Asami felt pure joy, watching Korra beneath her, trying to catch her breath. She never expected to be tucked against the back of a musty sofa, skin flush with Korra and a mix of sweat and drying sea water. Still, these last few days with Korra had been anything but ordinary, and she treasured this next strange moment all the same.

Eyes closed Korra felt Asami's right hand meet her cheek and her lips press under her jaw. She could even detect the fingertips on her left stroking her hair line above her ear. Korra knew how kind she could be from their long friendship, but she never imagined what it was to feel loved by her. Her chest was full by it, and she was afraid to breathe for fear it would leak out.

"I hope this is consolation," the heiress told her nosing where'd she'd kissed. Korra was, as always, was caught off guard by the affection and took a minute to respond.

"For what?"

"For getting your ass kicked twice in one day."

Korra laughed at her, and made a show of turning them both, Korra pinning her hands above her head and telling her.

"Pinning you beneath me comes with new meaning now,"

"And that meaning is?" The heiress feigned innocence as Korra leaned in close to whisper into her ear.

"I'm the top."

"What no!" Asami struggled, laughing unreservedly as her best friend tangled her legs with her own and kissed her neck.

"You see the reason I couldn't beat you is simple,"

"Is it now?

"Mhm it's because…" Korra punctuated her pause with another kiss to her neck "I never wanted you to submit." as Korra spoke the sound was as soft Asami had she'd ever heard it, soothing, and vulnerable in the dark. Asami never thought she'd ever hear beauty in a voice. "I want you to be free," she kissed the crook between her neck and shoulder "to let you go wild." To prove her point her own grip on the heiress came loose, tan hands palming the long expanse of her wrists, her elbows still together, fingers feeding into her hair, "To feel your hands on me."

Asami felt the touch like a blaze on her flesh, eyes closed as she detected fingertips framing her jaw and chin.

"If that's true how did you ever beat me? 73 times."

"I'm still a better fighter than you," she gloated, "I beat everyone else in our age group except you, and you could never get past Tye Lee, and Mai, and Azula," grinning that smug crooked grin, she reared her head back and Asami saw her eyes, blue, open and honest, "But when you touched me I felt things, oh how I felt them, when I knew I shouldn't be. You're my friend, my best friend, I couldn't accept how good it made me feel. Not in this way. That's what I was fighting. It's a losing battle."

"You were pretty deep in that closet huh?"

"Only for you," Korra replied. Asami caught the sad twinge she only caught in flashes before.

Asami watched her then, throwing her mind back. Korra had never discussed her sexual preferences with her, it came almost casually, when a once-fling kissed her in public and Korra gave no reaction one way or the other. It wasn't something she kept from the world, but from Asami, she'd built a wall around it, carefully constructed, maintained with silence and kept secure. I'm not comfortable talking about it, she used to say, omitting the with you, she'd add in her head.

Asami thought she just wasn't the type of person to kiss and tell, but as she analysed her wording, her behaviour, it all became clear. Asami was the only person whom she hid herself from.

"What would you have done?" the words fell out of her, and Asami knew probing into world beyond that wall. The time before Ember Island, and what Korra had planned on doing as she watched her sail away with someone else. Someone she considered to be the wrong person.

Korra's openness veiled. She sat back on her heels, pulled a blanket from behind her and feigned cold, shivering and angling her eyes away.

"I don't know." the lie was bare faced, and staggering.

"Yes you do Korra," Asami was stern, but careful to keep her hands connected to her thigh as she sat up to meet her gaze.

Korra was mute, and throat closing as she shook her head softly.

"If I had married him, you would have let me go?"

"You know the answer, why ask?"

"I want to know what my life would have looked like, I would've needed you Korra, I wouldn't have let you go."

"I would have been the same," Korra could only look at her a few seconds at a time as she spoke, "Just hiding my feelings,"

"Pulling further away more like,"

"That wasn't my intention,"

"That's what you were doing," Asami's thumb traced an arc over her thigh, "I was losing you because you refused to tell me,"

"I was hoping distance would make it easier."

"So I would have come home after three weeks and what? You wouldn't care anymore."

"I would've been your friend, and not…"

"What Korra?" Asami's hand cupped her cheek and made her look at her, "Your feelings were valid - do you understand this?"

Korra's face pinched, shutting her eyes as the wall eclipsed her.

"Even if I was with him forever, even if I could never feel that way back, what you felt, was yours to go through. I hate that you went through it alone K,"

"What would you have done if I had told you? With your new husband, year one of your hundred year plan to further the Sato-Iroh dynasty?"

"I would have done everything to keep you." Asami leaned in closer this time, pressing her forehead to her own in attempt to pass the belief onto her. "You think I'm going to lose my best friend over some man?" her voice was breaking, breathy, kind, "At worst we would have talked it through, and best, well, look at us now,"

"You would've cheated on your husband?" Korra scoffed sceptically, but Asami answered without a beat.

"Yes."

Korra opened her eyes finally, and Asami could see the cogs shifting in her mind, processing it all.

"You said it yourself, he wasn't right for me. It might've taken a month, a year, maybe more but it would have fallen apart. It was only a matter of time before I started to see you like I see you now. It only took a second of you catching me to get it."

"You think while you were crying and broken you were in any state to choose who you want to be with?"

"You were there. He wasn't." The heiress stressed, "I would have been miserable, I would have made the worst mistake of my life and I would have come running to you. Maybe I would've felt trapped, I would have designed and redesigned that kitchen and spent my evenings pensively holding a wineglass like a desperate fucking housewife, but sooner or later, after you'd held me weeping, after I figured how good it felt to press my face into your neck, and fall asleep in your arms…how right it felt… I would've needed those moments, and stolen them as much as I could. I would have wanted you to kiss me… I would have asked you to fuck me against the marble counter tops with rose gold furnishings or absolutely rail me against the smart touch screen fridge while his pot roast goes cold on the stove."

Korra's lips felt a smile tugging at her lips, but she barely allowed it, as her hand rested on her wrist.

"Would you have taken off your diamond? While I was thoroughly replacing him?" her tone was dark, and chills coursed up Asami's spine as she spoke. Of course Korra wanted to agree with her, wanted to run off into the next sunset, take his place and be content with that. However, this was her best friend, and she had a hard time telling her anything but the truth as of late, and these were the thoughts that plagued her. "You wouldn't have called me to your new well designed mansion because he brushed you off or left you feeling lonely? I wouldn't have been filling some man sized hole where he should be?"

Asami rescinded her hands, even though it was the opposite Korra flinched as though she'd been slapped. Like that she knew exactly what she'd done, staring at the disconnect she'd broken between them.

Asami was gaining distance now, and there wasn't anything she could say to repair the damage, her lips felt numb and nagging thoughts fell finally, utterly silent.

"You're never going to see this are you?"

Korra remained silent. All she could think about was sand, and her fingers could feel the sensation of it pouring through her fingers. She heard its sizzle as Asami stood and gathered her clothes, eyes glassy, tears drawing lines on her cheeks. To say she couldn't believe what she was seeing would taste a lie, she had been holding her breath, waiting for Asami to wake up and smell the coffee, that this was wrong and she should run. The scene before her Korra wholly expected and couldn't bring herself to stop it.

After dressing Asami opened the door and stopped, turning back but not raising her eyes high enough to see Korra's staring back, stoic and lost.

"Do you remember how you felt when we kissed for the first time?" Their eyes met, and Korra couldn't stand the sharp sting the jade delivered to her heart, "Try to remember that."

When the door was shut, Korra could never recall ever feeling so empty. The most important part of her had just walked out.

She sat back on the couch and stared up at the roof of the shack she'd never intended to return to. She knew it well, her heights were marked on a beam behind her. Her father hadn't returned either by the look of it, the board he was shaping still half carved where he left it, their sanctuary until this night, had been left untouched.

She could almost see him, polishing the wood and shaking his head at her.

"We didn't raise you to be a fool Korra," he'd say, not looking up from his craft.

Korra felt the itch in her hands once again, pulling a shirt over head, body thrumming with adrenaline as she did so. No pretending, Korra thought to herself lifting the smoothing plane on the half finished board, what a dumb idea.

It took everything in Asami not to look back. As she pushed through the stream of people she listened for the door to open behind her but no sound came, so she headed for the ones opening and closing in the cars and cabs ahead of her.

She barely mumbled the hotel name to the driver before laying on the back seat, eyes leaking and head throbbing. Regret burned in her stomach like a pit. She should have told her how she felt, but what use was telling a wall she loved her?

I fell in love with you when you broke my nose. Korra's words floated through her head, and she clung to them. It was proof she warmed like a bird, fragile in her hands. Korra had lived for so long without even this.

Her face, she thought, she was so resigned to it. Like that she was inundated by guilt, she'd broken her best friend. She was like a goldfish, but instead of slowly acclimatising her to the carefully treated water bit by bit; she had been thrown in a boiling hot tub laced with metaphorical STDs.

She tried to think back to how they used to be, the way Korra used to look at her. She was always slow to smile at her, even in return, but what a sweet one it was. Asami had assumed the accident had taken its toll on her conduct, once free wheeling and head strong, she became tense, anxious and would jump when Asami surprised her. Now Asami knew maybe she only did that for another reason entirely.

It was the answer to a thousand small questions Asami'd had, but never thought enough of to ask.

Once when she'd visited Korra in her workshop, the Ice Sculptor had been working on a commission of an ice Michelangelo's David, and from outside the room Asami heard her whistling and singing. She stayed rooted in her spot to listen to the alien sound, in between the familiar chips and clinking tools, a beautiful voice at peace. When Asami stepped inside she continued for a few seconds before catching her reflection in the power saw and lopping off the cock of her latest work.

In the present, leaving the cab, Asami chuckled at the memory, wiping her tears and feeling warmth in her chest. She loves me. She thought the words over and over, trying to wring every last bit of comfort out of them.

Those feelings dissipated when she saw Iroh hunched over a cocktail in the hotel lobby bar. He stood when he saw her, stool falling over.

She knew how she looked, just-fucked and soar eyes from crying, hair turning to straw from the salt in the sea.

"So you're stalking me now?" she raised her chin and levelled her eyes.

"Asami-"

"Shut up!" she silenced him with a hand, and strangely felt everyone in the room stop what they were doing, even the staff seemed to stop and stare.

Asami studied him, wounded and contrite, and found every cell in her body utterly incapable of dealing with his ego right now. She turned on her heel, trying not to remember the last time she marched to her room, the way it felt Korra led her there. But of course this time, Iroh was following.

"Three years, we lived together, ate together, fucked together and we almost get married and you have nothing else to say to me?"

"Emphasis on the almost," Asami called back without skipping a step.

"Asami - please, stay, talk to me!"

"Why should I when you didn't have the balls to stand up there with me on the aisle and say I don't!"

"So what? You spend a week with her, fucking her, get what you needed and you're done? Where is she anyway, or did you stomp her ass into the sand too?"

With that Asami rounded, he almost slammed into her but she jabbed her finger in his chest.

"Don't you dare speak about her that way. She'd been better to me than you ever where."

"I hurt you…I know this, I want to atone, rebuild what we had, it's not too late…Asami I still want that family you wanted, I can be your husband, please, I want to spend the rest of my life making up for what I've done to you."

Asami watched him, disgust dissipating in her eyes. Iroh tensed as she stepped back into his space, and placed her hand on his cheek.

"You were right the first time Iroh," she told him gently, "What you were feeling were valid feelings," Her thumb stroked his cheek and he gripped her wrist, "but you not telling me those feelings isn't a relationship. It was a lie. As for the rest well, I don't want to wake up every morning to someone making me pancakes because you feel sorry for what you did, I don't want to look at the shame in your eyes."

"I love you,"

"Is that what you thought when you wrote that poisonous letter?"

"I-"

"Instead of your vows. You were exploring the depths of your love and…you saw it before even I did, Korra was there to pick up the slack, I have more pictures of Korra than of you, does that not make it clearer?"

"I'll regret that letter for the rest of my life-"

"It's too late Iroh, my eyes are open now…I only see her."

When she walked this time, Iroh didn't follow, the weight of her words pinning him to the floor.

Adrenaline coursed through her, legs shaking, ground trembling beneath her feet all she wanted was to curl up in bed. Her mind narrowed with purpose she didn't notice the bell hop spotting her and excitedly muttering "Eat, pray, love!" under his breath.

When she ripped open the door of their room, eager to bury into her single bed she stopped. The room had been rearranged, the twin cots inexplicably replaced with a queen size bed covered in rose petals. Her heart stopped at the sight of it, and so did the world.

For a moment she was lost in the memories of the last night, and morning, she spent here. Enraptured in the arms of her best friend, making her see stars and forget all the sadness that led up to it. All that sadness came crashing down on her now.

She came to curled up sobbing. She'd ripped the sheets from the bed, scattering pillows and petals.

It'd been a while since she'd cried herself to sleep, longer still since she'd cried herself to sleep without arms to hold her together. Alone she fell apart. Her dreams gave way to nightmares of the ground opening up and swallowing Korra whole before she got to talk to her.

When she woke, it wasn't by choice, the phone had been ringing off the hook. She cursed the good samaritan on the cleaning staff who'd decided to reconnect it.

She fumbled with the receiver, but as she was about to give the caller a piece of her mind the voice on the other end stopped her dead.

"Asami? Did I get the right room?"

"Yes, Korra you did… Is everything alright?"

"That's subjective," Korra responded evenly, but Asami could feel the tension in her back as she spoke.

She wanted to ask how she was feeling, she wanted to know if she finally believed her, but the venom of their last encounter still stung her, and kept her words inside.

"I know we need to talk," Korra said finally, after spending perhaps too long just listening to her breathing, "but the kids asked me to swim the islands today with them."

"Oh,"

"Yeah they bullied me into it…Facing fears, going to see the sting rays on Makapu…I figured you could use a break from me anyway."

"Something like that."

"Right."

Asami could feel her pulling away again, but something desperate in her wanted to keep hearing her voice.

"I saw Iroh,"

"Oh,"

"We're still broken up K,"

"You and him right?"

"Yeah,"

There was a pause, and Asami let Korra debate the anxieties plaguing her.

"Good,"

Asami felt her own lips twitch into a smile at that.

"I'll see you tonight? At the hotel?"

"Sure." Asami bit her lip, and looked out the window at the sun rising on the sea, "It's a date."

She heard Korra drop the phone.

"Sorry."

God I love you. She thought better of it to say it out loud.

Sleep came easier after she hung up, she still felt the devastation nagging in her brain. Inexplicably Korra's voice made it all better.

"Guys," Haru yelled excitedly, "Guys!" running into the staff room.

Jet flinched at the intrusion, annoyed to have been dragged out of his usual languor.

"What? Dude?"

Out of breath, Haru grabbed the whiteboard pen and underlined his ballot, Eat, Pray, Love.

"She's alone in the room," he exclaimed happily, "Crying!"

"Dude," Jet snorted, Joo Dee added.

"You're sick!"

Haru gawped at them before gesturing at the whiteboard with which they bet harshly and methodically on heartless guests.

"Where's the proof?" Jet pressed,

"And they're booked for another two weeks," Joo Dee added. "The race isn't finished yet."

"Well the other one is gone, and the husband is face down on the beach out side, and Doug the bell hop told me when I came in for my shift this morning."

"Guys!" Sneers burst in the room, sweating, eyes wide, breath heaving.

"Oh god you didn't sleep with her?" Haru exclaimed, inspecting the board for the odds on Sneers sleeping with a newly single guest and if it would cost him money.

"What?" Sneers exclaimed, "Who? No!"

"Are you okay hun?" Joo Dee finally noted the fear in her eyes.

"The sky is red." She said simply.

Jet stood up, whole body tense.

"Black and red," Sneers clarified. "Mt. Makapu is on fire"

"Get everybody off the island." Jet commanded, breaking glass on an alarm that hadn't been used in a century. The engraving had faded, but the writing was still clear and terrifying - IN CASE OF ERUPTION.