"Why are you doing this?"

Jia scoffs, crossing her arms, rolling her beautiful golden eyes and Asami feels her guts twist up as tight as a noose.

"Jia, please, talk to me?"

"I'm done talking. You're acting like a child."

It stings, it hurts, because Jia used to pet her head and tell her how mature she was for a fifteen year old, how proud she was, and now it's like the cover of all her efforts are being thrown back to expose her, it hurts—she is a child and no amount of acting will cover that up.

She's just never going to be enough.

"You can't just—you can't just say you're getting married and leave, I—"

"What were you expecting?" Jia says, coldly. "That I would stay with you, a girl? That I wasn't going to go on with a real life after school?"

"What were you expecting me to do? Just sit quiet and let you leave?"

"At the very least I wasn't expecting you to come to my workplace, where my fiancé is, and cause a scene."

"You wouldn't answer my calls," she says, hoarsely, volume rising, and Jia looks around for a moment before hushing her sharply.

"Be. Quiet. Are you so petty that you want to ruin my life because I left?"

"No," Asami says, horrified. "No, I just, I needed to see you—"

"I thought you were better than this," Jia snaps. "I'm disappointed."

Anxiety is a great beast, a chimera of terror and anger, paralyzing and incessantly inciting. Asami feels claws dragging up the ridges of her ribcage, but she's nothing if not a woman with nerves of steel. Steel, her element: she may not be a bender but she bends steel under her will into creations, she tears into it to carve out the potential held inside. Clockwork hearts, thumping engines, the shielded plates of a ship's hull; she grew up surrounded by fire and metal, tempered to be nothing short of steel herself. Anxiety is nothing but fuel, to be felt and not shown—a true leader is the one who smiles and carries on when the world falls apart, her father once said. And she is her father's daughter, whether she likes it or not.

So when Min walks her back to her room, worrying all the way, she smiles charmingly and says she's okay, really, nothing to worry about, and bids her goodbye. She watches the city dome creak closed in the sky, and wonders if she can fall asleep before she realizes that Korra's not coming, before she stays awake in the dark willing the door to open to a sheepish smile, before the hours smother Asami's hope step by step beneath dark heels as they pass.

It's fine, she tells herself. What were you thinking would happen anyway, she asks, did you really think it would go anywhere? Did you think your little daydreams would come true?

It's not her fault, she tries to say. She didn't mean for this to happen, she didn't look at Korra's smile and earthy skin and decide to daydream about soft touches and kisses, she didn't choose to see an exclusive promise of intimacy in their little rendezvous, those thoughts slipped into the pauses between her thoughts, the quiet moments spanning the confessions of an Avatar.

Sure, an old voice says, as if that's natural, as if that's an excuse. She thinks about Opal and the pure connection between her and Korra, the wordless trust and sanctity. She thinks about the way they shimmered in the sunset like two spirits from an old story and falls asleep wishing her heart could be made of clean, precise steel.

And when she wakes up, she allows herself one guilty tremble under the bright sunlight before getting up and getting ready, drawing on her makeup as if nothing's happened.

She skips lunch with a flimsy excuse of nausea, and goes for a walk as a remedy. She's not avoiding Korra. She really does just want some fresh air. She's not thinking about the way that the easy intimacy in the Avatar's eyes tensed into unfamiliarity and how she doesn't want to see that again, not yet.

Because, yes, it's an excuse but the farther she walks from the dining hall the more she realizes it's true. She feels sick, dizzy, lost. As if all her resolve from last night is just fizzling haplessly at her feet.

She rounds the corner and hears a familiar melody, wondering if she's hallucinating for a moment before walking near a door where the muffled sounds get louder and clear into a single voice and a strummed guitar.

"People come, and people go… I'll miss you, I want you to know…"

Asami hasn't heard that song in ages. It's on a vinyl record back at the Sato estate, gathering dust in the study, in the back of her mind, except now the memories of crying on the zigzag patterns of the old expensive rug are pulled out and she finds herself resting a hand on the doorknob, hesitating.

It's already a little bit open. She pushes soundlessly and steps into a big, shining (as all the rooms in the Bei Fong estate are) room shaped like a semi-circle, the floor going higher in steps the farther back it went, and Asami thinks it's probably the family's music room judging by the many closed instrument-shaped cases and one Opal Bei Fong, sitting in the centre with a guitar on her lap.

"But oh, how pride, it gets in the way… Though we never speak, in my heart you will remain," Opal sings, taking a breath for the next verse before noticing Asami and faltering.

"I'm sorry," the apology jumps to Asami's throat like a kneejerk. "I didn't mean to interrupt—"

"No, it's okay," Opal laughs, running a palm over the guitar strings. "I'm just embarrassed. How long were you standing there?"

"For about a second, I promise," Asami says, raising her hands in a facetious surrender as she walks further into the room. "I'm sneakier than that if I want to be."

She lays a hand on the back of one of the chairs, waiting for Opal's nod to take a seat.

"I don't doubt that," Opal says, hunching over her guitar a little bashfully. "Travelling with the Avatar, you'd have to be pretty talented."

Asami blinks at the compliment, guilt and shame sticking to the insides of her mouth. Why can't she just be complimentary, nice, not-jealous, kind? She looks at Opal and thinks about how it's not fair how stunningly pretty she is in such a wholesome way, with her soft baby cheeks and bright eyes. Asami can make any boy fall over himself, she can dominate a room, but she thinks about all the people she's loved and how she's yet to be loved back and wonders if she's capable of making someone's heart skip a beat the way Opal or Korra can.

"I'm mostly just really lucky," she quips good-naturedly. "And you're not so bad yourself in the talent department."

She gives a grin and a nod at the guitar, and Opal fiddles with the strings a little more, smiling widely if a bit embarrassedly.

"It's nothing, really, thank you," she giggles.

"Your voice is beautiful," Asami insists. "I don't know many people who can do her songs justice."

Opal lights up at that. "You know Suji Seo?"

"Of course," Asami laughs. "My mother loved her. I think I own first editions of all her records back home."

"Wow," Opal breathes. "I'm so jealous. She passed through here once, when I was little—I think I only have about three songs of hers."

"I can lend you some of mine when I get back to Republic City."

"Oh no, thank you, but you don't have to—"

"I'd really like to," Asami insists, "It's not every day I get to meet someone else who likes her too. Is that your favourite song?"

Asami enjoys the way Opal blushes a little bit, because honestly it's adorable.

"Out of the three I know, yeah," she says with a laugh and a shrug. "What's yours?"

"Oh, jeez," Asami laughs, "what a question."

Opal giggles along, shifting her guitar so that the neck is pointing upwards and she's hugging it by the shoulders. "One of your favourites, then."

"Your Battlefield is the only one I know how to play, if that counts."

Opal's eyes light up, and Asami realizes she's made a critical mistake.

"Oh, no no no," she laughs as Opal starts edging towards her with the guitar outstretched and a grin across her face. She almost wiggles her eyebrows and Asami swears Bolin's teaching her his infamous bat-your-lashes-and-smile-until-they-say-yes method. "I haven't played in years—"

"But you have played," Opal laughs, scuffing her chair closer still, guitar practically on Asami's lap now. "Pleeaase? It's not every day that I get to meet someone who likes her too."

Opal says it, grin turning a little mischievous like she knows exactly what she's doing and Asami laughs as she takes the guitar.

"I can't believe you're suckering me into this," she scoffs, shaking her head as she shifts the instrument in her hands, trying to trigger her muscle memory. "You're worse than Bolin."

"I think you mean better than," she fires back with a cute nose scrunch, leaning forwards on her palms, and Asami laughs because this girl is a lot more than meets the eye and she likes it.

"Just don't be disappointed, I mean it when I say I haven't played in ages."

"I don't think it's possible to be disappointed by Asami Sato herself," Opal teases, and Asami snorts.

"You'd be surprised."

She really, truly, didn't mean to let that slip out but it did so she just takes a deep breath and strums once to get a feel of the instrument, hoping to bury the comment ever being said or heard.

The melancholy riff comes back to her like an old friend. She remembers the lyrics and doesn't really have time to think if she's ready to revisit this again, ready to reopen this wound.

"Someday I will ask you if I was a disappointment,

I will ask you if you put your hard-earned money

into a bad investment."

Asami remembers being poor, a little bit. She was very, very young but she remembers the gnawing feeling of a day's worth of hunger and the cold little room she shared with her parents before things got suddenly and so incredibly better. She remembers being so proud of her father for rising up from poverty with his own two hands, she remembers him talking about how to close a business deal and how to dismantle an engine in one breath and she remembers worrying that she wasn't enough like him, that she wouldn't be enough to carry on his legacy.

And what a legacy that was.

"But you say life is a battlefield,

And you have given me the arms,

You say I have to fight,

I have to keep moving on."

Armed with his training, his knowledge, his money, his legacy, she remembers the moment he asked her to join his cause, she remembers wondering if he would have been proud of her if she had just accepted him. She remembers, she remembers, and she doesn't want to because at nineteen she is a scion of Future Industries, CEO, engineer, a businesswoman carving out her own success from controversy and just a girl with memories of a wonderful father now in jail for being a bad man.

Interrupter becomes the interrupted and Asami nearly drops the guitar when she spots Korra standing by the door, hand on the doorframe, eyes wide.

"Korra," she breathes, but it goes unheard because Opal says it louder, bubblier, better.

"Hey guys," Korra says, rubbing the back of her neck. "Sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt— I just heard, and…"

Opal comes to her rescue.

"She's amazing, isn't she?" Opal beams, turning to Asami. "Is there anything you can't do?"

String words together in front of the Avatar. Be a good friend. Be a good daughter and a good person. Not betray her best friend's trust by developing feelings for her.

Asami swallows her thoughts.

"Thank you—you're pretty amazing too," she laughs, charm turned on as she stands and hands the guitar back to Opal.

"Aw, hey, don't stop," the girl protests, but Asami's already halfway to the door.

"I'm sorry, I just remembered Varrick wanted to talk to me today," she says, giving an apologetic smile-grimace. "Something about prototypes. Someone's gotta keep him in line, hey?"

That gets a giggle out of Opal so Asami lets herself relax as much as she can while she's resolutely avoiding looking at the girl standing right next to her under the doorway.

"I'll see you two later," she says, with a short wave and a polite glance at Korra before walking out as fast as she can go while still being qualified as walking.

"Asami, wait," Korra calls after her when she's almost halfway down the corridor, and she tries not to grimace for longer than a second before turning around.

"Yeah?" She asks, smile stickered to her face.

"I," Korra starts, and she looks so uncertain, shuffling her feet and rubbing her chiseled arm. "I was looking for you."

Asami feels like she's being punched, just a little, tiny whomp in the face, so she just smiles wider and hides behind a laugh.

"Well, you found me."

Korra tilts her head to the side, so much like Naga does when confronted with a conundrum, and Asami would find it cute but she's too immersed in the fact that Korra, her friend, her something, the one who comes to her room at night and shares stories they're too afraid to tell anyone else, is looking at her like she's seeing Asami for the first time.

Please don't do this, she wants to beg, I'm the same, nothing's changed, I'm still me.

But that's the problem, isn't it? She is Asami Sato, who falls in love with girls who can't love her back and she always has been, Korra just didn't know. And now—now the truth is splattered between them like ruinous ink.

"I just wanted to ask if you were okay," Korra continues. "You said you were sick, I—I was worried about you."

There's something soft in her blue eyes then, something gentle and caring just like the way they got when Korra held Asami and told her she wasn't responsible for what her father did, just that this time there's something that stops her from coming any closer and it tastes more bitter than sweet on Asami's tongue.

So she just curls her lips around the brittle taste in her mouth and shakes her head.

"I'm fine. I guess I just didn't have much of an appetite today."

Korra purses her lips and Asami wonders which words are standing trial behind them before putting her anxiety out of its misery.

"Sorry for worrying you," she tries. "I'll see you later?"

There's a smothered breath of hope before Korra just nods, and Asami tears herself away.


Hello after two years, I can explain...

Actually, not really. I have the standard excuses of my life getting really crazy and university kicking my ass, but then I started writing for other fandoms and gradually lost interest. I started writing this story because I thought I was telling a story that wasn't going to be told, that needed to be- the book 4 finale kinda shot that in the face and I felt like I wasn't contributing anything important enough to keep going.

But recently I finished a full fic that wasn't a oneshot/shorter than 4k words for the first time in my life, start-to-finish wrapped up plot and thematic elements neatly tied up in a bow, for the very first time in my life. It felt really amazing, and the attention I got there spilled over here a little bit (yes, i am talking about you guys from supercorp, you guys are amazing) so I decided to come back and finish this one up. This fic is really where I mark my milestone as passing from a dime a dozen teenage fanfic writer to someone with a clear voice and purpose to their writing. I'm a dime a dozen twenty-something fanfic writer now, but still, I consider this my first written work in what's become my style. I wanted to give it a clean finish.

Thank you so much for all your comments- I've read every single one of them and as always, I am so happy with what this has been able to do for you guys. you thank me for sharing this story and I want to thank you for reading, and letting me know.

I'll be updating the conclusion to Contentment in a few installments at a time, around 2k words each- and I mean it this time, I promise, most of it's actually written, proofreading is just going slow. the next chapter will be up tomorrow. But, this is the last fic I'll be updating on - please check me out on ao3 as wtfoctagon for more of my works, if you're interested!

Thank you guys so much for the ride. I hope you enjoy.

Song is "Your Battlefield" by Susie Suh. This entire fic was inspired by her discography, tbh, please check her out.