A/N: Last installment folks, and likely my last fanfic until Book 4 gets going. Thanks for supporting my work with all the follows and your very kind reviews. I very much enjoy reading them!
It is close to midnight when she hears the sound at her window, a faint tapping that makes her flip over to find three human faces and a fire ferret peering in at the window.
Her feet hit the floor heavily, and she rolls her ankles a few times to get out the stiffness before making her way across the window. Her body still feels awkward and cumbersome, a sensation that is aggravated by her sleep-fogged brain. But she makes it to the window safe, and she is bathed in the soothing air of a warm summer night when it opens. And just below eye level are the faces of her friends.
"Come on," Bolin says, a particular urgency in his whisper.
"Where?"
"You'll see."
She looks down at her pajamas. "Do I need to get dressed?"
"Nah," he says, and she sees that both brothers are in pants and undershirts, and Asami is wearing something short and loose-fitting – not a nightgown exactly, but she certainly less buttoned-up than usual.
"Ok." She boosts herself up on the windowsill, and each brother extends a hand to help her over and down.
"Can you walk to the ferry?" asks Asami.
She looks back at the window, realizing she's left both her staff and her boots back inside. The paving stones in the courtyard are slightly cool underneath her bare feet, and she gently scrapes the soles of them against the ground so that she can feel the texture. She bounces twice on her toes, and she feels a sudden urge to burst into a run, though it's an impulse she can't indulge. She still tires quickly.
"Yeah, I think so," she decides, and she feels hands grab both of hers and pull her toward the water, sweeping her up in their gait as they hurry.
"Guys, there is no ferry at this time of night. Wait, Asami, how did you even…"
"Shhhh." Mako hushes her, squeezing her hand a little tighter. But honestly, what would anyone do if they were caught? Send them back to their rooms (and mansion) – these four heroes sneaking off like runaway children?
There's a speedboat waiting at the pier. Korra recognizes the Future Industries seal on the prow and the evidence of Asami's fine taste in the gold-trimmed wood paneling and the lush white leather seats. Mako helps her into the boat, where she finds a comfortable spot on the long couch in back. Bolin hops in front, and Asami takes the wheel. Korra feels the upholstery shift as Mako settles in next to her, elbows propped against the wood-grain, his long legs unfurling as he gets comfortable.
"What's this all about," she asks him, and in response, he simply smiles and winks. His pale skin nearly glows in the light of the full moon, and his hair is messy, and she realizes that for the first time in months, she is feeling the urge to run her fingers through it.
"Grab a hold of something," says Asami as she backs the boat out of its mooring and then guns the engine. The wind whips around them, lashing Korra's hair against her face. And up ahead of her, she sees Bolin stand in the front of the boat and stretch his arms out.
"Asami!" Mako yells, "Throw on the brake and let him really fly!"
"What?" Asami yells back. The wind and the roar of the motor are so loud that Korra can only hear every other word they say. Finally, Mako settles back down next to her and shoots her a smile that makes her bite her lip.
She feels the boat cutting through the water, stirring up a violent wake as it disrupts the surface of the bay. The moon is full and enormous, and she can feel the water's power as it moves underneath her, coiling up and releasing like some giant muscled thing.
Bolin gets tired of standing in the front and pushes Pabu out of the way as he fishes for something underneath his seat. It's a bottle of something that he offers to Korra. She takes a drink, and the sweet burn of it hits the back of her throat as she passes it back. Mako waves the bottle off.
Asami steers the boat around a rock outcropping, and Korra looks backwards as the last lights of the city disappear behind its shadow. Outside of their halo, she can see stars beyond counting in a sky so big it feels like it might crush her. The water is black as oil, shining slickly ahead of the boat's headlights.
She doesn't know how long it takes – half an hour? An hour? But Asami starts to slow down, and bring the boat into an alcove in the rock face where the waves are relatively still. She ties the boat off, and Mako throws his long legs over the side, where he stands in water thigh deep and reaches out for someone to hand him something. Asami pulls her garment over her head to reveal a swimming costume, and Bolin strips off his pants and tank top and lets out a wild hoot as he leaps off the back of the boat where the water is deeper.
He swims a few yards out and comes back up. "Mako, it's better in just your underwear!"
Mako sort of shakes his head and holds out a hand to help Korra over.
She watches as Bolin's pale back vanishes under the water again while Pabu paddles in anxious circles around the place where he disappeared. And without a second thought, Korra pulls her top over her head and strips down to her wrappings. She sees Mako swallow hard as he takes her hand to help her over, and she finds that she isn't displeased. Asami passes him a basket, which he holds above the water line as she jumps over the side herself, and the three of them make for a small beach that lies like a bed of pearls at the bottom of the limestone cliffs that glow white.
Mako starts a fire with some driftwood that seems rather conveniently stacked beyond the reach of the tide.
"Did you guys plan this?" she asks.
"You could say that," says Asami, winking in her direction. Pabu races up from the water and makes a beeline for the basket before Asami sort of shoves him out of the way with her foot. Inside, there's two more bottles of wine and a collection of various food items.
Bolin shakes the water out of his hair, spraying the other three of them down.
"The food!" Asami says.
Bolin grabs a bottle and uncorks it. "Lighten up," he says, offering it to Asami.
She shrugs and takes a long drink before arranging their small picnic on a blanket next to Mako's fire.
"What gave you this idea?" Korra asked.
"We figured the only way to get you off that island was to kidnap you," she said.
Korra laughs. "You were probably right." She would like to say she's lost count of the days since she last left, but in truth she has numbered every single one.
"Just relax," Asami says, handing her a box of cold dumplings. Korra takes one and bites into it, letting the juice roll down her chin. She settles into the sand, flat on her back, and looks up into sky, listening to the three of them move around her. The first bottle of wine is half gone before someone passes it to her. She takes just a small sip before giving it back and tries to feel every grain of sand against her bare skin. She wants to be sure to feel absolutely everything.
"I miss Opal," whines Bolin. Korra props herself up on her elbows to see him prostrate in his grief, Pabu perched on his back.
"Enough," says Asami, handing the wine back to him with a roll of her eyes. She stretches her pale legs out in the sand, picking a little of it up with her feet and watching it fall through the cracks between her toes. Her toenails are a deep red, almost black in the dim light of the fire.
Something about it amuses Korra. "I never noticed how big your feet are, Asami."
"Ha!" Her laugh comes in one short burst. "Well, I never get knocked off them."
"I miss Opal."
Asami kicks sand in his direction. "Drink."
And he obeys. She turns her gaze back to Korra. "Literally all day with him," she says by way of making her understand.
"I miss Tenzin," Korra says. "And Jinora and Opal and all of them."
Asami looks at her seriously. "Is it them you miss or is it what their leaving represents to you?"
Bolin looks at her sympathetically and hands the bottle over. "A little of both." She drinks deeply this time. And the stars quiver a little bit when she looks back up at them.
"What do you miss, Mako?" Bolin asks.
"You're all right here!" he says.
"Well, what are you sad about, then? We're all sad about something tonight."
"What's Asami sad about?"
Bolin cocks an eyebrow in her direction. Asami sighs heavily and leans back on both hands. "I talked to my dad today."
Korra feels her eyes go large. "And?"
"And I'm glad I did it, I guess. He sounds like he's sort of sorry."
"Sort of?"
"I dunno. It's complicated."
Korra nods but doesn't push it. She passes the bottle to Asami, who nurses it for a while, taking long drinks every few minutes until her lips are stained purple.
"We didn't find out what Mako's sad about," Korra says. She looks over at him, still wearing more clothes then the rest of them put together, but his shoulders are bare, and they flex under his weight as he leans back.
"I'm not sad."
Asami looks at the three of them. "Of the four of us, Mako's the happiest. Someone write down the date."
Bolin guffaws and rests his head on the backs of his hands. "Tells us about the last time you were really sad, then."
There's a long pause, and Korra feels her stomach get tight. She stares straight into the sky while they wait, picking a small cluster of stars and trying to trace the pattern.
"When Korra almost died."
"Oh yeah," Bolin says, turning red and burying his face in the sand. He has to spit a mouthful of grains out of the way when he comes back up. "Sorry, I didn't mean to bring that up."
Korra turns her head and sees him looking her, his face etched with remorse.
"It's ok," she says. "I think about it all the time."
"Me too," says Mako's voice from somewhere behind her.
It's the kind of statement that brings a halt to a conversation, but the silence that follows isn't awkward. There's just quiet, the kind they can all simply sit in because they are all thinking about the same thing, and there's no need to really talk about it.
"This is a bummer," Asami says, taking a swig from the bottle. She stands up, a little unsteady on her feet. She grabs a small bucket out of the picnic basket. "I'm gonna go build a sandcastle," she says.
"I want to help!" Bolin yells, and he too sort of staggers to a standing position.
"You want to come or you want to stay here?" Asami asks.
"I'll watch from here," Korra says.
Asami and Bolin make their site several feet away, and Korra smiles to herself as she listens to the sound of Asami bossing him around. She hears Mako move to get closer to her, but he doesn't say anything, and they don't touch.
"I'm sorry you have to think about that." She says it before he can say it to her. Sometimes she honestly wonders if he doesn't deserve better than this. There has been so much pain in his young life that it just doesn't seem fair.
"It's a small price to pay," he responds, almost as if he read her thoughts.
It's quiet for a long time. She hears him move every once and a while, but she never turns to look. She just wants to feel his presence, the heat that radiates off his body and fills the space between them.
The stillness is only broken much later, when a commotion breaks out down the beach, and all of a sudden, Asami is chasing Bolin along the water line – neither of them running terribly straight.
"Well, I'm going to go see what that's about," he says, and she watches as he sprints effortlessly past her, his feet barely kicking up the sand behind him. And she notices that at some point, he took his shirt off, and the lines of his back are fully visible beneath the full moon.
…
She waits. And at some point the fire becomes too hot, and Korra feels a sudden urge to pull away from it. Past the flames, she sees the cool, gentle roll of the ocean, and it's as if each breaking wave is reaching out for her and then failing, retreating backward toward its origin. It beckons her in, shy and seductive and perilous. And so she gets up, struggling to her feet and moving forward, away from the circle of warmth toward a vast unknown.
The sand is connected to the sea. She can feel it in each shifting step as she carefully places one foot in front of another. The sand is connected and so is the air. And so is the fire she leaves behind her. And so is she. It all comes together and becomes everything and nothing. The light is connected and so is the dark, the deep dark of the night and the ink-black water and all of their terrible secrets.
She moves forward, one step at a time, and she can hear the voices of her friends as they chase each other, and they are connected too. And she smiles to herself as she feels the sand turn wet and squelch between her toes with every step. And she feels the occasional sharp sting when her feet turn up a broken shell, and she feels the water as it embraces her ankles before being sucked back toward oblivion.
She walks forward, and the sea envelops her until she can put her face down in it and swim, swim against the current, her body almost weightless. And underneath the surface it is pitch black and silent, and when she is tired of swimming, tired of coming up for breath every few seconds, she simply stays there, stays there in the quiet dark, the deepest stillness she can imagine, like a womb or a grave or like outer space without the stars. But she can feel the life teeming around her, the disturbances that aren't currents but are living creatures and spirits, inhabiting and filling that space that seems as empty and transcendent as death.
Pain begins to form in her chest as her lungs beg for air, and she holds out as long as she can before she comes back up and finds that the beach is not that far away, and if she stretches out her legs, she can stand on tiptoe and still keep her head above the surface.
And then she feels something move at her side, and a hand comes out to grab her arm, and when she turns, Mako is breathing hard with effort, and his eyes are a little too wide and a little too bright.
"Hey," he says. "You ok?"
She looks at him a moment and then laughs, "I'm just fine, Officer. What? Were you coming out here to rescue me?"
His forehead crinkles, and he looks stung. "You walked off… I thought… I thought maybe…"
She read the fear in his eyes but laughs it off again. "This is my element. Or did you forget?" She wriggles away from him and raises a wave that breaks right in his face.
He sputters and wipes the salt water from his eyes. She taunts him with her smile, wills him to come play with her. "Oh, I see how it is," he says and lunges awkwardly in her direction. But he hasn't a hope in the universe. Because this is where she draws her strength, her power. The water is hers to command, and for every attempt to dive down and grab her, she has a thousand moves at her disposal to punish him, to push him away.
But after a minute she is already tired of the game. She dives down and comes back up to the surface until he is little more than an arm's length away. He is panting for air, an inch from begging her for mercy. So she extends a hand, palm facing him, a sign of truce. And he smiles and presses his flat against hers, entwines their fingers together. And then she allows herself to be pulled forward until she has to brace herself with one hand on his bare chest. His feet touch the ground here, but hers do not, and the momentum carries her until they are very, very close indeed. But it isn't bad. And she isn't scared. Or at least not anymore.
She can feel him panting by the frantic expansion of his chest and the air that puffs against her face. She studies the water as it beads on his skin and drips off the tip of his nose. She is aware, like no other time, of all the details.
"I wish it could always be like this. Like tonight," she says.
"I know." His voice cracks a little, and his head falls forward to press against hers. "Let's just enjoy it while it lasts."
She closes her eyes and listens to him breathe, and she knows that they are going to kiss before it happens, before his nose brushes against hers and before she wraps her arm tighter around his neck. And when it does, it's full and open and ragged, and it's the kind of kiss that she can feel throughout her entire body, from the way his tongue pushes against hers to the way his hands try to cover her whole back and the way her legs float forward and tangle with his as he crushes her tighter against his chest.
"GROOOOOSSSS!" She breaks the kiss and whips her head so hard her hair whacks Mako in the face, and she turns to see Bolin standing on shore, his hands on his hips and his face the very picture of smugness.
She turns back to Mako and just smiles, and then she puts her head back down in the water and swims to the beach while he struggles to keep up with her.
"Whatcha doin out there?" asks Bolin, and with a wave of her hand, Korra opens the earth underneath him and sinks him up to his knees in oozy, wet sand.
Her body feels heavier on land, limbs leaden with the effort of swimming. But it's a good kind of hurt, a hurt she recognizes, the hurt of a body that's more living than dying.
"What can I do to help?" she asks Asami, who is placing empty bottles and food wrappers back in the basket, a little wobbly on her feet.
"Put out the fire, would you?"
She walks a few feet back toward the waves and pulls water from the sea, which she uses to douse the flames.
"I'm driving," Mako says, holding a hand out for Asami's keys, which she examines for a second before reluctantly giving them up.
…
The trip back is quiet. Korra, Bolin, and Asami sprawl out on the back seat. "I'm dizzy," Asami says as she rests her head heavily on against Korra's shoulder, the bottle of wine still in her hand. Korra loops an arm around her and peeks over her head to where Bolin is snoring with his head thrown back over the seat and Pabu curled up in his lap.
They come around the outcropping once again, and the silhouette of the city comes into view, its regular spires standing out against the jagged peaks behind them. The sky behind the mountains is slate grey with the dawn and ruddy at the edges. And Mako positions the boat parallel to the waves and kills the motor.
"We'll just watch the sun come up here," he says, crawling into the back with the rest of them.
Korra pushes Asami upright and scoots over to make room for him. Bolin is lolling over the side of the boat, a single arm supporting his head against the hull. As Mako settles in next to her, Korra feels his arm go around her waist and pull her back toward him. She fits into the gap his body makes and feels Asami nod violently before the motion wakes her, and she blinks at the reddening sky. "Mmmm," she says, drawing her feet up onto the seat, knees up under her chin.
"It's beautiful," Korra answers.
They sit there until the sun finally pokes its rim above the ridgeline. And twice, as they sit there, Korra feels Mako reach up to smooth her hair, his lips pressing gently against her scalp. And she sighs and sinks deeper into him. Bolin snores loudly, and Asami blinks serenely at the horizon, her hair swept loose and wild by the wind.
The moment ends, as all things must, and as the early morning begins to warm the bay, Korra feels her body get heavy once again with exhaustion. Mako resumes his place at the wheel and turns toward Air Temple Island, which assumes the contours of a battlefield in Korra's mind. She has been fighting for so long. Where, at last, will she rest?
But this is not a thing she ponders long, she who is in the morning of her destiny. She will fight a battle today, as always, against her own body's frailty and against the waiting darkness. And she will win, she resolves. Because she must.