All the things I never told you

If I could save you I would

Dear Korra,

I'm angry. Undeniably angry, the kind of anger that bubbles up in your stomach and settles as an unmalleable lump in your throat. The kind you're taught to swallow, ignore, and go on with the rest of your day. Atleast that's what my father always said. (kind of ironic, don't remind me). But what happens when it comes back again and again, day after day, and night after night?

That horrible feeling of uncertainty and misery pools inside of me sometimes becoming too much to handle on my own. Everytime I think of you and what you went through it comes back. It makes my speech labored and raspy in the middle of a meeting and just when I start to feel tears pooling in my eyes Tenzin or some other official forces me to excuse myself and pull it together.

I've spent the past couple of weeks in public bathroom stalls crying like an idiot. I don't know whether it's anxiety or the fact that I miss you horribly. Maybe an unsavory mix of both factors. I've said it more times than I can count in letters I actually end up sending- I miss you, I miss you so much it aches. Physically, it aches to think about you, wondering where you are, what you're doing, if you slept good and got enough to eat. Hoping you weren't awoken by another nightmare, and willing myself not to book the next book out to the South Pole to check up on you. "If you wanted me there you'd of already asked" I remind myself, it's better for you this way. This is what you wanted.

From how I'm wording this it seems like I'm mad at you. Really, I'm not. I'm just furious that you're the Avatar... Wow, that doesn't sound any better does it? What I mean is you save everyone. You saved me, Mako, and Bolin more times than anyone can count on their own hands or even with their mind. You saved thousands of Bender's from the hands of my father and Amon. You saved the spirits and the spiritual link between the South Pole and the Spirit World. Vaatu, you saved a whole nation from the threat of extinction and every single Avatar that comes after you. All this is just the tip of the ice berg, and yet it angers me.

How could I not be angry? You do so much for the world, for Republic City, and for the people you love yet this happens to you. Because we couldn't save you. I couldn't save you. Nor could Jinora or the other Airbenders despite their best efforts. How unfair is that? One person in charge of guarding the whole worlds spiritual and physical safety. It sounds exhausting, really, I don't know how you do it. Sometimes I wish you didn't.

And through it all they treat you like garbage. Raiko, the citizens of the city they act as if you haven't saved them. As if you didn't protect and serve the city with your life on the line. Someone seriously needs to give that man some common sense or one of these days I might lose my temper and knock it into him myself. As for the citizens I know what you'd say. You've said it to me before and you probably will say it to me again in the future. "It doesn't matter what they think of me. It matters that they are safe." You don't seem to know, and if you do know you hide it well but you've grown into one of the most compassionate and selfless person I've ever had the privilege of knowing.

Yet I still find myself wishing you were selfish. Not in the way you could be at times when I first met you. But in the way that when faced with the choice between your life and the lives of others you would choose your own without a second thought, even just once. I know it's wrong to think that- what you did... it was incredibly brave. You saved an entire culture from a second wave of extinction. Your sacrifice will be remembered in the eyes of history for centuries. I'm so proud of how far you've come. I really am Korra.

That doesn't change the fact that I find myself in a cold sweat every single night, replaying the events of those horrible couple of days on the trip back to Air Temple Island. Your screaming and thrashing in the healing pool as the healers worked on a tough bruise. Waking you up from a nightmare and comforting you while you fell back to sleep. And watching you stare hopelessly at a wall, watching you having to go through all that with little I could do to help made me wish you decided to save yourself for once.

Because if your not selfish enough to do it yourself then who saves you? Trust me, if I could save you I would. I would move mountains like your past life Kyoshi if it meant keeping you alive, healthy, and proected. I would risk my own life to keep you at bay. But that day I couldn't, I'm not all powerful nor do I have the abilities to be. I wasn't born special nor did I aquire any traits in my twenty years of living that would classify me as such. I couldn't save you and niether could the rest of Team Avatar or anyone helping us because the world depends soley on you.

That's such a shitty system. The world shouldn't depend solely on one person, it's not fair. Not for the friends and family who have to watch their loved one get hurt, struggle, or die trying to save the world and everyone on it. Definitely not for the Avatar who has to get hurt every time some physcopathic criminal crosses their path.

Do you ever think Avatar Wan regreted binding himself with Raava? I mean he started something so large, something that affected so many people including himself. He suddenly was the one person the world depended on and not only that but he bounded seemingly an infinite amount of people to the same fate.

It isn't all bad I suppose. Without you, and without the other Avatars the world would probably be much worse off than it is right now. Sometimes it's hard to think about the positives of a situation when you are always most affected by the negatives.

One day when we're old. And yes I imagine all of us, Mako, Bolin, you, and I growing spiteful and old together. I hope that the world stays at peace so we can be at peace, together. I miss you Korra, I hope your doing ok. This shouldn't have happened, Hopefully nothing like this ever happens to you ever again. If I could change the way things went that day, know I would. No matter what it would have taken I would, without a second thought.

Love, Asami