Holy hell, this took me way too long to get to! I apologize for that; I've been travelling a lot last week and this week was the first week of classes. Regardless, I'll try to be a little bit better with the updates here. Also, I hope you enjoy this chapter. ^_^
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Chapter 38
Rebirth
"Wha – what – why – am I – here – what –" Korra backed halfway into the wall, a strong buzzing in her chest. A pound on the door startled her. It made her and many of the other members in the room jump.
"I'll get it, mom." Kya hopped to her feet and scurried right through Korra.
Korra followed, if only for the mere distraction from everything that was turning in her brain.
Kya twisted the handle and the wind did the rest. The door flew open, revealing a panting, sweating Tonraq.
"Kya, I need you." He panicked, stepping forward and grabbing her shoulders.
"Tonraq? What's wrong? What's going on?"
"It's – it's Senna. She's giving birth – and the taakti is in Harbor City." He whispered between pants, too out of breath for a normal tone.
"What? I thought she wasn't due for another month or two, at least." She rushed through the common room, Tonraq on her heels.
"I did, too. But I just got back from the hunting trip and she was on the floor. She's having contractions and her water broke."
Kya opened a cupboard and pulled a decorated water sac from the shelf. She wrapped it around her shoulder. "Let me tell my mo –"
The pair turned to see Katara standing in the doorway.
Korra was behind her, watching the events unfold with a pounding heart.
There was a mixture of emotions on the elder's face: a swirl of happiness, sadness, and a hint of cunning. "May the Spirits be with you two." She walked up to her daughter and embraced her. "I'll stop by after…"
"Yeah." She finished the sentence in a whisper so that her mother didn't have to. "Tell him that I – I –"
"I will." She departed and smiled at her daughter. "Now go. Senna needs you."
Kya nodded, her expression morphing from sadness to determination. She turned to Tonraq and locked onto his confused eyes with burning ones. "Let's go."
Korra expected to be swept away again, zipping over to her house minutes before the Water Bending pair arrived. Instead, her body stayed in place. She stared in anticipation as Master Kya and her father ran out of the entrance and Katara returned to the bedroom where her husband lay. She decided to follow Katara by pure instinct alone.
Once her feet crossed the door, she felt herself almost split into two.
Part of her could see her mother, squatting on the floor by the mantle.
The other part flew past the mourners in the room and into the body of the man on the bed.
It was then that Korra realized the former half was back in her own common room, just as she expected it to be. Tonraq and Kya burst in not too long after, rushing over to her mother to help with the delivery.
She couldn't really see much from her other half; his eyes were closed, though she wanted them open. The lids touched against her will. She felt the hand of an older man on her shoulder, the palm of a younger man in her right and the tan fingers she actually did recognize by contact alone in her left. "Katara," she muttered in a voice that was not her own, speaking words that she wasn't coming up with herself.
Her tone was heavy. "I – I don't understand why this is happening."
"It's just my time, sweetie. I've been sick for months now, and you know that."
"I know."
"As much as I don't – as I don't want to go, there's nothing I can do to stop it. I've been fighting for as long as I could and I know you've done your best to try and heal me. If there is one thing we can't escape, it's time. Time and death. But just as time brings the end of things, it brings the beginning of others. Death, rebirth… it's all just part of the cycle we submit to when we come into this world. I've – I've done everything I can to save myself and this world, for that matter." A cough interrupted his final words. It rattled his burning lungs and sore muscles. "It's just… time."
Tears dripped down Katara's cheeks; she was oblivious to everyone else around her.
"Thank-you," he whispered, opening his lids for a final time and looking his wife in her weeping eyes. "You have done so much for me, from penguin sledding to saving the world to helping me continue on the Air Nation. You've made my dreams come true, Katara."
"Mine, too," she muttered back, the drops now streams.
"Push, Senna, push." Kya instructed, her hands near the crowning head of the premature baby.
Senna did as she was told, squeezing her husband's palm as she squatted. There was a fur underneath her to lower the baby on and catch any of the birthing fluids. She screamed out as she tried to push. "Tonraq, we are never having sex again. Ever."
All he could do was chuckle in amusement and – most of all – fear, but not from never doing the deed for the rest of his life; his horror was a combination of his wife's tone and the bones in his hand almost cracking. He ignored it. "You can do it, honey. I believe in you."
"Just a few more, Senna. You're doing great. Ready? One, two, three, push."
She cried out and gripped Tonraq's palm, using a mixture of his upper body and the mantle for support.
The scene cut back to the sight of the tan fingers wrapped around her tattooed hand. Her eyes fluttered shut, a strong buzzing radiating from her chest. She could feel herself fade away, like she was sinking into the ocean with no hopes of swimming to the surface. With each foot she sunk, the vibrating intensified.
"Goodbye, my love, my sweetie, my best friend," Katara whispered, bringing her husband's hand up to her cheek and cradling it against her skin while it was still warm.
"Push, Senna. Push."
A final scream and the baby was free. Kya cradled the head and body, moving the newborn out with care. She laid the infant on the fur, away from the collapsing mother.
Korra watched as Kya tapped the baby's bottom, trying to get it to breathe. The color of the child's skin started to pale and blue.
"Kya, why – why isn't she breathing? Kya? Kya?" Tonraq called out, causing Senna to spin around in horror.
"I – I don't know." She tried not to panic, though her nerves were getting the best of her. She Bent additional sterile water from the pouch she brought with her and ran it over the now-shaking baby.
Tonraq and Senna looked on in terror, holding each other's torsos in their arms.
My – my baby. My child –
"Something's not right. I – I don't know what it is. I can feel her life force and her chi and I'm going to try to hold onto it, but… you have to go get my mother. I – I can't do this alone. Her body is too delicate." She reached into the child with her own energy and grabbed onto the baby's chi, putting all of her focus on the dim force in her Bending grasp.
"W – why is she shaking, Kya?"
"She's having a seizure. I don't know why. It could have been stress from the delivery or because she's premature and underdeveloped or both." She glanced up at the frozen couple. "Tonraq, I need you to go now."
It took him another second to take off. His limbs shook as he burst through the door, afraid to the point that his Bending was less than perfect. It forced him to tumble forward into the snow.
Get it together. Get to Katara. Your baby, your blood needs you.
He took a breath and launched himself on a wave, pushing himself to the edge to get to Katara's as fast as possible.
All Senna could do was stare in absolute shock, way too exhausted and much too terrified to be of any help – Healer or not.
At that moment, the vibrating was out of her control. White filled her sight, filled every inch of her for just a second. Then, the force gathered in her core and shot out, leaving the old male body and taking Korra with her. It flew through the walls, through the storm, through the air, and right into Korra's home.
Her other half that was watching the birth saw the light burst into the scene, her double vision becoming too much for her.
She rushed towards the small baby, flying at unprecedented speeds.
Slow down! You're going to hurt it! Going to hurt – me…
Her hearts sunk as the beam crashed into the child. The lighter side of her filled the newborn from the tip of her toes to the crown of her soft skull. It intermingled with the Spirit inside of her, Korra's natural Spirit. She could feel different sparks from the base of her spine upwards as the light traveled and began settling inside of her. It crawled into her underdeveloped brain, searching for a means to make a physical connection. She could see herself – or whatever this force was – travelling through the canals in her mind, making links with the synapses present, connecting to the tissue and the nerves grown there, trying to not only find the physical paths, but the chi paths granted from her fleshy makeup.
She watched on the outside as Kya struggled to keep the shaking infant's life force in her grip. The baby – herself – was getting paler and paler from the lack of air. Senna was shaking against the mantle, her heart shattering before her very eyes.
The white continued to flow, moving up to a central portion of her brain. It moved through her blood up until that point, where it was blocked from entry.
What the hell?
Several clots were in the way, all linked to different pathways in her mind. The light tried to penetrate through each of them to no avail.
Why can't I get through?
The baby kept shaking. It would be minutes before Tonraq would return, each second ticking by like an hour.
Come on, dad. Where are you?
The light kept attempting to break the aggregations, weakening with each failed endeavor. She brought her attention away from four of the largest, most dense clots dispersed throughout her mind and focused on a series of smaller ones, near the back of her head. It tried to force its way past the blockage, using the chemicals releasing in the baby's mind to aid in dissolving the clots. The adrenaline pumped through the child's body in an attempt to get itself to breathe. The light gathered this together and attacked the clots in vivid, familiar, pain inducing strikes.
Korra stepped back and fell to one knee, the sights and feelings and everything else overwhelming her.
A loud thud filled her ears from outside. Tonraq, Katara, and Tenzin rushed in, the elder leading the group. She collapsed onto her knees beside her daughter and began moving her hands above the shaking baby's chest. Kya continued to hold onto the child's chi with her own.
"Keep doing what you're doing, Kya," Katara instructed, reaching into the newborn's lungs with her Bending and removing a significant amount of fluid from within. She allowed it to soak into the fur underneath them as she continued working, complete focus on saving the child before her.
The light smashed into small clot after small clot, trying to break free of its block. It shattered one. And another. And another.
Katara swirled glowing water around the infant, sending some of it into the baby to heal the physical damage throughout its body and to alleviate the stress within it. She felt something powerful within this small human – one of the most powerful bursts of energy she had ever experienced. It stirred things within the newborn, causing a great deal of turmoil in her chest. "Easy, easy now," she focused her attention on the baby's lungs and heart, trying to give them energy.
Korra's other sight revealed another destroyed clot. Her stamina was weakening. This was becoming too great of a task for the light to take on. The baby's chi was fading, as was its life force. With a final charge, the white beam broke through the last small blockage in Korra's sight.
Her infant-self stopped shaking. The viewpoint within her disappeared.
This was exactly what Katara needed. She reached her Bending into the newborn and gave her tiny heart and brain another kick start with a direction of her own energy – a feat possible by only the absolute greatest of the Water Bending Healers in the world. Once that started, she redirected her focus to the child's suffering lungs and commanded the energy in the cells. Within seconds, the baby started breathing and crying out, filling the common room with its shrill, piercing howl.
Senna and Tonraq hugged in relief. Katara and Kya exhaled the breath they were holding and sat back, sweating and exhausted from their efforts. Tenzin watched on from the corner with a smile on his face, unknowingly near the translucent Korra.
Korra stared as Masters Kya and Katara used Water Bending to clean the newborn off and wrap it – her, she reminded herself – in a rather large, white pelt.
Her pelt.
"Tonraq, Senna," Katara smiled, handing the baby to the pair, "it's a girl." She placed the baby in their joined arms and glanced at it, a hint of hidden suspicion in her eyes. "An alive, strong, beautiful girl."
They brought the baby closer, pure joy in Tonraq's eyes. Tears streamed down his face at the sight of his child, his creation in his arm. "She's alive. She's… she's alive."
Senna was in much of the same state. "We did it, Tonraq. We did it."
He nodded and sniffled, pulling the screaming newborn into their chests. "I never want to let her go."
"What are you gonna name the little fighter?" Kya spoke up, pushing herself to her feet with a groan.
They turned to each other and smiled. "Korra," they said in unison, their hearts fluttering.
The baby stopped crying upon hearing her name. She opened her bright blue eyes and stared at her parents for the first time.
Korra felt an extreme buzzing in her chest. It radiated and amplified, yanking her away from the scene before her. She flew at indecipherable speeds through indecipherable scenery and indecipherable thoughts. Everything was pounding inside of her, her mind trying to piece together what she just saw. The sight before her began to grow clearer and clearer. The open, starry sky of the Southern Water Tribe was the first thing to fill her view. Then the white snow. The joining of the Aakaga with the Paniga and Igniga was next. Soon, she could make out the shape of her large polar bear dog, a woman in blue beside her, another woman in half-white, half-dark brown, and a final person on the ground, wearing a mixture of blue, brown, black, and red.
It was then that she realized that was her.
She braced herself, shielding her face as whatever force that was commanding her slammed into her body. She was surrounded by darkness once more, everything aching and throbbing inside of her to the point of absolute consumption.
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