, no involvement, no closeness to. Nothing that she envies.
"Your hair was down your back in a braid," Korra says. "It was beautiful."
"Are you..." Kuvira begins, then her words catch in her throat. Korra looks at her with a smirk, knowing she's cracked one wall. Kuvira wants to punch the smirk off her face until she's knocking her back into the wall, and Kuvira hears cracks behind her but continues to sneer, to mock, until Korra releases her in anger, and retreats to her friends.
Her fists involuntarily tighten at the thought, guarded. She watches the Avatar shift so that her arms are behind her, leaning her weight on them, supporting and propping her up. Her legs extend in front of her, and that surely can't be comfortable, Kuvira thinks, with how baggy and crumpled her pants are in this position, the thickness possibly dragging her down.
Korra shakes her head slightly, a feather-light smile creasing her face, gentle and delicate, all things Kuvira doesn't deserve.
"I just thought it was nice, how you always braided it. Even by the time you were in the Empire," Korra says. "You still braided it into that bun."
"I did," Kuvira says, her voice stony.
She remembers how tight she pulled her bun together, every day, the braid twisted and contorted and pulled tight around her head, until her scalp burned. Eventually, as a leader should, she got used to it.
"But you cut it," Korra repeats.
"I did," Kuvira repeats in kind, already tired of this conversation. She leans her head back against the wall, only slightly relaxes her arms from a taut position she didn't realize she was holding herself in.
A moment passes between them. The Avatar looks all too comfortable in these visits, until Kuvira inevitably aggravates something between them that makes her finally leave her alone.
"Why?" Korra says, after a beat.
"Why do you want to know so bad?" Kuvira narrows her eyes, cutting. Her lips flatten into a line, annoyed.
Korra sighs again. "I don't know, I guess," she says. "I just remembered how nice it looked."
"I'm well past the days of hair braids," Kuvira says, alluding to her hair now, cut short and cropped to her shoulders, messily growing in, rattled and tangled, because Kuvira can't bother to braid it the way she once did, to position and gnarl it into the curves it once held every single day.
Her pride hasn't died yet, she knows; she clings to it every moment in these visits from the Avatar. But a part of it died the moment she and Korra burst into the Spirit World, and she hasn't tried to reach for it, not until she's out and on the stand, defending herself for the good she knows she did during her time as the Uniter.
"What do you want from me?" Kuvira asks coldly, not looking up from the ground. There's no point in it.
"Nothing," Korra snaps back, but there's no frustration in her tone; only the pitying patience of the Avatar.
Kuvira blinks. Korra scoots herself closer, creeping into Kuvira's field of vision more than before, crossing her legs.
"Before I cut my hair," Korra starts, "I used to always do it the same way, in a ponytail, with the two dangling pieces. I did that since I was a kid," she says with a sigh. Kuvira looks up, and sees Korra with her head tilted back towards the ceiling, looking up lazily, reminiscing again.
"I cut it because I needed a new start," she continues. "Away from everything that happened to me."
Kuvira ponders it for a moment, then feels a part of her swell up in rage, provoked by Korra's words.
"Do you think I need a 'fresh start', Avatar?" She asks, biting. "I already cut my hair in here. My 'fresh start' is in a prison cell."
Korra nods. "You can start something new here," she says, too nice, too forgiving, "something kind, not threatening the way you were. I don't remember you, that day," she pauses in thought, briefly, then continues, "when you came with the rest of the Metal clan. But I know what you did. It wasn't unkind."
Kuvira studies her, wary. Korra continues.
"You don't have to go back to the way you were before," Korra says, "as the Uniter or as a Beifong. But you can start something kinder here."
"I'm not as kind or forgiving as you, Avatar."
"And I'm not as kind and forgiving as you think I am," Korra bites back, and Kuvira hopes this is the start of the end of today, because she's tired, and frustrated, and wants to rest on her flimsy cot, instead of being pulled and picked apart by the Avatar, of all people. "Don't think I've forgiven you for everything you did to me, to my friends," Korra snaps.
Kuvira chuckles. "I don't want your forgiveness."
"I know you don't, Kuvira," Korra says, moving to stand, and then she's looking down at her, and Kuvira couldn't feel any more satisfied in this position, vindicated by the Avatar's current stance.
"But you can start by being kinder to yourself," she says, and moves to leave, the knife laying abandoned on the ground beside where Korra once sat; an olive branch.
Kuvira watches her back, then, when the earth slams closed, in her returning solace, she knocks her head back against the wall, and stares at that door, the unmoving, clean earth unmarred by the Avatar's effortless bending of it, like it was never cracked apart by her hand.
She wonders when the Avatar started putting her trust in those who've wronged her, and knows it started long before her time, because it's in the Avatar's nature to trust, to forgive, to give second chances to the undeserved.
Kuvira closes her eyes, and thinks about Korra's short, jagged hair, slowly growing in but still kept short by Korra's own hand. She wonders how Korra first cut it, when they first met, as Uniter and Avatar, after the fact, after everything began in earnest for Kuvira.
She ponders just how similar they are, and she chuckles to herself at the pathetic thought.