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Asami is angry. Her hair is messy. She stares with blunt force out the window of the airship, almost unblinking, like an angry eye of god, her hands clenching and unclenching on the steering wheel. She grunts. The air is discontent.
Asami’s hair is never messy, Korra thinks. She’s dispassionate in her frustration; she’s taking time off from worrying about the crate of stolen money (is it stolen? Who knows) stowed away underneath them by noticing her friend’s disarray.
It’s novel. Even her makeup is smudged.
“The nerve of….” Asami says, biting her lip on the last syllable, stopping, starting, “Making the Avatar do her dirty work. I mean, who does she think she is?”
“If you’re worried about me,” Korra sighs, “that’s great and all, Asami, but what are we gonna do about this? Is there anything we can do?”
It’s weird. A reversal. Korra can’t say she’s ever seen Asami angry while she herself (the brash one, the hothead) tried to weigh their options.
It hadn’t felt right beating up those bandits, whoever they were, none of this felt correct or necessary. They both feel used.
As she often does, Korra thinks to herself, “Now what would Aang do?” and she never really knows the answer to that question. Their priorities are different, even if Korra had pledged herself to the rebuilding of the Air Nation. The whole thing still feels dirty somehow.
“We’ll just give the…queen…her money, I guess. Hope and pray she comes through on her end.”
Asami blows a strand of hair off of her face in a uniquely captivating way. Korra notices it. Asami has that sort of magic, that effect on people, even unintentionally. Korra can see, in an objective way, how Mako would’ve forgiven her for running him over.
“I mean,” she thinks, “I would have.”
What a weird thought.
There’s silence for a while. Korra does not want to air her thoughts. Spirits, this ride is going to be long.
“So,” Korra says.
“So,” Asami says, light, dry, crackling with sarcasm. All in one syllable, because she is efficient above all else.
“I know they weren’t like. Our enemies really. That was probably bad,” Korra says.
“Korra, it’s okay. It’s not your fault. You were trying to do what was be--”
“--But I liked fighting with you? Along with you, I mean. Crap. That sounds bad, I know,” Korra blurts out (why didn’t she use the long stretch of awkward silence to come up with a better way of phrasing that? Who knows!) “but you know? You fight good. Watching you fight. It’s cool.”
She doesn’t respond at first.
But then Asami’s hard expression cracks, a little, and a little more, and she’s smiling, and then she’s snickering, and Korra would let Asami run her over a hundred times.
“High praise, Miss Avatar,” Asami laughs, “for a mere mortal such as myself.”
“Have you looked in a mirror lately?” Korra thinks.
“I dunno. Even without that glove you’d give me a run for my money.”
“Don’t give me so much credit...a little electricity is nothing, you’ve got four whole elements to work with, big shot.”
Oh no.
“Well maybe I,” Korra says, and she’s begging herself not to, “like your spark.”
Korra decides that if the pun doesn’t land, she will, because she might just jump out of the airship.
She eyes the escape hatch.
Asami, for some reason, starts to laugh even harder.
She’s having a hard time keeping a grip on the steering wheel, she’s laughing so hard.
“You....” Asami starts, in between some very unladylike snorts and guffaws, “And I can’t say I don’t....appreciate your punditry.”
Korra comes to the startling realization that Asami Sato, CEO of Future Industries, who had single handedly brought down five men earlier that day, really liked bad puns.
A weakness to be exploited. A shared weakness.
Not to mention a beautiful laugh.
In her mind Korra goes digging through her personal pun arsenal, thinking back to every time she’d made her parents or white lotus guards groan with absolute agitation. She’s blanking at a crucial moment.
“So I guess you value my…...opunion!” Korra made a few wild hand gestures, just to be certain.
If it was anyone else, that would’ve fallen flat.
Asami’s standards are low.
“That’s not even a pun. Not even remotely. Spirits. Are you serious, Korra?” Asami says, still laughing. If she’s trying to sound admonishing, she isn’t doing a good job. At all.
She takes a moment to lock the steering wheel in place, turning around to face Korra.
Her hair and makeup are still messy. Possibly even more so than they were; her cheeks are flushed from laughing, her lips pursed as she tries to hold back a smile. It shines out over the bags under her eyes.
Korra feels a fluttering of something in her stomach. Like a spark of electricity.
“Deadly serious. Yeah. Like a pierced hull on a united forces battleship, leaving thousands to drown at sea--”
Asami puts a hand on Korra’s shoulder, and she forgets the punchline.
“I think you don’t understand,” Asami says, taking a seat next to her, “the basic components of a pun. Or a joke. What you just said wasn’t a joke, technically speaking.”
Korra felt herself about to say something stupid again. She tried not to.
“I wouldn’t say it was a joke. The first one.” Korra says, stupidly.
“You mean the earth queen?” Asami quips.
“Oh, shut up. You know.”
“That you like,” Asami prompted.
A joke? The truth? Was this a moment for truth?
Probably not.
“Your electro glove,” Korra finishes.
Asami smiles, not in general, but at Korra, in a special and specific way; like whether or not she even thought that was funny, she’s smiling, and it’s because of something Korra said.
“What a feeling, huh.”
Asami stands up again, unlocks the steering wheel, goes back to monitoring the course of the airship. Korra wishes the way back was longer.
Asami turns again, so that Korra can’t see her face anymore, in a way one might call strategic. She almost covers her mouth with her hand.
“Well,” she says, “my electro glove likes you too.”