Korrlok Week, Day 4: Frozen
His dreams were filled with fire, water, and pain. Sometimes he managed to claw his way to wakefulness, struggling upward through the suffocating waves to steal a breath of air and a glimpse of light. Sometimes she was there, and he was able to think just long enough to decide that this must just be another layer of the dream before he slid back beneath the water. Slowly, the waking moments grew longer and longer, and the pain expanded to fill his awareness until it became impossible to put it out of his mind. The first time he was completely aware of himself the agony was so overwhelming he couldn't even bring himself to move. When he tried to open his mouth there was a surge of pain on the right side of his face. He managed not to cry out, but closed his eyes and tried to breathe deeply as he drifted back beneath the water.
The next time he woke, she was there. He didn't speak and neither did she, though she clearly saw that he was conscious. He didn't try to move, but his eyes followed her as she slowly moved around the room, taking care of little tasks. When she brought a bowl of water to the bedside and turned up the sheet over his right leg the breath caught in his throat. The skin - could he really call it skin anymore? - was stretched and unnervingly shiny, and it was far, far too red. The boat. The glove. He had survived somehow. The tightness on his face made sense now. At least he'd survived with all his limbs intact. As she bent the water over his leg the pain eased a little and he drifted back to sleep, watching her until his eyes closed.
She was sometimes there and sometimes wasn't when he was awake. They exchanged brief words occasionally. He couldn't read her expression, even when her hands hovered just above his cheek and her eyes were focused intently on his face. Did she treat him because she wanted to or because she felt like she had to? Why had she saved him? He still couldn't decide whether giving him life was mercy or punishment. As the days crept past, the healings began to make a difference in the pain, but what he could see of the right side of his body was as scarred and ruined as it had always been. The only problem was that although she treated him over and over, she'd never healed his arm while he was awake, and it hurt more than the rest of the burns did. Finally one day he managed to mumble a plea to heal his arm, or at least take the pain away from his hand.
Although her face had been largely blank the whole time she'd been treating him, it twisted into something unrecognizable and she turned away for several seconds. When she turned back, it looked like she was trying to hold back tears. He couldn't understand. He could feel the pain in his hand and fingers. Anything she could do to heal them would be better than what he was living with now. When she took the top of the sheet and folded it down, it took him a long moment to understand. His shoulder was bare and covered with the same red scars he'd seen on the rest of his body, but his arm just... ended. In the space where there should have been an elbow, a forearm, a hand, there was nothing. He could feel it, he would have sworn that he was moving his fingers, but there was no other way to interpret what he saw. His arm was gone.
He looked up at Korra, begging her without words to tell him that his eyes lied, that he was wrong about what he'd seen. She turned away, silently bending the water up to heal the stump of his arm. He closed his eyes and gasped for air as she bent her head to her work. It was too much. He cried quietly, tears streaming from his closed eyes. He could feel them running down his left cheek, but from his right side there was nothing. As he began to sink into merciful oblivion, he felt surprisingly gentle fingers brush the tears from his face and tenderly stroke his hair.