Chapter Text
Kuvira was sitting on the bed in the medical room at St. Raava's Senior School.
It was a plain room, with white walls. A cheap, flat-packed wooden desk placed opposite the always opened office door. A locked medicine cabinet stood to the side. A small sink stood next to it, and a white medical cot with a white privacy curtain drawn around it took pride of place in the middle of the room.
That was where Kuvira moodily sat to 'think about the consequences of her actions'.
She was nursing her bleeding nose. Wincing at every uncomfortable throb when she dabbed at it too hard. She really hoped it wasn't broken, picture day was fast approaching, and she knew Kya would kill her if she ruined yet another school photograph by being injured.
Her hands didn't fair any better though, her knuckles were swollen and split, and her wrists were supported with bandages from the repeated blows.
She knew she shouldn't have risen to it, that P'Li and her gang were just baiting her, but she has a short fuse at the best of times.
They just HAD to push her buttons.
They had been in science class, talking about DNA and family trees. For homework, they had to research their families back for at least five generations.
Of course P'Li was the first to zone in on Kuvira's lack of a family tree. The teen had tried to ignore them the best she could, but the slurs the other girl had called her mothers had been the final straw, she snapped, launching herself across the desks and up in the other girl's face.
"Say that again" she had hissed, the two were practically nose to nose at this point.
"Your Mummies are a couple of unnatural d ...... ".
P'Li never managed to complete her sentence. Kuvira had headbutted her to the ground, and punched every inch of the other girl she could reach.
The red mist had well and truly desended. It wasn't until her friends Iroh and Zhu Li had managed to pry her off the now crying girl beneath her, that she had realised what she'd done.
The two girls had been marched off to the Head Master's office at once, where she had been suspended on the spot.
Typical.
Now she was licking her wounds in the nurse's office, waiting to be picked up.
'I'll be fine, as long as they haven't phoned ...... '.
Kuvira's thoughts were interrupted by the distant shouts of.
"Get out of my way, I want to see my daughter right NOW", Lin Beifong barked to the poor receptionist on duty.
"I'm dead".
Kuvira muttered softly under the blood soaked ice pack held over her swollen nose.
- - - - - -
It was a silent, and slightly uncomfortable ride back to Zaofu Manor.
Apart from saying phrases like,
"Follow me" or "get in".
Lin hadn't spoken a word to her eldest child since picking her up from school, but as the wheels of her police car started to crunch under the stones of the private gravel road leading up to the family mansion, Kuvira tensed for the inevitable screaming match.
- - - - - -
"Mrs Lin, your home early", the family butler William said in surprise as he quickly stepped back to allow her to enter the family home. He then saw Kuvira and gasped. "Miss Kuvira, what happened? Are you alright?"
Kuvira smiled gratefully at the genuine concern in the middle aged butler's voice.
"I'm okay thanks William, I got into a fight at school is all, nothing a couple of pain killers and an ice pack can't solve".
Lin made a slight grumbling noise in the back of her throat,
"I wouldn't sound so casual about it if I were you young lady, you're in big trouble".
Kuvira gulped, and nodded, she waved a sad goodbye to the family butler, before trailing after her mother, with her head bowed slightly in shame.
- - - - - -
The mother and daughter combo hardly spoke a word to eachother after that.
Lin carried on with her work in her study, whilst Kuvira did her homework at the kitchen table.
It wasn't until Kya finished her shift at the hospital around noon, that they spoke at all.
"Kuvy, Honey" Kya said gently, after a hurried, whispered conversation with her wife on their apartment's front doorstep. "Can I have a look at your nose and hands"?
Kuvira silently nodded, as she put her pen down and turned to face her mother.
After collecting her medical bag, Kya started to mop up the dried blood staining her daughter's face and hands. "So" she said conversationally, "do you want to tell me what happened"?
Kuvira shrugged, "not much to say, P'Li was chatting sh..... ", the teen faltered at her mother's stern expression. Even though Korra wasn't currently at home, the rule still applied, no bad language in the family home. "She was just calling you and Baba some bad names, I didn't like it, so I made her stop", Kuvira shrugged again, then flinched violently as Kya started to assess the damage to her now clean nose. "Ow, Ow, Ow, Mum, stop, that hurts", she whined, squirming in her wooden chair.
"Some things never change", Kya chuckled, as she grasped the teenager's nose firmly with her thumbs. "I'm really sorry Baby, but this is going to hurt".
Before Kuvira could ask what she meant, the middle aged doctor expertly re-set her daughter's nose.
Kuvira's eyes watered as she yelled in pain "OW, MOTHER FUDGER"!
Kuvira barely registered the sharp smack to her arm, or the order of.
"Language young lady".
"English" Kuvira muttered mutinously as she tentatively touched her nose. She flinched, hissed, and pulled her hand away from her face.
"Don't be cheeky" Kya told her with a slight grin, as she passed her daughter a bag of crushed up ice from the freezer.
"Now, as you ice your nose, your going to tell me exactly what happened at school today".
- - - - - -
Kya nodded silently as the story came to it's end.
"Do you have anything you would like to ask me, before your Baba starts her 'accountability and responsibility' speech"?
"Yeah" Kuvira said softly, Kya had never heard her daughter sound so lost and timid. "Who am I, and where did I come from"?
- - - - - -
Lin and Kya were aware that one day, they'd have to talk to their daughter about this.
They had always been honest with Kuvira, she knew she was adopted, but they had never really elaborated on the story, they would always just give her the same answer whenever she would ask about it.
"When you're older Kuvira, we'll tell you when you're older".
Well, now she was older, now was the day they couldn't keep skirting around the conversation.
The trio sat at the long kitchen table, with three steaming mugs of tea and the family photo album sat infront of them.
"I'm so nervous" came Kya's slightly shaky voice, as she picked at her fingernails.
Kuvira placed a warm, comforting, bandaged hand on her mother's cold trembling ones, and said softly. "Take your time Mum, any information you can give me is amazing. Whatever you tell me won't change the fact that you and Baba have raised me, I don't care what anyone else says, YOU'RE my parents".
All three of them shared watery smiles and love-filled eyes, as Kya took a big calming breath, and started.
"Before we had you and your sister, I was part of the doctors without borders programme", she began. "We travelled all around the world, lending medical aid where we could. The Earth Kingdom uprising however, was the worst humanitarian crisis I had ever seen".
Here, Lin opened an accompanying scrapbook, filled with newspaper cuttings, hand written notes and photographs of the disaster.
"I don't know how much you've been told at school about it" Lin stated calmly, "but this is all the information we have on the subject".
"We've only ever been told the basics" Kuvira told her parents, pointing to a particularly gruesome picture of bodies being pulled out from underneath a collapsed building. "It started out as an earthquake right? One of the worst in living memory"? Kuvira paused here, looking and receiving conformation from her parents. So she continued. "Over half the continent was affected. Buildings collapsed, sinkholes appeared almost overnight. No power, no food, no water .... no hope ".
Kya nodded somberly.
"That's right, I was contacted by the organization to help as fast as possible. The team I was apart of were old hands at this sort of thing, we'd all been doing it for years, but even we were shocked by the total devastation and sheer lawlessness that erupted all around us.
Like you rightly said, only half the country was affected, and understandably the affected half felt hard done by. They started rioting out in the streets, breaking into unaffected homes especially, and businesses, pillaging anything they could get there hands on.
Soon, the only safe place was the hospital we were set up in". Kya paused here and took several calming sips of tea, before continuing.
"One day, about two weeks after we had arrived, one of the largest retaliation assaults I have ever seen descended on the tent city around our hospital. The unaffected citizens of the Earth Kingdom had had enough, they were taking a stand".
Kuvira stared at her mother in disbelief, as she recounted some of the horrific injuries she had to contend with, after the fighting was over.
"Several expecting mothers were rushed in to see us, the added stress and fear of the last month pushing them into early labour. One of those said mothers, was a lady who came to me in the middle of the night, she had just lost her husband, the stress of this had pushed her over the edge, she was ready to pop at any moment.
That woman, was your mother Kuvy, I delivered you in the middle of one of the worst aftershocks we had seen thus far, we suffered major power outages just as your mother was starting to push".
Kya faulted, and wiped at her eyes with some tissues she had brought in with her.
"Anyway, I was just cleaning you up when .... " the Doctor faltered again, and Lin brought her wife into a comforting one armed hug, she kissed her wife's temple as she shakily continued.
"The hospital roof caved in on us, one minute she was happily smiling at the little bundle in my arms. The next ? She was gone, buried under a mountain of rubble. I barely made it out with you before the whole ward collapsed".
You could hear a pin drop in the large, expensive kitchen, as the three occupence sat in horrified silence.
"Wh - what happened after that?" Kuvira asked in a hushed whisper, "I mean, you obviously got out the country with me, but how"?
"The red cross" Kya said gently, as she took hold of their daughter's trembling hands. "They sent supplies for residents who wanted to stay, and safe transport to foreign lands for anyone who wanted to leave.
My original orders were to leave you there, to hand you over to Earth Kingdom officials, but we had seen so many orphans, it broke my heart to think of a new born baby in the hands of that chaotic excuse for child protective services, I just couldn't in good conscience leave you there. So I brought you back with me to the city, with the thousands of other Earth Kingdom refugees. We adopted you legally as soon as we could, and the rest, you already know, we loved and raised you like you were our very own ever since".
Kuvira sat in stunned silence, before she turned to Lin and asked, "I can't imagine you being all that thrilled at the idea of Mum bringing home some dirt baby like that", Kuvira finished bitterly, using a common slur for anyone from the Earth Kingdom she had heard at school.
"Don't call yourself that" Lin had snapped at the teen harshly. "I will admit, your Uncle Baatar, Grandma Toph and I struggled with the sudden arrival of a second new born baby into the family, so soon after your cousin's birth, but we loved you regardless, and you know what else? If I had my time again I wouldn't change my decision. I love you Pumpkin, more than you could ever know".
Kuvira fell silent, she could feel herself becoming uncomfortably hot in the face as both her mothers scanned her face intently, looking for any signs of distress after the emotional tale she had just been told.
"Are you okay Kuvy"? Kya asked the teen softly after almost twenty minutes of slightly uncomfortable silence.
"Can I be excused please"? Kuvira asked, not looking at either of her parents, choosing instead to stare holes into the hardwood table infront of her.
"Of course" Lin began, "but ..... ".
Kuvira stood and hurriedly left the room before Lin could even finish her sentence.
- - - - - -
Kuvira didn't leave the safety of her bedroom for the rest of the day.
Even Korra's excited squeals outside her bedroom door didn't entice the teen to leave it's security.
Lin and Kya became increasingly concerned that after almost eight hours after their conversation, the girl still hadn't reappeared.
"I made you your favourite" Kya tried to coerce the teen through her locked bedroom door, "beef lasagne, I followed Gran Gran's recipe, just the way you like it".
The total lack of reply from behind the still closed door sent Kya glumly back to the kitchen.
"Still nothing"? Lin asked her as she brought the other three plates over to the laid kitchen table.
"No" Kya sighed, pouring herself a large glass of Róse to have with her dinner and sitting down at the table aswell. "You suppose she's still actually in there, you don't reckon she's done a bunk out of her bedroom window do you"? Kya worried her bottom lip.
"I don't know" Lin said, as she lent over and started to cut up Korra's dinner for her, "but the first thing I'm going to do when the troglodyte leaves her cave, is to remove her bedroom door. I mean, who gives a teenager the option to lock her bedroom door anyway? I blame you and those parenting books of yours".
Kya looked hurt as she scooped salad onto her plate. "Suyin did the same thing for Baatar Jr, she's had no issues so far".
"You and my sister talk too much" Lin grumbled as she too placed salad on the side of her plate.
"Nawww, is someone jealous"? Kya teased as she lent over the table and shared a loving kiss with her wife.
- - - - - -
Lin was getting ready for bed inside the walk in wardrobe, whilst Kya used the bathroom.
When a loud squeak from a door down the hall caught her attention. She listened intently, and sure enough, another squeak, from downstairs this time rang out loudly inside the quiet apartment.
Lin stole downstairs silently, carrying the first thing she had layed her hand on inside the wardrobe.
She sneaked into the illuminated kitchen, silently raising a ......... shoe horn? Seriously Lin?
Lin groaned internally as she raised her one and only 'weapon' and crept stealthily into the room.
"FREEZE" Lin called threateningly into the silence.
Kuvira dropped a tupperware box full of leftover lasagne in her surprise, letting out an undignified squeak for good measure.
"Kuvira" Lin sighed out exasperatedly, as she lowered her shoe horn.
"Baba, why? Just why?!" Kuvira huffed out as she bent down to pick up the dropped box.
"You're asking me why"? Lin asked her daughter indignantly, "I should be asking you that".
"I came down for a glass of water, I guess I got a bit hungry too. Why are you brandishing a shoe horn? What are you going to do, help me get my slippers on"? Kuvira raised her eyebrow at her mother.
"I, um, er", Lin took a breath before continuing properly. "I grabbed the first thing that came to hand, okay"?
Kuvira smiled in amusement as she watched her mother floundering.
"Wipe that smile off your face, it's late, come on, back to bed you go". Lin said, as she started to wander back to her own bedroom.
"Wait" Kuvira said desperately. Lin stopped and turned round to look at her daughter. "Can, can I sleep with you and Mum tonight? The story Mum told me earlier about the uprising really freaked me out. I've tried sleeping since lunchtime, I just keep dreaming of being crushed under rubble".
Lin looked sympathetically at her daughter and nodded, offering her hand out, as force of habit more than anything else. What she wasn't expecting was for the teen to take the proffered hand, and allowed herself to be lead back upstairs by her Baba.
- - - - - -
"Sit on the bed and have your snack Kuvy, I'm going to finish getting ready for bed" Lin told her as she slipped inside the luxurious en-suite bathroom.
Kuvira barely made herself comfortable on her parent's spacious bed, when Kya hurried out of the bathroom and over to her daughter.
"Oh Kuvira, Oh my Baby, I'm so sorry my story's given you nightmares" Kya told her, pulling the girl into a bone crushing hug.
"Mum ...... can't ..... breath" she wheezed out, tapping her mother on the back to emphasis the point.
"Oh" Kya said sheepishly, pulling back reluctantly, "sorry".
"It's alright Mum" Kuvira smiled, as she finally started on her leftovers, as Kya lovingly stroked her long black hair.
- - - - - -
"Alright, are we all ready for bed"? Lin asked, hovering her hand on the 'off switch' of her bedside lamp.
"Yeah" came two other voices, as they were all plunged into semi-darkness.
Kuvira slept soundly in-between her parents, like she used to when she was little.
At her wife's insistence, Lin had set up a small night light in the corner of their room, to help Kuvira relax. Bouncy was held tightly in the teen's muscular arms, as she was lulled to sleep by Lin.
Just before she fell off to sleep, Kuvira mumbled, "Thank you for saving me Mummy".
"We're family Gumdrop, your Baba and I would do anything to keep you girls safe, you know that", Kya whispered into the gloom as Kuvira snuggled down into her welcoming embrace.
Normally you don't get to choose your family, but right now, in the stillness of the semi-darkened room, Kya felt like she had struck gold with her tiny family. Forever grateful that she refused to hand over that small bundle of joy, who turned into the strong, intelligent, independent young woman in her arms.
She kissed her daughter's forehead before closing her eyes and falling asleep, dreaming happy thoughts of her family, all night long.