DISCLAIMER: Legend of Korra belongs to Dicke… uh, i mean Nickelodeon.
SPOILER ALERT: This fic takes place sometime after Book 4, but the finale hasn't aired yet so it only contains spoilers up through Beyond the Sprit Wilds.
A/N: Before we get this show on the road, i have some good news and some bad news. The bad news is this will likely be the last update i post for a while. I'm taking a sabbatical from school and work so i can do some traveling, and i probably won't have internet access most of the time. The good news is that i'll continue to write while i'm on the road and i should be able to post random updates when/if i find myself around some free WiFi.
Prompt: Honesty.
/
Korra never learned to hide her emotions. She was raised to be open about her feelings, as were all children of the Southern Water Tribe. To be open about one's feelings was to be honest and her people had always ranked honesty among the highest of virtues. The strongest of warriors was considered weak if he or she was dishonest, no matter how much they could carry or how far they could run. And although the South Pole was becoming more and more cosmopolitan by the day, the warrior culture of the south still characterized even the "modernized" fragments of society. It was a mark of pride for her people. So when the tall, mustached man all but sneered at her unguarded display of emotion, Korra decided to take it as a compliment.
There was a part of Korra that understood the man's reaction. The United Republic Founding Day Gala was a formal affair and perhaps she had been a little too affectionate towards Asami. Korra hadn't exactly been groomed for "polite society," but she could admit that greeting Asami with a kiss was a little inappropriate given their surroundings, even if it was painfully chaste. There was nothing she could do about it now except give her refined, well-mannered girlfriend a sheepish grin. Asami wasn't upset, but Korra knew she'd receive a gentle reminder to be more careful before the night was over.
The man standing next to Asami gave Korra a once-over, his eyes lingering judgmentally on her simple dark blue dress, dyed leather forearm guards, and bare, muscled shoulders. It was an all-too familiar look of condescension and Korra bristled slightly. The mental image of her fist meeting his face suddenly seemed very appealing, but she fought the urge to turn fantasy into reality. It wasn't worth the trouble.
"Miss Sato, won't you introduce me to your… friend?" asked the man.
Asami's back stiffened and Korra couldn't help but smile as she watched the older woman go from warm girlfriend to cold CEO in the blink of an eye. She always did that when speaking to someone she didn't like. Apparently, the man's attitude towards Korra hadn't gone unnoticed. "Of course. Harnook," she said with a small wave of her hand, "please allow me to introduce Avatar Korra. Korra, this is Harnook. His company handles mineral exports from the North Pole."
"Pleased to meet you," she said, catching the flicker of acknowledgement in the northerner's face. Unable to resist egging him on, Korra thrust her hand forward for a handshake, smiling when his forehead wrinkled and mouth contorted into a poorly concealed frown. She was well aware that she was too assertive by northern standards - especially for a woman - but northerners were nothing if not exceedingly polite and it would be rude for him to ignore the offered hand. After all, Korra was the Avatar and no matter what cultural differences stood between the Northern and Southern Water Tribes, the northerners were a people with deeply ingrained spiritual beliefs. Hanook might not have respect for Korra, but he would respect the Avatar.
Eventually, Hanook accepted her firm handshake with a slight bow. "The pleasure is all mine, Avatar Korra." His face softened almost imperceptibly. "I know some have questioned your choices, but many of us in the Northern Tribe were quite happy that you left the spirit portals open. I've also heard about your plans to help our cousins in the Swamp restore the Banyon Grove. It seems you have done much to bring spiritual balance to our world," he admitted.
Finally. A bit of sincerity. Korra relaxed a little. "Thank you," she said.
Hanook nodded and glanced around, clearly looking for an escape. His eyes settled on a distant corner and he lifted his chin with a hollow smile. "Ah, an old friend of mine just walked in. Pardon me," he said before melting into the crowd.
"Well," said Asami. "That was awkward. Thanks for that."
Korra uttered a playful tsk. "Miss Sato, don't you know that sarcasm is unbecoming of a lady?"
Green eyes twinkled with mirth, though the rest of Asami's face remained impassive. Korra knew that look. It was a look that sent a shiver down her spine and made her cheeks burn. That look made her feel weak at the knees - made her forget that she was the Avatar, master of four elements. It was the look.
"Oh, Korra. Trust me. I'm rather well acquainted with all kinds of behavior that would be unbecoming of a lady," Asami murmured.
A familiar warmth spread throughout Korra and she tried to appear unaffected by the pale fingers that reached out to touch her and lingered on her arm. The gesture would have appeared innocent enough to anyone who might be watching, but Korra knew better. Asami was paying her back for her social faux pas. Korra had been purposefully toying with Hanook, and now Asami was going to toy with her. Unlike Korra, however, Asami was a master in the art of subtlety and getting even. The next few hours were going to be a tortuous game of nuanced flirtation that would undoubtedly leave Korra flustered and uncomfortable by the end of the evening. She allowed her gaze to run over the taller woman, taking in the way thin layers of red and charcoal silk hugged gentle curves and revealed just enough cleavage to make her heart beat faster. Oh yeah. She was in trouble.
Asami reached behind Korra to pluck a thin glass of champagne from a server's tray as he walked by. The tray wasn't out of reach, but Asami still had to lean forward, causing her breasts to just barely graze Korra's upper arm and send the poor bender's brain into overdrive. The taller woman used the opportunity to whisper a lewd promise in her ear before stepping back to casually scan the room. Korra swallowed hard and reminded herself to breathe. Asami spotted to Suyin and waved, acting as if she hadn't just spoken some of the most delightfully inappropriate words Korra had ever heard.
Correction. She was in deep trouble.
"I'm going to go talk to Su about Bataar's monorail plans. We're thinking about working together to expand the existing rail network out to some of the islands off the southern coast. I figure if we can establish a line to Kyoshi Island, it should be no problem finding investors to back the rest of the project." Asami glanced over at Korra and smiled as the shorter woman simply nodded. "In the meantime," she said, "behave yourself. If I hear about any more of… whatever that was between you and Hanook, you can forget about taking part in any other unbecoming behavior tonight."
Although Korra was half tempted to call her bluff, she bit back a snarky reply and instead muttered a promise to behave. Asami smiled seductively and sauntered off, knowing full well that Korra was staring at her retreating form.
A tipsy Bolin suddenly stepped into view, jacket hanging open and thumbs tucked under his suspenders in a nonchalant manner. "Hey, Korra! I've been looking for you. Wow, you look flushed," he blurted as he slung a companionable arm around her shoulders. "What'cha thinkin' about?"
"I need to go take an ice bath," sighed Korra.
/
Asami propped herself up on one elbow so she could look down at Korra. She ran her slender fingers through short, chestnut hair and smiled when the gesture earned her a happy purr. Korra gravitated towards the warmth of Asami's chest and snuggled up against her torso, wrapping a possessive arm around the other woman's waist with sigh of contentment. True to her whispered words, Asami had rewarded her good behavior with a very thorough demonstration of things unbecoming of a lady. Korra grinned. Asami concocted an excuse for them to leave only halfway through the evening and all but dragged her home, and Korra suspected she might've gotten that demonstration regardless of how she'd behaved.
"So, I've been thinking about something…"
Korra blinked and struggled to concentrate on Asami's voice, though she wasn't really making it easy by tracing invisible circles and swirls on her shoulder. Leave it to the engineer to go into analytical mode while they're naked and tangled in the sheets. Korra fought through a lustful fog and tried to ignore the fingertip that was now working its way along her collarbone. "Yeah?"
"I know relations between the Southern and Northern Water Tribes haven't always been great and I understand why things have been tense since the Hundred Year War," said Asami. "What I don't really get is why there's such a strong cultural difference, even though about half of the people in the Southern Water Tribe have at least one or two grandparents from the Northern Tribe."
"Because the northerners are assholes," came the knee-jerk, mumbled response.
"Your dad is from the north," Asami pointed out.
Korra huffed. "Yeah, but he's a southerner at heart. Besides, he became part of mom's clan once they got married. Where he came from wasn't really important after that."
"I don't get it," Asami confessed. "Are you saying that your mom's family adopted him or something?"
"Something like that." Korra laced her fingers through Asami's and pursed her lips thoughtfully. "I'm not quite sure how to explain it. Last time I tried, Mako and Bolin looked at me like I was nuts," she said.
Asami sat up and leaned back against her bed's headboard. "Try me," she insisted.
Korra smiled at the look of genuine curiosity on Asami's face and shifted to rest her head on the other woman's shoulder. "Okay. So the chiefs of the Northern Water Tribe inherit their father's position. Kinda like the kings and queens in the Earth Kingdom. But in the south, the chief is elected by the council of the elders."
"Right."
"Each elder is usually the matriarch or patriarch of one of the clans and the elders inherit their positions through the mother's family instead of the father's. In fact, everything is inherited through the mother's line," Korra explained. "So everyone knows I'm Tonraq's daughter because he's the chief. But if we're talking about family or clan business, I'd be referred to as Senna's daughter first and Tonraq's daughter second."
Asami took a moment to process the information. "So if a man from the Northern Water Tribe got married to a southerner…"
"He'd have cut family ties back home and ask to be accepted into his wife's clan," Korra finished.
"Hm."
"It's been that way for as long as anyone can remember." Korra shrugged. "Northerners don't like it. That's why most of the northern immigrants were outcasts or had been disowned like my dad. Family is everything to the tribes, and an outcast has nothing to lose and everything to gain if they marry a southerner. As soon as they marry, they assimilate. Poof!" said with an animated flick of her fingers. "That's it. They're southern."
"Okay, but what about northern women?" asked Asami.
Korra hesitated. "I don't know. There weren't too many that went south." She let her hand travel up a firm, pale thigh. "Come to think of it, it's probably because they had to stay at home. Northern women don't have as much freedom as we do in the south. The Northern Water Tribe is weird like that. I've heard it used to be a lot worse and that it's gotten better over the past couple of generations, but I still don't like it," she said in a biting tone.
Asami nodded empathetically. "I can see why."
Korra tensed and scowled. "Northerners in general tend to look down on us, but the men are usually the worst. They think we're backwards and barbaric. They think we're uncivilized because we believe women can be more than just wives, healers, and mothers." She sat up and waved her arms angrily. "Did you know that before the 100 Year War, nearly every shaman in the Southern Water Tribe was a woman!"
"Woah, wait. Shaman? What - "
"Yeah. Oh, and don't even get me started on marriage practices," warned Korra. She twisted so she could see Asami's face. "Did you know arranged marriages are still a big thing up north? And the brides hardly have a say in the matter."
"Korra."
"And they say we're barbaric. Hah! I mean, we might be more scattered and live in smaller cities. And sure, we still do that thing with koi whale blood during a warrior's right of passage, which i actually did think was a little gross, but - "
"Korra."
" - at least we treat each other with respect and - "
"Korra."
A pair of hands clamped down on her shoulders. Asami eased her back until she lay against the other woman's body. Korra sucked in a lungful of air, relaxing almost instantly as she breathed in Asami's scent. "Sorry," she mumbled.
"It's okay." Asami dropped her head and buried her face in Korra's neck. "I'd heard a lot of that before. Sometimes immigrants from the Northern and Southern Water Tribes butt heads, but it seems like it's not as bad here in Republic City."
Korra laughed at that. "I think it's a Tribe thing." Her laughter dropped off and became a sigh as Asami placed a kiss below her ear. "You're not making it easy to keep track of my thoughts, you know. Anyway, there's this old saying…" she trailed off and groaned.
"Please, do continue. Don't let me stop you," insisted Asami, making a point to sound polite even as her lips wandered up towards Korra's ear.
"There's this old saying: Me against my brother. My brother and I against our cousin. My brother, cousin, and I against our neighbor," Korra finished, arching into the hands that slipped around to her chest. She exposed a little more of her neck and raised a hand to hold Asami's head in place.
"Ah. Makes sense," said Asami. "The north and south might not get along, but they'll team up against everyone else."
"Yeah, that's pretty much it."
The pads of Asami's slender fingers danced along taut, dusky skin. "Interesting," murmured the engineer.
"Is this lesson over?" Under any other circumstance, Korra would have been embarrassed by the way her question came out in a whine. But with Asami's warm mouth and hands… well, dignity be damned.
"For now." Asami quickly slipped out from behind Korra and moved to rest on all fours. She bent her head for a deep kiss before pulling back with a smirk. Green eyes held blue as Asami slowly made her way down to the juncture of her thighs. "Though for the record, I think I'm going to need to know more about this whole clan thing. Gotta know what I'm getting myself into, right?"
Korra opened her mouth to ask exactly what she was implying, but the question died on her lips as soon as Asami reached her destination. She let her head fall back against the bed with a soft moan. The question would go unasked and that was fine. It didn't matter anyway. She already knew the answer.
/
A/N #1: Hm. Well, i'm not quite sure how it happened, but this went from being a story about honesty to a story about cultural bias and gender inequality. Oops. My bad.
A/N #2: I've always imagined the Southern Water Tribe as having a genuinely more tribal culture while the Northern Water Tribe seems to have transformed into a more typical patriarchal society with a ruling monarch. There are so, so, sooo many ways this would explain the differences between the two cultures and why the Northern Tribe continuously involved itself in Southern Tribe affairs after the Hundred Year War. And if the Southern Water Tribe really was tribal, that would also explain why the tribe's chief is an elected position and why a council of elders is the voting body. That sort of governance is fairly common in tribal societies, which are also often matrilineal instead of patrilineal. True story.
A/N #3: Also a true story - the "old saying" Korra mentions is actually a Middle Eastern proverb (some say it's Arabic, others say it's Islamic; i say it's Middle Eastern because i've heard it used by non-Arabs and non-Muslims alike). I'm fond of it because it embodies a very problematic "us versus them" mentality that's hardwired into the human brain.