Korra looked up at the mouth of the mountain, and tried not to imagine it cracking open with the molten hot core of this most vengeful earth.
"There is an infinitesimal chance that volcano will erupt and kill us all," Asami told her from behind, reaching forward and squeezing her forearm.
"That's what the dinosaurs thought, and Pompeii," she mused, "And Iceland,"
"Do you memorise these?"
"Krakatoa, Pinatubo, Etna," Korra checked the list on her fingers as they waited at the base of it. They were one of three, Korra tried not so shudder, couples.
"Korra, it's a mountain now, it's dead inside." She also tried not to shudder as Asami rubbed her arm assuredly.
"The mountain and I have that in common." Korra stretched, feeling the exhaustion of the night still weighing on her shoulders, but mainly to distance Asami's touch from her bare arm.
She didn't turn to see the injured expression that flickered over Asami's visage. The two of them stood a distance apart, arms arranged in impromptu and comfortless self hugs as they waited for the guide, and watched the honeymooners whisper amongst themselves.
They flinched when a newlywed announced proudly.
"I shall carry my moon up the mountain back to the stars!"
The best friends shared a look as the man lifted his wife with an arm and pointed up the mountain.
"So long as we don't have to go back down with them," Asami nudged Korra, who finally found her smile.
They were teetering over the precipice. They hadn't managed anything other than small talk the entire morning since leaving Kya's.
Asami had mused that she had spend money on a very nice hotel room that she hadn't slept in since arriving here. Korra had felt a bitter part of her want to say why didn't she stay there and Asami stay at the hotel. Even though she didn't, she'd felt guilty about it ever since.
Korra knew she had only a few small words left at this point, and that beyond those dozen or so there were only the big existential questions that led her to the base of her biggest fear. To two of her biggest fears, she reiterated daring another glance at Asami in hiking clothes. Beige high waisted shorts, timberlands that in any other climate would be wildly impractical and a loose red vest. She had a comically small rucksack which only held a protein bar and a canteen.
Best friend Korra would have made humorous comments at her expense, but somehow Honeymoon Korra couldn't bring herself to.
Day three on the alien planet. She thought to herself miserably.
"Welcome newlyweds welcome," A calming bright, yet monotone voice emanated from behind them, "And guests," the woman corrected as she walked past Asami and Korra and indicated toward them. It was the first time in all day Korra stepped towards Asami for safety as the woman's overtly friendly smile beamed at them. The heiress snatched her arm the first chance she got.
She felt a sense of relief that for but a moment; they looked like the others.
"I am Joo Dee, your guide up our most majestic mountain - Mt Makapu," she presented at the natural phenomenon in front of them with a flurry of circular hand gestures, "Formed thousands of years ago, when the tectonics plates crush against-"
"We know how volcanoes are formed," Korra snapped. Joo Dee's face froze as she regarded the unhappy camper.
"I'm sorry, she's afraid of magma," Asami defended her squeezing her arm as Korra palmed her own face.
"And I learned about volcanoes in third grade, fourth grade, TV and I'm being a bitch, my aunt lives here and used to torture me with it. Carry on nice lady. We will stay at the back."
"Carry on," Asami finished for her, praying the the group would stop staring daggers soon.
When they did and Joo Dee went on and began to lead and talk, her noise was quiet enough to not affect the heiress and ice sculptor, caught in a tight tandem walk along the path, admiring a specific kind of view.
Korra sought to numb the cacophony of feelings barraging her at the moulding of Asami's forearm against hers. Some how Korra had to come up with a way of being supportive without touching her.
"You shouldn't torture civilians like that," Asami broke her thoughts, "I'm always impressed with your ray gun of truth, but it packs a punch."
"She only got a second of it," Korra shrugged, "she still has her eyebrows."
Korra tugged away from the heiress as soon as she could, but when she felt her hand wrap around hers she found the wall she had yet to truly break through preventing her from letting go.
"Why are you holding on?" it was an out of body experience asking that question, best friend (love sick) Korra would have kicked her for it. She rubbed her thumb over Asami's knuckles to make up for it.
"So we don't look suspicious," Asami defended, "we've infiltrated the vestiges of couple-dom,"
"No-one can see us we're at the back."
"Maybe it's for me." Korra felt Asami flex her fingers between her own.
"How are you feeling?" Korra turned back after stepping over a ridge, and guided Asami over the path she took, "I figure dangling from a cliffside that may spontaneously combust any second is a good place for you vent your feelings."
"Only if it'll make you remember this volcano is dormant,"
"Only in living memory," Korra murmured. "You seem to be uh," how do I put this in a way that doesn't make me seem like I'm in love with her? "Touching me a lot," Or an alien.
"Is that not okay? I'm sure I've…touched you before, right?"
"Um," Korra looked down at their hands, and bit her lip seeing how Asami didn't pull away, but she hadn't either. "I'm sure not this much." She admitted, "I would've noticed."
"I guess I've become a little needy," with her free hand Asami tucked her hair behind her ear and looked ahead, "Since getting here everything is so raw." She explained, "I feel like I've been asleep for a long time and now I'm awake."
"Wow, way to compare yourself to another Disney princess, princess."
Asami smiled and felt eased, especially as Korra's thumb traced patterns on her own.
"After my mom died, after dad went to prison, I know I turned my feelings off. Like lights. I went through the world, unencumbered by emotions and attachment to put the rest of my life back together, but I always thought, with you I was normal. You made me feel happy and I loved you for that…" Asami trailed off, pursing her lips.
Korra's heart stopped.
"But you never told me what a train wreck my relationship with Iroh was, like a three year slow motion train wreck between a corpse bride and a cold fish."
Korra's heart dropped.
"And I'm now that I'm not blind anymore… I can see you're keeping stuff from me." Asami raised her hands, with Korra's right entangled still. "You stopped talking to me about you, but you were still there, just keeping secrets with Opal and it left me wondering have I offended you?"
"No Asami-"
"Like did you think I deserved what happened?"
"God No, Asami, you deserve everything. I don't mean everything, I mean like everything good-"
They'd stopped following the troupe midway between the conversation, but neither of them could say when. Korra felt exposed, and their hands had slipped apart. She wanted to cover her chest to protect from being impaled. She was at a loss for who to deal with the ground opening up and swallowing her.
"I just realised you've never weighed in on any of my relationship with Iroh. In fact the only time I've ever seen you acknowledge it was when I commissioned a giant mystery ice sculpture from my wedding that failed. What kind of a best friend does that?"
Korra hoped for an iota of civilisation then. A door to close. A room in which to hide. All she could see were rocks and shrubs, none of which were big enough to hide a fully grown human female.
"Korra I get that you're neutral in a lot of things but you must have had some kind of opinion on this. This relationship came to such a cataclysmic end, there must have been some objective red flags along the way? Please Korra talk to me." the cadence in Asami's voice then was the final stroke of mallet onto chisel, "You never talk to me anymore."
The tight ball Korra in which Korra kept her meta-physical self fell apart, exhausted from struggling, from controlling her words, her expressions, her truths. She spoke not without thinking, but without being able to say anything else.
"He was never right for you,"
"Iroh is, was, good to me, a good man from a good family." Asami reacted reflexively.
"Good is not enough, Asami. Not for the rest of your want someone who pulls you across the room with just one look. Whose touch, lights up your fucking skin and sends your heart racing. It's," Korra stopped herself. "Iroh was safe for you. Easy to love. I guess that's easy when all you have to do is meet up a couple days a week in the apartment you share, have mediocre sex and plan your two point five children in the nuclear family you never had. I don't blame you. After what you've been through you deserve everything you want, but I just thought…he wasn't right for you."
Korra turned, unwilling to see the damage she was sure she'd just inflicted. She could see the path up ahead, curling on the cliff out of sight. She knew the way but couldn't take a step towards it just then.
"There she is." Asami said after a moment, voice calm, disappointed, "There's my friend. Where did she go?"
"She moved out of the way." Korra told her, "So you could be happy." She was on the edge of her truth staring over its abyss. She still didn't know what possessed her to take that step.
She was even more confused when she heard Asami following her. The path hugging the cliff curled into the mouth of a cavern, ancient steps carved into the rock face. Tracing her fingertips over the glassy cave walls to guide her way. The heiress' steps echoed her own. The sound of water lapping the rocks lured them on.
There was light ahead of them, reflected on the crystal blue waters, sending shivering beams of dancing light a net across this ancient haven.
The stairs ended on a lip, beneath which began a lake kept secret from the outside world. Clear, so that the ripples and patterns in the sand could be read from where they stood, but deep in that it may not have been possible for even an experienced diver to reach them. Fish came and went underneath where they stood. They had a moment until sunset, they could tell as on the far wall, feeding the lake with light, was a large crack, the sun directly behind it on the surface of the water.
This wasn't what caught their eye however. Amid the lake floated a wooden boat, anchored and tranquil, solitary and abandoned.
"It's beautiful," Asami breathed. Korra hummed in agreement. She could tell Kya she'd seen it, she thought, now it was time to get off this rock. But when she turned Asami had dropped her bag and peeled up her shirt.
When the heiress' green eyes clashed with her blues, she felt her heart jump. For once the storm in her eyes told Korra nothing, ordinarily she knew what every shade meant and how every pain could be salved. Right now it was too much to decipher through her own thrumming body and swirling thoughts. She might have asked what the heiress was doing then, but the answer came before she could.
"I didn't come this far to only come this far," Asami told her, shucking her shorts before stepping past Korra and diving into the sea. She barely made a ripple.
This was Asami's honeymoon, she remembered soberly, watching her glide deeper into the blue, she was not supposed to be here, seeing this. No pretending, she thought to her self, no more pretending, she added dropping her bag and pulling her own t shirt over head.
Back home, Korra wasn't used to swimming in salt water as warm as this. Taking the plunge in the ice was a challenge in and of it self, breaking it, bearing it, staying alive. Paled in comparison to what she was doing now. She stopped struggling, and let the tide of it take her.
The boat was bigger, and steeper, then expected. When she reached it, faster than Asami somehow who must've stopped half way to admire the view, she gripped the net draped over its side and let it be her anchor. Adrift alone on the edge of a boat she couldn't get on, feeling the heiress near, unable to bring herself to look at the threat she posed.
Korra was of two minds, the second she'd started to let her guard down her body flooded with this adrenaline. She'd let slip what she'd kept so close to her chest all these years and Asami hadn't hurt her, yet. It was amid contemplating this, she felt a cool hand pass against her shoulders. Flinching she lost her grip and replaced it with the edge of the boat that dipped.
"It's just me," Asami reminded her, reaching across her chest to tangle her hands with the net.
They floated, listening to the trickle of the boat settling.
"How do you feel?" Korra asked.
"Like nothing is fixed." Asami answered instantly. "What are you thinking?"
Korra stared at her, in her usual stoic way, this time her tan skin sparkled with the blue beneath them, refracted light painting her face and catching in those eyes of hers.
"Why were you staring at me?" she whispered softly, "That first night at Kya's"
Asami pursed her lips. Korra noted how her eye makeup had smudged a little, but her lips were just the same tinted rouge. She watched her face change, and all the words she wanted to say went unsaid behind her eyes. Korra adored the crease she got between her brows when she worried like this. This time she didn't move when Asami touched her, hand coming out of the water to trace her temple with her fingers once more, as she had that morning.
"I see you," she told her simply.
Korra let out the breath she was holding, shaking, feeling like she had received an exquisite punch in the chest.
"What are you afraid of?" Asami asked her softly, hand coming to rest on Korra's neck, thumb tracing the curve of her jaw.
The last brick of the last wall Korra had built to protect herself had just been decimated into nothing, and now there was nothing holding her back. The sea is still, yet a gentle push begins to close the distance between them, Korra feels Asami's ankle curl against hers under the water.
This time she's certain of it, Asami's eyes have dropped down to Korra's lips.
Asami's fingers knotted instinctively into her loosely tied up locks as Korra leaned in, letting one hand free of the boat as she mirrored Asami's hold on the heiress own cheek. The pressure of that first gentle kiss built quickly and Asami couldn't stop trembling with every press and touch. Korra seemed calm by comparison, every move in control of every second, she'd dreamed of this for every minute she was with her and it showed.
There was a lot Asami knew was true in that moment, she knew, as Korra angled her head and depended the kiss and her back pressed into the boat's side, that Korra had been keeping a lot from her. She also knew, on a grander, more permanent scale, that this was the final piece of the puzzle between them. She knew it as Korra's fingers traced her spine under the water, and the electricity gripped her whole body. She knew it as her lips slid over her hers and she felt a hunger to get closer and keep close every strip of her exposed skin against her own.
As the sun falls into the ocean, the only light there is comes from beneath them, neither can see it through closed eyes and racing hearts.
Suddenly, a long thick beat of a wing underwater sent them both reeling. Asami wrapped her arms around Korra and yanked her close, opening her eyes to see the new world they had just entered.
The sun had set, but the cavern wasn't in darkness. Pools of glowing blue particles of algae drifted at the edges of the water, and beneath them feasting, black manta rays with huge wingspans.
"Korra-"
"I've got you."
The soaring mantas dived and parried, meandering uninterested by the humans they'd just interrupted, and darting for the small fish illuminated by the natural lights.
Korra leaned back and guided Asami's hand from her chest to the net.
It was now with ease and grace the heiress pulled herself over the edge of the boat and inside, turning ready to pull the ice sculptor up behind her. The surprise with this boat was that it was mostly hammock, four posts spread to pin up a canvas, wide enough for two people. The pair lay across it to peek down at hunt beneath them.
Korra felt emboldened enough to take Asami's hand in hers as they did this. Asami felt emboldened enough to knot their fingers in response. When Korra smiled at her, it was a glorious mega-watt grin, that she hid a moment after by biting her lip. The weight of the guard she had kept up was lifted and Asami could cry as it showed.
"Korra?" Asami asked, Korra hummed in response, the heiress felt her own lips tug upwards into a smile, "Kiss me again,"
Korra knew she should ask all those questions now bubbling to the surface, but she had wanted this for so long, and wondered if she had actually slipped into a coma and ended up in a perfect world of her own creation.
Instead, as she moved Asami moved with her, sitting back on the flat of the bed. She placed her hand by her ribs, watching her chest flutter before meeting her eyes, she drew her fingers over her jaw, studying the reactions she got with every touch; the skipped breath, the pupils blown wide, the way she bit her lip as Korra's moved closer. Korra ran her thumb over that lip, gently coaxing them apart, and moved her own as close as she dared.
Asami let a whimper pass through her lips before tension broke with her resolve. Both hands behind the crook of her neck, tugging her the rest of the way. This time she took control, nibbling the sculptors' lip and scratching the base of her hair.
Why am I here? Korra felt a voice nag at the back of her head as Asami scratched it, How much of this is real? She added as Asami's lips gently soothed where she had bitten.