Chapter Text
“She said what?” Asami dropped the pad she was holding so fast that I had to recalculate mid-attack and nearly fell over trying not to crash into her. “Sorry.”
“You’re good,” I assured her. I probably should’ve said it between hits. “I was just as confused.”
“So he’s off to the Earth Kingdom?”
“Whatever’s left of it,” I handed her the pads, kissing her before getting back into position. “I feel like the bandits might be behind it.”
“According to Bolin, yes,” she said, beckoning me to strike again.
I did, yelling as I made contact, and she smiled. I froze.
“Korra?”
“Does Mako disagree?”
“Did he stop writing you?”
“No,” I admitted.
She nodded, and I knew she knew what I meant. “Well, I don’t think he’s too impressed with Kuvira,” she said.
“He’s biased, though,” I retorted. He had been working as Prince Wu’s personal bodyguard since everything went down. No monarch would want someone else taking over after their family had been overthrown.
“So is Bolin,” she reminded me.
The bandits hadn’t been as much of a threat to the people as they were to the queen. Maybe Kuvira had taken her place.
We tried to continue training, but I felt so stupid for not having realized any of this yet that I started hitting off target. I stuck to the pads, but couldn’t get the middle. I tried swiping my hand across to chop at the side of it, barely clipping it before I lost my balance and stumbled away from her, landing fists first. I made sure to roll into it, onto my side, but she still shrieked.
“I’m okay,” I assured her, lifting my hands to prove it.
“Clearly not, you’re bleeding.”
She said it as I felt blood run down my knuckles. “Shit, sorry.”
“What are you apologizing for?”
“It was dumb,” I stated.
She examined my hand up close and shook her head. “How’d you lose your balance?”
I fessed up, told her that I felt stupid for not realizing what might’ve been happening in the Earth Kingdom. Once I realized I couldn’t recover it I fell away from her. I didn’t want to bring her down with me.
She rolled her eyes. “Do you really think I’m that weak?”
“No,” I said. Of course I didn’t, but I didn’t want her to get injured because of my mistakes.
“How many times do I have to tell you that I have your back because I choose to?”
“Fine,” I groaned, leaned in to kiss her, half hoping she would smile as our lips met and make some comment just to get the last word in. She did.
“You’ll let me clean you up, at least.”
She pulled the door closed behind us, locking out the echo that had followed our voices. The tension between us had less room to breathe. I let it find space within me, instead, when she took both of my hands in hers and turned them upside down, her thumbs gently pressing against the insides of my wrists to support them.
“Is this okay?”
“Yes.”
She lowered my hands onto my lap, only so she could grab the cloth out of the bucket, and dabbed it onto my knuckles. She pressed her palm closer into mine, letting the water roll off my hands and my fingers onto hers. It ran down her arm into her sleeve. I tried to tell her she’d get cold if she wasn’t careful. She shrugged it off.
I didn’t get to worry about her much longer, though, because she soon lifted the bottle of disinfectant. “Now comes the painful part,” she warned me, and tilted the bottle
I braced myself but I still winced as it hit. She held tighter, giving me the chance to let out the breath I’d been holding.
She smiled. “You took that well.”
“You helped,” I let out a deep breath as I said it.
“Happy to,” she said, then lifted my other hand. “Shall we?”
I tried to make it seem like I was dreading it, so I sighed, but the truth was that I wanted to feel it again. I wanted the hurt, the relief, and I wanted to her to be there to help me through it.
“Might as well.” I said it quietly
We repeated the process, and I locked eyes with her while she poured it. Focusing on her didn’t make it hurt any less but it at least made the pain feel better.
Then I ruined the moment. “Is there something happening in the Earth Kingdom?” I asked. She hadn’t mentioned anything in her letters, so I never thought to ask. I had a feeling that she wouldn’t have kept information from me.
She broke eye contact to check on my hands, caressing my fingers as she did. “Potentially,” she said. “It’s hard to explain.”
“Not you, too,” I mumbled.
“You know that’s not what I meant.”
“Then tell me.”
“Well,” she pulled a bandage over my hand, “suffice to say that Wu was not prepared to take the throne and re-establish order.”
“So, Kuvira is struggling to keep things stable?” I confirmed.
“Actually, she’s done quite well, but some people think she’s on a bad track.”
“How so?”
Asami shrugged. “Where people easily obey rumors tend to follow.”
Efficiency and efficacy were difficult to establish and even harder to maintain. It was a ridiculous promise to fulfill. Wu may have been biased, but Mako would be able to tell for himself what was going on. He wanted no part of it and he had no desire for it to escalate any further.
I knew it before she said it, but I let her hypothesize out loud. I had always liked that about her.
“What exactly has she done so effectively?”
“Reunification of the Earth Kingdom,” she told me. “She was appointed to bring order, and that’s how she’s chosen to go about it.”
“How’s she managing that?”
“I don’t know,” she admitted. “I know that Su’s son joined her when she left Zaofu.”
“Which one?” I asked, as if I didn’t already know the answer. Wei and Wing wouldn’t have separated so easily, and I couldn’t imagine anyone wanting to embark on such a journey with Huan.
“Baatar.”
I nodded. She then told me that I should probably read those letters. There was only so much she could possibly relay to me, being farther away from it all. I knew she was right, even if I hadn’t admitted it. I wanted it but she changed the topic.
“You took that well, you know,” she said, raising an eyebrow. “It looked like you enjoyed it.”
I gulped. “So did you.”
“I think we’re going to learn a lot about each other this week,” she said, extending her hand to me as she stood. I took it and let her pull me up into a deep kiss before she led me out of the changing room, through the gym, and back towards the real world.
We paused before opening the door. I squeezed her hand and she squeezed mine in return. Then she let go again and we returned to reality.
The bandages were gone by blue hour. I hadn’t bled much and I needed them to start scabbing so they could heal. If Asami and I were going to run off I needed to be in my best shape. That, and I had promised my mom that I would help her with dinner. Having my fingers bound like that would have made slicing the seaweed for tonight’s soup difficult.
My skin was just raw enough to be stung by fresh air and I was alone. I could have picked at them, I could have run them under hot water, but instead I leaned against the counter and held them close to the window. It was closed, but outside was so cold that it emanated through the glass pane and dampened the stinging. It almost brought me some relief.
My mom, of course, freaked out. I played it down, left out the part where I lost my balance and fell fist-first, but she wasn’t convinced. She didn’t outright say that Tenzin was right, but she did take it as an opportunity to remind me that it was okay to take my time, that I shouldn’t push myself.
“Mom, you know I was getting scuffed up like this before everything happened,” I reminded her.
“You weren’t 100% back then either.”
Of course I wasn’t. I knew that. If I was then I wouldn’t have fallen into that trap, I would never have been poisoned. If I were anywhere close to 100% then I would’ve at least been able to fight my way out of that cave before they put the chains on me.
I could never admit that to her, though, so instead I tried to reason with her.
“I could be 101%, I’ll still get my knuckles bruised.”
Judging by how fast she left the kitchen, she knew that, too. She mumbled something about retrieving Dad and Asami from the garage for dinner and asked that I set the table. They would be back any minute.
I breathed on the window, traced a heart into the fog it left, and got to work bending the soup into the bowls. My dad taught me how to do it when I was a kid. It drove Mom crazy, so I did it quickly before they all got back and I’d have to physically carry everything to the table myself.
“Kya and Ushi,” Dad said, now several drinks in, “they seem—”
“What?” I asked. It came out sharper than intended, and Asami glanced at me.
“They seem happy,” he finished.
“Well, they’ve been together for while,” Mom noted.
I sighed. “It’s not often you see that around here.” Not that the Water Tribe was homophobic, but privacy was valued here. There was a reason why nobody knew of my disappearance last year. Then again, straight couples and families never had to hide themselves.
“That’s probably why Kya spent so much time on Kyoshi Island,” Asami noted, downing the rest of her drink.
Dad laughed. “You’ve been, haven’t you Asami? What’s the inside scoop?”
She glanced at me. I shrugged. I knew my dad wasn’t putting pieces together, he was just curious. He wasn’t exactly well-versed in this, but Asami looked at her empty glass, unsure of how to respond. Mom noticed and poured her some more. “It was nice,” was all she said.
“What did you get up to?” Mom asked.
“I trained with the Kyoshi Warriors,” she took a sip, “but I wasn’t particularly good at it.”
My dad found that hard to believe, and Mom chimed in to remind us all that Asami has been beating people up since she was a kid. Asami, cheeks now red, giggled and insisted that the Warriors’ fighting style was very different to her training and real-world experience.
“I went to a cool restaurant, though,” she said, “Suki’s Kitchen.”
My heart caught in my chest as my dad asked what that was. Asami explained that it was a casual kind of restaurant, pay-what-you-can, opened in honor of Suki from Aang’s time.
Then, the question I dreaded was asked. It was my mom. “Was Suki…”
Asami nodded.
My dad shook his head. “I thought she and Sokka were together?”
“They were,” Asami confirmed.
I decided to rip off the bandage. “She was bisexual.”
A silence fell over the table. I waited, breath held in my throat, for someone to say something. Anything.
Dad shook his head again. “I don’t know if someone can really be that.”
“Why not?” I shot back, and Asami brushed her foot against my leg.
“If she was with Sokka then she made her decision,” he declared.
My mom placed her hand over his. “That’s not necessarily true,” her voice was soft. “You knew about Sokka and Zuko, and that was going on while he and Suki were together.”
“What?” I almost laughed.
Mom nodded. “Yeah, who’s to say that she didn’t have something going on with another woman too?”
“Sokka and Zuko were a thing?” I asked. I couldn’t believe it. “How did I not know this?”
“Because you weren’t there,” Mom said. “Zuko was devastated when he died. Came back to the Southern Water Tribe to help Katara plan the funeral. It was small, he gave a eulogy and admitted that they loved each other.”
I was speechless. Asami wasn’t. “That being said,” she redirected, “I don’t think that being in two simultaneous relationships with different genders is what makes someone bisexual.”
“What does?” Dad asked.
She cleared her throat. “I guess it’s just who you’re attracted to. It’s not like straight people don’t find others attractive even if they’re married.”
My dad slapped the table, laughing so hard he almost couldn’t get the words out of his mouth. “I don’t know what you’re insinuating, Ms. Sato, but since meeting Senna, I’ve never even thought about another woman!”
Just like that, the room was full of laughter again. Asami found the sudden formality hilarious, and my mom made sure to let the table know that she certainly could appreciate an attractive man on the street.
“Even if I had your father on my arm,” she added.
I couldn’t help but join them. I couldn’t decide if it was genuine or simply out of relief. It felt good either way.