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It’s weird to watch her love life play out on stage.
They spend a lot of time on Mako, at first; by the end of the first act, Korra is resigned to perpetually groaning at her teenaged self, glad for the company’s honesty but mortified that this airship wreck of an attempt at romance is something that’s getting recorded into her history as an Avatar, inevitably, by virtue of it setting the stage for her marriage. The audience is laughing, and Asami is, too, so at least it isn’t too excruciating.
(It's still pretty bad.)
But she can’t deny that the stage is set so perfectly that it makes her heartbeat echo in her ears when her double sits down to write that first letter to Asami. All the pain, the heartbreak, the suffering and the death from that part of Korra’s life there, and the memory of how heavy her body had felt when she’d pushed through to pen those letters to the girl she loved is woven through every fiber of the story.
Korra watches as the hurt slowly drains back out again, some of the details fudged just slightly enough to make her more of a hero than her worn-down, roughed-up self really had been. Or maybe this is just how people saw her, she thinks. Ikki’s laughter carries all the way up to their box, and Korra thinks about her airbending family as they had been during the darkest parts of Korra’s life, the way all five of Pema and Tenzin’s children always teasingly loved who she was without ever really weighing her up against who Aang had been.
As a mechanical butterfly meant to imitate a real spirit one flutters onto Ikki’s nose and she fakes a sneeze, Korra remembers all the letters she and Asami had carefully penned and carried out of the spirit world all at once — letters to Air Temple Island, to Bolin and Mako, to Korra’s parents in their village and Asami’s friends in the city. They’d spent long nights curled up together writing out all the details of their travels, from a laughable sketch of tiny roots Asami’s boot had gotten caught in to the breathtaking cliffside they’d eaten lunch on top of.
Ikki spins around in a familiar waltz against a beautifully accurate recreation of that swamp Korra and Asami had danced in, so long ago, and Korra feels tears well up in her eyes.
On a lot of levels, in a lot of ways, Korra knows she makes a difference. She knows she helps people every single day, because she’s poured her entire life into that. She’s always been the Avatar, and then she’s also been Korra, and so much of her life has been learning to strike a good balance between the two for the good of everyone else.
But she’s starting to realize that even the moments she’s always considered private, personal diversions, things she’d never thought would be important to anyone except herself and Asami — hearing the audience’s sniffles and quiet exclamations as Ikki leaps into the air and catches her fellow actress in perfectly patterned mockups of Asami’s old gauntlets — even those moments are somehow wonderful to the people who she loves. She’s wonderful to the people she loves, in every possible way.
The idea of it brings stubborn tears to her eyes. Asami is sitting here with her, hands woven together, and onstage, they’re curled up against each other at a campfire. She’s loved even more for all of it.
(Korra isn’t crying.)
After the show, they wait in their box until an usher with a nervous fidget comes to escort them downstairs to introduce them to cast and crew.
“I had to fight fang and claw to get those writers to listen to me about the most basic stuff about literal people I literally know, you guys,” Ikki tells them after they’re settled. Her carefully applied makeup is still perfectly intact, but Korra can guess that if Ikki keeps gnawing at her own lip like that, it won’t last long.
They’re holed up in a room behind the backstage, and it’s taken nearly an hour to get through all the starstruck actors who wanted autographs from the real Avatar, wow, she’s really here, what did you think — it had taken even longer for the too-patient Asami to field questions about being a non-bender in a bender’s world, but Korra could never get tired of hearing Asami’s amused explanations for things that had long since become second nature to them both.
Ikki is hovering on a cloud of air that puts her about the same height as Asami and Korra’s comfortable couch, her posture a jumbled mess of overenthusiastic nerves and utter relief. After this, there’s almost two more weeks of plays scheduled back-to-back, thirteen showtimes clearly hovering at the back of Ikki’s mind. The thought of having to sell that performance again and again and again is even making Korra nervous.
“You did great,” Asami says, and Korra feels her wife’s fingers lace through her own. It’s a comfortable, casual gesture for them both, but their automatic reminder of mutual support still puts a grin on Ikki’s face that makes Korra’s own cheeks feel warm.
A knock on the door interrupts Ikki before she can launch into what is inevitably going to be a long tirade into how obnoxious her company is about Ikki’s connection to Korra and how tired she already was of explaining no, we’re not sisters-sisters, but we’re still sisters, because really, if they don’t get it I’m not going to bother, which Korra has already heard twice since their return to Republic City.
(She could go without hearing it again.)
At the door is a young woman with short-cropped dark hair. Korra feels a spark of recognition that blossoms into understanding when Ikki jumps up to hug her. It’s the actress who had played her part in the play — her face clear of all the careful contours and darkened eyebrows, with wig and wardrobe both gone, she looks shockingly different.
“I’m Sesi,” the actress says. The flowers in her grasp are rustling with the nervous shaking of her hands. “It’s so nice to meet you! I wanted to come earlier, but everyone else was here, so I waited, and has Ikki told you that I’m from a Water Tribe village sort of near where Ikki says you grew up, actually, but you left home so young that I don’t think I was even born yet —“
All the words come tumbling out of Sesi’s mouth in one abrupt push of air, and Korra is almost tempted to ask if the girl is an airbender. But she has heard about Sesi, as much as anyone in a fifty-mile radius of Ikki at any given time has probably heard about Sesi — nonbending, lady-loving anxieties and all, so many things that Korra knows have thrown Ikki for an admiration-propelled loop and that made her fight so hard to give Sesi the chance to play Korra — so she pulls herself to her feet and tugs Asami after her.
“Hey, Sesi,” she says, hand extended before the girl can even blink. “I’m a huge fan.”