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*About latent realizations
Asami’s eyes are incredibly green.
That’s the first thing Korra notices about her when they meet for the first time, and the initial shock of the girl’s perfect beauty has worn off.
Then, her hair is incredibly dark, her skin incredibly pale. Then it’s her stature. The way she talks. The way she moves. Her genius, her ability to find a solution to every problem, her unwavering kindness.
She spends a long, long time those first weeks just analyzing everything about Asami.
It’s a while after that Korra realizes it’s not envy, but admiration that fuels her endless curiosity.
More and more lately, Korra finds herself thinking about Asami.
Overall, she hasn’t really been one to have girl friends, or… friends.
She isn’t really what’s called a “people person”, which is painfully ironic considering she’s the Avatar, and will just make her task more difficult. Listening to people, getting to know their fears and hopes and wishes, all that is far from her specialty.
So getting close to Asami is unsettling at first, like nothing ever really was in her life, especially in its quick intensity.
She is the Avatar; that’s a simple fact.
She is Asami’s friend.
That’s way crazier to her, way more difficult to wrap her head around.
Although Korra antagonized her in the beginning (insecurity and jealousy are a waste of time), the raven-haired girl has really wormed her way into her heart.
Korra never once stopped to think about why exactly Asami joined and stayed with the team all this time. She became a part of it, essential and efficient, so Korra hasn’t really seen a reason to dwell on it.
But now, she wonders.
And she understands she owes Asami a whole lot, despite the fact that this one never asked anything in exchange of both her loyalty and her friendship.
This war, Korra’s lifestyle, cost her everything. Her family is gone. Her industry is near extinct.
And yet she is here, in a place where she doesn’t really belong or has any reason to stay, she brings her jasmine tea in the morning, cheers when she does something right in her training and offers reassurance when she fails.
At the same moment the realization that she doesn’t really have a reason to be here beside being her friend, it downs on Korra how important she has become.
Her hair is a dark Korra envies, so different from her basic brown hair. It seems to shimmer in the sun, and carries a scent of gasoline that always sends her mind back to the cars, back to the rush of the wind and adrenaline the first time Asami drove with her.
Her hands are so delicate, aristocrat’s hands, with long fingers that could belong to a musician’s but are perfectly at ease wrapped around a steering wheel. Despite their softness though, the lack of callouses that are scattered on Korra’s palms, they also carry strength that comes with confidence, with experience, with punches thrown. Her nails are always on point, Korra notices with curiosity. The lines of her hands are daunting. Her grandmother taught her how to trace and read life lines, heart lines, fate lines and such. Korra has never put much belief in those readings, but for some reason she’d give anything to read Asami’s lines.
And those eyes, oh, the stories those eyes could tell.
Although Korra isn’t one for superstition or poetry, she truly believes there are shadows of the past dancing in someone’s gaze, and Asami’s green orbs are incredibly expressive.
(Korra wonders what can be seen in her own eyes. She’s pretty sure she doesn’t want to know)
Most of all, she likes how she smiles so easily, so readily, despite what she’s been through. You’d never guess her hardships by looking at her, and Korra wants to learn all the layers of her pain and her kindness and her ability to love so fully so quickly.
(It builds and builds within her, without her noticing; when she notices, it’s too late)
She feels trapped.
Trapped in her wheelchair, sure. In a body that won’t answer to her. In a life she can’t have. In a role she can’t bear any more than she can escape it.
But worst of all, she feels trapped in her own mind, like a prison made of steel, akin to the one Zaheer escaped from. There’s no silver-lining. There’s no miracle solution, no matter how everyone keeps waiting anxiously and staring and whispering in the hope her abilities as the Avatar will just… reappear and allow her to go back to before.
All passes in a blur, until Jinora’s ceremony.
Then, Asami takes her hand.
Asami takes her hand, and under the simple, grounding touch, Korra can feel a promise blooming, something beautiful yet unmade.
If, for now, she doesn’t have the strength to see it, that touch, that unspoken oath, will linger for nights and weeks and years later, until she can eventually admit her fears don’t define her. Then she’ll come home.
*About years spent apart
Three years is a long, long time. Asami isn’t sure when she started counting the days (that’s a lie, she’s been counting them the moment Korra’s ship left the dock) but each little cross on her calendar hurts a little more than the last.
She knows Korra needs to heal at her own pace, to battle with her own demons the way she intends to, but Asami wishes she could do something. Now that her company is back on its feet and more successful than ever, there’s nothing keeping her in Republic City and keeping her mind busy, so a trip to the South Pole sounds more and more appealing.
She almost does it. Just to stop wondering if Korra has cried again and she wasn’t there to hold her hand, if she has managed to stand up, if she started bending again, and she is not used to being betrayed by her own head, but the questions whirl around without any answer.
Then Korra’s letter, carefully rolled in the drawer of her nightstand, surges into her mind, bringing answers to some questions, leaving others open.
Each time, Asami sighs, remembering the words etched on the paper in a haste, like she was afraid they wouldn’t get out if she stopped to think about them.
This is their secret, yet Asami feels like the sole bearer of it when she traces the ink endlessly, frightened it would disappear into thin air were she to look away or clutch the paper too tight.
Korra has always been painfully independent.
Three years is a long time to be on your own.
(When she is made aware of her return, Asami sheds a few tears in the privacy of her room, heart beating wildly in her chest, counting down the days passed without even a glimpse at Korra as her lips half-stained by lipstick contain all the words that threatened to spill for years).
Three years is a small eternity.
*About secrets and truths
Korra has always liked this spot on the Air Temple Island. The view of the sun setting on Republic City never gets old, and the structure of the gazebo mostly shields her form bad weather.
There’s no bad weather tonight, and her usual place perched on the wooden railing gives her an unobstructed sight of the shadows playing a rehearsed spectacle on the sea.
“I was looking for you.”
Somehow, her voice fits perfectly in the scenery, a graze even more delicate than the whisper of the wind. She can bend air and elements all she wants, Korra isn’t sure she’ll ever feel as complete than when Asami talks to her like that, like she’s been waiting for her, like seeing her is all she could ask for. It’s very different from how everyone else waits for her to show up and save the day, await a display of her powers, of her past lives, of anything she can give.
With Asami, somehow, it’s not about expectations. Korra realizes it never was.
Maybe that’s why she’s ready to give every piece of herself to her without her asking.
“Thought I might find you here,” the engineer adds, and she feels her lean her arms on the railing, so close to her legs.
“Yeah ?”
Not for the first time, Korra is taken aback by how beautiful Asami is. How sometimes her eyes catch the light and take on a golden hue, how her lips stretch too wide when she smiles honestly, how her hair always floats in the wind because Asami likes to thread her fingers through it (Korra would like to as well). How her skin stays pale despite the time spent in the sun, how her body moves with a fluidity and grace that training could never bring Korra, how she walks with her head held high and defiance in her eyes.
Spirits, she loves this girl so much.
It’s not just about the way she looks, it’s everything, from her unwavering loyalty to her bad jokes and fierceness of character. This woman is a genius wrapped in red silk, and for some unfathomable reason she chose to follow her, all rough edges and stubbornness.
“Can I confess something ?” Asami suddenly asks, lower than the wind, and Korra snaps her gaze up to see her warm eyes are already set on her, waiting with a patience the Avatar could never aspire to possess.
“Of course.”
“I’m in awe of you” she plainly whispers, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear with a small smile. It’s more honest than all the smiles Bolin and Mako sent her way, and it makes something bloom slowly in her chest.
“Of the things you can do. Of the way you keep going despite all that is gone and is yet to come.”
“I’m... I don’t know....”
“But I know,” Asami interrupts her gently, “that you need time, and that you will recover from it. I know your strength, just as I know you’re not broken. You’re just different.”
“Why are you saying this ?” Korra asks without really meaning to, something akin to despair creeping up in her throat.
“You deserve so much from this world,” the brunette shrugs like it’s the most natural thing to say. “I want to see you get it. When you realize that finally, you deserve whatever you want.”
And Korra can’t stop the tears, nor can she stop herself from pulling the raven haired girl in a tight hug, nose buried in the crook of her neck.
She has to bite her tongue not to say too much in the comfort of her hold and the intimacy of the moment. But when she pulls back, fingers playing with one of Asami’s curl, her breath puffs against Korra’s cheek as she resumes :
“The Avatar is and always will be a part of you, Korra. You don’t need to shut down that part, you need to embrace it with all your hopes and all your fears. But you also have to accept that you are someone of your own.”
“I’m not sure I can,” she admits, low and secretive in the space between them.
“You can. You’re not simply the one supposed to restore balance to the universe, you’re a person with needs and dreams of your own, that don’t necessarily involve the world and its sake. And that’s more than alright.”
The sun sets in the distance, but even closer, its warmth could never match Asami’s words’.
Korra has lived many lives, although they were not really her own. She grazed them, brushed things that she hadn’t experienced for herself -like love.
Oh, how she liked to experience love in all its intricacies.
Sometimes it was hurtful, sometimes it was the most peaceful thing she had ever known.
Be it the long, warm love that stretched throughout years and separation for Roku and his wife, or the blooming innocent affection of children between Aang and Katara.
The thing in her chest, pumping through her veins, feels different, like a ray of sunshine escaping from her ribcage, tingling all over as soon as Asami looks at her.
She loves this woman.
*About the time left to spend
She loves this place, Asami comes to realize.
But she loves the woman more, as the entirety of the island is encompassed in her eyes and her skin and the taste of her lips and the smell of her hair.
Nothing could ever compare to that.
She thinks Korra likes it here, too, if only because it is her way of healing. Korra’s eyes stopped glazing over, began to focus on things (on her specifically, but Asami didn’t want to presume). The blue she loved so much, shifting from the color of the sea to the night sky, found its place in her life again, shining with mirth or burning with frustration at her own slow pace.
In those moments, Asami will thread her hair through the short strands, tuck her chin on her shoulder, and whisper soothing things in her ear. She learned a while ago that it simply takes time to calm Korra down, to assure her all is well and that she does not have to figure everything out at once and on her own.
She’s very similar to Mako in that way.
Asami mules it over, some times. Mako and Korra really don’t have anything in common physically speaking, and yet...
Knowing them, she couldn’t help but see the resemblance.
The righteous glares, the fists on the hips posture, the graceful bending mixed with aggressive kicks and fists, the loud mouth and louder thoughts. She can read them both like open books.
Maybe she has a type, after all.
Yet, they are so different.
Mako is rough on the edges because he’s closed off, mistrust engraved in his bones from his years on the streets.
Korra is rough in an entirely different way, for entirely different reasons. She wants to right all the wrongs in the world, wants to take justice as the law. Asami loves how passionate she gets, and how much she has grown in the past years to become calmer, more level-headed while keeping that burning passion intact.
The spirit world is everything she dreamed it to be, and much more. While it is impossible animals surging from nowhere, drinking tea with Uncle Iroh, flying on a dragon, and all crazy amazing things, it’s also the simplicity of Korra’s laugh in the morning, unbidden and unburdened. If she could hear that laugh every morning, Asami would die happy.
It’s the warmth, coming straight from the sun, from Korra’s familiarity, spreading and spreading until it feels like her heart will burst with it. It’s the joy she has found again when she bends, just for fun and to keep exercising.
The spectacle of Korra bending never gets old, no matter how many times she has witnessed it.
Water especially, as her core element, is fascinating. It’s much more a part of her than the others, and Asami notices that Korra with water is grateful, delicate while still dangerous, and this intensity makes it mesmerizing. Often, the bender will create an ice flower out of thin air and tuck it in her hair, or gently land pearls of water in her hair. It makes heart beat faster, burst with joy at those simplest demonstrations of affection.
The Spirit world is made for healing, for taking the time, and so besides those demonstrations that make both their hearts trip and fall while reaching for each other, nothing happens.
They go back to Republic City.
Mako and Bolin are over the moon when they return, and even come eat to Air Temple Island for the occasion. Tenzin doesn’t mind the additional guests, and the children are happy to be distracted from “the boringness of the Island”.
So it seems to work out for everyone.
It’s a bit overwhelming at first, being surrounded by so many people, and maybe that is why she escapes as soon as she can to Naga’s favorite napping place.
The polar-dog is sitting, snout already sniffing the air like she can sense her friend arriving.
Naga whines a little, and Korra pats her side before sliding under her chin to wrap her arms around her hairy neck.
“It’s ok, girl,” Korra whispers against her fur. It doesn’t feel like it, though. It feels like tears are permanently stitched in her eyes, without ever falling. It’s awful, to feel alone surrounded by friends and family, awful to feel broken when you think you’ve done everything to smash the pieces together again. There’s not even an excuse now. All the enemies that haunt her are gone, there’s no new threat to face, her body is back to the way it was when it didn’t know the weight of mercury in its bloodstream, the lack of air in its lungs, the utter despair and helplessness as pieces of herself shattered inside and were torn away.
“You alright ?”
“Not really,” she answers shakily, words muffled by Naga’s fur. Asami lands a gentle hand on her shoulder, and when Korra finally manages to draw a steady breath, Asami lowers herself to the ground, pressing her back against Naga’s flank. The polar-dog seems to take that as a signal to drop down havily, resting her head on her paws like ready for sleep. The non-bender tilts her head up at her.
“Come down here.”
There’s no resisting such a demand.
Naga is warm, but Korra notices Asami’s closeness before anything else.
The raven haired girl is the more eloquent one, and as such is the one who usually starts their conversations with an eye-opening truth. This time is no exception.
“When you wrote to me,” she starts slowly, like tasting the words in her mouth, “you said that... that those were the hardest years of your life and I... I just wanted you to know that I missed you so much. We weren’t better without you, we were... I know I was missing a piece of myself, without the team, without you.”
“You did pretty ok,” she chuckles.
She doesn’t have to fake it, because Asami’s success is something she’s always known would happen, and always wanted to witness.
“I guess,” the engineer agrees, eyes down on her feet. “But I was so focused on bringing my company back up that… I guess I didn’t take the time I needed to rebuild myself as well, you know ? I don’t think any of us really did. We were so drawn by the idea of making something of ourselves at that point in our life, we forgot the things that really mattered. I barely had any contact with the guys. You were the one I talked to the most, because it was easier. It’s silly,” she chuckles self-depreciatively, “isn’t it ? You were out there, having real problems, and I’m complaining because…”
“It’s not silly at all,” she whispers, taking her hand. “You rebuilt yourself, you gained your honor back, your name means something again, something more than your father ever gave to it. I, on the other hand… I didn’t even manage to get better. I thought I did, for a while. But now…”
This time, it’s Asami’s fingers that squeeze hers and pull, just enough to make the Avatar lean closer to her.
“It was a victory, Korra. A big one, but it doesn’t mean you’re healed all of a sudden. You need your time. I feel like you didn’t exactly take it, even when you were gone. You were looking for something, but you never really looked inside, see what I mean ?”
“Wow”, she snickers, eyes a bit wet from the recognition, the validation she’s been waiting for. “Tenzin, get out of this body.”
“Stop it,” Asami grins, bumping her shoulder into hers. I’ve just… I’ve watched you tear yourself apart to meet the world’s expectations and I feel like in the middle of it you forgot you were, first and foremost, a person.”
“Can I confess something ?” She echoes Asami’s words from weeks ago, anxious.
“Of course.”
“When… When Amon took my bending away,” she shivers, holding her knees tighter, “and Katara told me there was no way to get it back… I ran off, and came on the edge of this giant cliff and I just… I contemplated jumping down, for a moment.”
She feels Asami stiffen on her side, but otherwise the engineer doesn’t let anything on.
“I was… I just figured that I was useless, you know ? All my life, I had been trained to be one thing, to be the Avatar, to bend the four elements and use them in order to bring balance. Without my bending, it felt like I had no point to be alive, because I couldn’t accomplish what I was born to do. And… Giving the world another Avatar, a functional one, was the only thing I could do, it seemed. Just… Take me out of the equation instead of wasting decades on a non-bending Avatar. And I know now,” she continues, turning her head to look Asami in the eye. “I know that I’m not simply the Avatar, and that even without my bending I can do some good in the world. At the time, it just didn’t feel that way.”
When she stops talking, the silence is enjoyable, words she yearned to say for so long finally out in the open. To her immense surprise, she doesn’t feel guilty anymore, doesn’t feel pitiful or even afraid of judgement.
She isn’t even startled when Asami brings her arms around her neck and lowers her head on her shoulder.
“I get it.”
That’s really all that needs to be said.
The first time she kisses her is not at all how she imagined.
For one, it’s cold.
For second, Asami is grumbling, nose scrunched up and silently judging Korra’s bare arms.
For third, Asami slips and falls on her ass in the snow.
Korra laughs at her, and next thing she knows, the engineer has gripped her collar and pulled her down to meet her lips.
It’s not like fire-bending, but it warms her insides just as much.
She is the Avatar, but she is also a girl, whose heart flutters each smile Asami sends her way, whose lips crave each time the girl winks at her, whose breath itches when Asami laughs, carefree and wild with her hair flowing in the wind and her eyes dancing with joy. For those reasons, and many more, she kisses her back.
It’s a long time after their first kiss, after their first official date, after a lot of firsts, that Asami says words Korra didn’t expect to hear. It’s kind of in the middle of nowhere, too, while they’re walking in the Park after having laughed at her statue, and Korra is resisting the urge to bend the fountain water.
“I love you.”
Dumbstruck, Korra feels her heart grow eight sizes larger, beat better in her chest like it’s been waiting for those words to leave scarlet lips, and Asami chuckles softly as soon as she says them.
“I just wanted you to know,” she says again, trailing her mouth on Korra’s cheek like a feather, and then Korra has to push her back just enough so she can look at her, otherwise she’ll get lost and won’t find the things she desperately wanted to say when she wrote her that letter, but wasn’t ready to yet.
But she shouldn’t have worried, because they’re written all over Asami’s face, have been written there for a while now. They’re just waiting to be said out loud.
“I love you.”
Like in all things, where Asami’s admission was soft and light, whispered in her ear like a secret for them only, Korra’s is more like a heartfelt declaration, hammered by her stubborn look. It feels like she’s going to war when she says it, but it feels like coming home when Asami’s wide grin smashes against hers, arms locked tightly around her neck.
They have so many things to do, so many to accomplish, but for once Korra doesn’t mind the respite she has.
As Asami’s hand grips her neck to pull her closer, Korra thinks the world can wait for the Avatar.