pulling on your heart to push my luck

Missing

There was a knock, followed by Tonraq's voice: "Korra? It's almost 11, you should-"

The pause in his sentence gave me the feeling that something wasn't right. But I was still half asleep, and I figured that Korra must have slept in, too. She would have been exhausted after returning so late. He was probably just surprised to find us both still sound asleep.

Then I remembered the note that I had left telling her to wake me up as soon as she had gotten back, and it hit me that she hadn't. Tonraq and I saw it at the same time. She was sitting in the same position as when I crawled into bed beside her, the note still undisturbed in her lap.

"Asami?"

"Tonraq, I can explain," I said as I scrambled out of bed and knelt on the floor in front of her. I waved my hand in front of her face. No response. No indication at all that she was even aware of our presence.

"What happened?" He asked.

"She wanted to try meditating into the Spirit World," I explained. "I promised her I'd watch over her body. I'm so sorry-"

Senna appeared in the doorway behind him and gasped at the scene she walked into. "Korra?"

The softness in her inflection stung. I had been welcomed into their home because they trusted me, because Korra trusted me, and now she had gotten lost on my watch. I couldn't even say anything. There was nothing I could say to make this better.

"She meditated into the Spirit World," Tonraq told her. "We don't need to panic yet, okay?"

I looked away from Korra, begrudgingly, and made eye contact with him. "Are you sure?"

"It's still early yet," he reassured us. "She's probably okay. If she's not back yet then she must be in the Spirit World."

"She hasn't been since Zaheer poisoned her," I said, as if we weren't aware of that already. "Do you think she actually made it this time?"

"I can't think of another reason she'd still be gone."

Senna pushed past him and sat on the floor next to me. "How long has she been gone for?"

"Only a few hours," I said. "It was pretty late last night. I tried to stay up until she came back but..." I glanced over my shoulder and saw my blueprints still strewn across her floor.

"Okay, let's keep an eye on her," Tonraq decided. "This is the first time she's been to the Spirit World in months. There's a good chance she just wants to make the most of it while she's there."

"Can she walk in the Spirit World?" Senna asked.

"If she meditated, then probably," Tonraq said. "If you physically go into the Spirit World you take your whole body with you, injuries and all, but if it's just your spirit-"

"You would probably be fine," I realized. This would have been the first time she could stand on her own two feet since Zaheer poisoned her. She was probably safe. She might have even been happy. "Korra said she met Iroh a couple times in the Spirit World," I continued, "he told her that he left his body behind when he felt he had lived out his life in the physical world. He was able to walk around just fine."

"We'll keep an eye on her, okay?" Tonraq said, rubbing Senna's shoulder. "If she's not back by the end of the day then we'll ask Katara what our next steps should be."

We spent the rest of the day trying to occupy ourselves while watching over Korra's body in shifts, except for Senna, who stayed in Korra's room all day, leaving only to retrieve an old scrapbook that she wanted to show me. It was getting late in the afternoon. Tonraq had gone to a council meeting in the center of town, and the three of us had agreed to bring Korra to Katara's if she wasn't back by the time he returned. Senna called me in from the kitchen, where I had been trying to focus on the blueprints I didn't finish the night beforehand.