Korra is the Avatar, you just gotta deal (korra) wrote in valarlogs, @ 2019-07-30 11:23:00 |
|
|||
Entry tags: | !complete, !trigger warning, asami sato, avatar korra |
Korra, are you alright?
Who: Korra, Asami
What: Korra dreams about Amon taking her bending, gains airbending
When: Last night
Where: Asami's mansion
Rating/Warnings: R, Warnings for Injury, Blood, and noncon dream events (not the R word though)
Status: Complete
Asami couldn’t sleep. It wasn’t like she was hot; the AC was efficient (and environmentally friendly). But she felt restless. Sleep hadn’t come easily with Korra away but now with her back, it still wasn’t coming easily. At least she was back and in three weeks instead of three years. Sometimes, she felt a little clingy, but she always kept that to herself out of fear of chasing away yet-another-lover.
She glanced at the woman sleeping next to her, reaching over to brush some hair away from her cheek, before gently sitting up and retrieving a pair of glasses from her nightstand.
They were a new design, an attempt to create reading glasses that worked in the dark, so as not to disturb one’s partner. She glanced around, then picked up a book.
That night, it was unlikely that anything Asami would have done could possibly have disturbed Korra. She was deep into the dreams, living out a whirlwind of investigation and newly uncovered information. Amon was a bloodbender, a member of the water tribe, and every bender on Air Temple Island was about to lose their bending forever.
Korra hadn't been able to do anything about it, despite the power she had in her hands. What good was being the Avatar if she couldn't save her friends? But she'd pushed that to the back of her mind as her and Mako did their best to put a stop to Amon's demonstration.
Everything she'd ever wanted to be, everything she was was at stake, but she'd done what she could. Still, it wasn't enough. Maybe she shouldn't have gone into the battle so afraid, maybe she just wasn't trained well enough to win; It didn't matter, either way she was caught.
In reality, tears started streaming down Korra's face. They shimmered just slightly in the dim light of the bedroom, and Korra began to squirm in her sleep.
"Mmm?" Asami looked over at the woman in bed with her, and quickly put the book aside. There were any number of events that she worried about Korra dreaming, and tried to remember where Korra had last told her she'd left off.
Still, she was unsure if waking her was the safest option and could only place a hand on her shoulder.
Korra was devastated and defenseless, left only with the non-bending fighting moves she'd learned as a last resort; And yet, she soon discovered that she wasn't as defenseless as she thought.
She could finally airbend. And as her dream self knocked Amon out into the bay, one of her fists in real life raised and shot out a swift current of air. It was soon followed by her feet, and her other hand, and Asami could very well have found herself inside a wind storm.
And just as she'd once warned Asami, she was causing property damage. At least the ruckus brought about by various things in the room being turned to splinters was enough to wake Korra up, and Asami didn't have to worry about rousing her. "Ohmygod."
One of the gusts of air flung Asami from the bed, sending her crashing into her dresser. Wood splintered and a mirror shattered, falling on top of her. Only instinct (and dream experience from Korra’s nightmares after the Red Lotus) saved her from serious injury. As she flew, she curled herself into a ball to protect her face, throat and torso.
Pulling herself from the wreckage of her dresser, Asami climbed to her feet and stumbled back to the bed. “Korra, are you all right?”
"Am I alright, you just crashed into your dresser!" Korra shouted, though she resisted the urge to actually point at the dresser. There was a very good chance that if she even moved her arms, more wind would start stirring up. "I think you're bleeding."
And it was definitely easier to deal with what she'd just done in the real world than deal with anything else. Including the very real threat that she'd just lost all of the rest of her bending here in this reality, too. She was only just starting to get used to it, too.
“It’s nothing,” Asami assured her. “I’ve been banged up more testing equipment for Future Industries.”
Not entirely a lie, though she could feel blood trickling down the back of her neck and there were probably a few mirror splinters in her back.
“What happened?”
Korra didn't look convinced, but one thing she'd learned in their short time together was that Asami was even more stubborn than she was. That left her with facing the inevitable, though, and she let out a long sigh as she very carefully moved her hands to look down at them.
"I guess... Well, I learned how to airbend. But only because that was really the only element left after Amon blocked the rest of them." She glanced back over at Asami and winced a bit at the destruction she'd caused - both to her girlfriend, and the bedroom. "I am so so sorry about all of this."
Asami glanced at the wreckage of the room, glad it had been airbending and not fire or earth bending. But she remembered that, what had happened with Amon. It had been something she couldn’t have fought and yet something she felt guilt about because of her father. If she’d actually noticed something…
But that was in the past for her, and this was Korra’s very real present. She sat on the bed, wincing as a shard in her back was jarred. “I know that it’s not something to be joyous about, considering what you lost in the process.”
What she might have lost, still.
"I don't really know how many more dreams of this I'm gonna get if I've already lost the ability to be the Avatar..." Korra trailed off, and let out a sigh. It was easy enough to get depressed over something like this, and those feelings reminded her of another, darker time in her life. She didn't want to go back there. "I'll deal with it. It'll be okay. Right?"
Korra leaned back a bit against her pillows, trying to get an angle of Asami that showed how bad the damage really was. Did they need to go to the hospital? If she couldn't heal her, they'd have to do something. "I think some of these might need stitches, are you sure we should just be sitting here?"
Asami held Korra’s gaze, a little nervous to suggest any testing of the rest of Korra’s bending. There were a lot of things she was nervous about; the battle with Vatu, the Red Lotus, Kuvira…
It amazed her that Korra could go through all of that and still come out the strong, kind woman that she was. That even if she might have lost her spirit a little she’d found it again. Just one of the many things she loved about her.
She kind of wished she knew how to prepare Korra for all of that. “Yeah. It’ll be okay.”
Finally, she turned so Korra could see her back better. “Is it really that bad?”
"It's... well..." Korra winced again as she took a good long look at the situation, and shook her head, "Do you by any chance have some suture kits here around your mansion?"
Because some of these shards were going to leave cuts deep enough to require stitches if she couldn't waterbend anymore. She didn't even want to think about that, but with injuries like this staring her in the face, Korra would have to try. She slid off the bed and held her hand out to Asami. "We'd better go somewhere that’s easier to wash up, too. Bathroom?"
“I always keep first aid kits around, you never know when an experiment or project will go bad…” Asami took Korra’s hand, wincing as she got up. “But we’re going to talk about this while you work. I’m here for you Korra, I always was…”
"We don't have to talk about this, what's there to talk about?" Korra asked, while leading Asami off to the bathroom. She was concerned enough that she had half a thought to propel them into the bathroom a little faster with a gust of wind, but it was a bad idea. She'd probably just splinter Asami up more in the process.
"I know you're here for me, it's just... I don't know. Amon blocked my bending. We were all scared of that happening and then it did. The airbenders were more important."
Asami let herself be led along, a little more worried than she had been about the mirror. But that didn’t mean she was going to let Korra off the hook. “Amon violated you, Korra. Yes, the airbenders were important, but so are you. It’s okay to admit that. But… I know this is still fresh for you. I’ve had way more time to come to terms with everything that happened with the Equalists and beyond.”
She frowned at herself in the mirror. “I’m sorry if I’m being pushy.”
"You're not being pushy," Korra replied, shaking her head. They'd managed to get to the bathroom without dripping blood all over the floor, and she considered that a win. Now all she had to do was find the first aid kit... or maybe turn on the faucet and just see how bad the damage really was.
She suddenly felt like she'd actually been holding her breath ever since she woke up. "I don't... like feeling helpless. In the dreams, OR here in reality, and these stupid things just happen. Not having any control over them just fucking sucks. I'm supposed to be confident and competent and know what I'm doing, and this whole mess is just an awful start to being the world's protector."
Korra wanted to ask Asami if this was the actual end. If she got her bending back, if somehow everything ended up okay. There were a lot of things that she knew she had to dream on her own, though. Having Asami warn her ahead of time wouldn't really make much of a difference, would it?
“You can cut my tank top off if you need to,” Asami said quietly, leaning on the sink. It wasn’t like she couldn’t afford it and it was already ruined besides.
“You might be the functional equivalent to a god, but you’re also human, and you wouldn’t be the first Avatar to mess up sometimes. But it’s kind of a new world, with new technology and problems no Avatar has ever faced before, right?”
She glanced back at Korra, “And despite that, you’re still the strongest person I’ve ever met.”
The compliment made Korra blush a bit, and she ducked her head down to stare at the sink. The strongest person Asami had ever met felt more like a complete human disaster than anything else, but Korra went ahead and turned on the faucet.
She plugged up the sink and stared at the liquid as it began to fill up the basin. The surface rippled around, and she closed her eyes as she placed her hand just slightly above it. The feeling was there, that little nudge in the back of her mind that felt indescribably like water and nothing else, though it felt like it was weaker than before.
Still, the surface began to glow, and Korra cracked an eye open to glance at Asami. "Is it working?"
“If you’re trying to make it glow, it’s working!” Asami couldn’t keep the edge of excitement - and relief - out of her voice. Relief mostly for Korra, and excitement that water was responding to her. Weakly. But responding to her.
"It definitely can't heal you if it's not glowing," Korra admitted, though she also sounded extremely relieved. Both of her eyes open, she nodded at the water and made some familiar hand gestures, directing it to the places that were bleeding the worst and didn't have any glass she'd have to remove. "And hopefully it's strong enough to fix the worst of this."
It wasn't full power, but at least it was something. "I guess... maybe whatever he did, it didn't come all the way through. But I'll take it. And maybe this means I'll stop accidentally putting holes in your floor or bending your pipes out of shape?"
Waterbending healing had a soothing element to it, and Asami felt that relief just a little bit. She attributed that to Korra’s current weakness as well as lack of practice. They didn’t really have much cause to practice healing and more than basic healing, lets face it, had never been Korra’s wheelhouse.
“Well, I did start replacing all the piping with platinum…ow!”
"Sorry! It's probably catching on some glass. This is going to take a lot of work..." The platinum comment, Korra didn't understand, but she let it slide for the moment. She assumed it had something to do with metal bending, though at the moment she wasn't even sure she could bend metal directly. She'd never tried in the dreams.
Mostly her destruction here in real life tended to be a mismatch of bending disciplines used all at once, and never in the correct way.
"You're just gonna have to hold still while I pick shards out and then heal them over. At least that's better than stitches?"
Asami tried not to squirm, because squirming would only make it worse. She forced herself to sit still, as hard as that was. And here she was, usually a lot better with pain.
Maybe it was that the healing was itching and that was a lot harder to deal with than pain. Pain would almost, maybe, be preferable.
“Better than stitches,” Asami agreed, biting her lip. By the time it was over, she was exhausted, but she couldn’t help but joke. “You dig scars, right?”
Korra was exhausted, too, and looked especially frazzled. Even her hair was sticking out at odd angles. But she let out a laugh as she finally let the water drain out of the sink, and nodded her head. "Of course I dig scars. I'm a disaster bi, we always dig scars."