date posted: 2024-04-05
summary: At nineteen years old, the memory of her father disgusts her.
word count: 991 words
notes: early to mid book 2, maybe a little not in line with canon, maybe a little too much projection on my part.
When Asami turned seven years old, her father told her they were alone.
He knelt down on one knee, put his hand to her shoulder, warm to the touch, comforting, and looked nothing but stern as he told her the way the world is.
Asami accepted it rather fast, her hands covering her father's hand on her shoulder, shrugging it off, nodding and running away to play in the manor, but the words stayed with her for the rest of the day.
She turned back once as she ran away, saw her father shifting to stand, looking back at her with some unreadable, longing expression. Worry, she realizes now.
Asami, now nineteen, in her lodging in the South Pole with the rest of Team Avatar, sleepless and restless under the cover of the night, wonders the furthest extent of her father's selfishness.
A breeze came through the window, and it left her shuddering, pulling the thick Water Tribe blanket tight over her shoulders, curling in on herself. She let loose her hair from the ponytail it was in, letting it fall messily behind her, already too tangled despite her lack of sleep, already greasy, from idly fidgeting with it, antsy and anxious all day, after her meeting with Varrick, concerned for the future of Future Industries, after her father's havoc on it.
How could he? How could she, really? How could he hide this from her without her having an inkling of doubt about him, even a little reluctance to trust him?
She closes her eyes, a sigh escaping her, weary and exhausted.
Unwittingly, images of Korra with her father come to mind unbidden, unwanted, how Korra leaned into him so closely when they met again in the South Pole after so long, how her arms wrapped around him tight, nearly lifting him off the ground, as tight as her hugs around Asami and the rest of Team Avatar, passionate and longing.
Korra has missed so much in her life; Asami can only imagine what it was like living in a compound for her whole childhood, nothing but training and her future on her mind, weighing her down.
Asami blinks.
She thinks about her times in the mansion, running around with no one but servants to keep an eye on her, making herself small in corridors and cabinets, finding ways to make fun out of its vast coldness, her father locking himself up in his office, making calls after calls, one business deal after the other, his whole life one of cutthroat negotiations and transactions and quiet, tight-lipped arrangements behind closed doors, behind an underground factory that blew the door to Asami's world wide open, leaving her wide-eyed and teary and unforgiving as she let the shock glove envelope her hand, too big, too heavy, as she commanded it to unleash her fury on her father for the first time.
She finds she's tightened her fist, squeezing tightly, knuckles white. Looking down at her grasp, she forces herself to relax, to loosen, sees the crescent moons her nails left in their wake. She forces herself to sigh, and it comes out shaky, weak.
Asami thinks back to Korra, the growing tension between her and Tonraq, how Korra can barely look him in the eye now. Asami knows the feeling; looking to the Equalist shock glove sat atop the dresser, unusually innocent looking when deactivated this way, not in use, but accessible in case of emergency, she remembers how rigid it felt on her hand, but recognizes its sleek design, how easy it was to bend her fingers in it, to activate its electricity like another limb, an extension of herself.
Korra may be the Avatar, she knows, but she thinks they aren't so different after all. She knows too well those feelings of rage and passion, and how not to handle them, how she wielded that glove, its existence one of invoked chaos and destruction, to sever the peaceful, tenuous tie between her and her father.
Korra has the power of the elements at her fingertips; Asami had herself and a electric glove and the five foot distance between her and her father, and nothing left to lose, as she watched the frozen scene before her, paused in its unfolding, the discord her father oversaw and funded in a single, vast factory.
She relaxes against the too-warm pillow, her posture having gone pin straight, a silly juxtaposition against the too-soft bed lent to her.
Her father, in that moment, blamed everything on the benders, swore on their loss that they were the cause of everything wrong in the world.
At seven years old, her father told her they were alone, that they only had each other. He looked at her with such warmth, and concern, stony but unshaking in his words, trying to convey their weight to her. His hand on her shoulder was so nice, so comforting: her whole world, the closest it would ever be to her.
Asami thinks about Korra and Tonraq, herself and Hiroshi, daughters and fathers. Unstoppable force meets immovable object. She shakes her head, the movement pulling uncomfortably at the pillowcase.
She thinks about that certain look in his eyes, and she knows now that he knew she would agree blissfully, unthinking, would think nothing of it, would know his words to be the truth, all she had, that he was all she had left and she should have been thankful.
The worst part, she knows, is that she was thankful, up until things played out the way they did. She was unshaken in her trust of him, furious at the implication of any wrongdoing on his part.
How foolish of her, she knows now.
At nineteen years old, alone, nighttime a generous cover over her, her mouth twists into something unpleasant and scathing. She restrains the feeling, suppresses it, squeezes her eyes shut.
At nineteen years old, the memory of her father disgusts her.