ruler of her heart, KORRA

𝟬𝟬𝟮 Have Patience, Avatar

── 𝒓𝒖𝒍𝒆𝒓 𝒐𝒇 𝒉𝒆𝒓 𝒉𝒆𝒂𝒓𝒕.

[ 002 ] HAVE PATIENCE, AVATAR
❝Hey, watch your mouth, Avatar!❞

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 THAT EVENING, PEMA INVITED Sanyu to dinner──again. And, as always, Sanyu politely declined. It wasn't that she hated Pema, exactly, but their relationship was... complicated. Pema was the mother of her half-siblings, sure, but to Sanyu, she was also the woman who'd "stolen" her father away from Lin.

 Lin never said that, of course. Her mother was too stoic, too above it all to make such petty accusations. But Sanyu wasn't blind──she'd seen the way her mother's jaw clenched when Pema's name came up, or the way her smile disappeared whenever she saw Tenzin and Pema together.

 Lin always told her to be kind, to treat Pema with respect, to see her as a sort of stepmother. Sanyu tried──well, sort of. But every time she looked at Pema, sweet and gentle and so infuriatingly perfect, it felt like a betrayal. Like forgiving her would somehow erase all the nights she'd spent listening to her mother cry in the next room, muffling her sobs with a pillow.

 So Sanyu avoided Pema whenever possible. Declining dinner was just one of the many little ways she kept her distance.

 As she made her way home that evening, she took a detour past the training grounds and found herself stopping in her tracks. There, standing bruised and battered in front of the wooden gates, was Korra.

 The Avatar was getting absolutely wrecked.

 Sanyu winced as Korra got slammed backward, landing hard on her back. For a moment, Korra just lay there, her hair a tangled mess and her face streaked with dirt. Then, with a growl of irritation, she pushed herself up and charged the gates again, only to get smacked down just as quickly.

 Sanyu couldn't help it──she laughed.

 The sound was soft, almost involuntary, but Korra caught it anyway. Whipping around, her face flushed with embarrassment and anger, Korra jabbed a finger at her. "Oh, you think that's funny?" she snapped. "Why don't you try it? Then we can both laugh at how terrible you are!"

 Sanyu simply shrugged, unfazed by the fire in Korra's eyes (or the literal sparks that seemed to puff from her nostrils when she was mad). Intimidation wasn't something that worked on Sanyu. It never had──not when her mother was Lin Beifong, and certainly not after spending three grueling years with General Iroh in the United Forces.