Really there were only three most likely outcomes, Joo Dee surmised, either Asami would choose to stay with Korra, go back to Iroh or nobody. Sneers however insisted there was a fourth.

"All I'm saying is this Asami chick sounds like she's open minded as hell,"

"Well you can waste your money then on the unlikely scenario they end up in a ménage à trois," Mang rolled her eyes at Sneers as the five of them huddled over their new ballot plan.

"A what?" Sneers balked,

"A threeway,"

"Right…I still think it should be an option, I would hate for it to happen and then where does the money go?"

"She's right," Jet surmised twisting the toothpick between his teeth, "I'd put a bet on Korra or both. Either way so long as there's some hot lady action."

Joo Dee stamped on his foot and he yelped and hopped.

"How do we tell who's done who?" Haru asked.

"Same way as we read the divorcee's, who checks out with who, we get a read on them on the way out. It's more obvious than you might think." Joo Dee didn't look up from the board as she wrote on it, calculating the odds.

"What about other guests?" Sneers asked,

"Those, my friend, are the juiciest odds," Jet wrung his hands, "I put them at around 23 to one against,"

"What about if she Eat Pray Loves it?"

"Three to one, the same as Korra and the douchebag,"

"So we get three times what we put in?"

The foursome looked incredulously at Haru.

"What? No," Joo Dee exclaimed.

"Who taught you math?" Jet added

"The odds are just suggestions," Mang explained, "Whatever you bet on you win the pot for,"

"But what if other people bet on that too? We could end up winning less than what we got in?"

"You gotta place your bets wisely then," Joo Dee explained, leaving her initials next to K and A getting together.

"Hey!"

There was a scramble for the pen, letters exchanged, they threw their yen into the pot Jet kept in his locker. The staff too bell let out its shrill tone, and a chorus of Not it! left Haru in the lurch.

"I get Eat Pray Love, and now this?" he mumbled heading for the reception.

"We shouldn't let him go out there alone, he's still new," Sneers mumbled,

Once more they yelled - Not it!

"I hate you guys," Mang mumbled, trailing after him.

"See you later braces!" Sneers called after her.

"Uh Hi, how can I help you today?" Haru asked the couple at the desk,

"Do you have a room booking?" Mang corrected him, reaching over the desk to open the booking ledger in front of them.

"Not exactly, we're actually booked in a smaller, much less expensive villa."

"I don't understand,"

"My boss is here, I'm her Assistant." Opal handed her a business card, and Mang took it, Future Industries, did not ring a bell, Assistant to Asami Sato, however had the ringing of cha ching between the young girls ears. Haru stiffened beside her.

"Have you seen a bozo with hair like this," the man beside her arranged his mop into a more demure and refined style before putting it back to rights.

"Bolin!" Opal chided, "Sorry We're on something of a personal mission, it's a long story, trying to warn her about her ex-"

"Iroh," Haru finished for her, realising too late that he had revealed too much, "He was just here, yelling at us to tell us where her new room was."

"We didn't tell him," Mang insisted, "confidentiality, you understand."

Mang was putting the pieces together in her head, this golden egg that had wandered her and Haru's way. Joo Dee had mentioned Korra seeing Iroh but not confronting him, and how now the mad incensed general marching around the island in search for a sign of his jilted bride.

"Right," Opal balked, "We would like to find her too, to support our friend, and our other friend."

"I'm sorry," Haru told her, "It's company policy we can't hand out the details of our guests."

"But I made the booking for her, all of it the massages, the dinners, the diving lessons," Opal started pulling out the receipts and copies of the tickets she'd kept just in case, "This guy is going to ruin the last shred of happiness my friends have, I mean he left her at the altar, I can't let her figure out he's gunning to try and win her back and ruin this vacation, it's just so we can warn her what's coming so she can prepare- look its 3:15 right now, on the third day - they're at the play, the ember island play," Opal recited from memory "fifty yuans a ticket, front row, seats J and K, just point us in the right direction."

"That's a damn good assistant right there!" Bolin encouraged massaging her shoulders and getting pumped himself.

"They cancelled," Mang told her, "They cancelled everything for today."

"Cancelled?" Opal frowned, and her expressions flowed from this to dropping with surprise to a firm but hopeful smile, "They cancelled."

When she looked up at Mang, whose eyebrows were raised, and lips sealed. Mang who little more than an hour ago had learned of the boat and the pair rushing off to their hotel room as though no-one else existed.

"This is very important. Iroh is a potentially dangerous and jealous man," Opal told her firmly, "This could be a safety issue," she pressed, "Your policy ensures the safety and privacy of your guests right? Emphasis on the safety part."

Mang knew Korra was a good person when she saved her from Asami's initial meltdown at the desk. She had bet on them making it, even though the ballot was saturated, by the end of this trip she hoped nothing would break them, so she scribbled on a scrap of paper and inclined her head to the direction of the suites.

"Don't," Korra started, eyes glassy, "Don't open that."

Asami looked down at her, reading every inch of the morose, terrified expression on her face. She watched as all the work she had put in to get Korra to relax rushed out of that perfect body, and in its place was a tense anxious mess she'd arrived here with. The only conclusion she could draw that the poison was on the other side of that door, knocking gently.

Asami was done with it, she thought, whatever tortured Korra like this had to go. It was with this in mind she reached for the door, and yanked it open.

Two nimble arms graced her enrobed shoulders and she was buffeted by the unexpected hug of one, Opal Beifong. She couldn't turn to see that Korra's expression had shifted into confusion, especially when a set of firmer, bigger and clumsier arms came around her and lifted them both up.

"Hey Bolin!"

Korra stood up gingerly behind the trio, looking lost as all she had been preparing for failed to compare to this. Before she realised Bolin's long reach had snatched her into the hug as well, it was when she felt Asami's arm tuck back around her in it that she let out the breath she was holding.

When they disengaged the heiress tucked her hair behind her ears in an effort to get her brain to catch up.

"What are you doing here?"

There was a silence that followed, filled with the possibilities of just how to pose such a problem of the human spanner, Iroh, in the works of whatever Opal and Bolin had just interrupted.

"The reception said you cancelled your activities for today."

Asami's mind went straight back to that morning, the bed, their bodies entwined, Korra's lips emblazoned against her skin and fingers inside her, languishing in the lazy morning fucking that was slow and building in its burning intensity. She also remembered how they'd agreed to keep this all a secret, and after being silent for perhaps a moment too long answered.

"We decided we had a lot to-" her breath was snatched away as she quickly relived the shower they'd just had together, and the tender way Korra had held and bathed her, blending sensuality and sex in the most exquisite of trysts "-talk about." she finished.

Korra couldn't stand it, and sensed scrutiny from Opal, who knew her true feelings, but did not know yet what had come of them.

I had a plan, Korra thought longingly about keeping Asami a secret, just until she could figure things out.

"I'm going to get changed if we're going to make it to Kya's," Korra stepped in, desperately hoping to change the topic, quickly lying and plotting her next move.

All she knew was the longer they were together in a hotel room in robes, the more it looked like they were having an affair. Which technically it wasn't, but it had only been four days since Asami had been left at the altar by the General now apparently loose on this side of the island. People tended to look down on such a thing, and Korra felt enough shame on the subject as it was.

"And we're going to Kya's," Asami went with it, even going so far as to explain, "Korra's aunt, or not so much. It's a whole thing." she shrugged and internally analysing each word that slipped out after the fact.

"Right," Opal studied them, "I'm glad you're getting on ok, to tell you the truth I thought you'd be driving each other crazy and be a little…devastated out here." she eyed Korra in particular, who remained a wall of unintelligable information. All she could say for certain was that the energies in here were full of conflict.

"Oh I was." Asami breathed, still struggling to keep from her mind the many recovery positions Korra had helped her with over the last day or so. "Korra's been a big help."

"That's what friends are for," Korra flashed a barely convincing smile their way before slipping into the bathroom with fist fulls of mismatched clothes, when Asami saw them she took the no's and left her with a more coherent outfit.

"But you came all this way?" Asami asked, tossing them, "For me?"

The heiress couldn't help the warm unfamiliar feeling bleeding over her chest then.

"Mako's coming too when he gets off work on Saturday." Bolin told her, "Opal got us a villa nearby so we could all support you after you know."

Next thing she knew she was leaking, lips pursing together as she regarded her Assistant and well, her friends, being there for her like a family would.

Opal hugged her again, more gently this time, and Bolin kissed her temple and rubbed her back. Korra was missing, she thought, but she suspected Korra was likely freaking out alone in the next room right now.

"We have some news. A warning," Opal added quietly. By this point Korra was out of the bathroom balling her robe between her fists. Opal looked at Korra when she said, "Iroh is here, looking for you."

Korra only watched Asami as she said this, in the aftermath.

"We came to protect you from him, and be on your side if you wanted to confront him." Opal explained.

"I'm not ready," Was the first thing the heiress managed to breathe, suddenly the arms she began to crave as of late, were around her, catching her as the wound she'd just healed split and had her bowing over, "He left a letter, why can't he just leave it alone."

She tucked her face into Korra's neck and found herself inhaling pure, clean Korra, before catching herself in the act. She knew she wanted Korra to act as she had before, to kiss her neck and card fingers through her hair, but a best friend outwardly has limits.

"He called the office looking for you, flipped his lid when he realised you'd come here without him."

"Why does he think he deserves an audience with her?" Korra sneered rubbing Asami's back in friendly circles was the heiress clung to her.

"He said something about therapy, even had the gall to sound remorseful, and went so far as to stupidly tell me he was coming to the island to quote 'win you back'"

Korra felt her stomach fall at the idea of it, fighting the urge to hold Asami tighter, instead she felt her pulling back.

"He'll be all over this hotel looking for me." Asami felt the logical, tactical part of her brain take over, and tried not to read into Korra's fingers slipping one by one from her grip.

"You can stay with us whatever you need." Opal nodded assuredly.

"We've got plans with Kya over on the other side of the island," Asami asked looking to Korra, who pulled her lips into yet another tight lipped smile to hide another lie.

"That's good, that sounds safe," Opal mused.

"Wait we can't just hide from him - this is your vacation!" Bolin argued, "We should be able to have a good time."

"We will Bo," Korra looked at Asami then, "We have two and a bit weeks left, but right now Asami just has to mentally prepare…I do too," she squeezed her arm, "We'll face him together."

Asami watched her then, and somewhere in those statements was something that felt wrong to her. That her truly burying her last relationship was meant to be a solo mission, one that should have already occurred before the last one started. She, like Iroh, had been foolish enough to think that a letter should suffice in the face of it.

"Okay, well me and Bo still have to check in with the Villa, so I guess we'll meet you at this Kya's after?"

Korra nodded and scribbled the address on a pen and paper behind Asami. Who stood there while, once again her friends rallied around her.

On autopilot she grabbed her clothes, and packed an overnight bag, it seemed to be a pattern of theirs to spend the night at Kya's and she had a sour feeling that this time would require clothes.

The pairs split off to their respective missions, and when in the cab only then did Asami actually speak.

"What plans did you make with Kya?" Asami asked.

"I uh, actually didn't," Korra admitted, "I just wanted to get out of there."

"Did you see him?"

Korra was silent then, choosing her words in her head but unable to put it in a light that made her lying seem less devious. Asami went on "Is that who you thought was on the other side of the door?"

"I just, when I saw him, and I knew what he wanted because how could he not, I wanted to see you." Korra looked down picking at the seat, "I wanted to be with you a little longer."

"Korra look at me," the sculptor shook her head and closed her eyes, but Asami was patient with her and let her take the shyest of glances, "You can't lose me."

"I'm scared I'm losing me." Korra breathed. "He was the 'wrong number' and I told him you'd forgotten him and to go home and then I lied to you about it…this uncertainty, all of it, I have no control. It's twisting me up-"

"More than usual?"

Korra looked up at her, brows knitted.

"I'm keep lying for you, to you, for you," Korra admitted.

"You're a good person." Asami assured her.

"I'm not so sure."

Asami let the statement hang there between them. She had enough trouble convincing Korra she wanted her, and she'd been put through the ringer of surprises, deceit and drama in the last hour alone. She was exhausted. So she crawled over the cab seat and wrapped her arms around Korra, tucking her head back into her neck.

"I'm just so glad that you're here,"

"You need me to be your friend right now." Korra felt numb as she spoke, fingers knotting in her hair as she balanced her forehead against the cool of the window. "I think we should pause this, until we get this Iroh thing over."

Asami pulled away at those words, it felt like a tsunami of cold ocean yanking her back with the current, and suddenly she was on the other side of the cab.

"You're not serious."

Korra nodded soberly, lifting her head from the window to look at her.

"You're not done with him," she said, and again that stoic, hard expression of hers was back, body tight and mind closed, "he's not done with you. You don't need me distracting you. I don't feel right doing this behind everybody's back - especially now that everybody is here."

"What about the boat- what about last night!"

Korra flinched and fists clenched over her jeans.

"I love you Asami." her voice was quiet, raspy and vulnerable, but she pressed through it even as her throat closed up, "But he'll be hanging over us so long as you don't face him."

"No Korra this is you, this is your fear-"

"I know."

Korra reached across the seat to balance her hand over Asami's and held it there. The heiress looked down at them, not believing what she was hearing.

"Best friends come first," Korra recited numbly, "Not to mention he will go insane if he finds out about us."

They were outside Kya's now, and when Korra saw the house she mumbled.

"Oh crap."

Korra had forgotten the Aang surf competition for the most part, but it seemed the day had crept up to them, and Kya had already begun decorating the house and bar for the festival of surf, sand and the years biggest waves in honour of her late father.

Kya waved at them from the porch, smiling warmly, and Asami snatched her hand back to run and give the older woman a hug. Korra grabbed the bags and followed.

"Need help setting up?"

Asami didn't know what she was getting into, but she knew a project that could be managed better when she saw one.

"More the merrier!" Kya laughed as the heiress took to helping bar staff (sans Kuvira) unravel a banner and attach to a crane she was automatically drawn to. Smile through the pain, the heiress remembered, you'll get through this.

Korra walked up to the scene slowly, in awe of both what in the hell she had just done, but also the memories washing over her at the sight of the old banners and arrows and colours.

The flags littered Kya's front porch, with the slogan that had dominated the festival since it started - Aang would do it.

Korra remembered the story, she'd heard it multiple times whenever she was there for a visit. The only difference to this one was that a certain former bride had dominated the conversation of late, most deservedly.

Still upon noticing the unusual staggered entrance of the girls who a day ago couldn't let each others hands go, Kya decided it was time for another lesson.

Korra took to knotting nets to block surfers from being battered against underwater rocks during wipe outs, an important job that required real focus. It became an impossible task when she overheard Kya informing Asami later.

"My father, Aang, was a local lifeguard, who had saved over three hundred people in his career. Not a single person died on his watch, to this day the best lifeguard in the world. He was so brave, there was no one he wouldn't go after if they were in trouble. One year the islanders council invited him on a Maori voyage, to sail as the original islanders had thousands of years ago using the stars and their sailers to navigate the open sea."

"That's incredible," Asami gushed, invested in anything that could distract her from the girl who held her heart not six feet from them.

"But," Kya took a breath, "They were hit with some rough seas, three men and three women, were clinging to that broken sailer as a raft for three days, until finally Aang said they'll die out there if they do nothing. So my mom…" Kya's voice went up, but she powered through the story, "put oranges around his neck, some of their last food for sustenance and he swam away, looking for help. Eventually a boat picked them up and they were saved…Dad…Aang was never found."

"I'm so sorry." Asami gingerly reached out to comfort the older woman who had once been so kind to her.

"So we hold this surf competition in his honour. It started when there were these forty foot, fifty foot waves and the surfers were like its too tough no one can do that, and then suddenly someone would say Aang would do it. Aang would do it, and they would and," Kya nipped a tear from her eye as she looked over the ocean, "it'd get us through some tough times. You should prepare yourself the whole Aang clan is coming here tomorrow…"

"Aang would do it." Asami repeated, this time her eyes flicking purposefully over to Korra.

"What's going on between you two? You haven't talked since you've got here."

"Oh we talked on the way." Asami snapped a part of the deck chair she was assembling at that moment and covered her face with her hands.

"Ah," Kya sat beside her, "It was that type of talk." her eyes followed Korra as she stormed off to be anywhere else, and she put her arm around Asami's shoulder. "She adores you, you know that right."

"We have the worst timing!" Asami all but screamed it in her hands. "My ex is on the island."

Kya's hand stopped rubbing her arm as she looked at her, and planned her words careful.

"How does that make you feel?"

"On edge, lost," Losing her. She omitted the last part. Asami sobbed only to be tucked securely against Kya and felt a warm hand on her temple. "Why is it everyone I telling me they know what they want, but at the same time what I want isn't real?"

She was referring to them both, Korra recently and all the damn rhetoric Iroh had used in that damn stupid letter which she wished she could study to tell what the hell he was thinking.

"You got to make them believe it baby," Kya soothed, "It took Kana and I over thirty years to make it together, and in the end I had to convince her and myself I could settle down here. The proof isn't you saying sweetie, it's just you."

Asami felt those words hitting her in her core, and when Kya went on the raw truth of it hit her hard.

"You've got a choice only you can make, I just hope it doesn't take you three decades to make the right one."

Asami found herself nodding and pawing at her tears, pulling herself together.

"What are you going to do?"

"I'm just trying to get my head around it before he shows up I guess."

"Well, you're welcome to stay at the usual spot for tonight,"

Opal and Bolin had pulled up, and Korra decidedly hung back as Asami did all the introductions. Lucky for Kya she had stocked a plethora of food to feed the festival staff to keep Bolin happy, and the chef himself immediately took charge of the barbecue at a complete strangers house. Asami had to admire the charm of that man.

The foursome founded an impromptu picnic in a party on the beach, and when they'd finished Opal and Bolin took their chance to enjoy what the ocean and the island had to offer. It was particularly beautiful as the sun had set and tiki torches lit the cabana.

"Are you okay?" Korra asked tentatively, drawing patterns in the sand.

"I am now, thanks to Kya,"

Korra read between the lines as no thanks to you, and it stung.

"I'm still here for you." Korra dug her fingers deep in the soft sand. "This is only temporary."

"I know." Asami whispered. She looked around them for people they knew, and decided to take a leap of faith, and buried her fingers too, sliding Korra's between her own hidden from view. "But I'm not letting go," she told her firmly.

Korra said nothing, but instead, in secret caressed her thumb with her own. Asami watched the invisible exchange before looking up and ended up staring directly into Korra's blue eyes, bright and crisp in the dark and fire.

Asami wanted to kiss her, in front of all these people, she craved it. Kya's words ruminating in her mind she leaned a touch closer. Until Bolin landed beside them soaking and shaking his hair out like a wet dog, and Korra snatched her hand away, wrapping her arms around her knees.

Asami couldn't take the cold empty cut that coursed through her at the whole exchange, and mumbled something to the effect of I'm going to bed, before taking to the bed she had once shared with Korra.

Despite herself she left a space for her, tucking herself into the cool wall and folding the edge of the sheet at a right angle so the Ice Sculptor could slip in behind her.

When she woke the first time, Bolin and Opal were draped across in the second bed, deep in slumber and tangled like children, Opal balanced precariously on Bolin's back. It was then she noticed Korra had just walked away from the door ajar.

Incensed by her abandonment, she followed her.

"So you're literally hiding in the closet now?"

"I think technically this is called a pantry," Korra mused pulling nonchalantly at a bag of Funyuns, "I thought I could eat my feelings but apparently I have no appetite,"

Asami wanted to hold her, it was an acute feeling tight in her chest, but all day she'd had to fight that urge and it stung then as it had the first time.

"I understand why we're keeping this secret. But I just, it hurts when you go cold on me, you know that right."

"If they find out- all these people judging us, issues of morality, would we even have a chance at this being real I- it'd be a disaster-" Asami silenced her with a wave of a hand and continued.

"I know, objectively this is all - it's too soon." she scooped her hair behind her ears, "but this isn't about him, it's about us. I have feelings for you, and I want to be an us." gestured between the two of them, "I can't stop wanting that all together. Not after last night. Not after the first. I think we both need it."

"This is hard for me too."

Asami reached out, and Korra's cheek rested in her palm. "You've been holding your breath for so long." The ice sculptor grabbed her wrist gently, and closed her eyes, enthralled by the arc Asami's thumb was tracing under her eye, and her hand now gracing her racing heart "I want you to breathe with me Korra."

Korra felt a valve trigger with the cadence of her voice, and through an 'o' in her lips she let out a lungful.

"I can't stop feeling like this Korra." Asami told her firmly, taking her hand and knotting their fingers.

"It's not like we can have those three dates with him lurking in the wings." Korra blurted, her actions were steeped in practicality, but the truth of it was all she wanted to give in.

"I don't think we should hide the way we feel about each other to each other…"

"I don't know how else to be." they both were very much all or nothing candidates, they had matching intensity, and had never considered compromise, except of course, with each other.

"…At least not behind closed doors."

"Asami…" Korra trailed off.

Aang would do it. That damn mantra was incessant, but the meaning had always been clear to Korra.

Be brave.

"Tell me to stop."

Only the next sound was their lips pressing together in an urgent, tight kiss, hands fervently gripping clothes and gently tugging hair. This was another one of those times Korra hadn't meant for it to happen, but was all the more grateful that it did. Asami pressed her against the door and latched onto her neck, proving how badly she wanted to suck and bite the pulse point there.

Korra let out a soft moan as Asami descended and ripped up her shirt unclipping her jeans in a swift unreserved motion. They were alone in the middle of the night, everyone deep in sleep upstairs, and they took each other silently and in secret. Asami on her knees and taking Korra's leg over her shoulder, and her clit into her mouth as though taking holy communion.

She could forget the man hunting her, how could she think of anyone else? When the woman she loved rode her face, and stifled, cried out her name.

"Dearest Asami… No that's too…wrong just wrong," Iroh scribbled on the notepad he'd bought from a knick-knack shop outside the hotel, he was writing with a novelty pen that had Ember Island is for Lovers, on a bar with a scotch beside him. He was dictating an apology letter.

"I looked inside myself and saw myself, above myself, marrying you. Guuuh," he grunted and scribbled and screwed up his fifth or sixth attempt after his fifth or sixteenth whiskey.

"Asami huh?" A velvet, calm voice cooed beside him, "That's an unusual name."

"It's beautiful actually," he corrected needlessly, "I'm just hoping she takes me back. If I can find her on this stupid island."

"Archipelago," the woman corrected, "and I might have seen a woman of that name around my bar a few nights ago."

Iroh perked up.

"Tell me where she is!"

"Easy tiger, buy a lady a drink first, perhaps we can help each other."

"Of course, anything miss, uh, name?"

"Kuvira," Kuvira held out her hand, "You must be Iroh,"