The Rebellion Within

Chapter 25: Un día después del otro

August 1927.

(One year later)

Madrid had never looked more beautiful. Frankly, it probably looked the same as she had left it, but Asami hadn't seen the city in three years. Thinking about how much she missed it and trying to forget where she was standing, she attempted to enjoy the breeze as it hit her face with delicacy. The woman tilted her head up facing the sun forward and closed her eyes, swallowing the warmth that wasn't as suffocating as the one in the sands and the sun that had tanned her skin.

"Careful, Asami." The engineer opened one of her eyes to peek at her mother, who was doing the same thing she was. Yasuko opened her eyes and looked at her daughter with a small sad smile. "The sun might wrinkle that beautiful porcelain skin of yours." The deja vu hit her like a truck, but instead of smiling back like she did that morning, she took a deep breath.

"Mami..." Asami's eyes bore to the ones she inherited and felt her own watering. "The sun has already done its damage to it. It's silly to call my skin beautiful and porcelain at this point." She smiled sadly and Yasuko cupped her cheek, trailing the scar that now marked her face with a soft thumb.

"You're perfect to me, no matter what scars you have; both physically and emotionally. You'll always be perfect." The dam broke and Asami felt her body being pulled into a motherly hug. Yasuko always told her how perfect her daughter was to her, those words will always stick to Asami and always had. Since Yasuko laid eyes on her in the train station, she has been cautious as to mention any scars that the war had left in Asami. She would fill her daughter with kisses, buy her creams and ointments -at Asami's request for help- and fill her with praises as she did right now. Still, they didn't calm down the bundle of feelings in Asami's chest.

The engineer felt selfish because she hadn't lost as much as compared to others. Korra kept mentioning how this was unfair to herself, yet she couldn't help it; even Korra herself had lost way more. Still, she allowed her mind to wish that her reality was different. Buried in the sea of black clothing and military uniforms, Asami didn't think that she'd be back to where this all started with such different circumstances. Today wasn't Asami's birthday, today she wouldn't fear her mother's arguing about her not responding to the mass, today Hiroshi wouldn't tell them they were late for breakfast, and today she wouldn't decide to leave everything behind and enter a war as if it was a field trip.

Today they buried a wooden decorative box.

Why decorative?

There's nobody in it.

Asami felt her sobs quiet down and straightened up from her mother's embrace.

She wished they could've gotten this symbolic ceremony over with a year ago after the war was won, but the high ranks didn't let most of the military leave until last month after Morocco was officially declared "peaceful". Only the injured left and some even had decided to stay in the care of the nurses that they came to love and appreciate. The assigned troops that stayed under orders were there to extinguish the remaining flames of the Rebellion after Abd-el-Krim turned himself in to the French; flames that still believe in their cause. The day that the news got to Tetuán that the war was over, though, was a train wreck. That day was so vivid in her mind, the memory seeming so recent, that she could recall every detail from it. That's when everything changed.

May 27th, 1926

There was something about the day that was simply odd, no one could place it and everyone seemed on edge at the sudden ability to just...breathe. These past six months have taken a lot out of everyone. From the hospital collapse to the suffocation of the strangling war...to the base getting the news that the camp the Spanish Legion was situated on got attacked... How was breathing even possible? Asami was never a woman of much faith, no matter how many times she went to church with her parents on Sunday. In fact, she was sure that being here in Morocco had broken the last little faith she had left. However, she found herself often praying...praying that the camp that was attacked wasn't the one Korra and the boys were located on.