Chapter Text
Korra
“Mako, you have never looked so good,” Korra said, with not a trace of a lie in her voice.
Her friend and very brief crush, once upon a time, stood beside Asami, as he did his duty in “giving away the bride,” as the old, sexist, but still somehow comforting tradition went. With both of Asami’s parents being dead, Korra’s father had actually offered to walk them both up the aisle at the same time, but when Mako had offered, Asami had instantly said yes.
It was strange, Korra thought, as her mind jumped all over the place in wedding day jitters, how Mako had brought the two of them together. Her, and...
Asami.
“I don’t think anyone even sees me,” Mako said with a slight smile. “Including you. Take good care of each other.”
He backed away from where they were standing, but Korra barely even noticed.
It had taken effort for her to take her eyes off of her bride-to-be long enough to greet Mako, and that effort was now gone. Korra now only had eyes for the woman she soon would be able to call wife.
Asami was radiant.
There was no other word to describe it.
While Korra looked quite dashing in her suit, or so she hoped, Asami looked like she had been gifted to the world by the spirits themselves. Tall and graceful, feminine and strong, as smart as she was beautiful, Korra still sometimes wondered what she had done to deserve the woman by her side.
Even after years of being together, Korra still sometimes wondered.
Green eyes locked with blue, and Korra could see nothing else.
Words were spoken, and she responded with the correct words at the appropriate places, or at least a part of her figured that she must have, because before she knew it, Asami caught her by surprise and dipped Korra, before kissing her thoroughly.
Korra looked in her lover’s eyes – in her wife’s eyes – and knew that everything was going to be perfect.
-------
“Wow, you are really not feeling well today, are you?” Korra asked Asami as she held Asami’s hair. “There must be some sort of flu going around.”
Asami gasped, and held up her hand. Korra passed her a warm, wet cloth, for Asami to wipe her face with. Asami sat back down on the bathroom floor as Korra flushed for her.
“Or maybe it is something else,” Asami said when she was able to talk again. “We didn’t go to that clinic for no reason, after all.”
“You think it took?!” Korra asked. “I didn’t want to get our hopes up.”
“Pass me a test and let me go pee, then we will find out,” Asami said.
Korra dug a pregnancy test out of a drawer, passed it to Asami, then headed for the door. She started to turn-
“Get out of here, love!” Asami said with a laugh. “You know I can’t pee with you watching!”
Korra laughed, headed out the door, and waited. It was only a few moments, and Asami joined her, stick in hand.
“Messy,” Asami muttered.
They waited, checking over and over, as if that would speed the time up, for the required minutes. And then the line appeared.
“We’re going to be moms!” Korra yelled as she picked Asami up in her arms and kissed her.
They smiled at one another as they ended their kiss.
It was all going to be perfect.
-------
Korra slammed on the brakes of their car and jumped out as fast as she could.
“Help us! Help us!” she yelled as she rushed to the passenger side. “She’s bleeding!”
She yanked open the door, and stopped. What had been a trickle of blood was now a flood. “Asami!” she screamed.
“Move!” a nurse came running out of the emergency room and pushed Korra aside. “We’ve got a bleeder! She’s pregnant!” the nurse yelled. “Get a stretcher and let’s get her to an OR!”
Another nurse came and grabbed Korra as Korra attempted to follow them in. “Wait! You cannot go in there. Wait!”
“But she’s my wife!” Korra screamed. She started sobbing. “My wife. My daughter.”
-------
“It’s an ectopic pregnancy,” the doctor explained. “We have to wait, and hope that your wife survives giving birth.”
“What? What do you mean hope? I’ve heard of those. Nobody lives through those if it is untreated.”
“That is not quite true,” the doctor disagreed. “There is still a good chance your wife will survive.”
Korra thought about her daughter, dead before she was even born. “Why would we give birth? The baby is already dead.”
The doctor looked at Korra for a moment. “You are talking about options... that we do not offer anymore. Removal of the fetus would get any staff involved up on murder charges, and get you charged with murder as well.”
“What?!” Korra asked. “That’s crazy!”
But it wasn’t. She knew it wasn’t. The wrong people had been voted into office, and the laws had changed, for the worse. The two of them had even talked about moving back to her homeland, the Southern Water Tribe, for just this reason. But Asami had wanted to stay and fight, and Korra had supported her.
“It is crazy,” the doctor agreed. “But our hands are tied. You can see your wife now,” he finished. “She’s unconscious but stable.”
The doctor picked up his phone as she left his office.
“Tied,” she muttered, as she went to Asami’s hospital room. “His hands are tied. His his his. Always fucking his.”
She walked into the room and stopped, completely still. Asami looked like she was dead.
Asami wasn’t.
Korra could see the faintest movement of Asami’s chest as she breathed. She stood over her wife and took her hand. “Stay strong, love,” Korra whispered as the tears streamed down her face. “I’ll figure this out. I’ll figure this out. Just stay strong.”
She stood, and watched, and waited, for how long she did not know. Nurses came and went, but outside of offering sympathetic words, did nothing of use that she could tell.
If only they had gone to the south, as they had considered.
Gone to the south.
Gone.
Go.
Korra gasped.
“I’ve got it!” She leaned down a kissed Asami on the forehead. “Stay strong.”
She rushed back to the doctor’s office.
“I’ve got it!” she yelled as she saw the doctor. He was not alone now, but she did notice. “Asami’s stable. We can get an emergency medical evac to the Southern Water Tribe! They will look after her properly there, and fuck the fascists in power here!”
The doctor winced.
“I’m sorry,” he said, “but that is illegal, too.”
“Ma’am,” another man said, as Korra noticed the doctor was not alone for the first time. “You are proposing the commissioning of multiple crimes. As a legal representative of this hospital, I am hereby informing you that no illegal activities may occur or be planned on hospital grounds, nor may any hospital staff be involved in any such activities, in any place or in any way.”
“What?”
Korra shook her head. It didn’t make sense. They were all words that Korra understood individually, but the way they were put together made no sense.
There was another man, too, she finally noticed. A cop.
“Also,” the lawyer went on, as he gestured to the cop, “we will now require you to have a police escort at all times while on hospital grounds, for your safety and ours.”
Korra slammed her fist into the doorframe beside her. “My wife is going to die! And you have a lawyer and a fucking cop? MY WIFE IS GOING TO DIE!”
“Ma’am,” the officer said as he looked at her nervously. His right hand brushed against the holster of his weapon. “I need you to calm down.”
“You’re lucky I don’t grab that gun from you,” she yelled, “and shove it up-”
Korra stopped as a nurse ran by, then another.
“Asami!”
She turned and ran after the nurses.
“Ma’am, stop!” the cop yelled as he started after her.
“Asami!” Korra screamed.
“Stay back!” a nurse yelled.
“She’s hemorrhaging!” another yelled.
“Ma’am, stay back!” the cop yelled. “Don’t force me to shoot you!”
“What?” a doctor yelled. “Put that thing away, you idiot!”
“Turn around, now!” the cop yelled at her.
Korra turned back to the cop, who was frozen in terror, his sidearm pointed directly at her.
“Either shoot me, or let me get to my wife!” she yelled back.
The cop just stood there.
Korra snarled, then turned around again and attempted to make her way past the orderly who was blocking the door to Asami’s room.
“Get the fuck out of my way!” she ordered as she pushed him aside.
Then there was a bang, and her world turned to fire.
She staggered forward enough to see the doctors and nurses moving away from Asami, and looking up in shock at the gunshot.
Asami was still.
Completely still.
“No,” Korra whispered as she staggered forward one more step.
“Stop!” someone yelled, at who she did not know.
There was another bang, then darkness.
-------
Mako
“This is the worst anniversary ever,” Bolin complained.
“Yeah,” Mako agreed, as he took another sip of his now warm beer.
There was a part of him that was still in shock, he knew. He wondered if part of him would always be in shock. Two of the best people he knew – two of the best people anyone knew – dead while in their twenties, because of a shitty system and a poorly trained cop.
To think that a year ago both Bolin and he were anticipating being unofficial uncles – and now both Korra and Asami were dead.
“Worst anniversary ever,” he repeated.
There had been no one to tell on Asami’s side. Korra was her family.
Korra and the two of them and Korra’s parents back in the south.
Korra’s parents.
It had been Mako who had taken it upon himself to make that phone call, before the newspapers broke the story.
He had never imagined it was possible for so much pain to come through a telephone receiver.
It had been his last official action on the force.
“You want another one?” Bolin asked as he headed towards the bar.
Mako looked at his warm beer, still unfinished. He took a swig, then put it down.
“Nah. I’m going home.”
Why pay money to be morose at a bar, when he could be morose for free at home?
-------
Korra
It burns!
It burns it burns it burns!
Her nerve endings were firing as if every single one of them had been dowsed in gasoline and set on fire.
She wanted to scream, to scream louder than any woman had ever screamed before, it hurt so badly.
The pain.
The fire.
Then nothing.
Nothing at all.
No pain.
No nerves.
Nothing but darkness...
And something else. A box she was trapped in.
She felt around it, with what she felt might be her fingers.
It was a strong box, solid and unyielding.
It trapped her.
She went from feeling the box she was trapped inside, to pounding on it with her fists.
A word came to her. Almost a memory.
Perfect.
Then she screamed.
For real this time, loud and long and full of anguish.
“ASAMI!” she screamed and the box exploded.
She saw stars above her now.
“What? What?” she asked and pleaded with the distant cold lights above her.
Eventually, she moved.
She sat up, and marvelled at the fact her body worked.
She crawled out of the exploded hole she was in...
Trees.
The moon.
Tombstones.
My tombstone?
She staggered to her feet.
Where am I?
Who am I?
There was a bird on a branch, outlined by the moonlight.
A crow?
It cawed once, then took off, heading towards the city.
She didn’t know why, but it felt like the correct direction.
She followed the crow, and did not notice the second empty grave behind her.