Who: Korra and Asami Where: Asami's place When: last night What: Korra is worrying about being deported, Asami has a solution Status: complete Rating: PG-13 warnings: Depression, talk of depression, PTSD
Asami unlocked the door, stepping inside. Astrid didn’t seem to be around and the nurse was quietly reading a book. After speaking with her for a few minutes, she headed to her room to change. She actually wanted to look her best for this (and honestly she’d fantasized about it under completely different circumstances, but it was what it was), but she didn’t want to freak Korra out. Make-up stayed on, even if she’d pulled on stylish jeans and a matching top. It was nice to get into casual wear, at least.
Then she stuffed something in her pocket and walked across the hall to Korra’s room. She knocked lightly on the open door. “Korra?”
The sounds of a video game could be heard through the door, mostly background music. As if Korra had the game she was playing on pause, or was still on a loading screen. For a few seconds there was nothing else to break the silence, then Korra's voice shouted, "Come in if you want!"
It was a little raspy, like Korra had just been exercising and was panting for breath. A loud thunk followed it, and she added, "I'm fine!"
She pinched her nose for a moment, took a breath, then opened the door and peered in. As expected, Korra was flat on the ground. She stepped in, fighting the urge to rush to her aide. Instead, she walked calmly over, and sat on the edge of Korra’s bed. It literally took all her willpower not to help immediately, but Korra didn’t need to be babied. “Do you want help, sweetie?”
Korra was glistening with sweat. It was clear she'd been at this for a little while and for the moment it felt really nice to just flop there like a vegetable. It was completely humiliating, but there were a lot of humiliating things Korra'd had to suffer through lately. She was, at this point, tired of being indignant about it.
The floor was nice and cool against her cheek, too, and she shut her eyes for a second. Mainly so she'd stop staring at Asami's feet. Cute, sexy, toenail-painted feet. Everything about Asami was always well manicured. "I don't need help."
“Okay then.” She moved her foot and nudged Korra’s nose with a toe, then flopped back on the bed and stared at the ceiling. “How far did you get today?” Keep Korra focused on her successes and not her failures. That was the key here. And at least laying like this she didn’t have to guard her expression. She still did anyway.
"I..." Korra trailed off, then sighed. It wasn't very far at all. She knew how long it had taken her to do this in the dreams, but with modern medicine she'd thought that it would take less time than that, "Got out of the chair and between the bars?"
The bars she was referring to were a set of two parallel bars set up on a training mat. It was the usual set of gear that physical therapists employed to help someone walk again. Normally that kind of equipment was left at the therapist's office or at a rehabilitation center, but at the time Korra didn't want to hear it. She wanted to train when SHE wanted to train. She wanted the bars there to remind her to use them. Most of the time she just stared at them and tried not to scream internally.
It wasn’t like Asami couldn’t afford to install some. So she had. As well as other equipment that Korra could use to improve the strength of her legs. The fact that she actually had a well equipped gym already had made it easier to explain to Korra as ‘I’ve already got the room and its as much for you as for me already.’
She wished Katara were here. And dreaming.
“That’s still pretty good, Korra.” Asami forced herself to sit up. “No one is expecting you to heal overnight. You’re making an effort and it shows.”
"UUGH!" Korra lifted up one arm and thwacked it back against the floor. The earth rumbled a bit in response, which was the closest she'd gotten to bending in a while. That was an improvement, too, but she wasn't in the mood to pat herself on the back for it, "Don't start that encouraging 'it won't happen overnight' bullshit! I know that's what you think I need to hear, but..."
Korra winced, and rolled herself over onto her back, "I wish there was some someone around besides me that was willing to actually kick my ass into gear. I don't want to hear the nice, polite things everyone says to people in my position. I just want to... I don't know. I just want to be ME again."
Asami pursed her lips. “Korra, there are some things that can’t be rushed. I know you’re impatient, but you have made a lot of progress, physically. You’re miles ahead of where you were last month. It doesn’t feel like it, but you are. But have you thought that...maybe some of it is in your head?”
The thought that Korra could spend a year or more without walking was distressing to Asami, and if it was distressing to Asami it had to be freaking Korra out. But she couldn’t just magic her to work better. But what if someone else could? “Like, I think you ought to consider a therapist. And I think you ought to consider asking if there are any dreamers that specialize in healing, too. I know you want to do it by yourself, but maybe even just a little boost?”
"You think it's in my head?" That was even worse. If it was her body, well, she could beat that back into submission. It was hard work, but she wasn't afraid of hard work. If it was all in her head, how the hell did she fix that?
"What's a therapist going to do for me? Do you really think that talking about my feelings is going to make my legs WORK again? Just like that? It doesn't MATTER how I feel about it! We all already KNOW what happened, how is talking about it to some random stranger going to--" Korra cut herself off when she realised that she was crying. She was so angry that it almost felt like she was crying actual fire out of her eyes and if she was more connected to her bending she'd probably have been breathing fire at the ceiling.
That was terrifying. She'd felt that level of anger before, and it was the most terrifying thing. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry."
"I'm not saying it's all in your head," Asami started to say. But then Korra started yelling and Asami clamped her mouth shut. She wished she hadn't said anything, but she remembered Korra's letter.
Asami slid off of the bed, sitting on her knees next to Korra. She lightly put her hand on her girlfriend's shoulder. "You don't have to apologize. I'm just trying to say that there might be some PTSD and you'll need to face that too. Maybe the physical part will come easier then. But I'm the one who should apologize. I'm treating you with kid gloves and you deserve better than that."
"It's not like I went to war, Asami..." Korra trailed off. Tears were starting to form at the corners of her eyes. Soldiers got PTSD, she wasn't about to deny that the condition existed. But she was no soldier, she was just the Avatar. It hadn't been a war, it had only been one fight. It had even been a fight that, in the end, she'd won.
Kind of. It hadn't really felt like a victory at the time. It still didn't. "But I can't use what I'm going through as an excuse to bite your head off, either. You don't deserve that, I shouldn't take it out on you. You’ve been here for me through all of this, I know it’s been hard for you, too. Sometimes you’re the only reason I get up in the morning."
"You were a victim. Abuse victims get PTSD. Accident victims. Even getting mugged could lead to something like that. And it kind of was a war. A war against the Red Lotus. They targeted you. Threatened an entire nation. They singled you out. They violated you! I wouldn't be able to just shrug it off either."
Asami shifted positions, gently pulling Korra up and into her lap, where she cradled her. She wanted to ask 'if you needed me why did you leave? Why did you leave and only ever write once?!' But that wasn't fair to Korra, and it was something Asami had to work through alone, because she understood objectively why. But emotionally, it made her a mess.
"You're angry. You're depressed. And you should be angry. You can't help being depressed." She paused, then added. "It did hurt a little. But I'm not mad at you for it. Do you understand?"
Asami tended to internalize everything, and she didn't want to dump her baggage on Korra right now. But she felt that Korra deserved honesty. "If you need to lash out, lash out. I can take it. I really do understand."
"I don't want to, and I don't mean to, it just happens." The moment that Asami pulled Korra into her lap, Korra curled in against her. The older woman was usually considered the 'little' spoon, but Korra really did appreciate how easy it was for one or the other of them to step into that supportive role. Right now, she needed that. She wasn't about to suggest otherwise.
One of these days Asami would need her this much and she just hoped she handled it as gracefully. She kind of doubted that she would, since she was her, but she'd do her damndest to try. "I don't feel like I'm in control of myself, or my life. My moods just swing, my body doesn't obey me, I lost my chance with school... my entire life's a mess and I don't want to THINK about how he-- Violated me or what level of victim I am. I'm not even as scared of him as I am of myself."
She didn’t know how to get through to Korra, or how to help her beyond just being supportive. Being a rock for her to hold on to. “Don’t worry about school, we can try to appeal.” It was an accident, an injury, but it would take awhile and she feared the government would just send Korra away because she wasn’t healthy anymore. “And I have a plan.”
Asami forced Korra to look at her. “You’ll get better. I believe in you, even if you don’t believe in yourself. You’ll get better, and you’ll bend again, and you’ll stomp me into the ground in a sparring match.” She’d loved sparring with Korra, and not just because it sometimes led to other things. Asami was trying to not think about those other things, it had been a long time.
"What if it takes three years this time, too? That's a really long time, Asami..." And there were unspoken questions there. Could Asami really stand to wait around that long? This wasn't the dream world. Without Katara's help, would she even recover? There were those things that they couldn't do right now, was it really fair to Asami to make her do without them?
“I’m not saying it would be easy, but you’d be here.” Asami pushed some hair behind her ear, looking suddenly her age. “I love you, Korra. I sometimes don’t know if I’m hovering too much or not around enough, but we’ll figure it out. And even if you had to go back, there’s skype, and airplanes, and….”
Asami shook her head. “But you’re not going back, okay? Not unless that’s what you want. They’re not going to deport you.”
"I don't know, either. It's not like being handicapped comes with a manual and I-- I don't think I even want to go home, how could I begin to explain this to my parents? They'd just freak out. And my Uncle's still there, and that would just be awkward, and..." Korra trailed off and squinted her eyes a bit at Asami. It seemed like the conversation had shifted a bit. Asami suddenly looked confident and serious, like she often did when she was formulating a plan that she was certain would work.
"...what do you mean?"
"This is not at all how I fantasized about this," Asami murmured, her confidence wavering. She felt flustered and entirely out of her league. A little known fact about Asami Sato was that she could be as much of a flustered nerd as the next person. She just hid it better than most. "There is a way to prevent you from being deported."
She fished around in her pocket until her hand closed around the soft, but still strong fabric. She pulled it out, and held up a betrothal necklace. The band was blue, and she'd attached a platinum disc that she'd machined and engraved herself. She'd cut notches to make the disc resemble a gear, and the engravings were the symbols of the four nations, with the water tribe symbol the most prominent in the center.
Her voice was quiet but she forced herself to look at Korra's face. "I know its a northern tribe thing and not southern, but I wanted..." A few more years of dating, maybe? Though if Asami was honest with herself she’d have said yes if Korra had asked her any time in the last five months. "I wanted to make sure you understood that this isn't just because I don't want you deported. I love you, Korra. And I want you to marry me."
Tears welled up in Korra's eyes, and for a moment she wasn't sure she could even remember how to speak. Her hand reached out toward the necklace, fingers gently caressing over the symbols on the medallion. Custom work, and such a well thought out design. Even a regular water tribe symbol would have meant a lot, but to go the extra mile and create something special like this?
There couldn't be any doubt about how Asami felt. Korra had doubts, but they were all the little stupid ones that everyone had. She thought. Mainly, the doubts surrounded her current predicament. But in the dreams, she was recovering, and she'd recover here, too.
How she felt about Asami? That was never in doubt. "Asami... I love you. Of COURSE I want to marry you!"
At first, Asami wasn’t sure she’d heard correctly. She was too focused on the emotions running across Korra’s face. Korra always wore her heart on her sleeve (it was why it was so painful to watch her suffer, among other reasons), and the emotion on her face quickly made Asami ruin her eyeshadow. She grinned through her tears. “Really??” Of course really. Asami carefully put the necklace around Korra’s neck. It was effectively a choker, but she thought Korra could rock a choker. And she wanted to get rings too but that could wait.
She wrapped her arms around Korra and hugged her tightly. She’d had all these ideas about how she’d wanted to get married, but she knew most of those weren’t going to happen. Her father certainly wasn’t going to walk her down the aisle (a fact which she’d wrestled with while making the betrothal necklace). But it would be with Korra. Small. Intimate.
Dresses, however, were non-negotiable.
Did it have to be small? Korra wanted to shout about their engagement on the rooftops. They'd never gotten a chance to skype her parents about the situation, but now Korra wanted to 'come out'. To them, and everyone else. She squeezed Asami, "I have to text Astrid! She's going to freak out. In a good way! And then we have to tell my parents! We've got to get on top of this with the press, we should just... tell the whole world!"
They could do big. It just had to be fast. At least there was plenty of evidence of them dating. Asami moved her hands to Korra’s face, kissing her nose, and her lips. “Tell Astrid! That’s on you, okay? You get that right. And we can tell your parents together, if you want.”
Korra’s enthusiasm was infectious, and Asami was grinning so widely it hurt. “Lets give it a few days before we figure out how to clue the press in.”
"You have someone you hired for that, don't you?" Korra asked, while digging around the pockets of her pants for her phone. Even though her own life had been a mess lately, she'd tried her best to stay on top of Asami's situation, too. As well as she could. Hiring a PR person was something she was sure she'd heard Asami mention before.
"We can keep it to ourselves for a few days before we announce it to everyone, of course. That will give you a chance to figure out how you want to handle it. But I just want to make sure my parents know first. Don't need them finding out about this from a press conference. I'm sure that's not how you'd want it, either."
“Yes. I’ll have to talk to Josephine about this. But not right away.” From the look on her face, it was clear Asami wanted Korra to herself as long as she could get away with it. “She’ll know how to proceed.” The idea of a press conference made her feel a little ill. But she was glad Korra paid attention.
Korra eyed Asami, "You know being married to me, we're not just going to be able to hide this anymore. Not that we were hiding it all the time, or anything, but... You're going to have to come out."
“I’ll work that out with my PR rep,” Asami assured her. She already had an idea of what words she wanted to use. “But I’ll leave it at ‘I’m bisexual’ for the most part. I don’t need to do a press release on that.” She rubbed her arm. Dad didn’t deserve a face to face talk about it, and she’d already talked to her mom’s grave. Everyone else that mattered knew.
"I don't care about what the press says or what word you want to label yourself as, Asami. It doesn't really matter, what matters is - Are YOU ready for that? Because sometimes you seem like you aren't, and that's... kind of a big deal." Korra asked, though her tone was less angry and more concerned.
“Are you?” Asami felt bad turning it around on Korra, and quickly amended. “I grew up here. I’ve been exposed to people of varying sexualities most of my life. Even if my father tried to hide it from me sometimes. I accepted I was attracted to girls a long time ago.”
She rested her head on Korra’s cheek. “There’s something coming up that I could speak at. Its mostly for women in STEM fields but I can squeeze something in about my sexuality easily enough. It’s as important to allow gay people into these fields as it is women. After all, the inventor of the modern computer was gay.”
"I am. I'd be out everywhere all the TIME if it wasn't for my parents. It's so important to me that they hear the words out of my own mouth. I mean sure, for a while... It was kind of hard to take. But it's hard to ignore and you're amazing, and I've always been confident in my skin. I'm not going to stop now just because I'm into girls, too." Korra said, while nodding her head a bit.
Everything else about her life sucked right now, but having Asami in it, getting to be married to her someday, that was just amazing. "So as long as you're okay, too. That's all I was worried about. Tell people when you're ready, and we can tell my parents together. Maybe just for tonight we can keep it to ourselves."
After a pause she added, "Except for Astrid. Since I've already texted her."
“Astrid is safe,” Asami laughed. She wrapped her arms back around Korra, nudging their foreheads together. “For tonight just us. Whatever you want.” There was a suggestion in her voice, but she was leaving anything and everything up to Korra.