Day 1
"Don't sleep the day away, Precious."
Korra rolled over and blinked muzzily at Asami. "What time is it?"
Asami was standing before the mirror putting on her earrings. She met Korra's gaze in the reflection. "It's 7:30."
Korra groaned and pulled the pillow over her head. "7:30 does not count as 'sleeping the day away.' Why do you torment me?"
Asami pulled the pillow away. "Because it's so entertaining. Also, you asked me to wake you up before I went in to work."
"Ugh. It seemed like a good idea at the time."
Asami kissed her on the forehead. "I'm sure it did. There's coffee downstairs. Love you. See you tonight."
"Love you too," Korra said. "Don't work too hard."
Korra stumped downstairs, poured herself a cup of coffee and went outside to drink it. She gazed off toward the Spirit Portal rising up over the city. There was a huge spirit that looked like a whale with parrot wings flying upward around the portal in lazy spirals. There was a toot of a car horn from the driveway. Korra turned and waved to Asami as she drove away.
Thirty seconds later, there was a squeal of brakes and a crash from the road. In alarm, Korra summoned an air scooter and raced toward the noise. Asami was standing next to her car, looking at where it had been run into by the second car. A car, Korra noted, that appeared to have been going the wrong way down the road. She gave the other driver the stink-eye as she rushed up to her girlfriend. "Asami, are you all right?"
"Look at it," Asami said, gesturing at her car. "I've had this car as long as I could drive, and now look at it."
"Right now, I'm looking at you. You're bleeding."
Asami put her hand to her forehead, probing at the wound. "It's just a scratch."
"Not buying it, Sweetest." She took Asami by the arm and led her to the side of the road. "You sit down here. I'm going back to the house. I'll call the police and get some water to heal you with. Then once you're done reporting the accident, I'm taking you to the hospital."
"But I've got meetings…" Asami began.
"Trust me," Korra said. "You're people would rather have you arrive late and whole than on time and broken."
The best thing that could be said about the day was that nothing else quite as bad as the accident happened. The police took a long time to arrive. The other driver wasn't insured. The hospital kept Asami for hours without actually doing much. When Korra got home, she got a call from President Raiko yelling at her for not answering her phone. He didn't actually remember what he'd called her to yell about earlier, so he called back ten minutes later to yell at her some more once he remembered. Korra's attempts to repair Asami's car with metalbending met with less than resounding success." Asami was in a grumpy mood, and Korra didn't feel much better.
"Look at it this way," Korra said, kissing Asami on the forehead a safe distance away from her bandage. "Tomorrow has got to be better than this."
Day 2
"Don't sleep the day away, Precious."
Korra rolled over and blinked muzzily at Asami. "Is this a new thing with you?"
Asami was standing before the mirror putting on her earrings. She met Korra's gaze in the reflection. "Is what a new thing with me?"
"The 'Don't sleep the day away' thing. That's what you said yesterday."
Asami frowned. "No I didn't. I never try to wake you up before noon on weekends."
Korra came fully awake and sat up in alarm. Memory loss. Asami had completely forgotten the previous day. They should have looked her over more carefully at the hospital, not just bandage her up and…. Korra stared at Asami's forehead. "What happened to your bandage?"
Asami stared back at her. "What bandage?"
"From the accident!"
Asami threw up her hands. "What accident?!"
"The accident you had on your way to work yesterday"
"Did you eat cheese just before coming to bed last night? That always gives you weird dreams." Asami looked at her watch. "I'm sorry, I've really got to rush. I've got meetings this morning." She blew Korra a kiss and rushed out saying, "There's coffee downstairs. Love you. See you tonight."
Korra stumped downstairs scratching her head. Did she really dream it? There was no way Asami would have been completely healed just one day later. So it must be Monday, and it must have been all Korra's imagination, right? And the stuff that seemed familiar. Just a coincidence. Had to be.
She poured herself a cup of coffee and went outside to drink it. She gazed off toward the Spirit Portal rising up over the city. There was a huge spirit that looked like a whale with parrot wings flying downward around the portal in lazy spirals. There was a toot of a car horn from the driveway. Korra turned and waved to Asami as she drove away.
Thirty seconds later, there was a squeal of brakes and a crash from the road.
Day 3
"Don't sleep the day away, Precious."
Korra rolled over and looked at Asami, frowning. She was standing before the mirror putting on her earrings. There wasn't a bandage on her forehead. She met Korra's gaze in the reflection. "What's wrong?" She looked worried.
"I was just thinking how beautiful you look," Korra said quickly.
Asami smiled, although there was still a trace of worry. "That looked more like your something's-wrong-and-I-need-to-punch-somebody face."
Korra waved this away. "Never mind that. I was still waking up. Strange dreams last night."
"Did you eat cheese just before coming to bed?"
Korra moved up close to her girlfriend, grinning. "No cheese breath. I promise."
"That's not exactly what I - mmmph! Mmmmmm…." Korra cut her off with a kiss. Asami melted into it at first, but then broke it and started pushing Korra back. "Lovely as this is, Precious, I've got meetings this morning. I've got to get going."
Korra let her go. She'd been counting seconds, but she honestly wasn't sure if enough time had passed. She shrugged. "It seemed like a good idea at the time."
Asami smiled and caressed her cheek before stepping away. "I'm sure it did. There's coffee downstairs. Love you. See you tonight."
"Love you too," Korra said. "Don't work too hard."
Korra went downstairs and straight outside. She leaned on the balustrade of the terrace, gripping it slightly as she waited. She glanced off toward the Spirit Portal. As she watched a huge spirit that looked like a whale with parrot wings came flying out of the portal and set off over the city. Korra frowned. Something not quite right about that.
She was distracted by the roar of a motor from the street. A car was going past, too quickly by the sound of it. There was a squeal of tires, like it had lost traction. Then it was gone. Moments later, there was a toot of a car horn from the driveway. Korra turned and waved to Asami as she drove away. Then she waited. And waited. She thought she heard the sound of Asami pulling out into the road and driving away.
She smiled to herself. "Now, Korra, I think you've earned a little coffee." She went into the kitchen to pour herself a cup.
Day 4
"Don't sleep the day away, Precious."
Korra groaned. "Of course it couldn't possibly be that simple."
Day 6
It was a fairly easy matter to stop the reckless motorist before he got into another and worse accident. Using the Avatar State to tell a man to obey posted speed limits might be a bit of overkill, but it seemed effective.
Unfortunately, that didn't fix the problem of why the same day kept happening over and over. Korra couldn't shake the feeling that she had been left unaffected because there was something she personally was supposed to fix. If that was the case, she'd have to look further.
Day 14
When Asami got home from work at the end of the day, she stared at Korra in mild alarm. "You look exhausted."
"There's a good reason for that," Korra said, not rising from where she was sprawled on the floor. "That's because I am exhausted. I've been running all over Republic City preventing accidents. And of course they're all nowhere near each other, so that is a lot of running. Well, a lot of it was flying, but it still takes it out of a girl."
"Not to sound callous, but why were you doing that? I mean there are accidents in the city every day, and you normally don't run yourself ragged trying to take care of them."
"That's because normally I don't know they're going to happen in advance. Today just keeps on happening over and over, and I'm the only one who notices."
Asami stared at her. "I'm not sure how to respond to that."
Korra explained what she had gone through for the past two weeks. "It's obvious I've been on the wrong track for figuring out what's going on. But now that I know about things that will kill people, and I have the ability to prevent it, not doing it just seems wrong. I'm in a bind."
Asami rubbed her chin thoughtfully. "What you need is some way to reduce the effort. Use your foreknowledge to tackle the problem with maximum efficiency."
Korra lifted her head, her eyes wide with hope. "Do you think you could do that? Figure something like that out for me?"
Asami looked slightly panicked. "Maybe?"
Day 19
Asami glared at Korra. "How many days have you been shooting down my suggestions like this?"
Korra banged her head against the floor. "Four. And I don't just shoot them down. I try them first. You just don't remember making them."
Day 23
"Don't sleep the day away, Precious."
Korra rolled over and got out of bed. "Hold that thought, Sweetest." She walked out of the bedroom rubbing her eyes. She stumped downstairs to the telephone. As she started dialing the first of the numbers she'd memorized, she saw that Asami had followed her down and was looking at her with a puzzled frown as she put on her earrings.
Korra held up a finger, signaling her to wait as the phone was answered. "Hi!" Korra said in her perkiest voice. "Is Jasmine there?" The response was quite terse. "Oh, I'm sorry. Wrong number." She giggled before she hung up. Asami raised an eyebrow as Korra started dialing the next number.
Four more calls later, Asami said, "Who, pray tell, is Jasmine?"
"I have no idea," Korra said. "But it sounds like the name of someone who would have an annoyingly perky friend who would phone at an inappropriate hour of the morning."
"Oookay. And why are you making crank calls exactly?"
"Those five phone calls should prevent five major accidents from happening today in Republic City. Look, I need to get out to the road right now to stop a reckless driver. If you come along, I can explain as we go."
Korra explained how time had been repeating itself. "At first, I thought maybe I needed to prevent something that wasn't supposed to happen. But that didn't really work out. But once I'd identified disasters that needed preventing, well it didn't really seem right to not prevent them."
"I guess that makes sense."
"But it was taking up my entire day, so I couldn't look into the actual cause of why the same day is happening over and over. So I got you to figure out how to prevent the disasters more efficiently."
They arrived at the side of the road. Korra made Asami stand well back in the driveway. "And the best that I could come up with for preventing accidents is that you annoy the people who caused them?" Asami asked.
"Yes. Well, no. Kind of. The main goal was to disrupt their routine on the theory that just a small change in the pace of their day might make them miss being at the wrong place at the wrong time. And it works. I tested it yesterday. Well, the previous version of today. Hooray for us!" She heard the sound of an approaching car. "Just a minute. I've got to give this guy a traffic safety lesson." Asami watched bemused as Korra stopped the speeding car and lectured the dismayed motorist.
As they started back to the house, Korra continued. "Of course it took you several tries to come up with a solution. And since you couldn't do anything like leave yourself written notes, every morning not only did I have to convince you that I wasn't crazy, I had to explain all the dead-ends you had hit on previous days so you didn't just do the same thing over again. Except I always forgot something, which meant you would make the same suggestions more than once. And I'd have to tell you they didn't work. I think the crank call suggestion was born more out of frustration than anything else, but you can't argue with success."
"OK. So what happens now?"
"Now I try to figure out what's causing this crazy loop and why I'm not affected. I've got to say, I'm not even sure where to … start." She came to a halt as she caught sight of the Spirit Portal rising up over the city skyline. She frowned and stared at it.
"Korra?"
Korra raised a hand and shushed. "Right now I'm having amnesia and deja vu at the same time. I think I've forgotten this before." As she watched a huge spirit that looked like a whale with parrot wings came flying across the city and disappeared into the portal. "That's it! I've seen that same spirit every morning, but it's not doing the same thing." She grabbed Asami by the shoulders. "The spirits aren't affected by whatever's going on. That's why I remember everything. My body is part of the physical world, so it resets with everything else, but my mind is tied to Raava, so I remember things other people can't."
"OK. So how does that help us?"
Korra looked at Asami for several seconds. "I have abso-frickin-lutely no damn idea."
Day 24
After making her morning phone calls and stopping the motorist, Korra immediately took off on her kite to see if she could intercept the parrot-whale spirit. She found it swimming through the trees of the Spirit Wilds.
"Great Spirit!" she called out to it. "Uh, hi. We haven't met, but I'm the Avatar. I guess you probably were able to guess that bit. Anyway, you might have noticed that here in the human world, the same day keeps happening over and over again."
An eye the size of Naga's head regarded her. "Yes. It's quite annoying. You should probably do something about that."
Day 28
Korra paced up and down the living room. "I've asked every spirit I can think of. I've asked Iroh. I've asked all his customers. I've been to the Spirit Library to ask Won Shi Tong. I've asked Koh the Facestealer."
Asami raised her eyebrows at this last one. "Really?"
"Obviously, I was desperate. None of them know anything."
Asami looked thoughtful. "Have you been to the Tree of Time?"
Korra stared at her and then slapped herself on the forehead. "I'm an idiot."
Day 30
"Don't sleep the day away, Precious."
Korra sighed. "Sweetest, I love you. But I'm not going to lie. When tomorrow finally rolls around, I'm not going to miss you saying that."
Asami looked at her, taken aback. "What?"
Korra winced. "Sorry. That was rude, but I hope you'll forgive me once you understand. I have been reliving Monday, this day for just about exactly a month. Before you ask, I am serious, I didn't eat cheese just before bed last night, I'm reasonably sure I'm not crazy, and I don't understand everything that's happened, but it's all Varrick's fault."
Asami opened and closed her mouth. Her brow furrowed. "That last bit is frighteningly plausible."
Korra went through her accident prevention procedure and gave Asami a recap of everything that had been going on. Hopefully for the last time in both cases.
"So anyway, yesterday, I made a trip to visit the Tree of Time and it was able to show me what was going on immediately. Varrick is trying to use Spirit Vine energy to travel in time, because 'Hey, why not?' The fact that he's using Spirit Vines might explain why the Spirits aren't affected. So while it's wrong and disrespectful and he should damn well know better, it also might be the only thing that allowed me to notice what was going on to stop him. So I probably won't punch him in the face."
"Pity."
"Thirty days. It's taken me thirty days to work this all out. If I understood the visions at the Tree correctly, he won't switch it on until sometime after midnight. However, I'm going to not take any chances. I'm going over there to smash his machine right now. And then this day will finally be over."
"I'll give you a lift," Asami said.
"I thought you had meetings today."
"I'll call and say I had an emergency meeting with you and Varrick. It's not every day I get to see you save the world."
Korra gave this some thought as they walked to Asami's car. "Sooo… Think you could take the rest of the day off afterward?"
Asami shook her head. "That might be harder to justify. Why?"
Korra leaned close to Asami's ear. "Remember last night?" she purred.
Asami blushed but smiled. "Yes. Indeed I do."
Korra looked serious. "That was thirty days ago for me. I haven't been laid since."
Asami stared at her. "You mean we didn't… in all that time… not once?"
"One or both of us was always either exhausted, cranky, or injured at the end of the day. Sometimes all three."
They arrived at the car. Asami chewed her lip thoughtfully as she climbed in. "I'll see what I can arrange," she said at last.
Korra sighed as she settled into the passenger seat. "And they lived happily ever after."
Day 31
"Don't sleep the day away, Precious." Korra sat bolt upright in horror. Asami took a hurried step back. The impish grin on her face gave way to a slightly nervous smile. "Just kidding?"
Author's Note: Probending circuit, Season 5, Round 5. The Groundhog Day challenge. Write a story with a character experiencing the same day over and over.
Main character selected: Korra
Bonus prompts used: (word) cheese, (location) Republic City, (quote) "Right now I'm having amnesia and deja vu at the same time... I think I've forgotten this before" - Steven Wright
Words (excluding Author's note): 3117
Waterbender for the Red Sands Rabaroos