Work Text:
Korra's New Year's Resolutions
1) Finally learn how to drive – it can't be that hard, right? (Edit June 14th: I was wrong. It's IMPOSSIBLE.)
2) Tell my parents I'm bi (Edit March 11th: Accomplished. They weren't that surprised.)
3) Figure out how to get a job in this town in the middle of nowhere. (Edit May 4th: Still a work in progress. 'Nothing happens here' may as well be the neighbourhood motto.)
4) Confirm my theory about the mansion being haunted.
Korra smiled down at the paper. She didn't normally plan for things, but her friends had convinced her to at least write something down this year, and sure, maybe only one thing had been accomplished so far, but that changed today. She clicked the end of her ballpoint like she was doing something momentous, and set it to the paper to add another note:
4) Confirm my theory about the mansion being haunted. (Edit August 10th: Mission begins today!!)
It had been years since she'd first come up with that theory. Everyone assumed it was a joke, because after all, who didn't make that joke about a creepy abandoned mansion? But Korra remembered what she'd seen. She'd been thirteen then, and she and her friend Bolin had gone on an 'adventure' in the woods behind the town. They'd got more than a little lost, and stumbled around trying to get Google Maps to work, and they'd found their way out of the woods on the wrong side entirely.
And sure, when Bolin saw the huge building, standing unkept and abandoned and surrounded by overgrown grounds, he also theorised that it was haunted. But he let it go after a little while. Korra, though? No, she had an actual reason for her theory. And today, she was going to prove it. She was going to find her way there and look for the face she'd seen in the window.
It wasn't like she hadn't tried before. Her parents had expressly forbidden her from going back there after Bolin accidentally told them what had happened, and that had been enough of a deterrent for a few years. Then, when she was sixteen, she'd tried again, but she just ended up getting horribly lost in the woods and having to call her dad to come and find her.
And not long after that, there was her accident, and the time afterward, and she didn't like to think about that time, but suffice it to say that ghosts were the furthest thing from her mind.
But this year. This year she was nineteen, and she was feeling much better, mentally and physically, and was getting used to managing some of the chronic effects of What Happened, and she'd made the resolutions in an attempt to get her life back on track.
And sure, maybe most people's definition of 'getting one's life on track' did not include 'prove the existence of a ghost you saw when you were thirteen' but most people weren't Korra, and she was determined to finally accomplish it. If nothing else, at least she'd be able to say “I told you so”, and maybe it was immature, but she couldn't pretend that thought didn't bring her some satisfaction. After all, it's usually nice to be proven right.
She set out through the woods at around eleven that morning, her phone fully charged, and a paper map of the area in her hand, just in case, because even Google didn't know the woods as well as the local community did.
She walked for about an hour, thankful for the deep shade the trees provided, because it was shaping up to be another hot day. She was pretty sure she should have reached the mansion by now, and she was trying to deny the fact that she might be lost.
She rounded a corner into a little clearing in the woods. For a moment, all she noticed was that she would surely have remembered the place if she'd been here before, which meant she was on the wrong track. Then she abruptly registered that she wasn't alone.
There was a girl in the clearing. She was sitting on a tree stump, her head bent low over what looked like a sketchbook, her face mostly hidden by a waterfall of black hair. Her clothes looked like she'd bought them from an expensive vintage store, and she was clearly too focused on her work to have noticed Korra's approach.
Korra froze there for a moment, hovering awkwardly at the edge of the clearing. She felt like she was intruding somehow, and considered finding a way past that didn't involve disturbing the stranger. But there was no way around it, she had to cut through here, and it would be way creepier for her to sneak off without alerting this girl to her presence, right? So she stepped forward into the clearing, letting a twig crack under her foot to give the girl a heads up that there was someone else here.
The stranger started a little and then looked up, and Korra's heart gave a little jump, because damn, she was pretty. Bright green eyes, immaculate make-up, her hair shining a little even in the shade of the trees. She couldn't have been much more than twenty or so. Something about her felt almost... familiar, but Korra was pretty sure she would remember a girl who looked like that.
Her admiration quickly turned to wariness, though, because the way the girl was looking at her was decidedly... odd. She was watching Korra like she was a TV program, or an interesting plant she was studying, and not a person who could see when she was being stared at. She didn't move, or say anything in greeting, just kept looking, until Korra couldn't stand it any longer.
“Um, excuse me? Do I have dirt on my face or something?”
The girl jumped. Not the little start she'd given when Korra first appeared, but an actual jolt, like she was having a heart attack. Her green eyes opened wide and her lips parted into a little o of surprise. “Are you talking to me?” she asked, like it was impossible, and fuck, even her voice was pretty.
“Um, yeah, isn't that obvious? Who else do you see around here?”
The girl looked dazed. “No-one, I suppose. It's just that...” she sighed. “Never mind. Sorry. If it helps, you don't have dirt on your face. You actually look...” she trailed off again.
Korra raised her eyebrows. “I look what, Mystery Girl?”
“Asami. My name's Asami. And I was going to say you look... nice.” She shook her head a little, like she was as freaked out by this whole conversation as Korra was, which made zero sense because Korra wasn't the one acting weird.
Also, this girl thought she looked nice? Korra stowed that observation away because no, she was not about to start crushing on a stranger she'd met in the woods. That sounded like a surefire way to get murdered.
Speaking of which, she was meant to be looking for a ghost.
“Um, thanks, Asami. My name's Korra, in case you were wondering.” There was a pause, and then Korra added, “Well, I'd better get on. You know.”
“Wait!” The girl – Asami – looked abruptly panicked. More than panicked, she looked almost terrified, and her hand reached out involuntarily like she wanted to catch Korra's arm, even though there was still several feet of space between them. “Don't go yet, please. It's been so long...”
Korra was getting progressively more confused. “Not really. We've only been talking for two minutes or something.”
“I know, I didn't mean...” Asami trailed off again. It seemed to be a habit with her, like she was swallowing down the words she really wanted to say. “I'm sorry. I must seem really... strange. It just gets lonely, I guess.”
“You spend a lot of time out here, then?”
“You could say that.”
Korra frowned, thinking it over for a moment. Sure, this girl was definitely odd, and sure, she was a stranger and they were in the woods, which was a typical horror movie set-up, but she didn't seem threatening. She seemed sad, and lonely, and afraid. And if it came to it, well, Korra was a good fighter. And she'd come prepared. So maybe the value that could be gained from having someone who knew the woods to help her outweighed the risk.
She made her decision. “Okay, so you know the area, and you don't want me to leave. I'm looking for something, but I seem to be lost. Think we could help each other out?”
Asami's eyes shone like a kid's at Christmas, and she was so beautiful when she smiled that it almost physically hurt. Nope, Korra, no, she chastised herself. This is objectively a logical plan, and has nothing to do with her being hot. NOTHING.
“Of course! What are you looking for?”
“There's an old mansion somewhere around here that's like, super abandoned and creepy. Seen anywhere like that?”
The joy drained out of Asami's face like water washing down the sink. She looked, for want of a better phrase, like she'd seen a ghost. Which she presumably hadn't, otherwise Korra's search would be over. “W-why do you want to go there?”
“I've been telling my friends for years that it's haunted. Figured it was time I got some proof.”
“You mean... you've seen someone in there?” Asami asked.
“Yeah, six years ago. Why, have you?”
Asami bit down on her lip like she was considering something. Her eyes flicked to Korra, then away, and a terrible sadness filled them, the kind that never belonged in the eyes of someone so young. She sighed and seemed to come to a decision. “Yes. I've seen her.”
“Her?”
“The girl in the house.”
“Okay. Great! So, want to come find her?”
“No!” Asami said, too loudly. Then... “I mean, I don't think she'll be there. It was a while ago. She's probably moved on, or something.”
“So? Can't hurt to look, right?” Korra asked, frowning at her companion. Something was off about this whole thing. There was definitely something Asami wasn't telling her, and logically, Korra should probably be running hard in the other direction. But this girl intrigued her way too much for her to go without finding out more. Oh, and she needed a lead on the house, of course! Mainly the house. Not the pretty girl. Right.
“I... I guess not.” Asami stood up, closing her sketchbook and stowing it under her arm. “Come on. It's this way.”
She started walking in a diagonal line, at a roughly 90 degree angle to the direction Korra had been estimating. Well, you lived and learned.
Korra kept a few paces behind Asami, watching her carefully. This was already a bad idea, but Korra told herself that at the first sign of anything worse, she'd back out and run. She might not be as fast as she had been before What Happened, but she could still get a good pace going, and if her back hurt afterward, well, that was better than getting killed by the prettiest girl she'd ever met.
They'd been walking for maybe fifteen minutes when Asami came to a halt. In front of them was a large opening in the trees, and beyond it, a crumbling wall hemmed in a lawn overgrown with tangles of weeds, stretching up to the facade of the house.
“You found it!” Korra said, enthusiastic. “That's amazing! Thank you!”
Asami turned to her, a sad smile on her face. “You're welcome. Now you've seen it, can we go?”
“What? No! I'm looking around, obviously. Wanna come with?”
Asami bit down on her lip again and sighed. “All right.”
The front garden yielded no results. It was tangled with thickets of brambles and grass that reached up past Korra's waist. For all her reluctance, Asami seemed to have an easier time navigating. Korra tripped at least five times and had scratches all over her arms and legs by the time they reached the door of the house. It was huge, heavy and wooden, with a rusting iron lock that looked to be still intact. Korra turned away from it and scanned the sides of the house, searching for a window.
“What are you doing?” Asami asked.
“Finding a window we can get in through.”
“What?” The fear in Asami's voice was evident. “No! Don't go in there!”
“Why not?” Korra asked, turning to her. Asami's hands were clasped tightly against her heart and she was looking at Korra with an imploring expression. “We're hardly trespassing. No-one's lived here in, like, a hundred years.”
“Ninety-six, technically,” Asami amended quietly.
Korra's heart thumped hard against her ribcage like it was trying to tell her something, and she felt a cold sensation trickle down her spine. “How do you know?”
“I... my family... we... knew the people who lived here.”
“You're kidding me.”
“No. My grandfather was friends with the daughter of the man who owned the house.” That terrible sadness was back in Asami's eyes. “They met because their parents both... worked in engineering. Car manufacturing, and other innovations like that. But the man who lived here... he was working with some bad people. He made a deal with them that went wrong. And his daughter got caught in the crossfire.”
“She died?” Korra asked, her eyes wide.
Asami looked at the ground. It was clear these people had really meant something to her family. “Yes. She did. And the man fled the country to get away from everything he'd done. His family was powerful, they had connections, and they managed to cover it up. Put it about that he'd died, too, faded into obscurity, and left this house to rot. These days, most people wouldn't know his name.”
“But you do?” Korra asked.
“Please,” Asami said, not answering her question. “Please don't go in there. Bad things happened in that house. I don't want them to destroy you, too.”
Something was definitely very, very wrong, but Korra had come this far, and she wasn't about to give up. “Asami, that story is terrible, and I'm so sorry your grandfather lost his friend like that, but... that stuff all happened a century ago. There's no way it can hurt me now. And I need to find answers. I need to know.”
Why are you so obsessed with this? a voice asked her. It sounded oddly like her ex-boyfriend, Mako, who'd said something similar to her at New Year, when she wrote down her fourth resolution.
Shut up, Korra told the voice. This, having a mission, helped keep her from thinking about things she didn't want to think about. And she wanted to be proven right because she wanted to trust herself again, trust her instincts and her memory. Her therapist had told her that building trust was an important part of healing from trauma, after all. And sure, maybe she wouldn't have recommended searching for ghosts as a trust-building process, but she'd also said that it was important for each person to heal in their own way.
She took a deep breath and headed for the window at the side of the house. “I'm doing this, Asami. You don't have to come with me. Thanks for all your help.”
Asami didn't answer, but she came to stand beside Korra all the same.
The windows were old, rotting out of their frames, and it wasn't hard to force one of them open. Korra didn't even have to break any glass. She squeezed in through the gap and looked around.
She was standing in an entrance hall, high-ceilinged and ornate, dust drifting in the air. She coughed, batting the motes away from her face. It didn't help much. There was some kind of fancy shoe rack near the door, but it was empty.
There were pictures hung on the walls, stiff looking portraits, and Korra headed over to inspect one. It depicted an older man with black hair, dusted with streaks of grey. His eyes were a dark brownish colour, almost maroon, and he wore round glasses. Korra wondered if he was the man who'd lived here. If he was the one who'd made some shady business deal and got his daughter killed. The thought made her want to tear down the painting and burn it.
“Hey, Asami, do you know who this was?” she asked.
“I'm not sure.” Asami's voice came from right behind her, and Korra's heart almost turned over. She hadn't heard the other girl's approach at all.
“Shit, way to sneak up on me!”
“I'm sorry,” Asami said softly. “Can we move on?”
“Wait a second.” Korra moved along to the next painting. Another older guy, similar to the last, maybe his father or brother or something. She studied it for a moment before moving on to the next. Or where the next should have been. But instead of a painting, there was just an empty hook, and a faint shadow on the wall where something must have been hanging. Korra would have thought that by now, the light from outside would have bleached the wall in that place the same colour. Strange for the shadow of the painting to linger after ninety-six years.
Korra put it out of her mind and glanced around at the other paintings. They were all similar, stiff portraits of old-fashioned looking men and occasionally women. She turned away from them and headed for the stairs. The window she'd seen the face at had been on the second floor, and that seemed as good a place to start as any.
The staircase had probably once been magnificent, grand and curving, but it was rotting now, and she stepped as carefully as she could. Asami followed her up, never once stumbling on the creaking stairs. A few times, Korra looked round to check she was still there, because her footsteps were so silent that it was hard to tell.
They finally reached a landing that branched out into several rooms, any one of which was practically the size of Korra's entire house. She opted for one of the ones which faced the front garden, because after all, that was where she'd been when she'd seen her ghost.
Asami followed her, still silent. Her shoulders were hunched, her hands still clasped against her chest tightly. Korra couldn't tell if she was scared or sad or something else, but whatever it was, she found herself wishing she could hug the other girl, hold her tightly and take a little of whatever burden she was carrying off her shoulders.
“Are you sure you're okay?” she asked. “I don't mind if you want to wait outside. Or go home or whatever. You don't have to stick with me if you don't want to.”
Asami shook her head. “I want to. I can't... I can't really go home.”
That was more than a little concerning. “You mean, right now, or like... ever? I don't want to pry into your business or anything, but if you need help...”
Asami smiled at her like her heart was broken. “It's a little too late for that. But... I'm not in danger. I promise.”
It was a strange way to phrase it, and Korra felt another chill go down her spine, like her body was warning her of something her mind hadn't caught up to yet.
She brushed it off and opened the closest door.
The room on the other side was oddly clean. No more dust hung in the air than there was in Korra's own house, and the furniture, whilst outdated, looked like someone had been giving it at least some care. The bed was made, with blankets that were neither rotted nor dusty, although it didn't look like anyone had slept there in a long time. A stately desk sat on one side of the room, and scattered across the top were sketchbooks, and sheets of paper that looked like they might be blueprints.
Korra frowned. Why wasn't there dust on every surface in this room, the way there was in the entrance hall? It looked like someone had been here recently, maybe even today.
She turned to ask Asami if she was sure this place was uninhabited, but Asami wasn't behind her any more. She was standing at the far window, looking out into the garden, like she was mirroring Korra's ghost, on that day six years ago.
Like she was mirroring Korra's ghost.
Korra's heart realised it before her mind did, jolting in her chest like she'd been struck by lightning. Her brain caught up a second later.
The way Asami had looked at her in the woods, like she'd been surprised Korra could see her.
Her words. It's been so long...
The way she knew so much about the people who'd lived in the house, and the pain in her voice as she talked about them.
The painting in the hallway, newly missing from its hook.
Her soundless footsteps.
And the familiarity of her face, a face Korra had seen before, a blurry brief glimpse at an upstairs window, not enough for her to match up the pieces until this moment. A face she'd been looking for since she was thirteen.
Asami was Korra's ghost.
Korra had been quiet for a strangely long time. Asami turned to look at her, and if her heart was still beating, it would have stopped for a moment at the look on Korra's face. The fear that hadn't been present once, not when she ran into a stranger in the woods, not when she boldly broke into a house to search for ghosts, was now written plainly in her eyes. Until that moment, Asami thought there was nothing worse than being unseen by everyone. But this was worse. Being looked at like that.
She tried to find her voice, to speak, to reassure Korra, because she's been so lonely for so long, and then suddenly this girl came along, all bright eyes and scarred hands and curiosity, and she saw Asami. She looked straight at her and spoke to her and heard what she said in return, and Asami didn't know how that was possible, but she didn't want to lose it. The idea of being alone again terrified her more than anything ever had.
So she searched for words, but Korra beat her to it.
“The girl who died here... she wasn't your grandfather's friend, was she? She was you.”
“Korra...” Asami reached her hand out, but for the first time since they met, Korra backed away from her. Backed up until she hit the opposite wall, her eyes wide with fear.
“This whole time, it was you. And you spun me some bullshit story so you could, what? Lure me back here? What were you planning to do with me, huh?”
“Nothing,” Asami said, and her voice splintered on the word. I can't lose this, I can't lose this, I can't lose this. “Nothing, Korra, I swear. I didn't want to bring you here. I tried to warn you. But you were so insistent, and... and I should have just let you go, let you try and find your own way and find nothing because I wouldn't be here. But I didn't want to lose you. Ninety-six years. I wasn't lying about that. You're the first person I've spoken to in ninety-six years. And I thought if I told you...” Tears stung her eyes and ran down her cheeks. “If I told you, then you'd run. And I can't be alone again, I can't, I'm not brave enough for that, I'm not and I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. Please, don't go. Please. I can't...” She couldn't speak anymore. She crumpled to her knees on the floor, and she could barely feel it. She could barely feel anything unless she made herself corporeal, and she'd learnt long ago how much that sapped her energy, and how little it helped.
She could barely feel anything except what she felt in her heart. She'd been hopeless for so long, and she'd got used to that pain, a steady ache. But now, to have hope again, to find it in a stranger's eyes for an hour or so, and then to have it torn away from her? That was so painful she couldn't stand it. As painful as the day she'd died.
And she sat there on the floor and hid her face and sobbed as if her un-beating heart was broken. She heard footsteps, and she knew that was it. Korra was leaving. For all her talk of wanting to find a ghost, she hadn't really been prepared for one.
“Hey.”
Asami kept her face hidden. She was sure she was imagining the voice, the way she imagined her mother's sometimes, comforting her on her worst nights.
“Asami, hey, look at me.”
She didn't want to, she didn't want to look up and see the emptiness where Korra had been.
Something touched her shoulder. Which was impossible. Nothing could touch her unless she made herself corporeal, and even then, it was only objects. A person couldn't ever touch her. She'd tried it before, tried to grab onto the arm of a stranger in the woods. He'd brushed at his sleeve like a fly had landed there, but that was all.
But this touch was steady, and warm, and it wasn't going away. “Asami, please. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm scared, but I want to work this out. I don't want you to be alone.”
I don't want you to be alone.
Asami opened her eyes. Korra's face was just a few inches from hers, her eyes wide and still afraid, but filled with something else, too. Compassion. Concern. Kindness. So much kindness.
“You didn't leave,” Asami whispered. Korra shook her head. “You didn't leave,” she said again, unable to believe it.
Before she could think about it, she threw herself at Korra and clung to her, as tightly as she could. And Korra hesitated for a moment, before her arms closed around Asami in return, holding on like she didn't want to let go either.
And this was real. Korra was real, and Korra could see her, hear her, touch her, when no-one else could.
“I'm sorry, I'm so sorry,” Asami said again. “Please don't go.”
“I'm not,” Korra said softly, and there was a catch in her voice too, but she sounded sure. “I promise.”
Over the next few weeks, Korra and Asami met almost every day. Every time Korra arrived, Asami's eyes widened with incredulity, like she couldn't believe that Korra would really come back. And every time she left, Asami followed her as far into the woods as she could go, and watched her out of sight.
Korra learnt that Asami's full name was Asami Sato, and that she'd died in 1926, not long after her twentieth birthday. She didn't elaborate on exactly what or who had killed her, and Korra would never ask. All she knew was that she'd been right to want to burn that portrait.
She learnt that Asami had been at the mansion ever since the day she died. If she tried to go more than a mile away in any direction, she'd find herself waking up in the halls of the house, unable to remember what had happened in between.
No-one could see or hear or touch her, except Korra, and neither of them had any idea why.
Asami didn't know if she was still here for a reason or not, but she'd long since given up on trying to find that one magic thing that would let her move on into whatever came after this. She was sure it didn't exist, and that she'd be stuck as a ghost until the end of the world.
Asami said she didn't mind that so much, if she got to see Korra.
In return, Korra told Asami about her own life. Her friends and her parents and her dog, Naga. How she'd been obsessed with ghosts since she was thirteen years old.
She even told her a little about her accident, how one moment everything had been fine and the next it wasn't, and she woke up in the hospital with two broken legs, damage to her spine, and a terror that hadn't gone away. How she'd been doing better since she got into therapy and started relearning how to trust the people around her, but it would be a while before she felt 100% okay again.
And Asami listened, and she never once made Korra feel like the things she felt were invalid just because her problems were maybe smaller than, oh, being actually dead.
Sometimes they talked about lighter things, too. Korra introduced Asami to all the aspects of the modern world that she'd only been able to get glimpses of, and within a couple of weeks, Asami had figured out more about the engineering behind phones and computers than Korra ever had, because it turned out that Asami had loved that stuff ever since she was alive, building things and engineering and the science behind it all.
The first time Korra ever made Asami laugh, she felt like her heart was going to explode with joy. Asami's laughter sounded almost rusty, like she hadn't laughed in a long time, and when Korra asked, Asami told her she didn't think she'd laughed since the day she died. After that, Korra made it her mission to make Asami laugh as much as she could.
All this, and what had initially grown from find the ghost, to shit the ghost is very sad and very pretty, fast became the ghost is my best friend, and maybe I'm a little in love with her.
And it turned out that even when the person you were crushing on was a ghost, it was just as hard to tell them how you felt about them.
So Korra found out that crumpled piece of paper that had started it all.
Korra's New Year's Resolutions
1) Finally learn how to drive – it can't be that hard, right? (Edit June 14th: I was wrong. It's IMPOSSIBLE.)
2) Tell my parents I'm bi (Edit March 11th: Accomplished. They weren't that surprised.)
3) Figure out how to get a job in this town in the middle of nowhere. (Edit May 4th: Still a work in progress. 'Nothing happens here' may as well be the neighbourhood motto.)
4) Confirm my theory about the mansion being haunted.(Edit August 10th: Mission begins today!!) (Edit August 11th: MISSION ACCOMPLISHED!! The ghost is very cute.)
Korra smiled down at the paper. She didn't normally plan for things, but this time, it had paid off. She clicked the end of her ballpoint because this time, this really did feel momentous, and set it to the paper to add on a final item to her list.
Edit, September 2nd: (it's not New Year's anymore but who cares)
5) Confess to the ghost I found in the haunted mansion that I might be falling in love with her.