Desperate
By slowrabbits
When he opens the door to her apartment, he finds her kneeling in front of the sofa.
There are dust bunnies caught in her hair, a smudge of dirt on her jaw and wrinkles on her shirt. Mako thinks that she looks rumpled and that it is the first time he's seen her so.
Like a banshee, she flits around the room: jumping from one space to another, looking under furniture and moving various things. It takes a while for Mako to catch on that she is looking for something, frantically so.
He asks her what's up.
Her head bobs up (she had been looking under the coffee table this time) and in her eyes—fantastic pools of green-, the firebender notices a film of tears glossing them over. Immediately, he is alarmed. Asami'd only ever cried twice in his presence and she is always quick to condemn those traitorous tears.
He asks her what's wrong.
"I can't find it," she cries. There is exasperation and sadness and panic in her voice, making Mako cock a brow. He didn't know what was so important that put her on the verge of tears.
He asks her to clarify.
Rising shakily, she darts to the coat rack. "My necklace." It sounds like she is swallowing back a sob.
Then Mako remembers.
The necklace. Her mother's necklace. Her mother's necklace from her father. A thin rope of gold that held up a tear drop of emerald that exactly matched her eyes. Hiroshi's bride's gift and her mother's most treasured possession. Asami never takes it off. Never ever. Not when she bathed, or fixed her engines, or cleaned out the bathroom, or went to either parties or work, or even that one time she and Mako spent their passions on her canopy bed at the Sato mansion. It was a part of her, she said. A testament of her mother and father.
He tells her to calm down; he'll help her find it.
They spend the remainder of the day combing through her apartment for the necklace. They check under vases, between stacks of books, inside the bin that kept her work plans, beneath water coolers and even in the tight space between her mattress and headboard. By the end of the day, she looks even crazier than she did earlier that afternoon and she is so very desperate and finicky that her thin scream of alarm pierces his ear drum when he lays a gentle hand on her shoulder.
He advices her to go to bed for now. They could continue searching tomorrow.
This only seems to make her (finally) cry in earnest, all of her anxiety and despair pouring out of her through the tears that leaked out of her firmly shut eyes and the solid sobs that made her body tremble.
He tries to comfort. But telling her that her parents' memory, and not the necklace was what mattered only seemed to make her cry some more. For a brief while, he noted to himself that he really should watch what he said to girls. He never could get it right what to tell them.
She falls asleep on the couch. There are still tear tracks on her cheeks and puffiness to her eyes. Even in sleep, she looks dejected. He wishes there was something more he could do for her.
He spends the rest of the night re-checking every crevice of her living space.
The sun had barely risen when Asami feels a hand shaking her shoulder. Still-swollen eyes blink open to find Mako holding out a cupped palm in front of her. He looked dangerously worn out. His warm (he was always warm) hand reaches out to take her hand and from his palm slithers down to hers the gold chain and the emerald that exactly matched her eyes.
He tells her he found it in the soap dish by the shower before his legs give out from under him and he collapses onto the couch she previously occupied.
The last thing he felt before sleep claimed him was her affectionate kiss of gratitude on his brow.