Chapter Text
It's cool even for midnight on Air Temple Island by the time Korra finds herself nodding off, but the breeze from the patio is welcome as it drifts north into one of the island’s many spacious sitting rooms. The tickle of it against her arm is enough to sway her into semi-unconsciousness - finally, despite herself. For the first time in a long time, she’s resisting sleep on a perfectly positive ground: at this moment, she’s curled against her mother, pressed to her side in true and relieved unity after months of absence and years of absent presence.
Tonraq and Senna had arrived in Republic City that evening with little fanfare. Just get here before Varrick’s wedding! Korra had written, although she knew that they would have boarded a ship as soon as the news of Kuvira’s surrender reached them. In the few days since, Tenzin, the airbenders and all her other friends had been, in their own ways, determining where and how to begin to put the city back together, but they kept their pace slow and they kept together. Time was a luxury they could afford again, at least more so than in those last few days where the threat of Kuvira had been both frighteningly imminent and frighteningly opaque.
Jinora and Kai and Opal took news to nearby towns and brought back delegates to start reorganizing the future of the Earth Kingdom (Kingdom, again.) Wu sat in on these preliminary discussions on his potential sovereignty, Mako tagging, insistent that he was fine, healing fine, he was good and fit enough to sit in a meeting. Lin, with Suyin an unlikely second-in-command and Baatar Jr an unlikely resource, had delved into the investigation and prosecution of those Kuvira sympathisers and supporters zealous enough to cause any serious commotion in the weeks prior. Asami let herself one, two days to grieve, tucked in her old room on the island (“stay here, Asami, it’s best if we stay together” said Pema, said Tenzin, said Korra loudest of all) but there were damage and needs assessments that needed carrying out, and Future Industries had holdings in the bruised heart of Republic City - and somewhere in there, there was a funeral to hold. (Or was there? Was it necessary? No one really knew what exactly to make of Hiroshi in the aftermath, and Korra suspected that perhaps Asami didn’t either.) For her part, Korra had attended Raiko’s meetings, formulated with him their plans of action - how to facilitate the reentry of evacuated citizens and whatever else - but right now, she is simply glad for her long-awaited family reunion.
The shift of Senna’s arm around her jolts Korra from her reverie. They’ve been sitting here talking, for hours now, just enjoying the other’s company (Tonraq too, until he decided to retire to the bedroom before sleep claimed him.) The island that evening had been well-populated; the airbenders and her entire, sprawling Team Avatar convening here when they could, Pema and her acolytes somehow happier for each extra person - but it was quiet and warm and relatively calm in a way that Korra had been learning to cherish. Nonetheless, this long moment with her mom is desperately welcome. It’s comfy, too, disappearing into the embrace of her mother and of sleep and this soft, soft couch - screw the ironing-board beds, her back can make the sacrifice for one night!
“Do you want to go to bed, honey?” Senna says suddenly in a voice made of feathers, although she sounds like she already knows the answer. It makes Korra feel young and loved.
She hmms before responding. “No… No, d’you?”
As her mother makes slowly to reply, there’s a sudden rustle of footsteps and Korra raises her head to look towards the adjoining hallway that leads to the women’s dormitories. Asami is at the door. She looks very mildly surprised (little colour in her face, as there has been for the past few days), and before Korra can say ‘hey’ she begins to apologize.
“I couldn’t sleep so I thought I should stretch my legs,” she offers, her voice slightly gravelly from disuse and the lateness of the hour, “sorry if I interrupted- if I woke you...”
Korra shakes her head in reassurance and Senna conveys the same with a kind, “I was about to get up, actually.”
“I wanted to get some air.” Asami continues quickly, making for the broad, open patio door, where the breeze is still wafting in. Korra follows the movement with her eyes until she feels her mother extracting herself from her arms, bidding goodnight and I love you and all the rest. Senna hugs her close and when she kisses her cheek, Korra thinks she feels Asami’s eyes flicker back from the door for a fraction of a second. It feels odd somehow to share this affection in her presence, truth be told, and Korra wonders (then regrets wondering) when the last time somebody kissed Asami like that might have been. She sinks back into the warm depression of the couch and the swish of the wind in the curtains lulls her almost to sleep again.
Presently, she shifts and sits up once more. This time, the breeze that sifts over her shoulders and through the cotton of her tank top is a little different, enough that it’s no longer comfortable. It’s getting chillier. Asami is still poised motionless at the patio door. The breeze shoves softly against her figure on its way in. Korra can’t see her face but she follows the play of the wind in her unbound hair, and it’s lovely. Asami seems to close further in on herself.
“Aren’t you getting cold?”
By way of reply, Asami steps slowly back and turns into the room, but she avoids Korra’s gaze. “Yeah, you’re right.” She rubs her arms and yawns, smaller than ever.
“Still can’t sleep, huh?” Korra says, half raising her arms, as if the gesture could will Asami into them - and then, patting the space next to her, “Come here.”
Asami walks around the couch and perches gingerly on its one end, very far from where she wants her. “No, come here,” Korra repeats and opens her arms fully this time, and Asami slides into them. Where she can feel it, Asami’s skin is cool, so Korra presses into her, trying to warm her up. The new proximity allows her to see the tension around Asami’s eyes, dulled by a creeping fatigue. She looks older than how Korra would’ve imagined her in her head, if she was asked to.
When Korra thinks Asami, she still thinks of quick, talented utility-gloved hands, all action at an engine, or a steering wheel, or the pressure points of some Earth Kingdom bandit. Bright eyes and a bright mouth (makeup or no), always kind and sometimes even coy (unless she was misreading them); and veritable torrents of hair, the distinctive loose curl on the left side (adorable) that she didn’t clip back for some reason. That imprint in her mind is years old now, and it would take years to overwrite it if she ever wanted to. Of course, Asami’s looked older ever since Korra came back - but where a month ago she would have said older mature, she now thinks older tired. She treasures the moments when Asami lets her hair down again, but now even that does little to inspirit her features. (She's still beautiful, though. That might have been the only thing that Korra hadn’t changed her mind about from their day one.)
“You look awful,” Korra says. As Asami pulls back and braces a hand on Korra’s upper arm, she flushes and twists her mouth into a small laugh. Korra flushes back, not expecting Asami’s embarrassment. “I didn’t mean - obviously - you just look tired, I mean.”
“I know,” Asami replies, bowing her head slightly before looking back up at Korra. Another small, sad twisty-mouth smile, and Korra pulls her back into her, arms relaxed and loose to indicate that Asami should stay there, this is a hold not a hug.
Asami exhales loudly as she settles against her. After a few long moments, she does it again. Korra can sense the fatigue in her body, in her breathing. The weight of her feels leaden, as if her body is teetering on the precipice of sleep but her mind won’t let her fall. It feels as though if Korra listened hard enough she would be able to hear an incessant whirring through Asami’s skull. Instinctively, she lifts a hand from her back into her hair and grazes lightly at the base of her head. When Asami responds by pressing further into her shoulder, Korra clenches her hand involuntarily, feeling the small movement through to her toes. She continues scratching lightly with her hand.
A small eternity passes.
Asami is still wide awake, she can tell by the rhythm of her breathing. It gets even colder. Asami shrinks ever closer into her, though if it’s a conscious movement or not, if it’s the chill or something else, Korra can’t tell. Korra wonders about closing the patio door, airbending it shut, but discards the thought. She doesn’t want to move her arms and disrupt the stillness. She watches a particularly lively gust of wind billow the corner of Asami’s robe up across her thigh and blows a warm blast back to flatten it again. Shortly, she releases a yawn, her stifling it leading to a second, wider one.
Suddenly Asami raises her head, causing Korra to remove the hand against it down awkwardly.
“Aren’t you tired?” Asami says. “You know you can go to bed if you want.” She slides a hand down the shoulder and arm where her head had been, and it warms Korra more than her airbending could have. “Don’t let me keep you here.”
Korra cards a hand through the mass of hair at Asami’s back in response, and shrugs. “I’m comfortable. Anyway, there’s nothing I have to do in the morning, so, yeah.” She pauses as Asami drops her gaze again. “What about you? I hope you’re not planning on working tomorrow.”
“No…” A deep sigh. The tone of her voice makes it sound as though Asami is about to continue, but rather than elaborating, she flops back onto Korra’s shoulder. Work or no work, Asami’s mind would be drudging through the day, heavy. Korra mulls it over and decides not to bring Hiroshi up, when Asami does.
“So I’m thinking I won’t have a funeral for my dad. Like, not a proper service, not now. I mean...he was - he was as good as gone three years ago, right?” Korra doesn’t know how or if to respond so she licks her lips and tightens her arms. “I don’t wanna get into any of the...political stuff. I just can’t think about press or any of that right now, so... It’ll just be - family.” As if family meant more than a sole griever. If Korra could have held her tighter without being too conspicuous, she would have.
She understood. Hiroshi Sato may have made a sacrifice for the city, but it did not redress the stain of his previous betrayal, a stain that had had three years to ferment in the city’s consciousness. If it had taken soft, magnanimous Asami all that while to permit the possibility of forgiveness (an eternity that, with hindsight, she resented), a meagre day of reparation or repentance wouldn’t mean much. If it had indeed been repentance, Korra thought. They hadn’t really had time to find out.
“I think that’s probably what he would want,” she says tentatively. Best hold fast to what they were sure of; what Asami was sure of - and that was his love for her.
Asami doesn’t reply but she feels almost lighter in her arms. Korra loosens her grip slightly but she lets her hand fall back in Asami’s hair. They stay that way for a few minutes until Korra’s fighting sleep.
“So, tomorrow,” she says eventually, her voice slightly hoarse from drowsiness, “I was thinking we could pick something out for the wedding.”
She’s not sure if Asami has heard her until she feels fingertips stroking slow along her shoulder, where Asami is tucked. Her eyes flutter close.
“My parents brought all my stuff from the Southern Water Tribe,” she continues by way of explanation, eyes still closed. “All my dresses are there.”
“Sounds good,” is the response she eventually receives. Asami sounds calm. “We can go over to the estate to find something for me and see Yin and her family.” Korra feels rather than hears her laugh before continuing, and presses her own smile against Asami’s hair in return. “And I saw Varrick today. He said to dress sharp, but not sharper than him. Or Zhu Li.”
"Oh, right? I’m sure we can get you looking prettier than Varrick.” Asami laughs again in response, though it sounds different this time, almost bashful. It’s everything Korra can do to not turn ever so slightly and purse her lips into Asami’s hair, the top of her head. She exhales loudly instead. “So Varrick and Zhu Li are raring to go, huh?”
“They’re super excited! Though part of that’s probably to do with the fact that they’re not doing cleanup work like everyone else. You know Raiko wanted the new portal tested, just to be safe. He’s wary of -” Asami stops stroking and clasps her fingers onto Korra’s shoulder, in acknowledgement and humour. “I think he’s wary of another Harmonic Convergence situation” - Korra's caught between a groan and a laugh- “thinks the city can only handle so much spiritual energy, though I do agree the portal is very worth studying in other respects. As if Republic City hasn’t been one of the most spiritually harmonious places on earth for years now.... It may have taken a while, but for all Raiko’s misgivings, I really think we’ve adapted well!”
There’s an energy in her voice for the first time and it makes Korra smile.
“Well, you certainly did,” she enthuses. “I disappear and you literally rework the whole city around the vines. And there I was bending fire at them for weeks! Asami, maybe you should be the Avatar.”
Asami gives a hum and a short laugh of dismissal, stretching in Korra’s arms. “But it would have been that much better if you’d been here.”
Korra twinkles. “Yeah?”
“For the spirits, probably, yeah -” A yawn.
“And for you?”
“Well, of course,” Asami mumbles, suddenly sober.
Korra buries her face in her hair.
They’ve been this close before, on sleepless nights three years before, but not this way around - not Korra holding Asami together. Whichever way, she wouldn’t mind getting used to the nearness. She inhales, quiet but deep. The scent, though she craves more yet, is intensely familiar and comforting. She remembers trying to remember it. “If it’s any consolation, you - you made things a bit better for me, even if you weren’t there.”
Slowly, Asami pulls back to look at her. If she wants Korra to elaborate, she doesn’t let on, and to be honest, she looks too sleepy to care. Korra watches her blink a few times. “I’m glad.” Asami says shortly. “I really missed being around you.” She lifts her hand to tuck a strand of hair behind Korra’s ear. The action feels slowed by the effort her tiredness makes it take. Warmth flares and scintillates into tiny sparks where she touches her, despite the coolness of her fingers. Asami’s expression is a shade from loving, even in the minimal light Korra can tell, even with her head half-lost to sleep.
And me too sounds as inadequate as I’m sorry, even at this ungodly hour, so Korra says, “I missed you a lot more than I expected to.” It’s a quietly significant thought; one that’s led her quietly to other significant thoughts.
Asami doesn’t reply in words, but she smiles, and when her muscles and her eyelids are too heavy to keep smiling, she pulls Korra close again.
Korra thinks she wouldn’t mind falling asleep right there.
And she doesn’t.
She wakes up the next morning to the distant clatter of the kids in the dining room, Rohan and Meelo struggling to yell over one another, by the sounds of it. Asami is fast asleep in her arms, though Korra’s shoulder is dead. There’s a blanket drawn around the two of them (a Water Tribe pelt, her mother’s), and Asami looks more snug and safe than maybe Korra’s ever seen her. It’s another feeling she could get used to.