Surprise sequel chapter! I couldn't get this story out of my head and wrote this follow-up before deciding there was actually a long-form story tucked away in here. After this, I ditched these two chapters, worked out plot/motivations/everything, and started over from scratch. This became my story 'A Crooked House.' Even though it has some major differences from this, I like both versions of the story and think these two chapters stand well on their own.

Sometimes he longed for the first days, when he had been able to pass the time in simple unconsciousness. Now sleep is a rare gift and he spends hours each night staring at the ceiling, barely aware of when he dozed off and slipped back into wakefulness. In the days he watches the door. Servants moved in and out of the apartment occasionally, but they made no attempt to address him and he could not muster the energy to address them. They were afraid of him, that was plain enough. Often it was easiest to close his eyes and feign sleep so he didn't have to see the frightened sideways looks as they walked through his room. When they were gone he would watch the door again, waiting for her.

Korra did not talk much more than the servants at first, but as the days passed on she moved from simply answering his questions to casually addressing him. After he had learned of the loss of his arm, she had made an effort to fill the heavy silence with easy conversation. He still wasn't able to do much better than mumble through the burns, but focusing on forming the words with stiff, uncooperative lips was a welcome distraction from the pain that even drugs could not fully dull. When she'd pieced together the story of how he'd washed up on the shore burned almost beyond recognition, he thought she relaxed a bit more and even looked at him with a touch of admiration.

She told him that almost two days had passed between when Amon disappeared and when he was found on the shore just outside the city. When his rescuers had brought him to the healers and he'd been recognized, they didn't let him die but nobody stepped forward to do any more. The wounded soldiers of the Navy needed more healers than they had, so nobody spared any energy for the traitor bloodbender. Unfortunately, that delay meant that his recovery would be longer, more painful, and less complete than it would have otherwise been. He could see the scarring that covered his remaining arm and guessed that the rest of his body didn't look much better.

She came to heal him and talk to him at least once a day, and after a while she guessed that he should be able to sit upright. He rolled to his side and struggled to push himself up on his elbow, but his head swam and he nearly collapsed to the side of the bed. She caught him gently by the shoulders and slipped under his arm to ease him up slowly. She sat there on the bedside to support him as he closed his eyes and breathed deeply, focusing on not passing out. When he had steadied she asked if she could treat his back. He'd scarcely felt the pain there before, but as he shifted it burned and ached like the rest of his body.

She turned to kneel on the edge of the bed, still supporting him with an arm across his chest. She watched over his shoulder as she bent water from the bowl on the bedside table and moved it over his wounds. A blessed coolness followed her hands as she worked and he slumped forward again, this time more from relief than from pain. As he held onto her waist for support, she apologized that she'd been afraid about moving him too much in the early days, so she hadn't been able to heal his back very well. When she finished, he felt better than he had since the explosion.

He was exhausted, but she persuaded him to stay sitting long enough to change his clothes and bandages. He should have felt embarrassed at the way she stripped him down, but he was too tired to do more than focus on not falling over. Before she redressed his wounds, she got the bowl of water and a sponge. She carefully washed him off, moving especially gently over the worst of the scars. As soon as she'd applied fresh poultices and bandages, she slipped under his shoulder again to ease him back down to the bed. As he relaxed she took the fingers of his hand, massaging them and slowing moving them back and forth, stopping whenever she felt him tense with pain. She spoke without needing an answer, explaining the different aspects of burn treatment and the steps they would take to his recovery. He listened, but as he began to fall asleep the words ran together in his head. His last memory before he drifted off was the soothing murmur of her voice as she carefully treated his hand.