Disclaimer: I do hereby disclaim all rights and responsibilities for the characters in this collection. Kudos to Bryke, indeed.
Pairing: Tahno/Korra, Mako/Korra
Genre: Romance/Drama
Word Count: 1,506
Rating: PG-13/T
Prompt: #37. Wake up, the day is dying. (This was also my original idea for Tahnorra Week — Important Step in the Relationship.)
Summary: Three lies Korra tells, and one she doesn't. Pocket language dictionaries, sunflower fields, and a summer filled with all the things that she cannot fix. — mako/korra, tahno/korra.
Warnings: Infidelity.
Author's Notes: 11/12/12.I just want to say this one more time:It is unfortunate that I lost inspiration for this so quickly after returning to the States... for a while, I never actually intended to post this at all. If Personal Record were, essentially, a written manifestation of my autumn feels, then Broken would be my tribute to summer.
Musical Inspiration: Young Blood (Renholdër Remix) by The Naked and Famous. "Summertime Sadness" by Lana del Rey. This is the perfect summer love song, and this remix fits this story particularly well.
broken
(ii)
It's summer; that in and of itself is enough to alight the life within Korra's veins, but there is also a copy the Lonely Planet magazine laying open out on the coffee table, its dog-eared pages rippling gently with the warm breeze from beyond the sliding glass door, and Mako is already sending disapproving looks before she has even told him where she wants to go.
"I'm not in the hospital anymore, Mako," she says, low and quiet. Under different circumstances, in another life, there might have been an edge to her voice, but time and tragedy and some shadow of maturity have dulled the blade to soft, woven ridges. "You don't have to take care of me."
The truth is that she wants to be taken care of—but to a certain degree, so long as it's for the right reasons. And it's hard, it's a fine line to toe, because on the one hand Korra is strong, independent, capable, and doesn't need anybody to tell her what to do. But then she remembers the way Mako would wrap his jacket around Asami's shoulders, sheltering her from the cold, and Korra can't deny the longing she felt when this tall beautiful boy opened the door for this lovely, beautiful girl. Korra doesn't need to be protected, and she doesn't want a protector, but she wants somebody to care enough to try. Is there even a point in such a dumb, childish wish? Korra knows that her thoughts only come in contradictions these days.
The point, Kora thinks, is that she wants more than to just be taken care of. But she can't tell them this. She has no words to describe these feelings. How can someone all at once want to not have to worry about taking care of herself anymore, to not have to be alone anymore, but in the same moment—freedom—want just to simply hear that the boy she'd wanted for so long cares for her, truly and unconditionally?
(Do you really, Mako? Really?)
In terms of indisputable facts and puzzle pieces and conclusions, Korra knows it to be true: she knows why he hovered at her bedside night after unthinkable night in that suffocating hospital room of thick white, and she knows the chain of events that led him to the decision to leave the woman—beautiful girl—he once thought he loved. When one follows the natural progression of their timeline together, trailing along the memories and histories with an objective eye, it seems only logical, perhaps even concomitant, that he is beside her now, that they are finally together now, as she'd always known they should be.
But his hand resting on hers feels like a weight that itches, and something is off.
Korra knows that there is some stupid, clichéd expression about actions speaking louder than words, but what she knows and what she hears—what she sees, what she feels—the distance is too great. Korra is a woman of action, but she's also a creature that craves balance; what her mind believes is not always so easily accepted by her heart—and she's no eloquent speaker—but sometimes acts without words simply aren't enough.
(Do even you know, Mako, why you left her? she wonders.)
"You were dying," he whispers. "I almost lost you."
But then she thinks of the way he used to look at Asami from the passenger seat of her daddy's souped-up car, or the way he would try to cop a feel under her designer clothes in the movie theater darkness while she sat only two seats away, how suddenly her memory expands, and she thinks—
Is that all?
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#2.
"I didn't tell you before because I didn't want to worry you. That's all."
The doctors wanted to call it Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.
Korra personally deems it: shit-out-of-luck.
Unsurprisingly, the doctors had won out.
It's not even like she has all of the typical symptoms, but they'd needed an excuse to give her a medical leave of absence because she's obviously not in any state fit to head into her final year of university. (That will come soon. Later.) In the meantime, they managed to fudge something just enough to get her a little bit more time to recover; considering what she'd been through, they hadn't had to stretch things very far.
(Screeching tires and crying shards of glass scraping across her skin, breaking into her soul.
Hit and run has such an insignificant ring to it, she thinks. These three words that tell nothing of the true story—one car twisted and broken, the other torched and blazing—nothing but the cold, basic mechanics.
They'd told her that his name was Noatok and that he'd had a little brother in the car with him; like that was supposed to mean something to her then, blood full of pain-killers and mind full of blank.)
They say it must have been a miracle, surely, the way her body was able to hand such an ordeal. And what had been worse than the external physical injuries themselves was the uncertainty of the extent of the damage you couldn't plainly see, and when words like permanent and irreversible cut straight to the soul. But she was lucky. Unique. Different. She must have had the spirits of many, many guardian angels looking out for her, they said.
Right.
She'd very nearly died, and it was then that Mako fully realized just what she truly means to him.
"Korra, I know it might feel like it, but the accident really wasn't all that long ago—"
But her eyes are on the mountains and her fingers are clenched over the windowsill and she needs to get out.
"I'm perfectly capable of handling myself," she says steadily, eyes level with a birch tree branch swaying gently in the breeze. "No remaining physical injuries. Good as new, right? Thanks to Katara and Tenzin and you, remember, I supposedly had a near-miraculous recovery."
"But—"
"What I need now, and Tenzin agrees, is a little respite," and she still finds strength in such resignation. "This is well within my range of capabilities, Mako. But whatever, thanks for believing in me, I guess. Or not."
"Don't try to play that card with me, Korra—just months ago, we weren't even sure how much of yourself you'd be able to get back! And now you want to go in a road trip off to some—some yoga cabin? By yourself?"
"It's already been medically-approved," she tells him evenly, but this only riles him further. "My doctor signed off on it two days ago. And it's not just yoga and it's not a cabin. Tenzin hooked me up with a few of his spiritual-know-how buddy contacts and knows that this place is supposed to be world-renowned for its healing capabilities. It's not quite as good as Katara's clinic down South, but within a week or two, or maybe a month, he said I'd—"
"But why go alone?" he asks her, and she doesn't have another lie at the ready, so instead, they stand in silence.
After all. What do you do when just living life just isn't good enough anymore? When you learn that what you thought you wanted, now matter how much you might have actually wanted it before, isn't really what you want now. What do you do? Do you keep on trying?
Do you let go?
(The days are dying fast, and so is she, and so is the world, but here she is standing still and silent and not doing and damn thing about it.)
Korra closes her eyes and, for reasons she can't explain, her mind is suddenly bursting with bright, brilliant yellows and greens in an endless field of sunflowers. She hasn't seen such a thing since she was a little girl, but the vision is as clear and vivid as if she had only seen it that morning. Her mind becomes a swirling mess of the blue-green aquamarines of some coastal island off to the north, right over the border, one that she has never seen outside of a Lonely Planet magazine, and suddenly she is obsessed. She sees white sand so fine that it looks like dust cleansed by the moon and she knows that she can't deny it a minute longer.
"I just need to do this," she tells him seriously, and she hopes that he leaves it at that, because there is nothing else she can say.
"Do you really want to be alone? For this?"
To be alone, alone, alone—
"No," Korra whispers, and she could cry because this is the closest thing to truth she has allowed herself in many, many days; she won't though, she won't cry. "But this is just something I need to do by myself."
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She doesn't waste any more time.
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