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Republic City at lunchtime was about as busy as it ever got.
Satomobiles rattling and honking, airships looming overhead, hawkers on every street corner, peddling their wares. The Southern Water Tribe being as far away as it was, Korra had needed to learn to deal with the city. She’d learned to love it, eventually.
All that love and lunchtime in the city still made her want to flip a table.
It had been something of a miracle that she’d been able to shove herself into a little side-street bakery amongst about a hundred other people. The one woman at the counter had been frazzled but nice enough as more and more people weaseled themselves into her shop, already so obviously over-capacity.
“We don't have any more rice cakes!" she'd yelled over the cacophony of voices to Korra's request.
Korra managed to steal the last few red bean puffs instead, stuck in that anxious limbo of trying to make a public decision with impatient eyes on her back. She’d tried to be pleased about her purchase, tried to talk herself out of the pit of uncertainty she’d dug herself into. The crowd in the store hadn’t helped, but she’d swallowed her irritation.
That’s growth, she thought to herself, you didn’t concuss a single person.
Were she not the Avatar, Korra figured she wouldn't have exactly been the most intuitive person. Something about empathy and thinking about other people's feelings without prompting didn't exactly click with her the way bending did. Sure, she'd learned empathy. For her, it had come about as easy as producing a gust of air.
This is growth too, she thought about the bean puffs, about who they were for. She twisted her paper bag shut.
Her walk through town had been pleasant. She'd helped a spirit clean up its street corner, a little girl get her cat out of a tree, and an old man cross the street. When she reached her destination, she felt great, albeit a little tired. She rang the buzzer, shouldering her satchel.
"Miss Sato is currently unavailable. May I take a message?" a garbled voice came through the receiver.
Korra frowned. "Um, it's Korra. I just wanted to drop something off. Can I come in real quick?"
"Oh! A-Avatar Korra, I had no idea—just let me…."
It always made her feel a little uneasy when she was reminded of just how much weight her title carried, but she'd also walked clear across town and wasn't about to get turned away at the front gate—a front gate she could have bent much faster than letting it open by itself. She followed the cobblestone path, trying to enjoy the warm spring air. She found the butler who’d answered the intercom tripping over himself trying to help her through the front door, which was not something she needed help with. She patted him on the shoulder as she walked past and then wondered if the action had been condescending.
Further inside, the iron door to the basement workshop was ajar. Korra could hear the sound of power tools and the scent of motor oil—not surprising, but unfamiliar.
She slipped through the door. "Asami?"
No response, just the continued sound of drilling or welding or whatever it was that geniuses did in rooms like these. From her vantage point atop the stairs, Korra could see the whole shop; out-of-commission mecha tanks scattered along the periphery, bits and pieces of Satomobiles here and there, and near the back, what looked like a… bird-machine? A pair of legs stuck out from underneath it.
The drilling stopped for a moment and Korra called out again.
"I'm not taking any appointments right now." The pair of legs responded, not unkindly.
Korra smirked. "Well, I guess I'll have to eat all of these bean puffs by myself." She popped one in her mouth. "Such a shame."
The legs rolled out from underneath, revealing the rest of Asami. She sat up, lifting her welding helmet and smiling from ear to ear. "Korra!"
Asami’s face was red from the heat, or maybe the exertion of whatever it was she’d been up to under the machine. She pulled the helmet off her head, a red line across her forehead where the thing had been resting for what Korra could only assume had been hours.
"Working hard as always, huh?"
Asami groaned, pushing herself off of the floor. "You have no idea. I'm trying to get this prototype out of here by the end of the week, but it's been giving me problems like you wouldn't believe." She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, and Korra tried to ignore the fact that, while Asami looked incredible in everything she wore, there was something about a grease-smudged tank top that made her brain a little fuzzy. She wouldn’t let herself dwell on that . “So what brings you here? No Avatar duties for today?"
"Nope." Korra said, hopping over the stair railing and walking over to Asami. "I haven't seen you in a couple days, so I figured you were working too hard for your own good."
Asami raised an eyebrow. "How'd you figure that?"
"My Avatar intuition, obviously." The other woman didn't look convinced. “Fine, I might have asked Bolin what you were up to and if you were doing okay, and he might have told me that you've been working nonstop for ages. So I just might have brought you these red bean puffs that I’m pretty sure you like, and I might be planning on stealing you away from your work for the day."
"Well," Asami began, stepping close enough to grab a puff from Korra's bag. "That just might be the sweetest thing anyone has ever done for me, and I just might have to take you up on that offer."
"Sounds like we have a plan." Korra said, grinning. "Here—" She handed the bag over. "They're all for you."
Korra wished she could have braced herself for the kiss Asami planted on her cheek, smiling as radiantly as the sun or some other corny metaphor, but she didn't and felt all the blood in her body rush right to her cheeks. "Uh…" she articulated rather eloquently.
"Let me get cleaned up and we'll head out." Asami said, still smiling.
If there was an award for standing around and looking like an idiot, Korra was positive she'd have won it as Asami climbed the stairs to her workshop, looking so completely unfazed that Korra had to wonder if she'd imagined Asami's lips on her cheek.
Asami insisted on driving.
Maybe another Korra would have protested, would have gotten up in arms about it, would have explained that she’d been driving in the Earth Kingdom, that all those years of wandering hadn’t been completely on foot, obviously.
This version of Korra just opened the drivers’ side door for Asami and hopped in the passenger’s seat.
“Where to?” Asami asked, sweeping her hair back into a smart ponytail.
Korra watched, not hearing for a long moment.
“Korra…?”
“Narook’s!” Korra blurted, remembering herself. “We’re—Narook’s for lunch.”
Asami, ever the diplomat, didn’t comment on Korra’s apparent lapse in consciousness. There were a great many things Korra was grateful to Asami for.
“There’s a spirit vine just kind of… in the main dining area now.”
“What?”
Asami nodded. “At least, that’s what Bolin’s told me. I haven’t been in… let’s just say I’ve been ordering a lot of delivery.”
“You mean you’ve been working so much you’ve been forgetting to eat.” Asami opened and closed her mouth a couple of times in a silence that drew out too long. In a moment of clarity, Korra realized that it may have come across a bit harsh. “I mean… you’re an adult, you can, like. Order delivery. When you want.”
After their botched lunch with Mako and the reason for her headache that day, Korra’s thoughts about Asami, frequent as they had been in the years she’d been gone, had narrowed into something loud and protective. Before, when she’d been reading perfumed letters in bed, (“Here’s that new one I told you about last time! It’s really expensive and I think it smells a little like garbage…”) or imagining what they might talk about if they were face to face, (Current affairs? Bad. / Engineering? …How? / Boys? Spirits, no.) her thoughts had been abstract. Suffocating in what felt like a cocoon of depression and a quite literally bone-deep trauma, Korra hadn’t had the energy to quantify the feelings, however much the small, bright corner of her mind might have wanted to.
Being with Asami now, years removed from those first painful letters, Korra could wonder if her feelings had been locked up too long. Long enough to grow spines.
But no, that didn’t make sense, of course. Asami made her feel light and soft around the edges.
“I’m not a good cook, is the thing. Also, I don’t have time .”
Korra shoved down the impulse to nag. “I could teach you, you know. My dad knows his way around a kitchen.”
“Chef Tonraq, hm?”
“Well ‘chef’ and ‘chief’ are one letter apart.” Korra winced at herself. “It’s a joke. It’s a joke he makes and it’s awful.”
Asami snorted. “It’s adorable.”
Korra watched her for a long moment. There had been things she’d considered over the years, things that had become pliable with age. She’d once considered Asami mysterious. Maybe she still was, in her own way, but that snort hadn’t belied mystery. She’d once considered Asami a threat. To a roving gang of bandits, sure, but to Korra? Not with any malice, no. She’d once considered herself incapable of caring about this woman. At a red light, Asami had turned to face her, a wry smile gracing her lips.
Korra cared. Maybe more than she could say.
Narook’s was busy, but nothing was too busy for the Avatar.
Asami, by way of Bolin, had been right. There was a vine, and it was being used as a bar. A little disconcerting, seeing as the thing could come to life at any moment.
They got a table, to be safe.
“Any recommendations?”
Korra blinked. “You’re the one that orders from here all the time.”
“You’re from the Southern Water Tribe. I trust you on this.”
Korra scoffed into her menu. “Only this, huh?”
When Asami took a moment to respond, Korra looked up, worried that she’d again managed to stick her foot in her mouth. But Asami didn’t look angry. Lost in thought, maybe. Her eyes wandered Korra’s face for a long moment—long enough for Korra to shift in her seat, wary of the scrutiny—before she straightened.
“So what do you recommend?” came next, like nothing had happened.
Korra thought about pressing the change, but Asami had given her a wide berth on the car ride to lunch. Korra could do the same, even though the persistent part of her brain was kicking her for not pressing.
Narook himself came for their orders, and they ordered two of whatever Korra wanted. Asami handed Narook what probably amounted to half of his daily earnings, refusing as he tried to press the bills back into her hands. Asami had always been stubborn.
“You know, I have Avatar money.”
Asami gave her a wry smile. “Spiritual wealth is wonderful, but unfortunately it’s not going to buy your noodles.”
“I’ve got physical money—“
“I want to treat you. You bought me the bean puffs and you’re taking me out.” She smiled and looked back to the kitchen before she continued. “This place has been in rough shape lately.”
“ Narook’s? ” Korra spluttered. “The only authentic Water Tribe food in this entire city?”
Asami hummed in assent. “The city’s changed. Not as many people go out.”
Korra thought about that, about the vines crawling along every street, up every building. She thought about the tensions in the Earth Kingdom. Maybe it was her Avatar senses tuning into the collective stress of the United Republic, or maybe it was the pressure on her alone, but she found it easy to understand why things were tense.
“Is that why you don’t go out?”
“I don’t really like to go out alone.”
It wasn’t a jab, it wasn’t pointed in the least, but Korra felt it like a hot poker against her chest. She thought about those letters. Written and read; alone, alone, alone.
“Asami, I—“
It was a blessing and a curse that the appetizers came at that moment, because Korra couldn’t manage to complete the thought. What could she have said to that? And if she did respond, what would it mean? She’d been letting people down for years, but for all her growth in all that time, she wasn’t sure she could stomach hearing Asami’s disappointment in-person.
It seemed that their lunch was destined for aborted thoughts and words unsaid because Asami didn’t press once they had their food. She ate her sea prune stew like there was nothing else going on, nothing to talk about. It put Korra on tenterhooks, making it hard to eat. This, at least, Asami seemed to notice.
“Are you okay?”
Korra nodded slowly. She’d spent years keeping things pent-up. Not of her own volition, of course, but the practice had made her very good at withholding. But was that why she’d sought Asami out? To be withholding?
She sighed through her nose. Her food was getting cold, but Asami was finally looking at her in a way that Korra could accept as open.
“I’m sorry.”
Reflexively, it seemed Asami's eyebrows knitted together, but there was no confusion on the rest of her face. “Korra—“
"I'm sorry to a lot of people. But I'm also sorry to you , right now, specifically ." Korra said with a burst of courage. "You deserve an apology."
Asami looked down at her meal. “Is this why you asked me out?”
Korra ignored the implication Asami surely hadn’t meant. “Not really. I just… things just come up sometimes. Feelings. The need to apologize.”
“I missed you, Korra,” she said, not looking up. “I don’t think I ever blamed you. But I missed you.”
It wasn’t a particularly eloquent statement, but it was heavy, almost landing with a thump on the table between them. Korra would have echoed it a hundred thousand times in her letters if she’d had the strength then. Even with Asami real and vital in front of her, she could recall a hundred instances where she’d only imagined the other woman’s presence. Where, save walking , it had been the thing she had wanted with such a singular focus that it made the rest of the world seem fuzzy and dreamlike.
Well, she could walk again.
“I missed you too.”
They’d stepped out of the restaurant, full of noodles and lighter than Korra had felt in years.
She hadn’t been sure of what she’d wanted when she’d sought Asami out. Maybe it had just been time together, maybe it had been something a silent part of her had decided on without her knowing. Whatever it had been, she’d achieved it. Or at least, was well on her way to doing so.
Asami threaded her arm through Korra’s, leaning against her. “They’re playing that new Nuktuk mover at the theater.”
Korra guffawed, taken aback. “What?”
Asami laughed, waving her hand around to dismiss the confusion before it continued. “It’s not Bo , it’s—they wrote him out of the story and they’re calling it… Tuk—I think Tuktuk or something.”
“Oh Tuk tuk. Sure, obviously, Tuk tuk and not Nuk tuk. The distinction.”
Asami threw her head back, groaning theatrically. It was a little jarring, but so very welcome, Korra couldn’t look anywhere else, couldn’t watch where they were going. She got to watch the long line of Asami’s throat, her dry smile, the glint in her green eyes. The tension Korra might have felt in the car ride over, at the beginning of their meal—that was nothing compared to whatever overtook her as Asami explained the younger actor who’d taken Bolin’s place, the continuation of a story that should have ended years prior.
Korra knew that she’d grown healthier in mind and body than when she’d been hurt, but other things had grown, too. Quietly, in her heart.
“They filmed it in Harbor City, Korra; it’s a lot better than Nuktuk.”
Korra didn’t care about the mover. “Let’s do it.”
The mover could have been fifteen minutes or five hours long, Korra would never know. What she did know was that Asami’s hand drifted along her forearm now and again. Just friendly, not lingering. The darkness and the mover and the hand gave Korra time to think. She’d assumed the years apart would have been enough time to think, but with Asami at her side she couldn’t help but wonder.
It was simple, really. Something she’d known for years but had never had this time—this exact kind of time—to consider. Asami’s fingers were rough, her laugh was contagious, and Korra knew then what she had known all along.
It settled in her bones as the mover ended, as they walked out to Asami’s Satomobile, on the comfortable ride home. It wound itself around Korra like a woolen blanket in a Southern winter, and if Asami noticed Korra’s lack of conversation, she didn’t say. There hadn’t been so much as a snapping, a taut wire ready to break, so much as an unlatching. Like opening the front door to your home.
Asami insisted on taking her back to Air Temple Island, and Korra obliged. It would have been ten times faster to bend her way across the water, gliding or swimming. But they waited for the ferry, spent the long afternoon hours staring out at the sunset, calm. Even with everything going on, in that moment, Korra was calm.
“The show was bad,” Asami said, the first real conversation since they’d left the theater.
Korra shrugged, “Bolin was what really sold it.”
Asami nodded, watching Korra. “I had a wonderful time. Just you and me.”
Korra’s heart kicked up. “Me too,” she said lamely. “I love spending time with you.”
For a moment, she worried that it was too much, but Asami’s features softened. She pulled Korra into a hug, the first one since their lunch gone wrong. Asami smelled like clean laundry and something metallic, and Korra sank into the embrace. That warm feeling, the one that had been tucked away for so long but never forgotten, it pressed itself into Korra’s chest. It pressed so hard it almost tumbled out of Korra’s mouth, but Asami pulled away. She smiled at Korra, a soft one, and she told her that she looked forward to hanging out again, and she turned on her heel and left.
Korra watched her take the ferry back across the water, watched her wave goodbye and returned the gesture.
The feeling stayed there, curled up in her chest.
I love you, she thought, and knew one day that she would say it.