Song 1 - Honey - Kehlani
Korra's head slammed into wood and brick, and in the rebound she charged the heel of her hand into her attacker's face. Incensed he went for a round house, meaty fist swinging wildly.
Korra dodged, ducking under, sliding a guiding hand over his outer arm, exposing his ribs just enough so she could break them with a swift crack of her knee.
He fell back wheezing, piggy little eyes opened wide, slumped against June's shins.
In her list of possible decisions, trying to relight the crumpled up cigarette she had been toting shouldn't have been highest. With shaking fingers she cupped the end and her thumb couldn't seem to light it. Her concussion had been instant, her nose was bleeding without intent to stop, her brow cut, with more blood blinding an eye that would soon begin to swell, and she had a massive headache forming at the back of her brick dusted cranium. Still all she needed at that moment was a drag.
The man on the ground gave one last kick at her feet, and as she went down she adjusted her priorities.
Korra punched him without finesse or technique, though it didn't seem to matter, he wasn't expecting someone of her size to be able to hit so hard the skin of her knuckles would start to split.
It had been a while since Korra had felt truly weightless, an odd realisation as burly bouncers lifted her from the squirming man.
Her ears were still ringing, but she was sure they were telling her to take it easy.
"Korra,"
Now released, and after an apparent time skip, she was stumbling away from the bar, flight instinct having finally kicked in.
Better late than never. Lighter than a feather. Stinging like a bee, stinging head, stinging heart.
She hadn't quite achieved the capacity to think in coherent sentences as she marched.
June gripped her shirt.
"You've done enough." Korra plucked her hands from her, only to find that her palms and knuckles were slick with blood. She flexed them glistening in the lamp light to be sure.
"You're going the wrong way," June informed her to which Korra stopped and looked around indignantly at the empty unfamiliar street in which she had been walking. The bar was no longer in sight, and the words looked bizarre as though written in another language.
"Where is your husband?" she seethed, taking reconnaissance of an area that was strangely lacking in people.
"I'm so sorry it got like this, and that he found out and I that didn't say…It's complicated. We've just been growing apart for some time,"
Korra showed her hands.
"He doesn't seem to think so!"
"I tried to warn you, but your new friend dragged you away from me,"
"She's not new." Korra told her, still scanning the horizon, her hopeless confused heart still hoping that one of her friends would have come looking for her. That the friend would be Asami.
June's eyes softened as she watched her.
"Let me take you home."
"I'm not falling for that again,"
"You're lost, you're hurt. Let me just get you home safe, okay? Or to a hospital?"
Korra patted the back of her head, and sighed relieved there was no blood there. From her fighting days she remembered what a concussion felt like, that bloody noses always looked worse than they were, and that hands, once the bleeding stopped, simply needed wrapping. She needed ice, painkillers, bandages and bed rest, and perhaps enough make-up to cover up this mess.
"Just home," she breathed, her head lolling back as a cool breeze soothed her feverish skin. When she opened her eyes she could see the moon and stars, bright and dancing. A gentle hand folded into her own, and June began to guide her to a taxi.
They rode in silence, for the most part, Korra taking solace in a cool window to her temple, June watching her. Specifically watching if she was still breathing, and for a moment getting lost in the sight of soft skin exposed to the moonlight.
"Is she what you're going through?"
"Hmm?" Korra feigned ignorance.
"The…tall one," June pressed.
Korra swallowed.
"We've been best friends forever," Korra's voice was husky, and morose.
"And you've been in love the whole time or just recently?"
"She's married,"
"So am I."
Korra opened her eyes finally.
"That's different,"
June sat back in her seat, arms folded, smile coy, "She's into you,"
"Stop," Korra warned. She couldn't hear this, her heart couldn't accept it. "Stop it,"
June chuckled, mirthless, tacking on with finality.
"Best friends don't hold friends the way that she held you."
Korra turned her eyes out the window. Jaw set, heart tight, desperately trying not relive it, and inevitably, failing.
Asami lay in bed, hands tucked under cheek, staring ahead. She looked the part of the sleeper, only her mind was running with no intent to stop.
Korra had left nights out before, without a word, on a whim, that was her way, Asami knew. She couldn't help but feel unsettled by her leaving this time. If almost didn't feel fair.
She'd always been satisfied going home with Iroh before, or at least to him if she went on a 'crew' night. Still she couldn't help but long for those single days, sitting with her best friend on her bed, sharing idle chit chat until the liquor kicked in and she'd fall asleep, only to wake up alone, and find a very hungover Korra wincing from her aching bones on the couch.
"That's not for sleeping in," Asami would say.
"You're a blanket hog," Korra would retort back.
As she sifted through the memories, bits and pieces returned to her in total clarity like floating debris.
She cast her mind further back to the hiking trip. They had marched all over that small mountain together, her parents trailing behind.
Korra would find something fascinating in the roots and the moss and vines, and Asami would be led from place to place seeing it anew through her eyes. Fingers entangled as they stepped over treacherous terrain, staying that way even when they reached the plateau of the cliffs edge.
Had they held hands before? Why was it so hard to recall? Why did her heart throb at the idea of it?
Gently she rose, lifting the picture from her bedside to inspect it. Korra smiled up at her, as did her younger self. For a second she felt it, reflected somewhere in the hollow space between her ribs.
That's what it used to feel like, an unhelpful, irritating voice told her matter-of-factly, happiness.
Oh. The Carmaker's thumb traced the brim of the frame.
"You still thinking about the house honey?" Iroh mumbled, turning his head in his pillow, refusing to open his eyes. "It's okay - We can call the estate agent in the morning," his words were coherent but his tone veered on babble. "Get it out and get on with our lives."
"No," Asami shook her head but he didn't seem to stir, "I haven't decided but I think I…need to fix it up first, go through it all…it feels important, for Mom."
In that moment she recognised the gift her mother had actually left her, and she knew in that big old house there were more memories like this, and perhaps they would outweigh the bad. Perhaps they could even be rewritten.
"N'kay," Iroh mumbled, before promptly falling back asleep.
"Hey boss!" Kai poked his head in the studio, "I brought pastries!," he announced, before adding quietly, "so you can't be mad I'm late…"
For nought it seemed, Korra was nowhere in sight.
"Uuh," he pondered to himself, pulling headphones from his ears, before poking his head in the freezer, finding only the sculptures sitting in the dark, half-emerged ghosts in cocoons of ice.
"It is Monday right?" again to himself, dropping his jacket at his bench. He climbed the stairs to the apartment, intending to knock, but finding the front door smeared with a palm of blood. His gut dropped.
"Korra?"
He hit the lights.
"Aaah! Turn em off!"
He breathed a sigh of relief to find Korra in a blanket nest of her own design, clutching an icepack to her left eye, whilst the right peered at him.
"…You okay boss?"
"I- yeah, sorry,"
Kai watched her for a minute, taking in her split knuckles, bruised cheek, and what was probably a black eye under the icepack.
"I brought pastry," he offered, if only for something to say.
Korra's defensive demeanour softened, grateful for the lack of interrogation from her colleague, who she often forgot was just a sweet kid with a chequered past.
"You know where the plates are."
Kai hopped to her kitchen, opening the fridge. He prepared cooling croissants with a squirt of whipped cream lighting fast, and poured two glasses of the good orange juice Korra kept for hangovers.
He set them down on her coffee table and took his own on the arm chair opposite.
"Can I ask?"
Korra gave a deep, wide-eyed sigh, struggling to know where to begin.
"I was…seeing a woman,"
"Did she do this to you?"
"No, no, she, no,"
"Well who did? Do we know them? Will they come here?"
"Will you let me finish? I was seeing a woman," Korra repeated, "her husband had a problem with it."
Kai paused, fingers prone over is food.
"Didn't you?"
"I didn't know she was married until he jumped me outside the bar," Korra admitted.
"Oh dang,"
"You cannot tell anyone," Korra told him matter of factly, "more importantly you can't tell my friends. Not Opal, not Mako, Bolin, especially not Asami, got it?"
More than anything she dreaded Asami finding her this way, and after a rivalry in martial arts that spanned a decade, she could never face to the shame of being jumped in a bar by some stranger. Her old sparring partner would never let her hear the end of it.
Kai pursed his lips, only to nod. Once upon a time he had been a good thief, but not particularly a good liar.
"Did you win at least?"
Korra lifted a glass to her lips, lowering the ice pack and stretching out her eye.
"You should see the other guy," she admitted with something of a proud half smile, remembering the crack of his ribs and stupid surprised face.
When they finished eating, Kai stood awkwardly at the doorway.
"I'm not coming to work today, obviously," Korra threw him a smile to ease the worry that gripped him, "I'm going to take some painkillers, sleep it off."
Kai looked lost at the idea of working without her, he was only an apprentice after all.
"There's not a lot on the docket, couple of swans, but you're an ace at those. When you finish why don't you work on your own stuff?"
Kai lit up at the suggestion, nodding.
"Want me to bring you lunch later?"
"I will be unconscious." Korra reminded, already taking herself, her cape and her pills towards her room.
"I'll leave it in the fridge!" Kai yelled back, already making his way down the steps so she couldn't protest.
Asami rather admired Korra's shop. She'd adapted the firehouse herself, converted the garage into a sizeable freezer, painted hazardous red over with a calm cerulean blue. She worked below where she lived, built her life on her terms, and to Asami, she'd created an oasis that matched her aura.
Visiting Korra's home felt like coming into harbour.
The lights were on, the front door open, but an eery silence came from inside. Korra worked to loud music, but while the wheels of the shop were clearly turning, Asami saw no sign of her friend.
She hadn't heard anything from her since the bar almost a week ago. Asami was starting to worry.
She paced into the workshop, around the machines hoping to find her working behind every corner. Finally she reached the fridge, the light was on but no-one was home, say for some ice swans, wings a loft and necks craned high. The engineer couldn't help but admire the ingenuity in their sculpt, her eyes were drawn to the real masterpiece beside them, a notebook of exquisite sketches and plans on the bench, frost dusting the pages, cold enough so the water couldn't blot the ink.
Asami loved the language of blue prints, after all she was an engineer. Already her thumbs turned pages over, between instructions and plans and variant designs she began to notice Korra's errant doodles.
A snowflake, lips, eyes, stars, an apple, Asami, a fish, a bird, Asami… flowers, Asami, a tree, Asami. Asami. Asami.
For one second she thought about her wedding sculpture, Korra must've practiced, she must've drawn from photos. For the next, she remembered they didn't bring a camera to the beach that day. Asami holding the crab, smiling down on it. Most were candid, from memory, though the memories seemed mundane and unimportant, at least on face value.
Her fingers touched lead, an intense patch of errant scribble covering something Korra had drawn, and no longer wanted to see. It was small, roundish, and if Asami wanted she could turn the corner it was on and see the answer carved in the other side. Her thumb traced the shape beneath, a heart, she was sure of it, the initials inside, not so much.
"Ah!" Kai yelped behind her, clutching an ice bird that had slipped awkwardly at the sight of her.
Asami slammed the book shut, cheeks raging, feeling as though she'd been caught reading a diary. A dairy that should have been marked danger, keep out!
"Hey," she rushed, "I'm looking for Korra, I haven't heard from her and I…Kai? You okay?"
Kai actually couldn't hear her, music still blaring in the headphones he couldn't take off, his face went slack as he struggled with what exactly to say.
"Kai? Where is she is she okay?"
"She told me not to tell you,"
"Tell me what?"
"Uh," Kai balked, pursing lips, puffing cheeks, waddling with the bird until he could rest it on its perch. "She's fine, she's not well, but she's fine," he scratched and ruffled his hair.
"The look on your face tells me otherwise." Asami mused, watching his eyes bounce. "What is it? Can I go up?"
"No, I've got it, her, covered, she's probably sleeping I've been bringing her lunch, I'm just about to,"
"Great! I can can come with." Asami was already on the move, and Kai had a problem catching up to her, her legs were so damned long, and the heels only made her stride longer. She'd snatched the lunch bag from the front desk.
Kai intercepted her at Korra's door.
"She told me-"
"-Not to tell me Kai, you're being ridiculous and so is she,"
"Just," Kai snapped, "wait here," he snatched the bag, twisted the door knob and turned back to her, "sorry,"
Asami folded her arms, conceding, she liked Kai, she had to remember that or she might throttle him.
Korra had drawn her, with care, with skill. You know the whole thing with magicians and secrets. Asami had uncovered another one of Korra's secrets. As she waited the haunting half smile held her.
"Oh shit," she heard Kai cuss, that was her queue.
Korra was on the floor of her kitchen, sitting, leaning against the cabinet, half asleep, cradling a glass of water.
She laughed seeing Kai, before closing her eyes at the nausea she felt.
"Okay," Kai had her arm over her shoulder, and she leaned into him. Asami watched speechless, she saw her bruised nose and face, the cut brow, the dark eye. Korra didn't even seem to notice she was even there.
Asami reached to carry her too, but Kai stopped her with a look.
"I got her."
Kai put her on the bed, placing the water at her bedside.
"I'm such an idiot," Korra laughed, "I got stuck!"
"You did," Kai laughed back, "You're on painkillers dummy,"
"Hey now, that's boss dummy to you,"
"Boss dummy," Kai corrected. Korra nodded in assent, smile fading, face morose.
"She's married…all this time and she…she's so perfect, but she's married." she eased into her pillows.
"How perfect can she be if she let her husband do that to you?" Kai asked, lifting her blanket to her chest before she rolled onto her good side.
"No it's not her…I'm in love with her…but she's married."
"I know, dream of someone better, kay boss?"
"Boss dummy," Korra muttered.
Kai closed the door behind him softly, rubbing his face and muttering "Heavy," beneath his breath.
"Kai what-"
"A woman she was seeing," Kai spilled immediately, he hated secrets, and this one was already half out, "turned out she was married and her husband…you can guess. She liked her more than I thought…loves her by the sound of it."
"How long?"
"I found her on Monday, I think this happened Friday,"
"June." Asami breathed, and the name hit hard in her chest. She'd never heard Korra talk about love before, it seemed every time they met nowadays she learned something new and entirely earth shattering.
"Is that her name? I would call but I don't have a number, also I'm not sure I should given…" he gestured to his face, where Korra's had been mostly red.
"I see,"
"Doctor gave her prescription for the headaches but they make her nauseous, so she takes pills for the nausea and they make her loopy, she's just been sleeping mostly," Kai paused, "and sleep walking," he meandered through her flat, replacing a chair she'd knocked over, and putting her lunch in the fridge. "I've got it covered." he sighed.
"And I'll be taking it from here."
"But she-"
"I know,"
"But I-"
"I know," Asami hushed, "and you've done beautifully," she rubbed his arms, "I've done this before. Black eye? Walk in the park. I knew her when she couldn't… This isn't your job, Kai," she hesitated, and thought it was best not to add, it's mine.
He looked so young when she praised him, not quite knowing what to do with it, looking down at the ground because he was so much more used to being in trouble.
"Why don't you go home?"
"You're not my-"
"I know," Asami hushed again, giving him a hug, which he also didn't know what to do with. When she let him go his hands were still raised at the elbow as though he were trapped at an altar.
"N'kay," he side stepped away gingerly, once again closing the door softly behind him.
When he was gone, Asami pushed on the door, watched her sleeping through the crack. She could see bruised knuckles poking above the fur throw she gripped.
She must've been surprised, she mused, she needs practice.
For a moment, she wondered what she'd do while waiting for her to wake, until she took a real look at the state of the apartment.
"Oh," she breathed, dropping her coat and purse, rolling up chiffon sleeves.
She was re-organising the pots in the bottom cupboard when Korra surfaced. Duvet around her shoulders like a make shift cape watching her from the other end of the room.
"Oh," Asami was surprised by her only when she was satisfied by the feng shui of the cupboard. "Is this sleepwalking?"
"I sleep walk?"
"Kai told me,"
"Kai…oh man," then Korra remembered her face and clapped a hand over her bad eye, only to wince.
"You can't be mad at him,"
"I'm not," Korra sat on her couch, arm coming to rest on an unusually plump pillow. There was a moment where they looked at each other, and Korra knew exactly what her best friend was going to say. "It was one hit,"
"One is too many, you weren't even drunk how did he get close?"
"I was distracted! Okay? I was smoking and I didn't know until-" Korra mimed punching, "I broke his ribs, I won it's fine."
"You're out of practice,"
"I am not out of practice," Korra seethed. "I didn't know she was married, I was blindsided."
"Kai said," Asami pursed her lips, unwilling to press further. Her mind was on the notebook downstairs, but what did it matter? Korra loved someone new. Korra's heart was probably broken. Korra had gone through it all alone.
"You should quit," Asami told her.
Korra gave her a puzzled look.
"Smoking."
"Day six."
As Asami walked toward her she grew tense. It didn't ease when her friend offered her water and perched beside her.
"Do you see a future with her?"
"I-" Korra began, reeling.
"Kai told me,"
"Kai should keep his mouth shut," Korra mumbled, chewing the inside of her lip, inspecting Asami via side-eye and feeling her own heart pumping loudly, filling her chest with warm unfettered energy. "It's complicated."
"Because she'd married?"
"Because it's complicated." Korra told her sternly, taking a sip, using the time to think of a diversion, "I don't," she finally answered, "she's not what I need right now," she tacked on with a bitter twist of her lips. "How's the house?"
"That's why I came here actually."
"Oh?" Korra tapped on the glass with her fingers to fill the silence.
"I'm thinking of moving there and its a lot of work…since Iroh's busy with his new job, and well your evenings are opening up, and I thought...well isn't that what friends do?"
"Oh,"
"But you totally don't have to, I get-"
"I'll help," Korra answered quickly, too quick for her reasonable mind to stop her, "…I'm sure the other's will too, but, it's your parent's old house…are you sure?"
"Less and less, but, I feel like I should try…for Mom,"
Korra's lips twisted up, she couldn't help it, when her old friend showed bravery, she was proud of her. She tipped her glass upward, and toasted.
"For Yasuko."
Song 2 - Motion Sickness - Phoebe Bridgers