WARNINGS: Mentions of sexual abuse.
I might make a companion piece to this, I'm not sure yet...? But its been bouncing around my mind for a while. Anyway, enjoy!
The touches were as soft as the ocean against Fire Nation shores. Gentle at first, warm, inviting, running up Korra's skin like the waves against the sand. She breathes out shakily, soaking the sensation in as if she was dying of thirst and the saltwater could quench it. In a way she does feel like she's dying, the pulse in her throat twitching so fast like the movements of a frightened crab disrupted from its home. It's pleasant, sweet, something she never realized she could yearn for so fondly.
Then a nail catches at her skin, and it is as if her heart forgets to beat for a moment before taking off in a frightened reverie. It beats so fast her breath is being sucked into her chest and she feels the deep flush begin in her face as her hands begin to tingle with cold numbness.
Not again. Please not again.
She is sitting on the floor by the bed, hands clutching fistfuls of short chocolate hair as she inwardly searches through the panic to find the memories of meditation she learned long ago.
Korra feels a gentle touch on her arm, and her instinct is to jerk away, but she is so dizzy at this point she is incapable of making a coherent movement. Besides, she knows who this person is, she knows what this person wants of her. And she failed to give it.
She feels herself pressed into a comforting bosom where she can hear the soft, steady beat of life from another human being. She times her breaths to these beats, and soon she finds her own heart slows its frantic drumming and her vision begins to clear of stars. As she comes to, a cold sort of sweat is clinging to the creases in her body, even the ones she wants to pretend don't exist at this very moment. She can't think about those parts right now, she had finally been able to calm herself down.
After a few more minutes, she can feel her hands again. She closes her eyes in exhaustion.
"Zaheer?" Asami murmurs lowly, the sound soft and like velvet in the warm night.
Korra's eyes tighten for a moment before she shakes her head against Asami's chest. A pale hand comes to brush the hairs sticking to Korra's forehead out of her face. She wants to kiss that hand in the way of an apology, but she is too weary, mentally and physically, to move again.
"No," Korra says after a moment, licking her dry lips. "Amon."
Asami holds Korra a little tighter, pressing her dark lips into the messy hair, inhaling the avatar's scent. She doesn't want Korra to see the anger in her eyes-the pain-and mistake it for disappointment.
"Whenever you're ready, honey." Asami whispers gently as Korra breathes against her bare chest. "You're worth waiting forever for."
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It is random things that trigger the memories, and seeing as Korra had almost lost her life to Zaheer, she had assumed what had been done to her earlier on was of no significance. True, when Tenzin found her used and broken body lying on Avatar Aang's Island, the horrible truth had come spilling out to his concerned wife only hours later. The experience had shaken him, made him clutch his daughters a little tighter before he had the realization such a cruel thing could be forced upon Meelo as well. It took a few weeks before he could sleep again, the unwanted images clawing underneath his eyelids and filling his brain like a sick sort of spider-web. It creeped around there, spinning its thread with interconnected horrifying thoughts, all leading back to the young women he had come to love as a daughter. If Pema's exhausted eyes said anything, he supposed Korra was under the same sleepless plight.
Although, hers weren't worries. They were memory.
The motherly air acolyte was there through every nightmare, every scream into the unforgiving night. She held Korra's head when she needed someone to clutch; she sang Air Bender lullabies when Korra needed lulled. Sometimes Korra would refuse Pema's touch at all, and Pema-of course-obliged. During the day, Korra went about her business as if nothing was wrong at all, the only indicator that something was amiss being the slight increase in the fervency of her training. Tenzin watched with despair as her air bending did the impossible and regressed.
In the time Korra needed to fly away like a Juneberry leaf caught in the wind, she was being weighed down by a stone as dark and heavy as the Equalist himself. She could not move, lest she surely tear.
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Mako was frustrated.
It was obvious Korra wanted him, she had practically pounced on him after he returned home from work, pressing her mouth to his feverishly. Bolin was gone for the night, up to some new mover breakthrough with Varrick. It had seemed the perfect time for their relationship to take the next step, as he thought they had both been anxiously waiting.
Her breath was heady and thick in her chest as he laid kisses all around the exposed skin. He licked a trail, blowing on the wet spots softly to create the chilling effect he knew enticed her so. She shuddered, and he had to hide his wicked smile of triumph, wanting nothing more than her pleasure.
Mako wasn't sure what he did next that caused such a reaction, but suddenly he felt his back collide with the adjacent wall of his bedroom, pain splintering through his spine to his arms as he slid to the ground. With her air bending she had knocked the wind out of him, and he took a shaky breath, wincing at the sharp bruising already beginning to form. He opened his eyes, and there perched on his bed, half naked and wild, was his girlfriend.
She clutched his bedsheet to her chest, hair a gnarled mess and neck flushed plum from his ministrations. Her eyes were wide, like a doe's, lips trembling from the rigidity of her spine.
"Korra, what the hell?"
"I'm sorry…Mako." She whispered, voice trembling and breaking. Her eyes flickered around, as if searching for answers. Then she shook herself like the polar bear dog she loved so, as if she could shake off the panic that was pulling at her mind, and made a beeline for the door, pulling on her shirt as she left.
As she quickly left the room, Mako tried to grab her arm as a way of asking what was wrong, but it was very much so the wrong move. At his touch she fell to her knees, weeping and shuddering and gasping for air. She shied away from his touch, desperately trying to regain her composure even through the sobs that found their way of her chest. He had never seen her like this, not even when she had lost her bending and the emptiness had taken residence in her eyes.
"Korra?"
She begged him not to touch her, to not look at her, to just give her a minute and some air. After a few moments of baffled silence, Mako brushed a finger against her hand, (Her knuckles were white from the fierce grip she had on her own knees) and quietly asked if she wanted to go outside and get some air with him.
Taking a shaky breath, she agreed, and they exited out the apartment with his arm firmly placed around her shoulders.
After this disastrous first attempt, there is not much more progress made before the two tearfully meet their relationship's end, thus forfeiting any more endeavors of a sexual nature. She never told him why such an act was terrifying for her, for he never asked. He was quiet, he was thoughtful, but he never pressed farther.
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When Korra and Asami first make love, it is not the terrifying experience she had anticipated.
The sun has turned into a warm sunset in the heat of their passions, the grass softened to cushion them in their movement. The spirit world is a place of learning; a place of healing. She takes the time to learn Asami, and Asami takes the time to learn the music of Korra's body as well. She plays Kora's body like a lyre and finds what makes the most beautiful of vibrations. The panic stays at bay, leaving in its place a warm contentment that oozes through the cracks and mends the hollow scars from Korra's past. When she begins to see brutal blue orbs that crush against her face, she opens her own and instead sees endless green seas. She keeps her gaze locked on them as the lovers move slowly, then more quickly.
For the first time since the unthinkable happened, she breathes.