Return
Five o’clock on a Monday evening a train coming from Gaoling entered its final stop at the Republic City train station. After everyone else seemingly got off the train, Korra slipped out of the cabin she had been in for the past four days and got off the train. With her head down she walked off the platform and through the station to the exit, hoping to go by unnoticed.
Once outside Korra thought of where she should go first. The thought of surprising her girlfriend at work was enticing. Korra had last written Asami a week and a half prior saying that she planned to come back during the week of the twenty-fifth. Right now it was the week before that and Korra was imagining surprising her girlfriend at her office. She would surprise her with flowers, those fire-lilies that she likes, she thought, and Asami would immediately drop everything and jump on her. They would go to dinner together and afterwards the park, and would finish up the evening at Asami’s place where she would spend the night.
Shaking her head and sighing, Korra stopped fantasizing and swiftly threw her glider up in the air and jumped off the tallest step of the stairs, meeting her glider mid-air and heading towards air temple island.
……
As she grew closer to the island she scanned to see if she could see Jinora anywhere. The island seemed to be deserted, oh right, it’s dinner time, but right then she recognized Kai practicing by himself near the spinning gates, so she decided he was the next best thing.
“Korra! Hello!” he said cheerfully, waiving at her as she landed.
“Hey Kai. Do you know where Jinora is right now? I need to speak with her.”
“She's probably eating dinner.”
“Well, why aren’t you eating dinner?”
Kai sighed, looking down. He looked tired. “I can’t. Tomorrow Jinora and Master Tenzin will be testing me to see if I can begin the fifteenth tier. I’m practicing right now. Jinora’s going to help me on it after she eats.”
“I’m sure you’ll pass, you’re a talented air bender,” Korra said warmly. “I’ll wait for Jinora with you here. I’m not hungry.”
“Don’t you want to see everyone though? Haven’t you been gone on that secret mission-” Kai cut himself off by slapping his mouth shut with his hand. His eyes went wide and he started blushing.
“I forgot i’m not supposed to know that. I didn’t tell anyone I promise!”
Korra laughed and waived it off. “It’s alright Kai, I suppose if Jinora was going to tell anyone it would be you.”
“She’s been teaching me all her air bending spiritual moves…or at least trying to, so she told me about you tracking down that spirit. Why didn’t she come with you? Kai asked. "She’s amazing with the spirits."
“Honestly I didn’t think that the mission was going to be all that hard. Also I was told to come alone. If Jinora was to come then Tenzin would've had to know about it and then everyone would've found out and made a big deal. I couldn't have had everyone offering to come with me this time."
Before Kai asked another question Jinora appeared from the temple.
“Korra! You’re back!”
“Yeah,” she said smiling. “Kai, do you mind if I borrow her for a bit?” she asked him.
“Sure. I guess i’ll ask Ikki to help me instead.”
Jinora apologized to her boyfriend and then she and Korra walked off in the direction opposite of the temple. Korra heard some people nearby. The last thing she wanted was to see everyone right now. “Lets go somewhere else. I don’t want to be seen right now.”
“Alright. Let’s go to my room,” Jinora said.
Once in Jinora’s room they sat down on the floor and faced each other in the lotus position. “When did you get back? What happened? Did you do it?” Jinora asked quickly.
“Slow down. You sound like Ikki.”
“Sorry. I’ve been worried about you.”
“It’s okay. I got back an hour ago.”
“Does anyone else know you’re back?”
Korra slumped her back and sighed. “No, I came straight here. I took a train from Gaoling.” Korra then sighed and pondered for a moment of how to start it off, “I completed the mission. I tracked down the spirit using the method you taught me and defeated it using spirit bending.”
“But you’ve been gone for three weeks! Tracking the spirit down took that long?”
“No. Once I got to the Gaoling province it only took me three days to track it down and defeat it.”
“Then why have you been gone all this time? I almost went to my dad.”
“Well I thought everything was fine but I experienced side effects from the spirit.”
“What do you mean? Like you got sick?”
“Kind of, but worse. The spirit messed with my mind somehow. For over a week after I defeated the spirit it was hard to function. I’ve never experienced anything like it…I almost died Jinora.”
Jinora was silent for a second, looking sympathetically at Korra. “We should’ve come with you. All of us. We all have experience with these situations-”
“I’m glad you didn’t!” Korra exclaimed, cutting her off. “It wasn’t a hard mission to complete. I knew I could handle it myself, I just didn’t know I would go crazy afterwards.”
Jinora was silenced once again for a minute while she processed the information.“In the letter the governor sent you it said that the spirit was doing some type of mind control. Was that it?” Jinora asked.
“No I don’t think so, it was something else. I knew from the beginning that was most likely not it, that’s just what the governor thought it was because a lot of the people the spirit affected were committing crimes, like vandalism and assault. But the spirit wasn’t making them commit those crimes. I think being near the spirit made them paranoid and hallucinate like I did, and that’s just how they reacted.”
“It makes sense that people would react violently if the spirit made them paranoid, and if they were having hallucinations. What did you experience?” Jinora asked.
Korra had some reservations telling Jinora all of it. Everything that Korra hallucinated and did felt too personal to tell anyone. She is like my spiritual advisor though, she can tell me what this all means.
“I’ll just tell you everything from the beginning. I have reservations telling you it all because you're a bit young but I trust you.”
….
It took over an hour to tell Jinora the whole story. Korra found herself venting and unable to leave out any of the smallest details of the last three weeks. Jinora mainly stayed quiet the whole time, not changing her focused expression very often. At the end she asked Korra some questions which she answered the best she could.
“Okay… It seems like the entire experience was just as if you had taken a strong psychedelic drug. Everything you experienced was random and it probably has no deeper meaning to it, even if a spirit is what caused it,” Jinora concluded. “It doesn’t seem like the visions from when you were tracking it in the swamp.”
“Yeah, those were completely different. Those were only mild hallucinations and I didn’t have any visions of past experiences or of people I knew because of the amnesia.”
Jinora bent her body a little closer and placed a hand on Korra’s shoulder. “It was noble of you to track that spirit down by yourself,” she said. “You potentially saved a lot of people. Go and try to rest for a while. If you start experiencing anymore symptoms tell me and i’ll help.”
“Thank you,” Korra said.
“You're welcome. Are you going to go home now?” she asked.
“No, I should go see Asami. She’ll be happy that i’m back early.” Korra then sighed and looked down. “I don’t know how i’m going to even look at her. I feel guilty about it.”
“Don’t feel guilty. You didn’t do anything wrong. Like you said, you had no self control over your mind or body-”
“Not just about that. I had to lie to her about the mission. I told her that I went to Goaling to help the governor pass spirit legislation. She would’ve forced her way into coming if she knew what it really was.”
Jinora was silenced by that. She didn’t know what to say or what advice to give the Avatar. Korra got up and picked up her staff and backpack.
“Thanks for listening Jinora,” Korra said awkwardly.
“Your welcome. Everything will be alright with you and Asami. She’s understanding and she cares about your well being. Whatever you decide to do, she’ll understand.”
“I hope so,” was all Korra said before she exited Jinora’s room and quietly left the girls dormitory without anyone spotting her. Once outside she again swiftly threw her staff in the air and then ran and jumped, meeting with the staff mid-air, and heading toward the Sato estate.