pulling on your heart to push my luck

Deja-vu

I've always found that the worst nightmares are of mundane moments, the calm before the storm. Reliving a traumatic event in brutally vivid detail might not be easy, but it's manageable. As soon as you wake up you remember that because it's already happened you can't possibly be there anymore. You're elsewhere, safe now.

Likewise, nightmares that are bizarre are easy to brush off. There's no sense in panicking over something that would never happen. You'd never get eaten by a dragon, nor would you ever show up to school or work without a shirt on.

Deja-vu nightmares of the moments before disaster struck will make a fool of you. They start off nonthreatening, and in a dreamlike state it's easy to think that you've finally gotten what you've been wishing for ever since it happened: the chance to change the course of history. If you're back in that moment then that horrible, haunting thing is about to happen again. Maybe this time you can stop it.

That hope is quickly crushed by the realization that you're not living it at all. You're just watching it. The fact that it's already happened, that you're not there anymore, doesn't make you safe. How are you supposed to know that some other horrible thing isn't about to happen if you wake up to a place and time that's just as mundane?

There were some of these moments that I often hoped to dream of, that I was desperate to stretch out even further so I could prolong the experience. Something between slowing the action to enjoy it just a little longer and pushing the very borders of the scene out a little further, giving it more space so it can run on a little longer, but it never plays out the way you want it to. Either you wake up too soon or you relive it entirely. You never get to experience the other, preferable outcomes, not even in your own imagination.

There are two of these moments that play on repeat in my dreams that I always fall for, the first being the perfectly normal evening I had with Mom the night of her murder. We made dumplings for dinner, my father's favorite, but he called to say he wouldn't be home until much later and not to wait up for him. She let me sit in his seat at the head of the table, joking that someday my husband would sit there, and afterwards we listened to a pro-bending match on the radio. I usually stayed up with her, but that night I fell asleep on the couch before the match even ended. She must have carried me to my room without waking me, because I don't remember getting into my own bed or even saying goodnight to her.

Every single time, without fail, I find myself hoping to stay awake a little longer with her, but it never happens. I always wake up in reality as soon as I fall asleep in my dream, like the lights coming back on in a theater after the curtains close. Show's over. It's time to go, time to return.

The other scene wasn't mundane at all. Mako and Bolin were holding off the Red Lotus as I escaped with Korra. She was still looking for Aiwei in the Spirit World and we knew that moving her body might've made it more difficult for her to return, but those few minutes between fleeing the inn and being captured by the Earth Kingdom felt...good, at least to me. Maybe it's because I wasn't worrying about what might happen in the moment. Rationally, I knew we were in danger, but also I knew that Korra and I could handle whatever was next, and in my dreams I was curious. What would have happened if we didn't get captured? Would she have returned to find herself still in my arms?

Would I have gotten to hold her a little longer?

Now, finally, I had gotten what my sick self spent months wishing for and it didn't feel good at all. Here I was, struggling to keep a hold of her limp body without sliding off of Naga, who was sprinting at full speed. It was just as I had remembered, except this time I wasn't so sure we could actually handle this.

She came back last time. She came back every time. Still, I couldn't risk it. My eyes were fully focused on the tower of light, following it to the edge of the sky as I willed the entrance to finally peek over the horizon...it felt like hours had passed since we left Katara's. I tightened my grip around Korra, whispering in her ear that I was going to see her soon, no matter the realm. Spirit, physical, or in-between, I wasn't going to leave her behind.

My fear was that, if she had witnessed everything that happened in the past few days, she might not feel too compelled to reciprocate such devotion. I would gladly be stuck forever if it meant she could come back, it was the thought that she might have known that I had betrayed her trust, crossing boundary after boundary, that would've been an eternal punishment.

Soon the tip of the orbed entrance kissed the lowermost edge of the towering light as it finally emerged, and the trees surrounding it appeared one by one, then all at once. Naga barely slowed down as she dodged her way through the forest, making it even harder to stay on her back, but I was too focused on finding Korra to care. Finally, she approached the portal with a little more caution, skidding to a halt a small distance away. I flipped my legs over her side and slid down, turning and pulling Korra with me as I landed on my feet.

I struggled to drag her the rest of the way to the portal. She was still lifeless, my feet were slipping on the frozen snow and I wasn't strong enough to pick her up myself. Eventually I was close enough to reach both her and the portal at once, so I laid her down on her back and sat on my knees just in front of her, putting myself between the two. It was interesting, being sandwiched between two lifeless, yet very much alive, entities at once. I took one last look at her to check if her eyes had opened. They hadn't.

I looked back at the portal and lowered one hand just above hers, lifting the other and instinctively pausing when I felt my skin hum as I got closer. I'd been shocked countless times in the workshop, but nothing could have prepared me for what pure spiritual energy felt like. My finger only just brushed the glow of the light when I felt everything. All of the cells multiplying in my body, all the blood pumping through even the tiniest of capillaries, and the muscles and tendons stretching against my bones. Everything was happening all at once, culminating in a low drone that demanded to be felt. It wasn't overwhelming but it couldn't be ignored, either.

I braced myself and touched the tip of my finger to the portal itself and felt...nothing. I opened my eyes to confirm that my finger did indeed still exist while the cerulean haze of the portal buzzed along the skin of my arm, pulling all the little hairs up straight. I let my other fingers melt against the beam, then my palm, and lowered my other hand onto hers before closing my eyes again.