A/N: School starts next week. So not ready to give up freedom. But anyways, enjoy this chapter!
Chapter Seven: Losing It
Republic City was markedly different after nightfall. The sound of rumbling traffic and the cry of street merchants were gone, replaced by the distant laughter of a drunk trying to find his way home, of the steady drip of a leaking roof echoing in the silent darkness. The alleyways seemed more threatening, the shadows clawing at Asami as she was dragged deeper inside, away from the safety of the main street and the light. She closed her eyes, her head pounding senselessly.
It was Dai who had taught her to avoid alcohol whenever and wherever possible. She still remembered his first lecture on the subject, his explanation of how a clear head could determine the outcome of a situation regardless of the opponent's strength, status, or wit. Drinking, according to Dai, was a poor man's beginning, a rich man's end, and every man's handicap of choice.
Asami never asked him how he knew all of this, whether he'd personally had trouble with the bottle. Even so, she'd never questioned Dai's strict philosophy regarding sobriety, and although she'd seen her parents drink the occasional glass of wine or even dragon whiskey on their 10th anniversary, she came to see liquor as an object of evil, not to be dealt with. That is, until she left the library with the sudden realization of how cold her father's trail had become. Full of rage and frustration, she'd blindly walked down the street until a bar sign at caught her attention. Her feet were already moving before she'd consciously made a decision, and in seconds she was ordering a glass of dragon whiskey.
She lied to the bartender, of course. In the past five years, she'd mastered it all, how to spin a lie, a story, a history, a disguise – any number of ways to fool just anybody. It was almost too easy. She'd never had dragon whiskey in her life. Yet, she downed her first shot all in one go, feeling the liquid sear her throat, burning down her insides. It tasted terrible yet she pretended that it was like a glass of cold juice after a week in a blistering desert. She'd ordered for a second, a third, and then time blurred and so did the rest of her senses. It felt good to forget, to feel nothing, be nothing. Screw you, Dai, she'd thought with every shot.
"This'll do." The man shoved Asami forward and she fell like a bag of bricks onto the wet ground. The alleyway smelled like an open sewer.
Rolling onto her back, she looked up at the stretch of star-speckled sky above, framed between the surrounding rooftops, a ceiling portrait, a map for lost souls. She turned to her side. She coughed and heaved but nothing came up. She was empty, hollow.
The man circled her slowly. Asami watched his dirty brown shoes as they stepped by. This situation was what Dai had been talking about, the one that drinking would eventually lead to. He'd been right about the drinking but she was determined to prove him wrong about her and what she was capable of. With a shaking hand, she surreptitiously reached into her jacket, fingers tightening around the handle of a hidden blade.
The footsteps suddenly stopped. The man panted heavily, his wheezes nasally from his broken nose. Asami listened, ignoring the pounding in her head.
"Let's have some fun, eh, sweetheart?" The man reached down for her arm.
Asami moved fast, much faster than the man expected of an intoxicated teenager. The tip of the dagger sank all the way into his shoulder and before he could do more than scream, she drove a fist into his already broken nose. His howling was deafening and almost musical to her ears.
"You – you!" The man wheezed. His face was illuminated in a patch of starlight and Asami saw his frightened expression, his wild eyes, his severely crooked nose. Blood drenched the front of his sweater and his greasy matted hair seemed to stand on end as she stood to face him. Her stance was a bit shaky but her eyes were full of murder, her teeth bared, her chest heaving like a wild animal's.
"D-don't move!" the man screamed. He pulled the knife that was imbedded in his shoulder with a sharp gasp of pain. Brandishing the knife at her, he repeated, "I'll cut you open, you hear me?"
Asami's heart was practically vibrating in her chest, adrenaline pumping to every cell in her body. The numbing calmness of the whiskey was now changing into an unbridled fury, a sense of pure recklessness that she had never felt before.
"Did you hear me?" the man shouted again, his back to the wall. "I said stay –"
The knife spun out of his hand before he could finish the sentence. As it landed on the ground with a clatter, Asami landed two punches on his face, a sharp right hook followed by one a clean backhand. Then she kneed him in the stomach and swept his feet from beneath him. He landed hard on ground groaning. But she wasn't finished with him. Muffled cries filled the empty alleyway every time her fist connected with his rapidly swelling face.
She would have killed him and kept on abusing his cold corpse if not for what happened next. It was instantaneous. She felt a pinprick at her neck like someone had poked her with a needle. A current shot through her body which was followed by a tingling sensation, then unconsciousness. As she fell to the ground once more, she rolled onto her side. Her last thoughts were simple: Screw you, Dai. Screw you.
...
Whispers caressed Bolin's ear, lingering briefly before evaporating into the still silence. Then it came back, louder at first, then softer and softer…
Bo… do you trust me?
A flash, a glimpse, a face. Mako's face.
Pain, a vice-grip upon his throat. The breath slowly squeezed out of him, his eyes tearing up. Suffocation. He felt faint… Suddenly, the pressure lifted. He coughed. It hurt.
Say goodbye to your worthless brother, little Spec.
Bolin remembered what happened next. The blood, the shock. Then the mansion broke apart, demolishing itself. He could hear people dying. He could hear people screaming. And it now he was screaming, screaming himself hoarse because he couldn't stop it, because he was the one killing them.
Bo… it's okay…
The screams continued. Make it stop, he thought desperately. Make it go away…
Bolin's eyes fluttered open. The silhouette of a face was leaning over him. He could barely see in the sputtering orange glare of the single gas lamp that sat beside him. His immediate instinct was that he didn't know this person. And yet he was equally certain that she (he was sure it was a girl) would not hurt him.
Splash. Water. Apparently there was a small bassinette nearby though Bolin couldn't see it from his position. The face disappeared and then returned, a blob of water hovering in front of her. He'd seen Kria do the same thing a million times back at Survivors HQ. Then he remembered. The HQ. The Hunters. The explosion.
"Where… Where's my…" Bolin gasped. He felt the water applied to his abdomen. Its texture was similar to cold gelatin.
"Try not to move," the girl said, moving the water carefully over his entire stomach then moving to his chest. "You've been hurt really badly but I'm going to help you. Stay still."
"Where's my brother?" Bolin managed to choke out, trying to hold down the cough. His throat was paper-dry. "Who are you?"
"Korra. And your brother's fine."
"He is?"
"Yeah. Just lay back, Bolin, I'm almost finished."
Bolin leaned further into his pillow, feeling the water moving in its shimmering blob around his abdomen. He looked at Korra. He'd seen her before somewhere, perhaps in a dream. Maybe this was a dream too.
A few minutes later, Korra leaned back, her job finished. She wiped her sweaty brow. Stray strands of wet brunette hair clung to her forehead like seaweed on a rock.
"There, that should do it," she said, smiling down at him. "Feeling better?"
Bolin nodded cautiously. He looked sideways and up at the ceiling. They were in some sort of empty warehouse, not much else but bare shelves and lots of space.
"What happened?" Bolin asked, trying to prop himself up on his elbow. His head felt immensely heavy for some reason.
"A lot," Korra replied. "How much do you remember?"
The question was reasonable but Bolin had to think for a while. The dream he'd had moments before waking was still fresh in his brain, every flash and every image burned into his retinas. He sifted through the imagery, moving passed the garbled mess of memories to find the last few minutes.
"There was a man," Bolin said slowly. He could almost see the crisp new suit, the stranger who'd entered just as he'd retrieved the vial of Dead Red blood. "He took me back down to the lobby and then I saw…"
"You saw what?"
Bolin's green eyes suddenly filled with worry. "When you found me, was there anyone else? Like, an older guy?"
"Oh, right, yeah Loc's okay," Korra said and Bolin let out a sigh of relief. "He's out right now looking for a friend of mine, actually."
"When will they be back?"
Korra hesitated. Nearly two hours had elapsed since Loc had taken off on Naga to find Asami who still hadn't returned by late evening. Korra had wanted to tag along but had stayed behind at Loc's insistence. "He needs you more than me right now," Loc had said, referring to Bolin. "Don't worry about Asami. I'll find her. I promise." Though it was already past midnight, there was no sign of Loc, Asami, or Naga.
"Soon," Korra said. "Real soon."
...
A side street to the left of the run-down theater on Sokka Street led into a series of progressively dilapidated shops and grimy windows. Shady patrons and drunks sometimes wandered down this path, looking for a second bar to crash at or, to those in the know, the rather infamous and well-hidden haunt of prostitutes known simply as "the parlor". The parlor was a squalid basement guarded by a chain-smoking doorman who lent out basement rooms to anyone who was willing to do the nasty on a soiled mattress with practically anyone. Normally, the patrons were too drunk to care much about the filth, and most of prostitutes were no strangers to desecration anyway, so it usually worked out.
The usual trickle of drunks and whores had run dry in the late night when a couple showed up. The doorman dropped the cigarette on the ground and pressed down with his shoe as two figures approached, a man with a slight limp and a clearly intoxicated young lady.
"Room for two," the man grunted, keeping a hand on the girl's waist to support her.
"That'll be sixty yuans," the doorman replied. He glanced at the girl. Despite the fact that she reeked of booze, he did not fail to notice her shapely figure. She was definitely not one of the regulars though that was most certainly about to change.
Her patron, an average-looking fellow in rather drab clothes, pulled out a handful of bills and shoved them into the brute's open hand. The patron seemed reluctant to show his face and kept his head bowed, a shared trait among all sober customers.
"Hey, listen," the doorman said, his voice oily and slick. "Since you're obviously new here, how 'bout I give you a discount in exchange for a bit of girl after you're done?"
"How 'bout I save you the trouble and break your balls right now?" The patron growled.
The doorman held up his hands in surrender. "Hey, man, just joking." He opened the rickety door to the basement. "She's all yours."
The couple disappeared downstairs, the door shutting behind them. The doorman took out a fresh cigarette, taking a puff. It was a worth a shot, he mused. His mind wandered elsewhere, the girl and the patron already forgotten.
To be continued...
A/N: Finally! I got this chapter up, whew! And Bolin lives! And Asami is... um, she's been better.
Originally, I had someone else come in and save Asami in the alleyway but this way was way cooler. She's kickass and she can hold her own, even when completely wasted. Also, I need to find better places for epic fight scenes to go down because I've done the alleyway thing WAY too much. Even in my other stories, people drop dead in alleyways. Maybe I should use a warehouse next time? ;)
Anyways, thank you so much for reading. If you haven't already, make sure to Follow to keep up with the latest updates.
Thanks! :)