(Book 3, episode 10)
Earth Kingdom Desert
Korra shielded her eyes from the mid-afternoon sun as it scalded the desert. Unsteady shifting dunes rumbled in the distance. They were making her anxious. Almost as much as the fact that she and Asami were stranded in the middle of nowhere with only their captors for company.
The escape from Earth Kingdom custody had not gone well. The airship transport had been their chance to get the upperhand. A skeleton crew of airmen, not a single member of the Queen's Dai Li forces. After a ruckus expertly started by Asami, and a few busted control panels courtesy of Korra, the airship had plummeted and crashed into the middle of the desert. They'd have been dead if Asami hadn't piloted them to a relatively smooth landing.
Now, Asami was the best engineer in sight, and the Avatar was conscious, freed from her chains, and angry. The Earth Kingdom soldiers had wisely agreed that survival was the more important goal to focus on right now.
A tension hung in the air. Their chances of survival dwindled if the ship couldn't return to flying shape. Korra watched the four soldiers as they took shifts watching the horizon and helping with repairs. These men were a prisoner transport crew, not a strike team. Honestly, if Korra really wanted to, she could overpower them in seconds.
But if Asami got the airship back up and running, what was to stop these men from following through with their orders to deliver them to the Earth Queen? At the back of her mind, Korra almost wanted them to. She had a few choice words for Her Majesty about all the mess her court had brought down on them.
The airmen seemed nervous, too, though. What was to stop Asami and Korra from overtaking them and leaving them out in the desert to die?
The soldiers might not believe her, but Korra wasn't about to abandon them in the wilderness. They'd seen reason, for now. Asami was giving them marching orders to repair the airship, and they were going along with it. Thousands of Earth Kingdom soldiers were after them as fugitives, but in the end, unlike Zaheer and the Red Lotus, these men had just been following orders. Korra was not in the business of hurting decent people. No Avatar would be.
They all needed to work together to get out of this.
Korra followed the airship's massive shadow and found Asami hanging from the outer bulkheads in a swing she'd rigged up. She was welding scraps of metal collected from the crash, patching up holes and cracks that would compromise any attempt to get back in the air. Though it wouldn't do much good if they couldn't get the engine back up and running, too.
"They rationed out the water that was left," Korra called up. She brandished a heavy metal canteen. "Half a liter per person per hour. You haven't had a break in a while."
"Sure," Asami breathed, wiping her face with the inside of an arm. She looked tired. Balancing on a swing for hours, arms up and tensed: even Korra found it exhausting to watch, and she'd trained for that sort of effort.
Asami adjusted the cabling on either side of her and slowly lowered the swing down with each tug. When she was within reach, Korra grabbed hold of the swing's seat and gently guided it down. Asami seemed wobbly on her feet, so Korra offered a hand.
"Thanks," Asami said, standing with a sigh. Reaching to the sky, she stretched the soreness out of her arms. She took the canteen and considered it for a moment, passing it back and forth between her hands. "There's at least double that in here."
Of course she'd figure that out. "You're doing all this work and I'm just sitting on my hands," Korra insisted. "I don't really need it."
"You have to drink."
"I'll be fine. Can I help with anything?"
"Bring another of those sheets over?" Asami pointed at the pile the soldiers had gathered nearby.
Shuffling to the scrap heap, Korra came back with a piece of metal about the width of her torso. As she walked back, she saw that one of the Earth Kingdom soldiers had appeared. He was shifting between his feet as Asami doled out orders.
"Tell Kong that he needs to get that debris out of the engine room before he tries to run it again," Asami said, stern but even. This had not been her first correction. "If too much sand gets caught in the filters, it'll blow."
"Yes. Sorry, ma'am," the soldier threw up a flustered salute before thinking better of it. "Right away, ma'am." He spun on a heel and fought the urge to run.
"Break it open and brush it out by hand if you have to!" Asami called after him.
The soldier nearly collided with Korra as he rushed past. "Sorry! Sorry!" he huffed out, raising his hands. He disappeared up the airship's ramp.
Asami threw the strap for the canteen over her shoulder. She inspected the sheet of metal as Korra hauled it closer. "That's good," she said, getting back into the seat. "Could you try to break that in half for me?"
Korra hadn't been metalbending for very long, but it had come naturally to her. A firm exhale and a twist of her wrist gave enough force to fold the sheet in two. Soon, she set about ripping the two pieces apart.
Asami got back into up position against the bulkhead and pointed at the next untreated section of gashed steel. "Right about here?"
Korra gestured firmly, lifting the patch into the air. It slammed against the side of the ship with a heavy clang. Hands thrumming with connection to the metal, Korra held it snug against the bulkhead.
There were some directions, and adjustments—turn it a few inches here, slide it a ways over there—before Asami was happy with the placement. Korra dug her feet in and pinned the sheet in place as Asami lowered her goggles and lit up the welding torch.
"So what was that all about?" Korra asked, nodding back where the soldier had fled.
Asami had gotten to work melting the edge of the sheet. With both hands busy, she could only shrug. "I guess having the Avatar off her leash makes them a little skittish."
"That was not about me," Korra said, smirking.
Asami hesitated with the torch. "What do you mean?"
"You're intimidating," Korra chuckled. Propped up and focused on holding the metal still, her arms were starting to tire. Maybe she did need some water. "I mean, you're this genius inventor, all smooth-talking and put-together, you're way taller than him, pretty…"
The metal patch slipped a little, but Asami pinned it with a glove. "Korra."
Realizing what'd she'd done, and what she'd just said, Korra straightened her arms and took back the grip on the sheet. "Sorry. I got it."
"Be careful," Asami said gently, "You'll have to waste perfectly good drinking water to patch yourself up if you get conked on the head."
Korra nodded, wincing with the effort of keeping hold of the metal sheet hovering overhead. She fought off a flicker of panic in her brain. She hadn't just said... nope, she definitely had. Put the Avatar in front of a raging horde of marauders, and she was cool and collected. Powerful. Put her in front of Asami Sato and she melted into a puddle of awkward.
Asami traced the edges of the patch with the welding torch. In the blinding hot light of the fire, the hull and the metal sheet melded and mixed together. She was more than comfortable with this kind of work. She seemed to live for it. Crafting with her hands, creating, problem solving. She was so at peace in it. "But I interrupted you," Asami called down. "Please, continue. You were complimenting me?" Her smile lit up in the glow of the torchlight.
"Right," Korra coughed a little. "Pretty…" Scouring her brain for a segway, she kicked at the ground. "...pretty much on your way to running the biggest company in the world," she finished. Lamely. "There's plenty to be intimidated by."
The last corner of the patch fused with the bulkhead. Asami patted the airship with a glove. "Okay, you're good," she said. "You can let go. I'll get to the rest in a bit." Flipping off the torch switch, she tucked it into a basket strapped to the swing; another thing that she'd fashioned from ship scraps. She tugged her goggles down to her neck and used the winch to lower herself to the ground.
When she hopped to the sand below, Asami finally swigged from the canteen. Her eyes lit up a little when they found Korra's. The amusement drifted to her mouth. Lingered there. "You think I'm pretty," she said. It wasn't a question.
"You know you're pretty," Korra quipped back, her smile struggling to hold. You are flirting right now. What you are doing is a flirt.
The line seemed to go over well, though. "And you call me smooth-talking?" Asami teased.
Korra couldn't seem to remember what words were. It only made Asami more pleased with herself.
"Thank you for the water," she said. Taking one last drink from the canteen, Asami handed it back, pointing firmly with it. "Now drink your half." Her smile was still bright. "I can finish up here. You should head back inside, help the others with cleaning out the engine."
The winch groaned but held firm as Asami hauled her swing back up the side of the airship. She was on task, completely focused and at ease despite how dire their situation seemed.
It took a while for Korra to actually move her feet, or take a drink, for that matter. The Avatar had found herself staring a bit too long at the mouth of the canteen, where Asami had left a warm print of dark red lipstick.
They were not alone out here in the desert.
What Korra had assumed to be unstable sands beneath them had not been the rumbling of shifting dunes. An enormous creature rose from the depths of the desert, latching onto the airship and tearing it apart like paper in its razor sharp maw.
After the attack, the desert went deathly silent again. At least they'd all survived. Perhaps the creature had only seen the airship as its prey. And now, scattered in pieces, it was 'dead' enough to be left alone. But perhaps the gigantic sand shark would circle back and finish what it started.
Perhaps they were now being hunted.
As the rumbling grew louder and louder again, Asami once again took charge. Organized the small team and gathered what scraps they could salvage from the wreckage. No time for a clean welding job. They roped pieces together into a makeshift sand-sailer. In barely enough time to secure all the pieces of their escape vessel, the tide of the dunes sank low, and the monster erupted from the earth.
The next few minutes were a blur. Korra blasted air into the sails, as hard as she could without bursting the balloon fabric. Thrusting them forward. Fleeing from the massive predator. Asami navigated them through the dunes, finding the soft waves of sand where she could, dodging the worst of the rough terrain when she had to. The crude rudder she'd constructed held, just barely.
The soldiers clung to the trussed-up planks of wood and metal as the shark kicked up powerful waves from the desert floor. The sand rose up beneath them, and they were flung out into the air. The creature dove up from the dune to pounce at them.
Korra sucked in a long hard breath and put everything she had into a thrust of air. The sail groaned under the strain. The creature bore down on them, its mouth surrounding their little sand-sailer. The sun went dark, and the sand shark's gullet loomed around them.
They all found themselves staring back and down the abyss of the creature's mouth. Releasing her command of air, Korra pulled a burst of furious heat from within her. A powerful flash of fire seared down the sand shark's throat and its momentum suddenly faltered. Korra instinctively swept another gust of wind through the sail. In a burst of forward speed, they slipped through the predator's gaping maw and hit the ground. Their pursuer plummeted to the ground with a massive shock wave. Asami twisted the rudder, turning them smoothly into the crest of the tidal wave of sand.
They didn't stop for a long time. Adrenaline was high, and they wanted to put as much distance as they could between them and the shark. They listened for the telltale rumbling, scanned the horizon behind the sailer for any slip of the dunes.
When a half hour passed, it seemed that they were out of the creature's territory. Bare desert and glorious silence lay ahead. Hopefully there wasn't something similarly sized, and similarly angry, waiting for them further out.
By the top of the next crest, Korra needed a break. She lowered her aching arms, the sand-sailer gliding to a creaking halt. The ropes stretched to their limits, ship parts grinding together haphazardly. They weren't going to get much more mileage out of this thing.
From their vantage point at the top of the hill, they could see the soft sands of the dunes gave way to a flat rocky plain. Too hard for any creature to swim through. And out ahead of that, there was an outcropping of stone structures. Korra recognized the walls of the Misty Palms Oasis. It was where they had started in this whole mess, but it was civilization. They could search for Mako and Bolin and get out of here.
Exhausted laughter quickly filled the silence. As if every nerve in the airmen's bodies had to release tension through pure joy. The soldiers hooted, patting each other and Korra on the back. Each of them, even the grizzled captain, threw a quick but sincere salute in Asami's direction.
Korra looked up at their fearless leader. Asami was smiling underneath her goggles, hair mussed up from the wind of the chase. She swayed a bit, but held onto the rudder's handle for balance.
Chuckling along with the soldiers, Korra climbed up the sand-sailer platform and steadied the rudder with her. She studied Asami for a moment before resting her hands on either side of the girl's head.
"What?" Asami laughed quietly, out of breath.
Without warning, Korra shook her hands, kicking up a sand cloud from Asami's hair.
Grabbing Korra's wrists, Asami laughed even harder, coughing through the cloud. Korra tried to untangle her fingers, but Asami held them still as she fought to soothe the laughter rocking through herself. "Goof." She shoved her goggles up out of her eyes.
Reaching out, Korra helped loosen the goggle strap that had twisted up. Asami had gotten some color. The dry heat of a sunburn spread out across her cheeks.
"You're amazing," Korra breathed, grinning.
Asami's smile flickered, her face blushing an even deeper pink. "Don't give me all the credit," she shrugged, pulling off the goggles. "This thing comes with a built-in airbender." Their eyes held, but Asami was fiddling with the goggles in her hands. For the first time Korra could remember, she looked downright bashful.
Korra would have done just about anything to coax that smile out of her again.
"Oy!" one of the soldiers shouted, "Out at the wall. Look at that!" They passed along a small telescope to each other, murmuring and muttering.
Asami turned to them for her chance to see through the telescope, but Korra didn't move. Couldn't look away. As though she were being held in place, her smile hot-wired to her brain.
This girl.
The Avatar didn't need protecting, but Asami still put herself in the way. And she had done all of this. She'd saved them all. She'd gotten Korra away from the Red Lotus, freed her from the Queen's grip, made a truce with all these soldiers to escape the desert. And with the fear of being eaten alive looming over their heads, she'd designed, built, and piloted a scrap of garbage against a giant sand monster. Asami had saved them all with her intellect, her courage, her nerve.
Korra watched a frown spread across that beautiful face as Asami stared out of the telescope.
"Is that a dragon?"
(Book 3, episode 12)
Please read the short comic "Book 3 Au where Korra and Asami got a slightly longer goodbye" to see another sequence that I consider canon to my fic. (this scene is referenced with permission by the artist, plastic-pipes)
.com[slash]post[slash]118185748113
(Between Books 3 and 4)
Avatar Korra is broken, ravaged by her torture at the hands of Zaheer and the the Red Lotus. Asami struggles to connect with Korra as she recovers from her injuries on Air Temple Island.
Read my fic "Safe Harbor" to continue Korra and Asami's story between Books 3 & 4.
Chapter 4 of Parts to Play coming soon!