Chapter Text



In her dream, Korra ran.

Jade green eyes and wild grins chased her through shadow. Claws pulsing with blue light reached for her. They smelled of burning skin. Of jasmine…

Flame, stone, and wind rose up to protect her, to drive them away. The shadows were too thick. She lost her way. The creatures howled at her heels…

Korra’s back ached with a sharp pain. A claw had pierced her skin. Pulled her close. The snarls grew louder. Blue light filled her vision, closing in…

Until the pain fell away to warmth. Jasmine and green eyes, but soft hands, too. She wanted to fall asleep in it. Gentle fingers across her skin. Korra lay back and let herself get swept away…

Caresses turned to scratches. Clawing for her eyes…

Korra faded through the fog, and the sensation of hands on her face grew solid. Her body tensed, and she shoved weight away from her. Fire blazed from her arm in a wide vicious arc. A voice cried out, and Korra nearly stumbled off the bed. Pitch black surrounded her. Had those green, hungry eyes been real? She reached back, ready to send out another blaze into the dark.

“Korra, stop!” Asami wept, “Please!”

Cold and damp, her heart thudding furiously, Korra stared out into the darkness. She flicked her fingers and conjured a small flame, coating the room in a dull orange glow.

Asami flinched at it, stumbling up against a wall. “I’m sorry,” she got out through sharp breaths. “Y-you hit your head…I was…trying t-to clean you up.”

The flame receded as Korra’s eyes adjusted. She wiped at a thick cut across her brow: stinging, wet to the touch. At the foot of the bed, a puddle of water grew where she’d toppled a bowl and washcloth. She swallowed hard, the lump scratching against her dry throat. Breathing was taxing. Talking was harder.

“What happened?” she rasped out.

Asami hugged her arms, sinking against the wall in a trembling heap. “You’re safe."

“Are you crying?” Korra asked. Her vision was blurring, but she saw Asami curl herself up on the floor.

“They won’t find you here,” Asami whispered.

Korra slipped her feet over the edge of the bed, bracing her arms. Pain shot up to her shoulders. Every muscle ached like she had fought off the world. She pushed up to stand.

“You’re still woozy,” Asami warned.

The room spun, and Korra slowly lay back on the mattress, squeezing her eyes shut. Her brain felt unbalanced, thick with cotton worse than the rice wine hangovers.

Asami’s quaking voice cut the silence. “Do you remember anything?”

Korra stared up at the shifting ceiling. She saw Asami’s glares, her smiles. Her injured words. Playful touches. The guilt she’d sewn into Korra’s bones. Her stomach tightened. “You lied to me.”

Asami bit back a sob. “To protect my family.”

“I was right,” Korra muttered. Her body was heavy on the bed.

“That note you got, the informant or whoever you thought you were meeting, it was a lie.” Asami hauled herself up, leaning on the wall. “A trap set by my father.”

Korra tried to pull herself up by fistfuls of mattress. “We have to…have to warn Tenzin. Beifong…”

“No,” Asami said. She almost stepped up to stop Korra, but hesitated. “We’re waiting till morning. I don’t know how many are still out there.”

Arms burning, then giving way, Korra fell back to the bed. “Everything’s heavy,” she sighed.

“Sedative. Your shoulder blade’s gonna hurt when things start to get clearer. Try to rest for a minute.”

Sprawled out on the bed, Korra faded in and out. She remembered the fight. Asami in an Equalist uniform. The blood on the concrete. The way Asami had moved: swift, vicious. Trained like them. Korra had run from the window, and dozens of Equalists had charged her in the warehouse, their gloves hissing with electricity. Korra had tried to fight the soldiers off, but then everything had gone soft.

Opening her eyes, the ceiling began to sharpen. Korra turned her head to a heavy sigh at the window.

Asami kept her distance from the bed, peering out through a slit in the drawn curtain. Her breath hitched as she cradled her arm.

Korra remembered the blood on the concrete. The snapping of bones. “I saw you kill that Equalist,” she said.

Green eyes never left the window. “He was a threat.”

“He was a person,” Korra snapped. “But you just stepped…” She swallowed hard and held her throat, fighting back the sense memory. “How could you just-”

“I won’t let them take you.”

Korra inched up in the bed, slowly sitting. “Them? You’re one of them.”

“I thought that I was, too.” Asami reached down for a pillow, tossing it to the bed.

Korra squirmed, shoving it behind her for support.

The room was small, tight. Unfurnished except for a bed and a table. It was still dark outside, but the city was quiet. It had to be early morning.

“You don’t hate benders,” Korra insisted.

“The world would be safer without them.” Asami’s voice was small, but sure.

“How can you believe that?”

“My mother-” Asami choked on the words. She shook them away. “Too many benders think they deserve control.” She stood from the window sill and began to pace. “The Triads are dangerous. Bending is dangerous.”

“Am I?”

Laughter rang out. Spiteful. More tears fell as Asami brandished her hand at Korra. “Especially you!” The skin was scarlet, lined with swollen blisters. Dark slashes along the palm revealed charred, exposed muscle.

Korra stopped breathing, unable to look away. The burns climbed all the way to the wrist. “Did I do that to you?”

Asami pulled the burned hand to her chest. “You were still foggy,” she murmured. “You were scared.”

“I’m so sorry.” Korra reached out to her. “Let me see.”

Stumbling back, Asami cornered herself against the door.

Muscles still throbbed, the room still wavered, but Korra swung her legs down the side of the bed again. She groaned to her feet, arm still outstretched. “Asami, stop. Let me see it.”

Asami snatched a stun baton from the table. “Keep back!” she growled, thrusting the stunner at Korra with her good hand. It shook. Tears streaked her face.

There was a tense silence. Korra took a step forward. Waited. Then another. Asami kept the baton raised, threatening, but didn’t move. Korra took a final step, pressing her collarbone against the tip of the stunner. She waited. “Let me help you,” she said softly.

Asami’s eyes, hard and red with tears, met her gaze. The baton went limp and she let it drop to her side, then the floor.

Inching through the dull burn in her limbs, Korra pulled a chair out at the table. “Sit down.”

Sore and uncertain, they both slowly fell into seats across from each other. Korra reached for Asami’s arm and gingerly held it. “Can you feel it?” she asked, turning the girl’s hand around and studying the burns.

Asami breathed through clenched teeth. “Yes.”

Korra nodded. “Good. It’d be a lot worse if you couldn’t.”

The table was only a few steps from the pool of spilled water, soaking into the rug. Korra grabbed the bowl and towel, tossing them on the table and extended her arm. A curl of her hand bent a thin stream of water out of the fabric. It steadily grew to a disk shape, a little bigger than a palm. Korra beckoned the water to her, spinning it in her hands.

They watched a dull blue glow slowly brighten between Korra’s fingers as she channeled energy between Asami’s chi and the water. Healing came naturally to the girl from the Southern tribe.

“It’s going to burn at first,” Korra said, taking Asami’s injured arm in both hands. She coated the wounds in a flow of glowing water with one hand, holding steady with the other. Asami tugged back, gasping.

“Easy…” Korra slid her chair closer, bracing against Asami’s shoulder. “It’s okay,” she whispered. Their foreheads leaned in to touch as they both watched the glow between their hands. “It’s okay.”

The Avatar’s movements were confident, smooth. She barely grazed against the burnt skin, leading a trail for the healing waters to follow. Between each finger and around the wrist. Over and over. Asami held back a wince, then began to softly cry.

“Breathe,” Korra told her. After a heavy, slow inhale, Asami breathed out and her eyes drifted closed. She was tear-soaked, exhausted, shaking: something had broken inside.

“You got me out?” Korra asked.

Asami nodded. She was silent for a long moment, watching their hands resting together on Korra’s lap. “You’re not what they said you were.” Her voice cracked.

“What did Amon tell you?”

“I’ve never met Amon,” she muttered, “I’m not…I just did what my father asked. Watch you. Get close. Help them find their opportunity to get to you.”

“Is that what the warehouse was?”

“I had nothing to do with that.”

“But you were there,” Korra said.

“I followed you.” Asami looked up. “Beat them back and brought you here.”

And just as easily, the Avatar could have been in Amon's custody right now. “Thank you,” Korra said softly. Her healing pattern switched to a rotation around Asami’s palms, working on the worst of the defensive wound.

“We need to leave,” Asami said, sucking in air. “Amon wants to make you an example. If he can’t have the Avatar, he can’t claim victory on the city."

Korra shook her head. “He’ll hurt innocent people if I run.”

“But he won’t hurt you.”

Images of Amon’s threats loomed in Korra's imagination. Parading her through the streets. Publicly stripping her of her bending in front of the whole world. Proving he was as strong and mighty as the Avatar. Stronger.

Korra could hide. Let the world go on without the Avatar for a little longer. They’d been surviving without her before now, hadn’t they? Which would Amon rather have? An Avatar who flees from her guardianship, or one he could put up on a chopping block?

“What?” Asami asked. Her expression hardened.

Korra tensed in her seat. The water’s cycle had slowed to almost a standstill. “Get the Avatar out of the city, get her out of the way. That would make things good and equal, wouldn’t it?”

Green eyes narrowed at her. “Is…is that what you think of me?”

“How can I trust anything you say?” Korra demanded.

“After everything I’ve done?” Asami’s jaw trembled as she held back a snarl. “I am losing my family by doing this. I am giving up everything. For you!” She wiped her face frantically, water splashing everywhere. Korra barely kept a grip on it, spinning it into a controllable spiral, back to its resting disk shape as the girl pulled away.

Asami took a deep breath. “Amon isn’t making the world safer. He’s ruining people’s lives.” she said. “I want to stop him.”

Korra thought of Tahno, of all people. The terror that must have run through him as Amon ripped his waterbending away. How small he looked with his future destroyed. He wouldn't be the last, if Amon brought about his new world.

“Prove it,” Korra said. “Go to the police. Turn yourself in.”

“You don’t think Amon has men in the police force?” Asami glared. “They’ll kill me. They’ll kill my father.”

“If you tell Chief Beifong what you told me,” Korra said, “she’d protect you.”

Asami clenched her teeth, staring at a stretch of burned skin by her thumb.

“I can’t let you go back to them,” Korra said.

“My father keeps their work away from me. But I can get closer. Amon will want to let me closer if he knows I have access to you. I can help you. From the inside. You can take his entire operation out at once if you knew where to look.”

The glow was fading as they sat there. Korra kept her momentum going, staring blankly at the water.

“You already know I can lie,” Asami said. “Let me do this for you.”

Korra held a steady motion with one hand, suspending the water. She reached for Asami’s arm with the other, bringing her gently back to keep working the burns. The blisters had subsided, but her skin was a mean pink. Asami held her breath as cool water coated her burns.

“The other one saw your face…” But then you killed him, Korra wanted to say. “Would they know that it was you who helped me?”

“I don’t know,” Asami said quietly.

“Is it safe for you to go back home?”

Another glare. “My father wouldn’t hurt me.”

This close, with the glow between them, Korra could now see a dark swollen bruise along Asami’s brow bone and down her cheek.

“What happened to your eye?”

“I got in the scuffle when they prodded you with a sedative to slow you down.” Asami looked up, a small smile fighting it’s way to the surface. For a brief moment, there was a familiar shine in her eyes. Even the swollen one. “Even drugged up, you’ve got a mean right hook.”

The fight had been chaotic. Korra thought she had seen a few of the Equalists throw punches at each other. By accident, she’d assumed. She couldn’t have been sure in the blur of the moment.

Asami’s hand was less red now. The skin had begun to grow over muscle. It would still take some time to heal over, but they could let it rest for a few minutes. Korra let the water slip into the bowl. Dipping her fingers into it, Korra rubbed dripping water between her own fingertips and thumb. It quickly began to glow. A miniature of her treatment on Asami’s hand.

Muscles twitched beneath her touch as she lightly pressed on the girl’s cheekbone. A thin blue glow trailed in the wake of her fingers as Korra ran up the corner of her eye, to her brow, along the edges of the occipital bone. Soothing the bruise, healing burst blood vessels.

They didn’t speak. The more time passed in silence, the more fearful Korra was of what her next words would be.

Korra wanted to scream. Demolish the walls of this safe house and hunt down Amon before the sun went up. Beg Asami to admit that this was all a dream, and that she hadn’t just put up a wall between them.

So she focused on the treatment. Avoiding Asami’s eyes. Jade green like glass. Raw. Angry. Lost.

When the water had evaporated, Korra held Asami’s cheek steady to check the color of the bruising. The skin was hot, but Korra's healing training wasn’t surprised at that. The body had its own natural defenses for fighting injury; fevers were the immune system doing its job. The skin at her temple was already shifting from dark purple to green. Yellow would have been better, but they had time.

She felt Asami slip forward past her hand. Her breath warm against Korra's face. The air went still between them. Asami leaned in and kissed her.

Korra’s hand stiffened against Asami’s cheek. She parted her lips, just barely, not quite returning the kiss. Feeling the pressure of Asami’s face against hers, the velvet of her hair. Her mouth was somehow even softer than her skin. Korra inhaled softly, catching a hint of cherry blossom lipstick, and beneath that, something entirely Asami.

Before eyes could close or another breath could be shared, Asami tore away. “I’m sorry.” Hand raised to her mouth, she began to tear up again. She stumbled up out of her chair, shoving hair back from her face. “I’m sorry.”

Korra grabbed her wrist before she could run. Held it firm. She didn’t realize what she’d done until Asami bit back a shout. “I’m…I’m not done yet,” Korra said gently. The burns were still warm. Still exposed.

Asami held her gaze for a long second, ready to bolt, but she slowly let herself be pulled back into her seat. Her face beet red. Korra reached for the bowl, swirling the water till the soft, blue glow returned.

Korra knew that the burn would sting for a while longer.

Then the pain would dull. Grow warm.

The only thing left would be the comfort of holding her hand in the dark.