Track 12- Comatose
(Note: Amon's lyrics will be in bold. Korra's only line in lyrics will be italicized.
~Once again, this is for masksarehot! It's a get-well-soon gift! I hope you feel better ASAP, Masksy!~
Theme: After the boat explosion that killed Tarrlok, Amon was found by the United Republic Navy barely alive. After many months in a deep coma he begins to become aware of everything around him and the experience changes everything he ever believed in and everything he has ever wanted. (Post-Cannon)
Song: 'Comatose' by Skillet)
~~~~~~.:oOo:.~~~~~~
"How is he today?" Her hushed voice seeps into my consciousness, waking me from blurry dreams, or at least waking me as much as my condition allows. It feels as if she's trying to avoid disturbing a sleeping child. If only she knew that I want nothing more than to be disturbed by that smoky voice of hers…
"Same as always, Avatar Korra." The healer doesn't bother to whisper, he just speaks with his usual strident voice that has been rattling my nerves ever since I started to become aware of things around me again and that has been a long time.
"Can I stay with him for a while?" Her question gives hope and her tone is almost pleading.
"Knock yourself out. You never listen to what I say anyway." The healer replies, having gained enough familiarity to speak to her this way in the past few months. I hear the sound of footsteps and what I think is a door being slid open and shut.
"Still asleep, I see." Korra's unique smoky voice sounds from somewhere near my face so assume she's either leaning close or sitting beside me. "Lazy-ass." Her chuckled insult actually sounds endearing to me after all this time.
I'm not really sure how long it's been, it feels like years but it could just have been months or weeks. I remember the explosion very clearly, somehow I wish I didn't, I wish the trauma would make me forget but the memory is as clear as water. I can recall the moment I understood what Tarrlok was doing and shed a tear, I'm not sure why I did that, perhaps it was my goodbye to the world or perhaps it was due to the sorrow of our tale or guilt for what I had done to my brother, then again it could very well have been relief too, I don't even know anymore because what came immediately after is what still haunts me- I fully intended to go down with Tarrlok but as soon as that flaming hell blasted around us, my body reacted out of instinct and my waterbending saved my life, I don't know whether I should call it irony or hypocrisy that the man who despised bending so much was saved by it but sometimes I wish I hadn't been saved, I didn't deserve to live, I should have died with Tarrlok, at least we would have gone down together as brothers again but instead I lived, me, the monster survived and Tarrlok, my misguided little brother who I should have protected and saved from the very start, who I never should have abandoned, died in a fraction of a second by his own hand while trying to end our sad story.
I can remember the blast of flames with stark clarity, I can almost still feel them lick at my skin with gruesome sizzling pain, sometimes I think I can see that brightness all over again in my eyes and it terrifies me. I still recall that deafening sound when everything went up in flames, I can still feel the force of the overheated air flinging my like a doll and burning my lungs from the inside out, I can still remember the crack of my bones, my skin melting like wax, my sight vanishing in a brilliant flash of light and my hearing tuning in on nothing but static. I can almost still feel the water around me, stinging on my flesh, filling my lungs and drowning me, I have no idea how I survived that, I wished I knew but everything that came after that was wiped clean from my brain when I lost consciousness.
I don't know how long it took them to find me but from what I picked up from pieces of conversation around me, the United Republic of Nations Navy found me drifting and barely alive and I was transported here… I don't really know where here is but I can tell that it's some sort of hospital. I really haven't a clue of how long I was out in their care but eventually I slowly began to become aware of things around me, it helped that my hearing had eventually begun to return after that explosion, at least in one of my ears anyway.
A first this was utter agony. To be trapped inside my own body, to be able to hear and feel but have no control over myself even for something as simple as opening my eyes, to have to live in a world were dreams and awareness blur together indistinctly, a world of my own mind where everything is dark and only my thoughts, nightmares and guilt keep me company… The healers call it a coma, I call it the most pure definition of horror and every day I wished that someone would show enough mercy to kill me once and for all because there is no way that death can be any worse than this.
But then she came and that changed everything. I still can't understand why Avatar Korra visits me what I estimate is every other day but she never fails and sometimes after she leaves I wonder if the sound of her voice meant she was really there or if it's just my deteriorating mind playing tricks on me or some dream that I couldn't quite tell apart from reality.
At first Korra was angry, she came to confirm if it was really me and she blamed me for Tarrlok's death and the state of chaos the city was in, I was, however, surprised that she wasn't distraught because I had taken her bending. The healers told her I couldn't hear anything, they told her it was useless to talk to me because I wouldn't understand but she lashed out on me regardless, telling me what a monster I was, how I deserved to be in the state I was and how she would destroy me if I ever dared to wake up, her screams were ringing in my ears for days after she left.
Then one day she returned, she sounded aggressive and didn't seem to know why she was there in the first place but she talked to me anyway, she informed me that she had her bending back and that my efforts had failed because she could now return anyone's bending, she told me everything Tarrlok had once told her about our past, she tried to make sense of what had happened in the boat, she told me how my army had been dismantled and how the city was recovering and peace treaty had been signed, she even told me how most of my men and women had been pardoned and were helping rebuild the city whilst promoting social equality in a peaceful manner.
After that she popped up again a couple of weeks later, now talking to me like a normal person and informing me of the state of things- she told me how Hiroshi Sato was imprisoned in mental institution and how my lieutenant and joined the Council as an advisor after being released from the hospital, she also told me that she was trying to understand me, mostly to get over her own bloodbending trauma.
A few days later she appeared again and by then I realized I had been hoping she would return, I had been counting the seconds, she was the only person who actually took the time to talk to me and I needed that or I would have lost my mind completely. That day she gave me her take on my philosophy, she had obviously been thinking about my points of view as Amon for a long time and even though she disagreed with my methods and still considered me a heartless monster she seemed to finally understand my motivation, she also thanked me for the first time, mostly with sarcasm, stating that if not for me she would never have become a fully-fledged Avatar.
I wasn't sure what to expect but a few days later she was there again and I felt the familiar smell of Panda-Lilies float into the room with her but it was hard to consider that she had brought flowers so I deduce that the smell was simply clinging to her from another source. She talked to me again and told me I had been asleep for too long and the healers were starting to believe I would never wake up again, she told me that she hoped I could hear her, that she wanted some part of me to be aware of her presence there and at that second I wanted nothing more than to reach out to her and tell her that yes, I could hear every word she said but my body, my prison, refused to cooperate and by the end of the day she told me that she might not come back for a while and all I wanted to do was scream and beg for her to stay.
She didn't return for a long time, weeks maybe, and that gave me time to think, it gave me time to consider multiple points of view and flaws in my plans, it gave me time to regret and to miss her. That was when I realized that I was starting to like Korra, not the Avatar but Korra herself. I was starting to change too or perhaps I was simply shifting back to the person I had been before I became Amon, either way it didn't make things any easier, in fact the sudden development of a conscience made the remorse and pain infinitely worse but at least I felt human again, I felt like a trapped man but a man nonetheless and not a cold machine fed by its ego, reveling in power and running for the sake and pressure of thousands of supporters.
When Korra returned again she sounded tired and depressed, from what I could tell she had been in the South Pole for a while which was I she hadn't been around but when she was left alone in my room it was as if everything was as it should be again and for the first time she spoke of herself, not as the Avatar but as a young woman, for once she didn't talk about ethics, politics, philosophy, the city or the past, she just poured her heart out about herself- she told me how insecure she was feeling with all the pressure and responsibilities of being Avatar, she told me about her spiritual breakthroughs in the South, she told me how her love life was strained and she wanted her group to just be friends again without the awkwardness of romance between them, she also told me about her family and for the first time I realized that she also had Northern blood like me and for some inexplicable reason that little thing in common made me feel warm inside. She left that day not knowing why she had poured her heart out to a person who shouldn't be able to listen, she said she didn't know why the presence of her biggest nemesis calmed her so much when it had once terrified her but I was glad to hear her say those things.
She started coming every other day after that and every moment she's not here is like a year trapped in this horrible jail that is my own body. I'm not aware of long she's been doing this but she's been saying that I look better now, that the burns have healed and that my hair is longer; Korra calls me Noatak now, since the name Amon seems to hold bad memories for her. She also talks of trivial things like the weather or the medication and intravenous nourishment I am given, there are also times were she gets personal and talks of herself again- she has since broken up with the firebender and they are just friends now, she tells me he joined the police, she says Miss Sato is running Future Industries now with amazing business prowess. I find that I enjoy hearing these tidbits of information just as much as I enjoy it when she tunes the radio and does one-sided debates on Pro-bending matches with the commentator or when she hums along with songs or even when she picks up some random book given to her by one of the airbender girls se often speaks about and reads out loud to me.
I know now that I profoundly enamored with this woman. It might be because she is the only one who still hasn't given up on me, it might be because she is my only lifeline to sanity or it might simply be because I have slowly come to know her better than anyone else I ever knew but none of that changes the fact that I have fallen in love with this girl who is young enough to be my daughter and just so happens to be the Avatar and my former greatest foe.
"Kya tells me I should move on with my life, she says I'm wasting time coming here when you can't even hear me." Korra sighs and I can hear some sort of sorrow in her voice as I feel her warm hand in mine like always. "I know she's a great healer and all but I refuse to believe her, something just tells me you're in there somewhere…I just can't stop now." There's a pause and a rustle of the bed sheets as she leans closer and I feel her speaking close to my ear with her warm breath patting my skin. "You can hear me, can't you, Noatak?"
When I can't reply , when my body gives no sign of awareness, she lets out all her breath in a sigh and I hear her slump back into a chair. In a way I'm so happy to know that she doesn't want to give up on me but I feel guilty too because now that she's said it I can't stop thinking about how she's wasting her life on somebody so unworthy, somebody who spends the majority of his paralyzed time wallowing in depression and wanting to give up and die and the rest of the time clinging to her words and dreaming of a love that will never be.
"Maybe they're right… If you haven't woken up in twenty months then what are the odds that you can even hear me?" Her voice is bitter and the hand that is almost always holding mine let's go, leaving me with a distinct sensation of emptiness and loneliness.
«I hate feeling like this…
So tired of trying to fight this.
I'm asleep and all I dream of
Is waking to you!»
I think the words that I want to say to her, I hate living like this, if it can even be called living, I hate being so trapped inside myself and I'm tired of fighting… I just want my eyes to open so she can know that I've been listening, that I care.
«Tell me that you will listen.
Your touch is what I'm missing...»
I want her hand back in mine, I want to feel her skin again, I want to know that she's there and won't let me go but most of all I want her to be able to hear me too, I want her to hear my apologies, my feelings, my words that she's been pleading for so long.
«And the more I hide I realize
I'm slowly loosing you!»
It's the thing I've come to fear more than anything in this world- losing her. I don't care if she finds a new love so long as she's happy but if she disappears from my life… I will cease to exist, I will face terror worse than death, worse than this frozen life.
"Comatose…"
She murmurs softly with such sadness that I feel my heart break.
«I'll never wake up without and overdose…
Of you!»
I wish I could tell her that out loud, it's not my most charismatic line but it's exactly how I feel.
«I don't wanna live,
I don't wanna breathe
Unless I feel you next to me,
You take the pain I feel…
Waking up to you never felt so real!»
If only she knew of how often I beg for a merciful death whenever she's not by my side, if only I could tell her that so she could understand how much her presence means to me. Only when she's here, talking and touching me, do I feel alive again and not just a wisp of a person buried in a swamp of agonizing pain and nightmares, only when she's around do I feel truly awake and aware even if I can't wake up for real because when Korra isn't here nothing really matters and I just zone out into a mix of semi-awareness and bad dreams that blur with reality.
"I wonder if you can dream in this sleep of yours…" Korra has mused about this many times, she's asked me about it time and time again but even though I can't reply she keeps asking. "I once wished you were stuck in a nightmare forever with memories of all the horrible things you did but I regret that now, I don't think anyone should handle being trapped like that for so long... So hope that at least you can dream and that they are happy dreams ."
«I don't wanna sleep!
I don't wanna dream
'Cause my dreams don't comfort me
The way you make me feel…
Waking up to you never felt so real!»
It's the truth, if only I woke up to her for real I would never want to sleep again, I don't want this forced slumber, this paralyzed existence and no amount of nice dreams can comfort me or make me happy ever again, only her presence, her touch, her voice, can truly do that.
«I hate living without you.
Dead wrong to ever doubt you
But my demons lay in waiting
Tempting me away…»
I know it's ironic and that I don't deserve her but I love her, I truly do, she's all I have in some twisted way and I truly despise every moment without her, if I ever wake up I won't let go of her, I'll win her over even if she still hates me, I'll let her take my bending if I have to because after so long doing nothing but thinking I can finally see that I truly became a villain, I was wrong to have ever been against her, I was wrong to doubt her, I should never had been Amon, all I wanted was peace and fairness, I even used to admire the Avatar enough to copy Aang's bending block but my demons of the past warped me into something disgusting hiding behind a mask of righteousness, making me hate what I once admired and now they tempt me to just give up and die when all I want is to hold onto her and let her brightness chase away my shadows.
"Oh, how I adore you!
Oh, how I thirst for you!
Oh, how I need you!»
I want to scream these words at her, I'm thinking them so hard that I might just pop a vein, I'm trying against everything to get them out so she can just know how much I love her and it's not just her as Korra anymore, I've learned to love even the Avatar side of her that I once envied so much.
«Comatose…
I'll never wake up without an overdose
Of you!
I don't wanna live,
I don't wanna breathe
Unless I feel you next to me,
You take the pain I feel…
Waking up to you never felt so real!»
I just want her to touch me again. I feel that if I have her close enough, somehow I'll find a way to show her that I'm listening… But I know it doesn't work that way and that's what tears me apart.
"Do you dream about me, Noatak? Do you hear my voice and dream of me?" Korra asks softly after a long moment of depressive silence. "What am I in your dreams? An enemy? Or have I become a…a friend?" I hear her hesitate and then she huffs to herself and speaks in a more defensive voice. "I mean, if you can hear me maybe you can tell that I don't really hate you anymore…I've kinda gotten a little attached… It's stupid, I know. Everybody tells me I shouldn't give a damn about you after what you did to me, to the city too, but I can't help it… I feel pity for your past and responsible for you being like this and I…I don't know… I don't know why I care." She sounds so confused and it's so different from her usual self-confident tone that it hurts to hear.
«I don't wanna sleep,
I don't wanna dream
'Cause my dreams don't comfort me
The way you make me feel…
Waking up to you never felt so real!»
I do dream of her all the time, the nightmares are the most predominant thing in my mind but even in those she manages to appear either as my victim or my executioner. There are other dreams though…dreams about her that I am too ashamed to speak off, dreams where she's mine to love but even those dreams don't comfort me or give the sanity and will to live that I get when she's really there next to me.
"I better go now, Noatak. It's getting late and Tenzin will probably worry if I show up too late… He's been trying to stop me from coming here, he thinks this is bad for me as it is so I don't want to give him any other reason to stop me." Korra mumbles an apology and I hear the distinct sound a chair being dragged back across the wooden floor before she hesitates. "Maybe… Maybe I really shouldn't show up for a while, maybe I should move on and make sense of my life."
She's leaving? Really leaving? No! I can't handle that! I know I don't deserve her but, Spirits, I can't live without her!
«Breathing life…
Waking up…»
I ordering myself as hard as I can, I feel that if I don't do something now, if I don't give her a sign then I will never hear her lovely smug smoky voice again and that would destroy me completely.
«My eyes, open up!»
I'm practically begging my own body and for the first time in a long time I feel something- my eyelids flutter, I still can't open them but just that sensation of being so close to true consciousness is a massive improvement, it's been so long that it almost feels alien to me. Now if only I could push myself just a little further…
«Comatose…
I'll never wake up without an overdose
Of you!»
This despair I feel to have her close is the only thing I can cling to, the only thing I can use to push myself, I don't have time to rationalize, for once I just need to feel and force myself to react once and for all.
«I don't wanna live,
I don't wanna breath
Unless I feel you next to me
You take the pain I feel!
Waking up to you never felt so real!»
Suddenly an idea sparks in my mind, something I haven't even dreamed of trying before, something that I don't even know if it's possible in normal conditions, much less like this. I'm considering using my unique psychic bloodbending, something that I'm not sure I can do in this shape, and I'm considering using it…on myself.
I don't know if it's possible, nobody in their right mind would willingly try that on themselves but if it's doable…If I can manipulate my blood with my mind then maybe, just maybe, I can give her some sort of sign!
"Sleep well, Noatak." She murmurs her goodbye and I know that I don't have any more time to think about this.
«I don't wanna sleep,
I don't wanna dream
'Cause my dreams don't comfort me
The way you make me feel.»
I focus harder than I have ever focused in my entire life, I map out the labyrinth of my own blood vessels in my mind, carefully becoming aware of the fluid pumping in my own body and before I can so much as hesitate I tug those imaginary puppet strings and force my hand to rise off the bed.
It's pain like nothing I've ever experienced, even that one time when Tarrlok bloodbent me in that cabin in the mountains was nothing compared to this. It's not just the bloodbending itself, it's the sudden strain on muscles that haven't been used in many months and it's the massive amount of force I have to put in the skill with all my willpower so that the pain and survival instinct won't make me shut down.
I feel my fingers wrap around something warm and I realize it's Korra wrist, I immediately tug those puppet lines hard enough to make my digits snap shut around her, clinging to her for dear life.
«Waking up to you never felt so real!»
"What the…?!" Korra's startled voice and sudden movement are a relief to hear, she's turning to me and moving closer but I don't relinquish the bloodbending grip on my own hand even as the disgusting wet sound of the strained blood vessels creeps into my ears. "Your hand…Noatak?! Are you awake?! Noatak?!"
She shakes me roughly but I still can't open my eyes. However, I refuse to let go and bloodbend my other hand to reach out to her but the pain is too excruciating and the sound is too innerving so my limb falls limply half way to her body. I'm fairly certain that if I wasn't in this coma I would have passed out from the pain by now.
"Wait…" She pauses and stops shaking me, apparently to watch how my fingers twitch rebelliously under the bending grip as she listens to that ghastly sound. "This…This is bloodbending! Are you bloodbending yourself?!" She shouts out in shock and horror the fingers of the hand I still control squeeze tighter around her wrist for a brief moment. "But you're not awake…" She hesitates for a moment, most likely putting two and two together. "But you ARE aware! You CAN hear me! I knew it!" Korra's voice sounds victorious and hopeful, it's almost infectious despite the overwhelming pain that is driving me beyond the limits of sanity. "You want me to stay, don't you? I know how painful bloodbending is and you want me to stay with you so badly that you're willingly enduring it!"
I force my fingers to squeeze down again but what little focus I have is slipping and my hand clings too hard, probably bruising her wrist by the hiss she lets out, and then my hand drops lifelessly again only for her to lace her fingers in mine and hold on closely.
"I'm here, Noatak." She actually lies next to me for all I can tell. Her breath pets my cheek and she's so close that I can feel the heat radiating from her body as she holds my hand. "Even if you still hate me I'm not going anywhere. I'm right here for you. Please…please…please wake up!"
Her begging voice is filled with stubbornness, hope, tenderness and heart-wrenching sadness and all I want is to do open my eyes and tell her own grateful I am.
"Oh, how I adore you…" I wanted to yell it out even though I knew it wouldn't leave my frozen lips but my voice actually does come out as a barely audible, cracked, raspy murmur that is almost incomprehensible from long disuse.
«Waking up to you never felt so real!»
"Oh, how I thirst for you…" Korra has shifted and I feel as much as hear her breath catch as she leans closer to listen. Recovering that little shadow of my voice is an enormous victory, now if I just had the strength to push a little further…
«Waking up to you never felt so real!»
"Oh, how I adore you…" I cough slightly and it hurts all over my chest but I don't care. Korra is silent and I almost want to try and bloodbend my eyelids just so I can look at her face and try to understand what she's thinking.
"The way you make me feel…" I can't even describe what I'm feeling for her right now but after a long time, after a long struggle with gargantuan strength I didn't even know I had, I finally force my fluttering eyelids open.
The room is actually quite dark with the sun almost completely set and letting only a slight haze of deep golden orange light seep in through the window above my head but even in that semi-darkness, the sudden light in my eyes is blinding and it takes me several minutes of painful blinking to actually see anything again and through all that time Korra is silent and petrified by my side.
I finally manage to look at the woman who's lying next to me and even though she is still almost the same despite her unfamiliar clothes, she looks so different that I almost don't recognize her- she's wearing a bright cerulean and white top, dark blue arm-warmers and her usual triple tie hairstyle is messy and untidy, she looks so much thinner but still so brawny, she looks tired, slightly older and a little more mature and holds an expression of absolute shock right now but at the same time she's so much more beautiful than I remembered and the sight cracks a painful smile on my parched lips.
"Waking up to you never felt so real."
The words slip out a little louder this time, if this didn't feel so real and so physically painful I would almost think it was a dream, it could be very hard to distinguish dreams from reality after so long being comatose, but this has to be real, I know it and because of that I can't stop smiling even if I know that I can't really have Korra, even if I'm a criminal, right now all I want is to shove that aside as I watch tears well up in her stunned eyes before they stream freely down her face and she hugs me so tightly that it's hard to breath and all my unused muscles complain with bruising pain. I don't think right now anybody would believe that we were once hated enemies and to be honest I'd rather die or go back to the torture of being comatose rather than ever hurt her or turn against her again.
"Stay…" I whisper as loud as I can, begging as I try to move my rigid limbs.
"Yes. I'll stay."
"I'm sorry…" I need to say this, I need her forgiveness. "Don't hate me…"
"I should hate you. I should hate you more than anyone in the world for what you did but I can't." She hiccups slightly into my chest but dashes her tears away and looks up at me hopefully. "Don't you hate me anymore? I'm the Avatar."
"You…" I cough slightly again to steady my dry voice. "You're Korra…and I love you…"
"Why?" She bends water from a jar on the table by the bed and tries to couch me to drink it, which I do in little sips.
"I was…always aware of you…I heard it all…Everything." I choke a little on the water but my voice is finally more than a cracked whisper and the sensation of her warm arms enfolding me in the most comforting embrace I have ever experienced is a joy I could never have dreamed of. "…You stayed, you saved me when I was nothing so I'm never letting go."