AN: The Legend of Korra and the characters therein are the property and ingenious creations of Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko. Publishing rights belong to Nicklodeon. I hold no ownership rights to this title whatsoever, and I never will, sadly, or this pairing would be canon. I am simply writing this story as a leisurely past time, and because I am a humble fan of this title simply telling a story.
Okay, now that the legal bullsh!t is out of the way, let's get to what you guys came here for then. This is just a one-shot drabble I came up with out of the blue one day, spawning primarily from a song and my desire to get inside the head of one of the more complex characters of the LoK cast: Eska. Sure, she comes off as an emotionless, vacant, possessive girl at one point, but then we have her recent outburst that has all the makings of a psychotic break, and for some reason, that moment intrigued me. There has to be some reason for that sudden shift in characterization, even though we could see her getting more and more possessive of Bolin up until the point where she just snapped. A lot of this, at least in my opinion, comes from a lot of deep-seeded emotion and trauma from something in her past that she (and Desna) has suppressed to fulfill whatever twisted design Unalaq has planned for them. So, intrigued and inspired, this story was born.
Warning, this is by far one of the most depressing, angsty, and dark things I've ever written, so be prepared for feels of some kind when reading this one-shot. The song that inspired this drabble is "Text Me Back" by Your Favorite Martian, which I felt described Eska's possessive attitude towards Bolin surprisingly well, regardless of the fact that the singer is male and situated in the modern era. Well, I've rambled long enough now, so without further ado, on with the drabble!
"I had a dream the I killed you.
I'm not certain what it means.
I didn't say that I would do it!
I said it was a dream..."
- Your Favorite Martian, "Text Me Back."
The cold was nothing new to her, that much was true.
All of her life, she was surrounded by the barren wastes of the North. The snow and ice had been her cradle, the melted ice like mother's milk, the howling frigid winds that tore through the city like a tempest were the first true lullaby's she had known as a child. They drowned out her mother's voice so adamantly, that were she old enough to imagine such a thing, she might believe the spirits themselves wished to denounce the woman's song in lieu of their own, to claim her ears as their audience.
Even when she was old enough to accomplish such a thing, the cold was ever a part of her. If anything, her growth had only made it stronger. Her eyes held a hardness to them that rivaled the thickest of ice-floes, chilling and devoid of life to any who held their gaze long enough. She knew they would never say it to her face, but there was some unspoken pity about them when they looked at her.
"As though she has never been hugged, or told she was loved like a child should be," she knew they must say.
But what could she do about it? She had no other context to her life to compare her upbringing to, no other point of view than those sixteen long, agonizingly quiet years under her father's tutelage. She was never "raised," so much as she was trained, molded to fit her chief's designs, like her brother beside her, until the two were nearly indistinguishable. Desna too, knew of the all-encompassing embrace of cold, how it was always with them when the things they lacked which other children possessed were forbidden and deemed a distraction. Perhaps that was why they were inseparable. No one else could understand their constant companion as intimately as they.
But this cold... This was something different.
This was utter fear.
Eska sat up panting heavily in her bed, sweat pouring from every orifice along her skin, raising goosebumps like little waves as she stared wide-eyed in horror past her sheets to nothing seen by human eyes. Heart hammering away in her chest like a drum, her hands locked up in a grip on her bedclothes to tight that her knuckles turned white as the very sheets clutched between her fingers. Maybe it was the nippy Arctic air, but there was no mistaking the quivering that shook every inch of her body like a personal earthquake. Every gasp that escaped her lips only made her dry-throat all the more agitated.
"Wha- What was... Did I... How could I... Why would I," was all she managed to squeak out between shudders of terror at what she had seen, the question on her lips continually unanswered.
She knew what it was, there was no question of that. The Princess of the Northern Water Tribe was no stranger to the nature of dreams, much less the madness of nightmares. They had come to her frequently as a child, snapping her awake at night as this one had, only now she knew better than to cry out and scream. She had learned long ago that there would be no comfort for her fevered imagination, no soothing reassurance that everything was alright, no loving hand rubbing her back as she sobbed into a sympathetic shoulder. There was no such kindness awaiting her in the world beyond the North, and she was exposed to it at an early age.
But this... This was too much for her to bear.
This wasn't some imagined boogeyman come to torment her from realms regaled to children to scare them into obedience, no phantom of her own creativity unabated by the infinite possibility of the dreamworld. This was something much more powerful than that, something that came deep from the recesses of her own mind. A manifestation of her heart's desires, of her hidden passions, those thoughts most suppressed. She should have known they would escape. Anything that strong only grows with time, like the chill in her soul, and with newfound strength, it gets loose, and is free to terrorize you unbound.
It had come from her.
Spirits preserve her, it had come from her!
The winds carried something to her ears, something that gave her cause for shiver in discomfort.
All around her, the snow was stained to the very earth beneath with crimson, seeping into the once pure white land to create an oasis of spilled life. A testament to the dark act wrought upon this hallowed ground, given gruesome form around her in abhorrent ways. She was surrounded by it on all sides, at the very epicenter of it.
A garden of death.
A glade of suffering.
The boy in the red scarf hung limply in the air to her left, swaying back and forth in the gale like some grotesque wind-chime. His blood ran down the spire of ice that pierced his chest, streaming down the expanding surface to the hilt where it met the snow. The tip protruded from his back a good three feet, like the painted nail of an elegant lady for a fancy dinner party. His scarf came loose in the wind as she watched, buffeted about and then carried off unceremoniously to nowhere in particular.
The girl with the pretty green eyes lay on the ground to her right, apparently missing the aforementioned orbs, and recently by the look of her. In fact, she was missing much that would have framed those enchanting emeralds as well. It lay hither and thither about the ground in little, tiny shards, each like a sickeningly whimsical puzzle piece just waiting to be put back together. All those fabulous ideas running about that pretty head of hers would do little good with it gone all to pieces like this.
The third flower hadn't been hard to recognize. She had seen it so many times it made her sick to even think of it without imagine cutting it out like the bothersome weed it was. It hung just behind the formerly green-eyed girl, close to the boy with the scarf, pierced through all its petals and leaves and stem with all manner of icicles and spikes. So pretty,she must've thought, almost like an evergreen tree in winter. For all her unforgivable faults, her cousin truly made a lovely addition to her garden.
Lastly, her eyes trailed up to rest upon those of her beloved. Unlike the others, he was quite whole, all of his beautiful parts intact. Only now, he was far better than he was before. Now, she knew for sure he would stay with her. He would never run away now, or ever again. He couldn't. There was no way he could. No physical way. And now, not even death could separate him from her, with it's greedy designs to take away all she held precious in this cruel world. He would not grow frail, he would not fall ill, he would not face harm, he would not philander with another who would steal him from her. He would simply be.
Her beloved Bolin. Her precious little turtle-duck.
Forever hers, forever in a heart of ice.
That sound would not stop. It only grew louder, and louder, and louder with each passing second. Barely a whisper at first, but then it grew. Spirits, how it grew. Choppy, awkward, laughable even, but all that faded into a raucous, maddening chortle of what could only be described as pure insanity given voice, splitting and piercing with every new octave as it echoed through the garden around her.
She tried to move her hands to block out the laughter, only to find them unresponsive. There was nothing to do but listen in fright at the sinister proclamation of psychosis as her world began to spin like some demented merry-go-round, each corpse passing before her as though on display for the world to see.
"Shut up!" she screamed at her unseen tormentor, tears rolling down her face as she pleaded over and over for this madness to end. Something in her cries must have spoken to the cackling offender, for though they did not cease their disgustingly joyous guffawing, the world righted itself and came to a halt in front of Bolin's icy prison.
Leaving her staring into the eyes of her jailer. Unkempt hair long and wild like that of a crazed animal, face contorted into a laughing mask of eldritch insanity, bloodshot eyes little more than brown pinpricks accentuated by running purple make-up. As though someone had made her up to look like some sad, demented clown...
Her.
This was her.
What had she done? Spirits, what had she done?!
Hot, salty streams of unbridled emotion trickled down her panicked face, pattering her sheets with little drops as Eska tried to wrap her head around what she had just seen. She knew what it was, the ugly truth that was staring her in the face, the monster inside her own head she'd seen for the first time, but she struggled to admit it. Who would want to admit such a thing was a part of them?! Why would anyone want to accept that something that awful came from their mind, their heart, their desires?!
Another wave of angst flooded her chest like an avalanche, doubling her over with renewed sobbing as she hugged her knees to where she could bury her chin in them to muffle her crying. Her skin was so clammy, and she knew by morning she would have to wash her sheets again. Rocking back and forth, Eska tried to get her thoughts to stop racing long enough to think logically once more. She was ruled by it, so it was the natural state her mind gravitated towards when confronted by something like this.
But... Over the past few weeks, that detached mindset had been harder and harder to hold onto. New thoughts were overriding her better judgment, filling her mind with new ones, with dreams and desires she should've buried long ago, things she knew were a detriment to everything she had been taught.
Some filled her with a feeling she thought might be what commoners called "happiness" or "love."
The others, however, stung the worst. Those she knew from experience as regret, heartbreak, sadness, and hate. So much hate she could barely stand it.
And it was all his fault.
She wanted to go back to the way things were. Back to the cold that had been her only companion outside Desna, back to the safety of her privileged, sheltered, pampered life where everyone did what she told them, everyone served her without question, everyone laughed at her humorous quips with true enjoyment...
Where no one made her cry like... Like this...
Hesitantly, she peered over her tear-stained knees at the nightstand by her bed, another sharp stake of pain stabbing her heart and sending her back to sobbing quietly in the darkness. Her father had gotten her the device not so long ago, stating its usefulness despite the fact that his stance on the so-called "modern technology" of the times was a corrupting influence on the minds and spirits of humanity. Always logic, always reasoning, something she had grown accustom to over time.
Her heart and mind continued to torment her with the sight of the telephone, even though her eyes were shut and boiling over with tears. Maybe he would find the card she'd slipped into his coat that day at the fitting for his ceremonial robes? Maybe he would realize his foolishness and come back to her, like a prince from a fairy tale awakened from the spell of an evil queen, whom she regarded as Korra for her attachment to him. Maybe this was a bad dream, and the one before it an illusion, and she would awaken to find herself cradled gently in his strong arms, like she had always longed for since girlhood?
The logical part of her mind spoke up again, trying to tell her that these fantasies were just that, and that she would never see him again as he was back then. That she was to blame for his flight from her love, not her cousin. This was quickly silenced by the torrent of emotion-fueled delusions, however, her mind simply denying the ugly truth that spoke to her, stared back at her through the dream-ice, laughed at her.
'I'm not crazy,' she thought to herself in a mantra as she lay on her side, pulling the blankets over her as she remained in the fetal position. Sleep would not come for her this night, of that she was certain. 'I'm not crazy. I'm not crazy. I wasn't crazy... Until I met you.'
AN: Again, probably one of the darkest things I've ever written. Hopefully, by the time this season ends, Eska and her brother will get out of their father's control, and get the help they need to undo the years of brainwashing and abuse he's most-likely subjected them to. Anyhow, I hope you guys enjoyed this one, even if it was a bit angstier than my usual work. Please remember to leave a review if you feel so inclined (constructive criticism is welcome, flames are doused, and trolls are crushed by their own bridges), and I'll see you guys next time. Take care out there! EXCELSIOR!