A/N: Ok, here's the deal. The imminent arrival of Book 4 has forced me to sort of speed up my plans for this fic, since I want it to feel finished before it conflicts with canon. After this chapter, I will release a Mako chapter and another Korra chapter, the latter of which will put a button of sorts on this series. Don't worry, though, I'll still be writing after Book 4 is over (and likely while it airs as well). If you haven't already go check out my other fic here on and come over and talk to me on tumblr (username bobbityhobbity).

This is another chapter that I've been kind of scared to put out there because I know it is going to conflict with a big part of the fandom consensus about Asami's role in Korra's recovery. Like a lot of people, I feel Asami canon arcs have been somewhat underwritten. She just doesn't have a lot of layers. And in order to give her some character development here, I need to find some source of conflict or some problem for her to overcome. I tried to do that here while staying as close to her canon portrayal as possible.

She knows who it's going to be before she even picks up the phone.

"An inmate of the United Republic Federal Correction System is attempting to contact you. Will you accept the call?" She knows all the notes of this particular operator's voice – tinny, metallic, grating.

This time, she holds the receiver an inch from her ear for a full fifteen seconds before hanging up.

Sometimes she thinks it would be easier if her father were just like her mother – past the point where she would need to worry about whether or not to take his phone call. She supposes it's an awful thing to think, but she also isn't sure she feels that bad about it.

Her eyes scan the surface of her desk, fall on the stack of unopened mail and the folder of forms waiting for her signature. But it's too late. Her focus is lost, just one of the many ways her father still manages to get to her even from inside a prison cell.

The clock hands are edging toward ten, and she decides she might as well leave early. At least she has something to look forward to today.

On her way out, she checks her preparations – cars gassed up and ready to go on the track, stacks of records ready to be played, and menus from everyone's favorite take-out restaurants. It's been a while since they've all been able to just hang out, just the four of them, and she's been looking forward to the opportunity to spirit Korra away from the Island, which has felt increasingly claustrophobic with each passing weeks even as the emptiness of the mansion has become almost an embodied presence. Everywhere she walks, Asami thinks she hears voices, and she is often surprised by how disappointed she feels when it turns out to be no one.

…

The morning is clear and warm on Air Temple Island. A salty breeze blows in from the west, ruffling the robes of each airbender as they form a group in front of the waiting bison. Tenzin's words are brief – duty, peace, solidarity – but Asami smiles all the way through it. Watching them all together, preparing to initiate this new tradition, a reinvention of the old, makes her feel more hopeful.

A year and a half ago, it would have scarcely seemed plausible that she would be included in something like this, that she would have somehow acquired a second family so large and so different from everything that she had be raised to value. As the airbenders pile onto the bison, she sighs to herself, more at peace, her father's phone call a rapidly fading memory. She is ready to gather her friends and begin their day together and pretend to be normal people who listen to music and eat take-out noodles and gossip late into the night. Bolin keeps hugging Opal, who is the last one to mount the bison, and Asami makes a mental note to order extra noodles and his favorite rice liquor.

Standing on tiptoe, Asami scans the crowd for Korra, surprised she hasn't seen her yet. But what she what she finds makes her heart sink into her stomach. She thought Korra had abandoned the wheelchair for the cane over a week ago. She'd been doing so well, but now the metal contraption is back, and Korra doesn't exactly look ready to go out: no boots, her hair hanging limply about her shoulders. She's going to bail, is the first awful thought that comes to mind. And as she walks toward them, she berates herself for her own disappointment and the awful resentment it engenders.

Getting closer doesn't make her any more optimistic. Korra is staring at some fixed point in space, and there are dark rings around her eyes.

"Hey Korra," Asami says. "Do you want some help getting ready?" It takes Korra a second longer than it should to turn her head. Not this again - that thousand yard stare and all the signs of poor sleep. There are burst capillaries around Korra's eyes, and Asami feels sympathetic, but at the same time she wants to scream why why why do you keep winding up back here? Just tell me what's wrong already so we can fix this.

Korra looks at her for a second, not quite comprehending, and then her eyes go wide. "Oh!" she exclaims, clearly remembering, but her face doesn't register any real expression other than vague numbness. "Asami, I'm so sorry. I just don't think it's going to happen today."

Asami chews at her lip and looks up to find Tonraq and Senna's apologetic faces.

"Well, if you're not feeling up to it," she offers, trying to make herself ok with it.

"We'll do it soon, ok? I just need to get some rest. I didn't…"

"Ok. It's ok. I mean, is there anything that I can do? Do you want to talk or something?"

"No," Korra starts. "I mean, let's talk some other time, ok?"

"Ok." Asami smiles, but the smile feels tight. She feels like bursting into tears right there. And she feels ashamed, like a pouting child.

She watches closely as Korra's parents wheel her back in the house, words too honest for the moment still clinging to her tongue. She is so lost in thought that she doesn't notice Mako strolling up next to her.

"Not happening today, huh?"

"She forgot," Asami says, though she knows that's not a fair characterization.

"Well, she looks rough. Her Mom said she didn't sleep."

"Yeah."

They are quiet for a minute while Asami turns over the question that's been nagging at her. "Does she talk to you at all?" she finally blurts out. "I mean about what's been going on with her?"

She's watched the two of them move closer together over the weeks, though what exactly they are becoming isn't quite clear. But Mako just looks back at her and shrugs, "Probably as much as she talks to you."

"Then it's not a whole lot."

"I think you just gotta give it time," he says. And for that she wants to slug him. It's been weeks, months at this point. How long is it going to take before she snaps out of it? Katara even said there was nothing getting in the way of her complete recovery. Not physically at least.

"Asami!" a graceful hand falls lightly on her arm, and Asami turns to see the warm face of Su Yin Beifong, her radiant presence asserting itself almost harshly in the cloud of gloom that surrounds them.

"Hi!" Asami tries to brush aside the hurt and frustration that still threatens to overwhelm her in the moment, but her greeting feels a little too enthusiastic.

"What a beautiful ceremony," Su continues. "I can't believe my little girl is going off to save the world!"

"It was nice."

"Well, anyway. I didn't mean to disturb you, but I was actually wondering if you and I could talk business. Perhaps I could stop by your office tomorrow, and we could have a chat about Future Industries and my plans for Zaofu?"

Asami looks at Mako, who shrugs. Then she looks back at the space in the courtyard left empty by Korra, and she turns back to Su Yin. "Let's go right now."

…

An afternoon showing Su Yin their operations and explaining their supply chain makes Asami feel, once again, like a competent adult rather than a child whose birthday party was cancelled. Su marvels at a new prototype airship, the design of which Asami had supervised directly.

"You've done a remarkable job. Surely no one thought this company would recover after what your father did, but you've managed a heroic task here, and you are taking your company to new heights. Of that there is no doubt."

Asami accepts the compliment as they stroll back into her office after their tour of the factory floor. But Su Yin's frankness is disquieting, and she chews the inside of her cheek as she takes her place at the desk.

Su Yin is quiet for a moment as they look at one another, and Asami can almost see her calculating her own breach of etiquette. "I'm sorry, dear. I feel now that I probably shouldn't have brought up your father."

Asami smiles and tries to cover her discomfort. "No no! That was a wonderful thing to say." She leans back in her chair, and all of a sudden it's like the exhaustion just seizes her. In the middle of saying something about how proud she is of all that she's accomplished, she realizes that it's getting harder to talk and that tears are burning at the corners of her eyes. "I'm sorry," she says, grabbing her purse and rifling for a handkerchief. "I don't know where this is coming from."

Su is faster, handing her own across the desk. "This is my fault, I'm afraid."

"No, no no no. I mean, yes, but…" She wipes at the tears that simply refuse to stop and tries to laugh a little, but Su continues to look at her with such motherly concern that every feeling in the world just seems like it wants to come spilling out of her. "He called this morning," she confesses.

"And?" Su Yin leans in closer, inviting her confidence. Never before had Asami considered how much she needed this – just some feeling of closeness with another human being.

"And I wouldn't even take the call. I just hung up. He's called dozens of times. And I always just hang up. It's horrible. I know it's horrible, but I just… I just can't."

"Shhhhh," Su Yin walks around the desk and folds Asami into her embrace, and Asami just lets her head hang down against the other woman's shoulder. "It's not horrible," she whispers. Anyone would understand why…"

"But a big part of me wants to talk to him," she sobs. And Su Yin pulls back to look at her and smooth the hair away from her forehead. "I have so much to say to him, so much to ask. And I've had so many opportunities, but I just…"

"I know. I know. Families are complicated. No one knows that better than me."

And all of a sudden Asami remembers that Su didn't speak to her sister for thirty years because of something that happened when they were kids.

"And sometimes," she continues. "Sometimes you have all of these things to say but it's just never the right time to say them. You have to trust that one day the time will come. One day you will be ready."

"But I keep thinking. I keep playing this over in my head, and what if he says things that are painful for me to hear. And what if he still hates me. And what if something were to happen to him in there and I never get the chance to find out?"

Su rubs her hands up and down Asami's arms, soothing away the tension. "You can't control any of that, darling. You just have to focus on what you can control. You have to focus on you."

Asami feels the rigid parts inside of her start to give way a little bit – not all the way – but enough. She throws her arms around Su Yin's neck one more time. "Thank you," she whispers, and she thinks that she could almost let this woman rock her to sleep right there in the giant executive chair of her very own office.

…

Air Temple Island is quiet, eerily empty when Asami returns in the late afternoon, not quite knowing what she is looking for. All she knows is that she can't quite bear to go back home. She passes Pema in the hallway and receives a silent squeeze on the arm as she carries a sleeping Rohan toward the nursery. The entire house feels like it is sleeping.

But Korra is not, and when Asami finds her, at first she is glad to see that Korra is standing. But she also sees that Korra is alone, staring out the window, searching the sky for something. The invisible barrier that Korra has placed between herself and everyone else is still present and palpable.

Korra turns when Asami enters the room, and she meets no objection as she makes her way across the floor.

"Are you feeling better?" she ventures.

"I got some sleep finally," Korra says. "Kya gave me some of that … some of that stuff."

Asami feels guilty again. Because whatever else was going on with Korra, she clearly didn't mean to bail. She didn't want to bail.

"I'm sorry again about earlier," Korra says. "I know I'm a disappointing friend these days."

The reflexive no you're not forms on Asami's tongue, but she's done with polite dishonesty. "It's just hard," she starts. "I don't know how to be, what to do, what to even think about what's going on with you. I want to make you feel better, but it's impossible to figure out how to do that."

Korra huffs a little, and Asami looks over to see that she's actually smiling. "I'm not even sure what to do about it. Some days, it's all laid out so clear. Some days, I almost feel normal. But then others…"

Asami moves closer and hesitantly places a hand on Korra's shoulder, and she can feel the tension in the other woman's body release just a little bit. "I'll hang on until you figure it out, ok?"

And what if she never does? – is the unwelcome thought that intrudes. What if she is always like this?

Control what you can control.

A long moment passes before Asami hears Korra sigh deeply, and she looks over to see a tear tracking down her face. "I worry sometimes that no one needs me," Korra says. "And that no one is ever going to need me again, especially not like this."

Asami closes her eyes and thinks about the airbenders leaving that morning to do Korra's job, and she feels stupid just a second because of course. But then she pulls her friend a little closer, the friend whose frailty makes Asami feel her own, and feel it bitterly. "I think I know what you mean."

They are quiet, but it's a good kind of quiet. The boundary around Korra isn't gone, but it's porous.

"Don't stop trying, ok? With me."

"I won't," Asami says.

An inmate of the United Republic Federal Correction System is attempting to contact you. Will you accept the call?