A/N: The song "Sleeping Sickness" by City and Color was in my mind when I was writing this chapter
The light was flickering a little overhead. Asami shot a scowl up towards it. It should not be doing that, especially not when she was trying to read her book. She'd designed this whole building, and Asami Sato did not make mistakes. She'd gone over the electrical plans for the hospital herself and everything was state-of-the-art, running on hydroelectric power so there is no real reason that the bulb above her should be winking on and off in the incredibly irritatingly inconsistent pattern that it was.
Closing her book with a sigh, she filed a mental note to have a conversation with the building manager later.
Asami leaned her head back against her chair and closed her eyes. Shutting off her brain for a minute, she simply sat and listened to the sounds of the room. Tonraq's rhythmic breathing resounded against the bare drywall. She'd finally been able to convince him to take a nap in the small cot taking up more than half of the tiny suite.
The only other noise was the slow but steady dripping of the morphine bag hanging above Korra's bed. Since her fight with Zaheer, the constant influx of pain medication had been the only thing able to keep the once-powerful avatar comfortable. Any attempt by the doctors to reduce her supply in the past two weeks had left Korra mewling in pain at best, and outright screaming in agony at worst.
Turning to look at the girl, Asami had to repress a sigh. Korra just looked so pitiful laying there. She was covered in perfectly made sheets, Senna checked nearly every half an hour to make sure that her daughter was tucked-in tight. Hands that had once ripped down mountains, parted the seas and even brought the wind to heel now rested limply on itchy blankets, covered with small cuts and abrasions. Every part of her was scarred from her fight with Zaheer.
Still, it was almost possible for Asami to believe that Korra was simply sleeping. Almost. It was the look on Korra's face that gave it away. Her eyes weren't resting peacefully, but darted back and forth in panicked motions behind closed lids, and her mouth was pursed in a tight line. Korra was fighting for her life and even in her drugged coma, that expression gave it away.
The doctors hadn't been particularly helpful. The metal poison the Red Lotus had used on her was rare, and they were unfamiliar with the effects it could have on the human body. When you threw in the unusual nature of The Avatar's spiritual energy, even the advanced healers Asami had paid to come from the Northern Water Tribe were at a loss as for what to do for the girl.
She'd hardly left Korra's side since she'd been hospitalized. Along with Senna and Tonraq, she kept a watchful eye on The Avatar around the clock. She had gently cleaned korra's sweaty brow in the night, stood by anxiously chewing her lip as doctor after doctor came by for their meaningless checkups. Through tears of anguish and frustration, she'd even helped Senna peel the bloody clothes off the Water Tribe girl when she was first admitted. Seeing Korra's body bruised, broken and so utterly lifeless like that was not something she wanted to remember, but her brain would never let her forget.
The two had grown close over the past year in the Earth Kingdom, and Asami was not about to abandon her friend now.
Friend? Come on Sato let's be honest here.
Asami cleared the thought with a swift shake of her head. Yes they were friends, but she'd come to feel something more for the girl. What had started with butterflies in her stomach after Korra had complimented her sand glider in the desert, grew to a small (and embarrassing) heat in her cheeks whenever they sat a little too close together or their hands touched, and developed into a light airy feeling in her chest at the mere sound of The Avatar's voice.
Eventually, she had resigned herself to the fact that she'd fallen in love with the brash Water Tribe girl. Unless she was completely misreading the signs, Korra felt something for her too. Not that she had a great track record with these things. And it was for that exact reason that Asami had never told Korra how she felt. Stupid, stupid stupid!
Well, she was just going to have to wait now. She certainly couldn't blurt out her love for Korra when she was in a state like this. Once she was healthy again, back to the Korra that she knew maybe they could talk. They could go to the beach, she always liked the beach, and they could get dinner and maybe see a mover…
A slight twitch on the bed jolted her out of her fantasies. Asami had been like a taut string for days, waiting for just the slightest sign that Korra would wake up, and now she had it. The fingers on her left hand had begun to move, just a little on the bed sheets making a quiet scratching noise that would be impossible to hear unless you had been listening as closely as the heiress had.
Heart in her throat, she stumbled the two steps to the bedside and crouched down. "Korra?" she whispered as quietly as she could muster.
What was at first just a fluttering of fingers had moved up her arm and turned into a light shaking. Peering over The Avatar's prone form quickly confirmed that the mysterious shaking was not isolated to one side, but both arms were now quaking fitfully. Her face did not change but maintained a pained expression as she began to violently buck off the bed.
"Korra!" Asami screamed as an icy panic shot up her spine. Hearing her shout, Tonraq jumped from his cot and was at Korra's other side in an instant.
"What happened?" He growled without looking up at Asami.
"I-I don't know she was just lying there and I was reading then I walked over. I saw her fingers move and I thought maybe that-"
"Get a nurse. Now." The chief commanded in a tone that did not offer any argument, eyes never leaving his daughter's agonized face.
In a flash Asami was gone, out the thin door and sprinting down the linoleum hallway. She slipped once before leaning against the wall for support and pushed forwards. "Help! Please help!" she yelled as loud as she could, praying to any spirit that would listen that someone heard her.
It was several agonizing seconds before a young man dressed in green scrubs popped his head around a wall with a confused and vaguely irritated expression which drained away instantly when he saw what Asami assumed was the terrified one she was wearing. "What's wrong?"
"It's my friend. She just started shaking and she won't stop, Her whole body is-"He cut her off by turning away from her and shouting something about a crash cart before sprinting back the way Asami came.
Following on unsteady feet, she had to all but dive out of the way as two more healers in similarly colored scrubs wheeling what she assumed to be the aforementioned crash cart came barreling down the hallway and into Korra'r room.
Tentatively Asami followed and immediately wished she hadn't. The first healer held a still-shaking Korra on her side and a ghost-white Tonraq hovered behind him. Spotting the two he stated "She's seizing. It looks like there was still some poison in her system and it's just made its way to her heart which is causing it to beat arhythmical and cutting off blood to the brain. We have to stop the seizure." Almost as an afterthought he added "And get that girl out of here!"
One of the healers nodded and began unhooking wires from the cart and sticking them to Korra's skin with gel adhesives while the other calmly approached Asami and softly pushed her backwards by the shoulders. "I'm sorry miss but we need space to work. You're going to have to wait outside." Feeling like her head was full of cotton Asami slowly nodded and backed her way out of the door and into the hallway until she hit the opposite wall. Not knowing what else she could do, she slowly slid until she was sitting with her knees pulled up to her chest.
As the door to the tiny room gently shut in front of her there was nothing she could do now except for wait and count her heartbeats. Realizing Korra's heart was betraying her just a few yards away. Asami felt disgusted with the easy regularity of her own pulse, and consciously stopped listening to the familiar thrum within her chest.
The minutes ticked by and the noise behind the door grew more and more frantic, and she could make less and less sense of what they were saying. Now however, it seemed as though there was nothing but chaos, panicked noises and quick footsteps flitted behind the thin door.
Then there was silence. Asami could even hear the quiet electric hum of the light above her, and she didn't even dare to breathe.
Finally after what seemed like a lifetime, a quiet voice floated to her from underneath the slim crack in the door. "Alright, It's over. Let's call it. Time of death…"
Asami buried her head in her hands and felt a sharp snapping in her chest that she hadn't in years. Not since a little girl wearing a red bow hid underneath a bed from screams and smoke.
Asami shot upright in her chair and stared wildly around the room. After a panic-ridden moment she realized where she was. Her office, she was safe and sound in her office, not in the hospital. That's six months in the past Sato she told herself it's over and done, she's gone and there isn't a thing in this world you can do to bring her back. Get used to it.
She was trying. She really was trying to get used to it. And as she ground the heel of her hands into her eyes she remembered why she was currently sitting in her pitch black office, napping on top of an unfinished sketch of a new Sato-mobile engine.
She'd started cracking again that afternoon. She'd worked so hard to put herself together again and one throwaway comment from a board member, a Mr. Gi-Lan about reallocating some of the land in Avatar Korra Park for new office space had sent her into a frenzy.
At first, she'd seen red and threatened to fire him on the spot. Then she'd come to her senses and, through gritted teeth, apologized and told him she'd been a bit tired and not thinking clearly. Neither of which had been true, but that weasel was important Future Industries, the man was a wizard with finances and was quite possibly the only one in The United Republic that could actually make all of her building plans feasible. She simply could not afford to be outside his good-graces.
He accepted her apology graciously of course. Gi-Lan was too smart to stay on her bad side either.
Asami had still been fuming however. Avatar Korra Park was the one thing, the one thing she'd been proud of in the long months since she'd returned from the Earth Kingdom. It had been meticulously designed in such a way that humans could comfortably enjoy its natural beauty without disrupting the spirits who now called it home. She'd jumped through hoops to get it approved by the zoning commission, even promising Raiko that she'd pay for it out of her own pocket and that snake had wanted to tear up a part of it so that a few more office drones would have a place to sit and stare mindlessly at their cubicles for the rest of their lives.
After her incredibly insincere apology she had locked herself in her office, instructing her (very distraught) secretary that she wouldn't be taking any calls the rest of the day, and sulked. As it always did, her anger slowly burned away, leaving nothing but the suffocating sadness and guilt that seemed to follow her everywhere these days.
It had been on a day just like this, shortly after the funeral that Asami discovered her favorite part of moving into her father's old office. The man had been a great lover of Fire Nation whiskey, and kept a fully stocked mini-bar next to his own desk. Though she'd never been anything more than a social drinker, that day Asami had taken to it with gusto, and drained more than half the bottle. She'd felt better. Not forever, she knew it couldn't last, but for a few hours at least the heady liquor had left her with nothing. No thoughts, no feelings, no guilt, and no empty aching in her chest that made it so hard to breathe.
Since that day she'd taken up her old man's mantle and made sure that the mini bar was always freshly stocked with the best booze money could buy.
Today, she'd been knocking back a fifth of some sort of gin made in Omashu, when the idea for how she could add an extra cylinder to the Sato-mobile engine without compromising fuel consumption had hit her. Her mood improved dramatically, not only was she no longer thinking about Gi-Lan, but she had a good glow on and was getting some real work done to boot. That is of course until she fell asleep, and had that dream.
She dreamed of that day in the hospital almost once a week since it had happened, and every time it felt just as real. The worry, the panic and the inevitable sense of crushing loss left her exhausted and hollow.
Tonight, it also left her feeling thirsty, very thirsty.
Without moving her head she let her hand crawl across the dark desk until her fingers bumped into smooth glass. Picking it up and shaking it lightly, she grimaced at how little seemed to be left. Wasn't this a new bottle? Ignoring the need for a glass, she tipped the neck up to her lips and drained it in one long swallow. It made her nose scrunch up and her eyes water, but she could feel it doing its job as the burning trickle made its way down her throat.
She slammed the bottle down on the table a little more forcefully than she meant to, cause a sharp snap and large shards to splinter off the bottle. Blinking down at the pieces of glass reflecting the moonlight in crazy shapes, she sighed before leaning down to pick them up.
With fingers fumbling as much from the darkness in the room as from the alcohol tearing its way through her system, she managed to pick up almost all the pieces. One of the last shards cut deeply into her thumb and she breathed out a "Fuck!" while sucking the blood out of the very painful gash.
In the back of her mind she heard her father's voice telling her it was neither polite nor ladylike to swear. Her mental voice responded to his by telling him it also wasn't very polite to sell weapons to a terrorist organization so he should mind his own god damn business, which caused her to chuckle darkly to herself.
Placing the majority of the pieces of broken bottle on the desk, she sat with the largest one in her left hand, and simply stared at the cut on her thumb which was dripping a thick crimson trail down her palm before staining her very expensive shirt cuff. For half a minute she glared at it and in a detached sort of way debated widening the cut with the impromptu blade still clutched lightly in the opposite hand. It would be so easy to just rip it open. It would be painful, yes but Asami had been hurt worse before.
After the initial sting she would just fade away wouldn't she? That's how the stories always described it, just blissfully fading away into nothing. She could do it, right now. The office was deserted at this time of night and no one would be able to stop her. It would be so easy to just let it all go. No board meetings, no Gi-Lan, no deadlines, no waking up to cold sheets and the quiet thrum of an empty apartment…
But Asami but the piece of glass back down and quickly wiped off the blood as best she could on her pants, most likely staining those too. She knew her head wasn't right, but she wasn't quite that bad yet.
In all honesty, she should probably be getting home. She knew from painful experience that a night spent sleeping in her office chair would leave her with a crick in her neck, and in an even fouler mood than she was usually in these days. So, rising with only a slight wobble, she grabbed her jacket off the rack next to her desk and made her way to the exit.
As the elevator doors dinged open at the basement garage, she stuck her hand in her jacket pocket to find her Sato-mobile keys only to hiss in pain as the cold metal came into contact with the open wound on her thumb. She'd forgotten about that already. She would have to see a healer about it first-thing tomorrow, or else her employees would begin asking questions as to why their CEO had a large gash on her hand, and those were questions she'd really rather not answer.
Climbing into the driver seat she let out a contented sigh, there was really nowhere in the world that Asami felt more at ease then behind the wheel. When she was driving everything was so simple, all she had to do was focus on the road and let everything else take a back seat. Tonight she had to focus a little more than usual pulling out of the narrow employee entrance to the garage, but that was fine. This was hardly the first time she'd driven home after having a couple of drinks.
Once she was safely out and on to the main roads she could relax. It must be later than she thought because the roads were all but deserted. That was just the way she liked them, and she was able to open up the engine a little more than may have been technically "legal" but she was unquestionably the best driver in Republic City, and had built most of these roads to boot. In her head she had the right to drive them any way she wanted.
Once she got to a comfortable cruising speed, she allowed her mind to wander just the tiniest bit. As it often did, without meaning to her mind floated back to memories of Korra. She found herself thinking about the one and only driving lesson she'd ever given The Avatar. She'd honestly thought at the time she might have had to replace the clutch on her favorite Sato-mobile after Korra had started and stopped so many times so quickly. It had been such a nice afternoon, the two of them just enjoying the unseasonably warm fall day driving through the city with the top down. Asami just had to turn to her left and drink the long toned brown arms of the powerful Avatar, just had to call her name and have her shining cerulean eyes drawn towards her face as if she was the only person in the world. It had been so easy for Asami to make her laugh in those days, even now if she just closed her eyes she could still hear it quietly twinkling in the back of her head. If she just closed her eyes for a second, she could call it back.
The loud squawk of a horn brought her sharply out of her memories, and even in her gin-soaked state, her trained reflexes didn't let her down as she snapped the wheel to the right to avoid the oncoming taxi. They weren't fast enough to avoid the radio-pole on the side of the road however.
A/N: This is my first story so any notes, critiques, edits, feelings, hatred, rage, you can give me would be greatly appreciated! More should come soon, and thanks for reading!