tushanshu_logs

[The feeling of air against his leg actually makes him suck in a breath, and he grimaces a bit at the sight. It's definitely not pretty, there are numerous incision sites that are neatly and handily bandaged. The entire thing is bruised, black and green and yellows bleeding together from the internal damage and Jim.

Exhales. He hates doctors, medics, anyone poking or prodding at him, and there's a very real part of him that wants to tell Korra to just leave it alone. But if she can heal? Straight up, no questions, fix the damned thing? Then yeah. He's all for it. A muscle jumps in his jaw and he forces himself to answer,]

Spiral fracture, it broke in six different places. Sora plated it together so it'd heal straight, and my CMO said it's working.

[Jim’s reaction doesn’t go unnoticed and Korra glances up at him before looking back at the leg, her eyes darting from one bandage to the other. A sickening game of connect the dots on top of the body’s struggle to heal itself against a grotesque injury. Fractured bones being held in place by unnatural means and he walked here by himself using only a cane.]

Why… [Her trailing question was barely above a whisper. A pause while Korra looked down at the few ounces of water.] Hold on, I’ll be right back.

[Hurriedly, Korra headed toward the kitchen and returned just as fast, the water in her hand had grown to the size of a large bowling ball.]

Just try not to move too much, okay?

[When Korra applied the water to his leg, encompassing it completely, it began to glow a bright blue that illuminated that part of the living area. With slow hand movements, Korra guided the soothing water through and under the bandages. As she worked, the water leeched away the pain, allowing her to freely find where the fracture was without interruption from the body’s natural reactions. Getting a feel for where the bone was injured, Korra focused on it. She could understand now why it was called a spiral fracture.

A broken bone wasn’t anything new to Korra, she had learned to do so under Katara and it showed as the light of the water shifted its array. Inside; the fracture was coaxed to mend and as each piece came together, the water washed away the pain before it could even register.

As Korra slowly moved her hands upwards, the bruising started to vanish from where her hands were around. The water seemed to stick to her palms as she did so. Climbing up was a slow process, one that required her concentration. Eventually, some of the bandages started to slide off to float in the water. When they did so, they were gently pushed out and wetly flopped onto the floor.]

Jim, how did you even get like this?

[Bones had his fair share of machines that helped and healed, but it's nothing like this. There's an artistry to the way she moves, and although he's braced for pain, the only thing he gets from the whole ordeal is a slight tingling sensation that makes him think of mints.

Getting over his innate desire to jerk away and snarl at her to leave it, the whole process is actually... kind of fascinating. And it feels good, not to have that pain. He releases a breath he didn't know he was holding and just leans back in the chair, letting her work.

What the hell is he going to tell Bones? The man's going to have a conniption fit. What's he going to tell Spock? His pulse is loud in his ears, and he identifies it as adrenaline. Peace wouldn't know what to do with you, Kyle had told him, and maybe it applied to this, too. He'd just gotten used to dealing with the pain, pushed himself to be at a hundred percent despite everything because he was a damned captain, and in this prehistoric age of things like casts and plaster, he wasn't going to complain. He hadn't even considered magic as a possible solution, because it wasn't even on his radar.]

I told you. Or do you want the gory specifics?

[He smiles, and although it's not quite genuine it's definitely showing off some of the relief he feels. He leans down conspiratorially, cups his hand near his mouth and in an elaborately dramatic stage-whisper says,]

It was over a girl.

[... not technically inaccurate. Kyle stepped in for Clara, and Jim got involved because Kyle did. Jim wasn't letting any of his people go into the darkness alone, and he never would if he could prevent it.]

[Korra actually paused to look up at him and dug a corner of her mouth as far into her face as it could go. Mostly to suppress the smile she wanted to give.]

That’s almost not funny.

[Korra continued to nurture and encourage the body's healing process, letting it’s potential unleash itself with assistance from her own chi instilled in the water she was bending.]

Guys always try to punch each other in the face and the stomach, because they’re the most open areas. You look pretty clean to me. Whoever did this to you wasn’t just trying to show off for a girl. They really wanted to hurt you.

[She had seen injuries from regular fights and they were usually light and easy to work with. This was hardly one of those. The wound was so isolated from the rest of his body, every conclusion she came up with didn’t add up.]

Why just your leg?

It was a couple weeks ago, back during Evandau's missions. Most of the rest of it's healed by now.

[He's forcing himself to sound patient, because he doesn't want to explain to a teenage girl the fact that this was just a precursor to the whole, you know, being tortured thing.

Her asking about it is making him think about it, and the adrenaline intensifies. He has to work his fingers into fists, to feel the pressure from his nails against his palm to keep himself from getting lost in the moment. He can still hear the crack, loud and audible in his ears. Funny how he heard it before he felt it break. Like his brain just hadn't caught up with it yet.]

Anyway. Believe it or not, this has nothing to do with why I'm here. I wanted to talk to you about Kyle's clinic.

You had some bad experiences there too...

[Said quietly with a fleeting look at at his hand which is fairly close to her eye level. Korra was sure what he was feeling wasn't too far off from how she felt when she had come home from Evandau's mission.

He was handling a lot better than she did.]

Could have fooled me, you haven't told me what I should be doing, why I should be doing it, and how everything I do has consequences. [She felt like she was under a microscope that had a line of people waiting to peer through. She purposely avoided looking at the console directly behind the chair Jim was in.]

I wish I knew about this [His leg.] sooner.

[With a deep sigh, she continued working the calming water up his leg, now more than halfway done, feeling that the bone was getting strong with each millimeter of mending that was going on under the flesh as the bruises continued to be washed away under the waters gentle movements.]

[He catches that quiet remark, re-orients on it almost immediately. It gives him something to think about that isn't... everything else. Maybe it's something he can solve or fix or help somehow, and that is by far the lesser of two evils.]

What happened on your mission?

[And then he grimaces, half-jerks his leg out of her hands at a sudden unfamiliar twinge.]

Look, I'm not going to lecture you. I know what it's like to lose your temper, trust me. But Kyle's a friend of mine and I think he'd appreciate an apology and what is going to happen to the plate she fused to the bone? That's going to need to get pulled out, right?

Well; we succeeded. [Her voice drops a few octaves and the corners of her lips twitch momentarily when she spoke. Whatever she was feeling did match the usual happiness that with victory. At all.]

An apology? He let Amon teach illegal chi-blocking in a clinic! When J-[Her scoff was filled with breath and disbelief, and she cuts herself short. That didn’t need to be brought up. Especially when she hadn’t even explained anything about Amon or his revolution on their world.

Her next words are free from it, guilt interspersed in her words.] I owe an apology to the patients that had to be relocated, that I know.

The plates, well I don’t know. I’m a healer, not a doctor. [A beat, and she moves her hands and the water back to his leg.]

I told you don’t move. I’m almost done, leaving it like it is might cause another fracture.

Korra.

[Jim's voice is firm, it's the same tone he uses when he's on the bridge of the Enterprise, in his captain's chair.]

Being here is a second chance for a lot of people. And chi-blocking isn't illegal in Keeliai. I'm sorry if this guy's hurt you somehow, but I trust Kyle's judgement. He's probably doing it so he's close enough to keep an eye on everything.

[Because Kyle takes too much responsibility for too many things, Jim's pretty sure it's not beyond him to take this on, too. Jim doesn't know much about Amon save what he's heard or been told, and they've never spoken, but winning Kyle's trust is a hard, uphill battle. He doesn't hand it out like candy.]

You burned down someone's home. I don't care about your reasoning, that warrants an apology. And maybe it might do you some good to listen instead of just lashing out, okay?

[He tempers his voice now with some gentleness as well. Because he's been there. Man has he been there. Only genius-level repeat offender in the Midwest, right? It weirds him out how similarly they react to things.

And then she uses the healer not a-- and he just. Presses his hand over his face and tries not to laugh. Why him.]

[Korra closed her eyes in forced patience, her lower lip jutting forward a bit.]

I’ll apologize to Soranik. It was her suite and she was the person I went to see in the first place. [That was her compromise.]

Besides, I don’t just run about town burning down buildings like a kid who just discovered matches. Things just, kind of collided. [Both internally and externally. Now able to finish the healing, his leg looked fairly normal. The water stopped glowing when she put it away, the room darkening from the absence of light. ]

What’s so funny?

[His barely restrained laughter wasn’t something she was expecting.]

Kyle's the one you hurt.

[It's a correction. He is Not Okay with your compromise, girl, and he's been a captain long enough to have a pretty good idea about how to wheedle and manipulate people into the compromise that works out best for him.]

Trust me, he's a good guy. He'll get why you did it, and he doesn't hold grudges. At least talk to him, okay? For me?

[HE WILL BAT HIS FUCKING PRETTY EYELASHES AT YOU IF HE HAS TO, KORRA.

When the light dims and fades off, Jim draws in a sharp breath and looks - actually looks down at the leg. The incision scars are still there, but they're faded, they look years old instead of just weeks, and the tingling that signified nerve damage across his toes is gone. Hell, he can wiggle his toes without searing pain and he rubs a hand across his mouth, then down to his neck where those ligature marks from the torture have faded and he just doesn't say anything at all for a moment, or move. Or do anything but sort of look faintly bemused, like someone's presented him with a puzzle he can't quite solve. Then, barely audible,]

Holy shit.

Hurt? [Oops.] He trapped me so I suffocated! That green ring wasn’t hurt AT ALL. The last time I was trapped like that, I had to escape or be delivered to Amon for him to take my bending away and then kill me!

[A torrent of words awash with emotion she had been keep locked up since telling Jack, all rising up from her gut at once. She was in a clinic that was one of Amon’s haunts, with a stranger she knew worked with him, and a boy she had a crush on was recovering while her arch-nemesis had been training an art specifically design against “her kind”. When it was all out of her, she was breathing deeply as if she had just sprinted the entire distance Jim had walked.]

…Sorry. I don’t know what to do about the plates. You should ask Soranik. I can heal the cuts she makes later.

[Guilt for lashing out him, who had always been good to her, made her shudder for a moment. Then she stood up to put the water in the sink when she saw his neck. Not about to let him tell her no to this as well, Korra tilted her head and leaned in to scrutinize.]

You didn’t have those scars last time I saw you, did you?

[I didn't mean physically, the argument is there in his mind, taking shape, but at the next bit, he stops. The rest of her words blank out in his mind, he couldn't have told her what she'd said even if she asked. Kyle suffocated her.

He hadn't heard that side of the story, and it makes him feel cold and sick and nauseous and it feels like water in his lungs and grayscale vision and burst capillaries and bruised eyes and just like that he's back in that room and kedan are holding him down and he's losing consciousness over and over and--

Jesus. Jesus. He has to remind himself to breathe and isn't that ironic. He shakes himself, looks up at her in time to see her lean down to study his neck and something in him snaps, cold and hard. He wants to not be here, the room's too small and Jim, who's never had claustrophobia in his life, suddenly wants the space and freedom and open air of Iowa.

His voice is harsh and a little rough when he replies,]

Drop it.

[Her focus entirely on his neck, Korra merely assumed the shake was because she was getting into his personal space. When she hears his tone, Korra also assumes it just in some retaliation to her raising her voice angrily.]

Don’t worry, I don’t bite and I won’t set you on fire. Did you even know you had these?

[Raising one of her hands from the water still held in the air, Korra reached out to touch one of them.]

Edited 2013-07-18 17:45 (UTC)

[And Jim catches her hand before she can touch him.]

Korra. I said drop it.

[Jim Kirk: serious as a heart attack, ladies and gents.]

[When he grabbed her hand, Korra is a little taken aback by his reaction. She didn’t try to wrest her hand from him, the look he had made balked her and Korra furrow her brow. First his leg and then suddenly this, Korra was starting to wish Jim had just been in a simple bar fight.]

But I was jus-

[She couldn’t think of any way to relate why he would be that serious when usually they had a sense of silliness and fun between them.

But, there was one thing that she had been very serious about recently too.]

Did your team do okay in the mission from Evandau?

[He released her hand, but as much as he should feel ashamed of himself for manhandling a teenager, he couldn't do it. She'd helped him, and he was being an ass, but some things... some doors, to borrow a metaphor, couldn't be opened this way.]

We did fine. Got a few good leads.

[He's pushing himself, to ease up, not sound quite so damaged. He's fighting to get his pulse under control after that bout of adrenaline and as grateful as he is for the fact she healed his leg, he isn't sure how much more of her company she can take.]

What about you? 'We succeeded' doesn't tell me much.

Neither does “We did fine.”.

[Korra sat down on the floor in front of the spinny-chair, forever renamed thanks to Toph, and the ball of water she held turned to ice. Setting in the ground next to her, Korra looked up at Jim. Giving him the look a scared child gave a nurse before they received their first shot, Korra just started:]

Our mission was to find out what the suspicious activity at the Quarry was. It was where the shell of Tu Vishan had been worn down. Our team of five were observing the kedan for a few weeks and when we tried to get into the shacks they had set up to get whatever evidence we could fine, we were attacked.

[Korra’s eyes drift to his neck and then she closes her eyes and takes a deep breath before opening them and continuing.]

One of the others got injured. Raimei, just above her knee. She couldn’t walk well, let alone run. Amelia was unconscious. That only left the other three of us. That’s when Another group of kedan showed up, they were arguing and it led into a fight. We were supposed to stop them, they began killing each other.

Hiding was all we could do. Just hide and watch.

[Grabbing her own throat and moving it around to loosen the knot that was growing, Korra’s voice trembled.A beat.]

Who I am.

[Korra looked down at her feet, her shoulders shaking.]

We succeeded because we brought the evidence. [The same tone she used earlier when asked about the mission.]

Hey.

[Just that word, to catch her attention, and then he reached out to grab her shoulder, fingers flexing a little. He's been there, a hundred times. But more importantly, he's seen other people there - his crew, his family - and no one deserves to be in that dark place, where they're questioning their own judgements and actions and running over the what-ifs in their mind.

He ducks his head, offers her a bit of a smile. She's too much like him and he's not enough like Pike, but maybe he can still salvage something here.]

You did what you could. That's all anyone can ask, ever. Don't be hard on yourself, all right? Learn from what happened, and do better next time.

[When he spoke, Korra instinctively looked up, both of her lips were between her teeth, clamping down on them to keep any emotions from the event bottles inside. She felt that to do so otherwise would somehow taint the carefree friendship they had. Both of them had been through events more serious than they played it off as, and admitting it would betray the kind of escape they created by bouncing off each other’s humor.

Nodding at his words, Korra let them sink in alongside Toph’s. They coincided, resonated, and reinforced the stableness Korra needed from them. Finally, she stopped clamping shut and her lips were white for a brief moment before the blood rushed the color back into them.]

Thanks.

…

We can drop it if you want. I just didn’t want you to be alone with it. [With the what-ifs and how-comes.] Talking about those kinds of things is the first step to getting over them.

[A lesson that had actually stuck with her.]

[That actually gets a genuine laugh, and he reaches up from her shoulder to ruffle her hair.]

Kid, I'm twenty-six. I think I got the memo.

[Or at least he likes to pretend he did. Jim's never talked about his issues if he can help it, and he isn't going to start. Her offer's... appreciated, sure, but he's never going to be That Guy who dumps his problems on a kid.]

But I appreciate the concern.

[Don't lose that.]

[The last person that had ruffled her hair like that had been her dad, and that actually gets a chuckle out of her.]

I’m seventeen, I’m not a kid. [Said in just the way all seventeen year old kids would say.]

Well I didn’t get a memo, it kind of tackled me out of nowhere.

[Technically a bolas snare out of the dark, but it was close enough for her.]

Hey, it’s what friends do, right? [As she does so, Korra picks up the ball of ice, refreezing it as she picks it up.]

Think fast! [Tossing a ball of frigid temperature just to break a serious moment should be an Avatar trait.]

[He catches the ice - of course he does, his reflexes are awesome, thanks - but doesn't throw it back. Instead, he turns it in his hand like a kid with a snowball.

He's never been a big fan of having things thrown at him, but this is play. She's trying to lighten the mood, and that (changes the connotations) makes a difference. He laughs, a little wry, and shakes his head.]

You could make a killing with this, man. Sell ice during the summer months.

[Giving a smile that lay somewhere between humor, fondness, and something else; Korra was strongly reminded of Jack with how he expertly handled the iceball. But then:]

What?

[That sounded completely absurd to Korra.]

Why would anyone buy ice? Why not just-

[They weren’t at the South Pole, it wasn’t just everywhere. Benders were not there to give simple services like that.]

Oh. OH. That’s brilliant!

[Side business for extra juulan on top of what fishing gave sounded incredibly good to Korra.]

I could purify water and freeze it! [She gave him an appraising look.] So what’s your job on the turtle; Business consultant?

Because it should be.

[Jim starts to laugh - it's an automatic response to her comment, but after a moment it turns real and a little bit of that Iowa farmboy bleeds through in the slightly abashed way he reaches up to scrub a hand through his hair.]

Maybe I'll look into it. Right now I'm just doing manual labour, it's-- [what he's used to, from back home] -- decent work.

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