Archive of Our Own

The crack under the closed door remained dark, and the house remained silent.   

Since the day after the funeral Asami had woken up an hour before the sun, sitting at her desk (a half-sized version of the one her father had in his office, as nothing else would do for her fourth birthday present, she had insisted) and reading, drawing, and thinking until Yuki, her nanny, came to wake her. She loved Yuki like a grandmother but her rough Earthbender hands, gruff voice, and penchant for not speaking unless absolutely necessary made Asami miss her mother even more. She also never did Asami’s hair quite right.

It was after two days of eating breakfast with Yuki at the table she had shared with her parents every morning since she could remember that Asami asked if it was okay if she ate her breakfast at her desk in her room.

“Unless Daddy is coming to eat with us too?” 

“Your father left early this morning, Miss Sato. An emergency at the factory. He will be home later. Now, please eat.” 

So she did. 

The next day Yuki entered the room with the sun, placing a plate of toast spread thickly with passionfruit jam on top of some of the papers strewn across her small desk. A steaming cup of tea joined it shortly thereafter, leaving a light green crescent in the middle of the Satomobile braking system she had just finished tracing from her book, and then left the room wordlessly.

Asami cried when the door to her bedroom was shut again with a soft click.

She fed her toast to the birds that sat outside her window, watched the sun rise, and then got back to her books. She didn't drink her tea. 

By the time the cold dread had gripped her stomach on the sixteenth day Asami woke without her mother she had already changed into oil-stained clothes, pulled her comb through her hair, and was grabbing papers off her desk and rolling them into a tube before slowly and silently slipping out of her room. 

She crept through the estate, the occasional floorboard squeaking under her small booted feet, pausing only to run her hand over the painted-over scorch marks that had marked the hallway near the library, and to press her nose against the glass door of her mother’s sewing room. It had been shut since her father returned from the hospital to tell her that her mother wouldn’t be coming home. 

Drawing in a deep breath against the glass pane, Asami tried to smell the fabric and the perfume her mother wore, hear the gentle humming of songs she never knew the name of that had filled the room just a couple weeks before. Nothing.

Asami swallowed the lump in her throat, rubbing the twin dots of condensation off the glass, and continued outside and around the house to her father’s workshop.

The plans were simple, she reasoned as she held a pencil between her teeth while she spread out the roughly drawn schematics on the work table and weighed them down with scrap metal blocks. She had been her father’s assistant many times in the same workshop, working on much more complex projects than a basic wood table. In fact her father had been introducing her to the Republic City elite as Future Industries next CEO for a year now, proudly clapping her on the shoulder as he told them how she knew how to disassemble a Satomobile engine before she knew the alphabet. Asami exhaled with a smile ghosting across her lips. It was true, even though she could tell from their acquaintance's eyes that none of them really believed him.

“Focus, Asami.” She whispered to herself as she brought her attention back to her papers. 

She measured, marked, cut, planed, and tapped wooden pieces into place over the next few hours, stilling whenever she thought she heard someone approaching the workshop door. 

“Don't be so silly. No one’s there.” Asami’s small voice echoed in the workshop. 

It wasn’t even as if she was breaking any rules outright, she thought to herself. Her father hadn’t told her directly that she wasn’t to go into his workshop, or not to use his tools, or not to touch the wood scraps that were piled in the corner of the shed. Of course, he also hadn’t said much of anything to her over the past few days because of all the emergencies at his factories. 

Besides, she thought as she was sanding the rough edges of the table, this is going to help. One he saw it, he wouldn’t be mad. 

Small green eyes crinkled in concentration as she backed across the shop to survey the wooden structure. She tilted her head to the right, crossing her arms and tapping a small finger to her chin while she considered it.

"Almost there.”

She grabbed a few more tools and returned to work, the sun rising fully and the morning wearing away without Asami taking any notice. Birds chirped, the city below the Sato estate slowly came to life, and all Asami could see were load-bearing points, precise angles, wood grain, and puffs of sawdust floating to the floor as small lips blew air across joints. 

She had been so careful all morning to listen for the sound of approaching feet that would warn her to clear up the tools and hide, but the excitement that filled her when she saw that she had in fact had created a perfectly level the table on her first try had completely distracted her listening for the crunching of heavy boots on the gravel path to the workshop and the desperate calling of her name. 

Her mother had called it “occupational tunnel vision”, laughing lightly whenever she startled Asami with a gentle hand on her shoulder while she was drawing or reading, having called her name several times with no answer. “Oh dear. Five years old and you’re almost as bad as your father."

She was brushing the last of the sawdust onto the floor with a wide smile when the workshop door whipped wide open, framing her wide-eyed father in morning light. Asami dropped the sandpaper she was holding, freezing.

“Asami! What are you doing in here?! Everyone has been looking for you!” He was angrier than she had seen him be in a long time, rushing over to her, his clothes and face covered in oil and a wild look in his eyes, “What are you d-“ 

He paused as he got closer to Asami, noticing the tools littered around her and the small wooden dining table that she had shuffled behind slightly as he approached. 

He ran his fingers over the seams of mismatching pieces of wood, the dovetail joinery of the table legs, and then turned the levelling instrument sitting on the tabletop to face him. His eyes fell down to Asami when he saw the bubble inside rest perfectly in the centre of the tool. A silence filled the space between them.

“It’s... for us, for breakfast - see?” Asami whispered while gesturing to what she had built, terrified, but sure that if he only understood that he wouldn’t be so mad. “...Sato-family sized."

They cried together on the workshop floor beside the two-person dining room table. 

She received no punishment. 

The next morning, a quiet knock startled Asami as she was pouring over a book about birds of flight at her desk. Not sure if she imagined it, she paused for a moment and heard nothing, so she lowered her eyes back to the illustration of a Turtle Duck wing.

“Asami,” She heard her dad call softly through the door, “would you like to join me for breakfast? I’ve made us some tea.”

Asami was already pulling off pyjamas and considering what she was going to wear by the time she remembered to answer, trying to keep the lump in her throat down, “Yes, please."

“I’ll be downstairs. Take your time.” Heavy boots went back down the hallway and continued down the stairs. Asami followed not long after.

She noticed the change immediately as her small feet crossed the threshold of the dining room. The table she had built sat where their old one had with breakfast for two laid out on top of it. The table was shining with a varnish Asami hadn’t had the time to apply. She swallowed her curiosity, scuffing the toe of her shoe on the floor where she had stopped.

“Come, sit,” her father said over his newspaper, gesturing with it to the chair that sat next to his, “I’ve got to go to the factory early today.” He folded it and placed it aside before he started pouring two cups of tea. 

Her stomach, just moments ago fluttering with the excitement of seeing her table here in the dining room, lurched as she sat down. She bit her lip. “Okay Daddy."

He looked over at her as she accepted the tea, blowing on it and then pausing with a pang of heartache when she realized suddenly that this was the first real breakfast without her mom. She was glad that the radio wasn’t on and that the sun was still sleeping. 

She was placing the cup down and reaching for a piece of toast when her father continued, “If you’re up for it, I think you should come along.” 

She looked up, checking his eyes for a joking twinkle. He raised his eyebrows, sipping his own tea and turned his attention to unfolding his newspaper again. 

“Finish up and we’ll go.”

Asami grinned. 

They continued like that for years, long after Asami had lost count of what day it was that she was living without her mother.

Rising long before the sun, breakfasting at the table she had built, leaving the house together as the sun rose, and spending the day in the heat and noise of Future Industries warehouses and factories.

On the eve of the anniversaries of Asami's mother's death they worked through the night and slept through the day.