Chapter Three – Loss

"...What?" Asami asked, believing that she must have misheard Korra. Asami blinked and kept her hands on the Avatar's shoulders.

"My nightmare, it was about you or, more specifically, losing you." Korra muttered softly, while staring down at the wooden floorboards. Her voice noticeably cracked on the word "you".

Asami, once again, took Korra's cheeks in her hands and gently lifted her head up so that her tear-filled gaze met Asami's. Asami softly wiped away the tears threatening to fall from Korra's eyes as she said, "Korra, tell me what your dream was about, please."

Korra grasped onto Asami's wrists and shakily said "Alright, I'll try and recall what I can." Asami offered a small, sympathetic smile in response.

And so, Korra recounted to Asami all that she could remember of her nightmare earlier that morning. She told her friend about how she was forced to watch, unable to do anything, as Zaheer and his Red Lotus brothers enchained Asami in the very same cave that the Avatar herself had been in not three weeks prior. She recalled that Asami had been forcefully stripped in a fashion similar to Korra, and how she had looked at Korra, visually begging the young Avatar to save her – but Korra could not. She could do nothing but stare in absolute horror and fear as her best friend was slowly, sadistically injected with the Red Louts' mercury.

"The screams you made... Raava... the screams as they put that poison into you." Korra told her friend as her heart beat frantically at the recollection. Despite Asami's best efforts, tears were freely falling over Korra's cheeks, making her look more miserable than she already was.

The Avatar's voice was like shattered glass as she continued to retell her nightmare. "I kept... I kept trying to get up to help you, but I was stuck in this damn chair. I didn't think it could get any more horrifying, but it did." Korra took in a shaky breath and stared into Asami's eyes, her eyes were bloodshot and watery – the once bright azure was now reduced to a dull, murky blue.

"It was just a dream. I'm here and I'm okay, you don't have to tell me anymore if you don't want to." Asami said gently as she fought back some tears of her own at her best friend's broken state.

"No, I want to finish this." Korra said resolutely.

With those words, the Avatar finished her tale. The "more horrifying" part was, indeed, quite disturbing. As Korra sat in her wheelchair, forced to listen as Asami screamed and whimpered in pain at her torture, she heard a familiar deep voice whisper in her left ear. "You've failed Korra, you are useless. What kind of Avatar cannot even save her best friend?" Korra stated in abject terror as Amon moved around her chair to stand in front of her and continued talking. "If you weren't so weak, maybe your friend wouldn't be chained up right now, begging to be saved by you. If you can't even save your friend, then how could anyone expect you to save the world?" Korra looked down at her lap in shame and attempted to block out Amon's words, but he was not going to let her.

He took her chin in his right hand, in a similar manner as the bloodbender had done on Aang Memorial Island just over a year ago. The only difference was that, instead of staring into the lifeless eyes hidden behind that terrifying mask, Korra was looking into the eyes of Asami Sato – clothed in her torture garb.

"It's okay to just admit that the world doesn't need you anymore. Please, just give up and let the next Avatar take over. They'll undoubtedly be a better Avatar than you have ever been." The most unsettling aspect about what "Asami" said was that she sounded completely sincere. Korra moved in her wheelchair in a desperate effort to escape Asami's grasp, she moved as much as she could to her left and right, but it was no use. Asami only laughed as Korra struggled to escape the dream, and just when Korra thought that her mind was going to shatter completely, her friend pushed her backwards and the back of her head cracked onto the cave's floor.

"...And that's when I came to in your arms." Korra finished, barely able to hold her voice together. The tears were now freely falling down her cheeks, as Asami continued to wipe them away.

Asami sorrowfully saw just how much the nightmare had broken Korra, both emotionally and mentally. Whatever contentment that Asami had witnessed in Korra's visage during the end of their talk at the gazebo the other day had been utterly shattered by her dream earlier that night. Asami thought, It's almost as if she... no she couldn't... could she?

"Korra," Asami began slowly, "you don't believe what I said during the dream... do you?" In response, Korra nodded weakly.

Asami could barely believe what she saw and, in that moment, resolved to dispel any more of Korra's doubt in abilities as the Avatar or just how amazing of a person she truly was.

Asami slowly leaned forward and gently pressed a comforting kiss to her friend's forehead, she then moved back to look at her. The Avatar flinched at the contact, as if the kiss burned her skin. "Asami, don't please... I don't deserve your... affection." Korra laughed derisively. "By Raava I sound pathetic."

Asami only shook her head at her friend's words and said, "No, you sound like a person who has been beaten and broken down by a situation that she had no control over. You don't have to worry about how good the next Avatar is going to be, just worry about how you're going to recover from this."

Korra blinked away the last of her tears and asked her friend shakily, "Why do you care so much if I decide to... give up? It's not your life." In response to this statement, Asami only smiled sadly.

The engineer said with a tremor in her voice, "No you're right, it's not my life but, you are still my best friend and... I couldn't handle losing you. ...I have no idea what I would've done if Zaheer and his poison had managed to kill you and I don't even want to imagine the possibilities."

In response to this confession, Korra found it in herself to move forward and weakly wrap her arms around Asami's neck. Asami enveloped Korra in a deep embrace and murmured into the Avatar's left ear, "Korra, if you ever feel like giving up and... ending it, please think of how it would impact those who love you. It would ruin us all, your mom and dad especially. ...Also, I would never-"

Just before Asami could finish her sentence, a familiar voice rumbled from the doorway. "Korra!" It was Tonraq who, after exclaiming his daughter's name, had rushed into the room to kneel down next to her. Asami promptly, but softly, let Korra go as her father chose to check and assess his daughter for any injuries.

"Dad, I'm fine." Korra said, with a slight hint of annoyance in her tone. Asami stood up and turned to face the doorway, letting Tonraq and Korra have as much privacy as she could offer. The CEO noticed that Senna, Tenzin, and Pema were standing in the doorway and, at that moment, she decided to go and get some breakfast.

As Asami left the bedroom, the other three residents of the island came into the room to offer what help they could.

Korra wanted to tell Asami just how much her words and touch had meant to her – how much they had, once again, helped to pull her back from the darkness that had threatened to envelop her – but before she could even form the words, her friend was already out the door and walking down the hallway towards the temple's kitchen.