Work Text:
It wasn’t a big deal.
Korra knew everyone had been struggling with nightmares since the battle with the Red Lotus and even more now plagued her friends and family after Kuvira’s War. She knew Mako woke in a cold sweat clutching his arm and Bolin often cried out his friends’ names in his sleep and Asami would reach out to someone, likely her father, right before she’d bolt awake. Nightmares were not new to any of them, so Korra kept hers to herself.
No one else needed to know about her dark shadow who still followed her even after all of the poison had been removed from her blood. She had hoped removing the poison would have stopped the awful image from following her but it didn’t. She was stuck with her dark copy for now and was often dragged from sleep by her unwanted visitor.
Naga helped some, licking a trail of slobber up the side of Korra’s face and reminding her that she was the real Korra, not the shadowy death image. Getting up and walking it off helped more, which was what brought Korra to the kitchen of the Beifong Estate in the first place.
She hadn’t expected someone else to be up at this time, but it wasn’t too surprising. As she said, everyone had nightmares and apparently everyone included Lin Beifong.
The elder Beifong sister hadn’t originally wanted to stay with the rest of her family but someone, be it Toph or Suyin, had pulled strings and Raiko ordered her on leave. Korra hadn’t seen her around much, though Mako spent most of his time wherever she was hiding.
It was odd seeing her here now. Korra didn’t really associate kitchens with Lin but she supposed living on her own, the older woman would need to know how to cook. She looked oddly at peace doing it, so Korra moved to back away from the door when Naga pushed her way into the room and bounded over to get head scratches.
Lin wasn’t surprised by the polar bear dog, nor was she surprised by Korra’s presence as she rushed forward and tried to pull Naga from the kitchen.
“Sorry,” Korra said, pulling Naga’s paws off the counter.
Lin shook her head. “I knew you were both coming,” she replied, her voice softer than Korra had ever heard it. Was it because she was tired or simply because she didn't want to disturb the quiet of the night? Korra didn’t have an answer but she did suddenly have a spoon.
“Stir that if you plan on staying,” Lin continued. “Might as well make yourself useful if you aren’t going back to sleep.”
Korra didn’t ask why Lin knew she wasn’t going back to bed. Lin knew about the nightmares everyone suffered from too.
The second time it happened, Korra might have intentionally headed towards the kitchen once she got her breathing back into order. With dark shadows pulling at her mind, she didn’t want to be alone and something told her that Lin’s cooking ventures were as common as Korra’s night time walks.
She was right, though now that she was here she didn’t want to be.
Lin was nowhere to be found but it was clear she had been there at some point before. The kitchen was in ruins.
Which might be a tad bit over exaggerating but not by much. Cooking instruments laid scattered around the kitchen full of half cooked and half mixed foods as if Lin had started one project and then jumped to the next halfway through. Some ingredients were spilled over the counter and eggs were dripping onto the floor out of a pan on the stove.
Once again, Naga forced Korra to enter the kitchen, this time to stop her companion from eating the seasoned but uncooked meat off the prep bench.
As she rounded the corner to catch Naga’s reins, she found Naga nudging something on the ground with her nose. When Naga’s head lifted to whimper, Lin Beifong was revealed leaning against the lower cabinets. She hadn’t been visible from the door due to the large island in the middle of the kitchen.
Korra and Lin stared at one another and a thousand questions flew through Korra’ head at that moment. Are you okay? Did you hurt something? Why is the kitchen a mess? How bad was your dream? Do you want to talk about it?
Instead Korra asked, “Do you need help cleaning up?” She knew vaguely the answers to all those other questions.
Lin sighed and pulled herself to her feet. “Guess so.”
They cleaned in silence and then they finally made a finished meal just in time for the sun to start rising in the distance. They took the meal onto a patio to eat and Korra blinked when Lin handed her an egg, unbroken and uncooked.
“What?”
“Throw it,” Lin replied, looking back down at her plate.
Korra stared at the egg before throwing it as hard as she could at the ground. Naga swooped in to clean up the evidence that splattered all over the cobblestones and Korra had to admit, she felt a little bit better.
It didn’t become a thing after that.
In fact, Korra and Lin wouldn’t cross paths in the kitchen for another week. Korra couldn’t say if it was just because they kept missing each other, if Lin’s nightmares had calmed and she no longer needed her outlet of cooking at night, or if Lin was avoiding her.
Tiptoeing her way down to the kitchen after yet another nightmare, gave her the answer.
Lin was in the kitchen, staring blankly down at the counter but not cooking. She seemed heavily lost in thought, though her gaze immediately snapped up as soon as Korra reached the doorway.
They watched each other for a moment before Lin waved her into the room.
“First nightmare in a while?” Lin asked, pulling a wok from the cabinets.
“No,” Korra replied, wondering if that was the case for Lin.
“Me either,” Lin replied, answering the unasked question.
“Guess we just missed each other,” Korra said, stepping up to chop the vegetables Lin placed on the counter.
Lin hummed and they cooked in silence. Another question hung onto Korra’ mind but she hesitated to ask it. She didn’t want to cause any tension between them.
“Spit it out,” Lin said, grabbing Korra’s chopping board and dumping the vegetables straight into the wok.
Korra smirked. She should have known better. Lin hated heavy silence more than awkward words. “When I got here you weren’t cooking like when I normally find you. I was just curious why?”
Lin watched her from the corner of her eye. “Might have been waiting to see if anyone showed up,” she replied.
Korra considered that. She knew no one else was likely cooking with Lin, which meant Lin was waiting on her which was concerning because Korra had clearly missed her often the past few days. How many times had Lin sat in the kitchen waiting for Korra who wasn’t coming? Probably as often as Korra circled the kitchen waiting for Lin to show up.
“Might be easier if these meetings were planned,” Korra offered.
Lin looked at her funny before bringing up the unspoken subject that filled the manor. “Do you plan your nightmares?”
Korra laughed. “No, you’re right, that was stupid,” Korra replied.
They fell into a much more comfortable silence after that and Korra considered the issue some more. She recalled from when she was little, and much more recently if she was honest, how whenever she had a nightmare, she would wake one of her parents.
It wasn’t a good idea. Neither of them were getting much sleep and waking each other up to cook in the middle of the night the few times they were sleeping would only make things worse.
Korra offered it anyway.
Lin accepted it.
Despite their agreement, it took three days before Korra was woken from a nightmare to find the kitchen empty. If Lin had a nightmare and didn’t come get her at that time, Korra wasn’t sure and as such, hesitated at the entrance to the hall where Lin's bedroom was down.
She wondered, not for the first time, if her presence wasn’t a burden on Lin. Cooking after a nightmare was clearly the older woman’s way of destressing and distancing herself from whatever plagued her dreams and Korra had just inserted herself into her coping mechanism.
Mako said she was never a burden on the people who cared about her. Bolin said not being alone was good for getting better. Asami said that the voice in her head that tells her to distance herself wasn’t a voice that needed to be listened to.
Deep down Korra knew her friends were right, but the voice and the guilt and the desire for solitude still pulled at her. She was about to turn around and leave Lin to her sleep when a door swung open at the end of the hall.
Lin exited and stared at her. She seemed surprised to see her there, as if she hadn’t really expected Korra to come and get her. That lit a fire in Korra, who walked over and looped her arms with the older woman.
“I thought, maybe I could teach you a water tribe dish this time?” Korra offered carefully. “My mom would make it on nights when the snow storms got really bad.”
Lin nodded. She still seemed disbelieving in what she was seeing.
They worked easily together, as if this nightly ritual had always been something shared between the two of them, rather than a solo mission that gained an unplanned partner. There was a space made for Korra within the kitchen, a space that Lin moved easily around because she planned for it to be there.
Korra was surprised to discover this. Lin also seemed surprised to discover this as she watched Korra constantly out of the corner of her eye. Their night cooking continued on with neither of them disappearing as if they were a figment of the other's imagination. When the meal was done they plated their food and walked onto a patio that wasn’t theirs but was still very much theirs.
It was a hard realization to swallow, that Lin had been just as worried of being a burden as Korra, but it went down better with good food and conversation.
They continued their ritual for the next several days before Korra decided to push another boundary. It was quite like it usually was this late at night and the two of them were watching bread rise in silence when Korra’s nightmare finally slipped its confinement.
“I’m being haunted by myself,” Korra said, not able to bring herself to look at Lin.
Lin’s head twitched as if she wanted to turn it but she kept facing the oven instead.
“That’s what I dream about at night,” Korra continued. “She’s chained and her eyes glow silver with poison and she’s everything the Red Lotus wanted her to be. She would have torn Kuvira to pieces well before I did. She’s stronger than me but she’s terrifying because she’s all the things I never want to be and I think she’s inside me sometimes just waiting to come out.”
Lin didn’t respond at first and Korra assumed that was that. It felt nice to get it off her chest but she knew it wasn’t something easily reassured.
“I think the fact that you have nightmares about her is the reason you’ll never become her,” Lin finally replied.
The statement was so simple and matter of fact that it left Korra breathless. She gasped and turned to Lin but the older woman was still watching the bread. Even just from her side profile, Korra could tell Lin meant it. Lin wasn’t one to offer false assurances but there was steel in the way her jaw was set that told Korra this wasn’t something she could be talked out of.
She fully believed Korra would never become something so dark.
“Raiko calls this a vacation,” Lin said, unprompted, finally turning to meet Korra’s eyes. “It’s not. It’s a prison. It’s a nightmare I can never escape. I wake up from nightmares of my family just to have to deal with the living ones in the real world.”
Korra didn’t know how to reply. Suyin and Toph had always been kind to her and Korra owed them both a lot but she knew there was something in the family’s past that Lin held against them and couldn’t forgive. Korra used to think it was childish, but now she knew better. Even when someone was helpful in other ways, like Zaheer or Kuvira, it didn't mean they weren’t harmful to others.
“This is my only real escape,” Lin finished, her eyes burning into Korra’s.
Korra finally understood. She turned back to the bread without giving false assurances and started planning a real one.
Korra didn’t have a nightmare the next night, nor did Lin, which gave Korra plenty of time to set her plans in motion.
Mako gave her a knowing look, he didn’t ask any questions or push on the topic. Bolin gave her a confused pep-talk, he was excited for her even if he didn’t understand. Asami gave her a hug, fully understanding her desire and mentioning her own plans to leave soon.
Morning came and with it a more typical breakfast than she had eaten in the last two weeks she had been in the house. She waited outside the kitchen for Lin to make her appearance. She knew, even when Lin did eat the breakfast prepared by Suyin’s chef, she always waited until everyone else was done eating.
If Lin was surprised to see her waiting, she didn’t say. Instead she took her food and walked towards their usual patio and sat to eat across from Korra.
“Did you already eat?” Lin asked. Korra had little doubt that she had caught the Chief’s attention with her out of character actions.
“Yes, but I wanted to talk to you about something,” Korra said.
Lin raised an eyebrow but nodded for Korra to continue.
“Let’s leave,” Korra offered bluntly.
Lin’s eyebrow climbed higher. “Leave?” she asked.
“Yeah, leave,” Korra repeated. “No one told us we had to stay here, they just told us to lay low out of Republic City. That leaves a pretty big chunk of the world outside of the city to explore. I was thinking maybe the Fire Nation. I never quite made it out there the one time I tried to visit.”
“You want to go to the Fire Nation? With me? And without your friends?” Lin asked, her disbelief clear.
“Yeah,” Korra replied, reaching out to grab Lin’s hand in her last leap of faith. She brought Lin’s hand to her lips and pressed a kiss to the back of scarred knuckles. “I do.”
Lin stared at her hand where Korra had kissed it. “Alright, if you think you can keep up, kid,” Lin agreed.
“Oh, I can keep up just fine,” Korra replied, a smirk pulling at her lips.
Lin rolled her eyes. “We’ll see.”
Korra took the answer for what it was. They would see where this would go.