Asami penned the last line to her letter and let the ink dry. She glanced at the clock and leaned back in her office chair. Mako would not be by for a few more minutes, so she reread the letter. She had waited a few weeks to write out of respect for Korra, and perhaps because she could not ignore the hurt she felt when Korra had asked her to stay behind.
But she needs time. The last thing Asami wanted was to fling herself on Korra, or take advantage of her in a raw emotional state. She made sure the letter contained nothing pressuring. It needed to show only a little concern. Asami sighed after reading it through once and folded up the letter. She pressed the seal of the envelope closed and carefully wrote Korra on the front. Just then, someone knocked on the office door. "Come in!" she called.
Mako entered. "Hey." He waved a letter at her. "You ready for this?"
Asami placed a stamp on her envelope. "Let's do it." She stood up and followed Mako out of the office. "And thanks for talking me into this."
"It seemed like a good idea. And I felt weird sending my letter by itself."
Asami snorted. "Hasn't Bolin sent her ten by now?"
"Well...yeah, but–" He shook his head. "This is different."
Asami nodded and locked up her office. "So what did you write about?"
"Nothing important, really. Just keeping her informed on what's going on. You?"
"The same." Asami did not want to talk about the contents of her letter too much. She and Mako walked out of the Future Industries building in companionable silence, instead. It had taken so much for Mako to simply start treating Korra like a friend again. Confessing the feelings of attraction she and Korra had admitted to one another would just place another wall between Mako and them. She could not estrange him like that.
"So, you think she's going to be okay?" Mako asked. They stuck to the sidewalk, heading west to the port. People walked past them without giving either a second glance. Korra was the only one who ever drew stares.
"I hope so." Asami shrugged. "My guess is as good as yours."
"That's funny. I figured you'd have a better idea, considering how much time you spent with her before she left."
A chill pooled in Asami's stomach. She glanced over at Mako, but could find no hint of anger or frustration in his expression. "She's not doing so well."
Mako nodded. "I guess I wouldn't be, either." They crossed out of the financial district and into the start of the harbor. The overwhelming smell of sea salt and fish made Asami crinkle her nose. "I'm glad you two have been able to become such good friends," Mako said.
More than you realize. Asami could feel heat crawling up her face.
"I'll be honest," he continued, "I was scared I had screwed everything up for the whole team."
Asami sighed, partly in relief, and placed a hand on Mako's arm. "You didn't screw anything up. It takes more than one person to do that. The three of us just..." She did not know how to sum up the odd experiences of herself, Mako, and Korra. "We're all just weirdly connected, and sometimes those connections just get tangled. I think we've done a good job untangling them, though."
Mako smiled, though it looked forced. "Yeah, with no help from me." He glanced out at the docks. They would need to take a speedboat to Air Temple Island. "I thought if I just kept my distance from everyone, it would all be okay, but it's too hard to be away from you guys. I mean...we're all friends, right?"
"I want us to be friends." They stopped on the pier. Asami studied the worn grain of the wood planks. She made a mental note to talk to the dock owner about upgrading. "And Korra wants to be friends with you too, you know? She doesn't want you to banish yourself."
"I know that now." He didn't sound completely convinced.
Asami offered him a smile and nodded at a tethered speedboat. "Come on," she said. "Let's get these letters to the White Lotus. You can write an apology or something whenever Korra writes back. Maybe it will be easier than talking face to face."
Finally, Mako gave her a genuine smile. "That definitely sounds like a safe bet."
They sent the letters off. A few weeks passed and no reply came. Asami and Mako made a habit of visiting Air Temple Island weekly to check for letters, but the months passed and none came. They eventually stopped going. Mako shrugged it off, saying, "Maybe she's just busy."
It wasn't as easy for Asami to accept. When she could not find distraction in work, she worried that she had scared Korra off, that she had done something to destroy what fragile bond they had formed. She would sit in her office at the end of the day and thrum her fingers against the hardwood desk. She would debate on whether to go home or to hop in a plane and just fly south. Korra needed her space, though. At least, she told herself that. The memory of their last private conversation echoed in her mind.
"Why do you want to go alone?"
"Because I need to understand myself. I need to understand what happened to me. You...make that difficult, Asami."
"I what?" She took a step back from Korra.
"No, that sounded bad. You see, this is what I'm talking about. I can't think clearly around you, and I need time to think."
Even though they had admitted to sharing an attraction to one another, Korra had not allowed their relationship to progress any further. Sometimes, on the worst days, Asami worried she had simply forced Korra into the situation by being her only caretaker for so long. She thought the distance would be good at first. Just a few weeks and then Korra would be better. She'd come running back to Republic City, perhaps ask Asami out to somewhere nice...
And yet two years passed. Korra never wrote to any of them.
She sat at her office desk, a nicer one now moved to the top of the new Future Industries tower. Her company had changed the face of Republic City in two years. She had done what many had said was the impossible. Still, nothing brought that pounding thrill through her blood like when she and Korra had fought side by side. Life faded into a domestic blur of sepia-tinted images.
That is, until someone knocked on her office door.
"Come in," she called.
A member of the White Lotus walked in. He was a younger member, obviously nervous. "Are you Asami Sato?" he asked.
"What name does it say outside?" she asked, smiling as the man leaned back and read her name on the placard.
"Um, of course, sorry." He cleared his throat and took a step forward. "I, uh, was asked to deliver this letter to you." He pulled an envelope from his robes and offered it to Asami. She stared at the weather-worn paper with wide eyes. The water tribe wax seal stood out brightly on the envelope flap, and written in familiar scratchy writing was her name, Asami Sato.
She stood and snatched the letter up. "Who asked you?"
"The Avatar, ma'am."
It was all Asami could do to not rip the letter open right then and there. "Thank you." She nodded and held up the letter. "I appreciate this." What she really wanted to do was eject him from the office and read the letter at least fifty times.
After several tense seconds, he nodded. "I'll just...take my leave, then."
Asami sighed and sat back down in her chair. "Shut the door as you leave, please." Finally, alone in her office once more, Asami opened the letter and pulled out the carefully folded paper.
Dear Asami,
I'm sorry I haven't written to you sooner but every time I tried…I never know what to say. The past two years have been the hardest of my life. Even though I can get around fine now, I still can't go in to the Avatar state. I keep having visions of Zaheer and what happened that day. Katara thinks a lot of this is in my head so I've been meditating a lot, but sometimes I worry I'll never fully recover. Please don't tell Mako and Bolin I wrote to you and not them. I don't want to hurt their feelings, but it's easier to tell you about this stuff. I don't think they'd understand.
Her heart pounded as she reread the last few lines. The final sentence tugged at her heart so much it hurt: I don't think they'd understand. It hurt because it showed Korra's vulnerability. It showed her fear. Asami dropped the letter on her desk and drew in a deep breath, shudders rippling through her lungs. After two years with nothing, Korra had finally reached out to her.
She let out a soft laugh, but the breath caught in her throat. Tears pricked her eyes. She folded her arms across her chest, hugging herself tightly. "Korra, why now?" Tears rolled down her face and she wiped them away. It would not do well to have an employee stumble in on the Future Industries CEO sobbing over a letter, a letter she could tell no one she had received.
Perhaps that was what hurt the most. She wanted Korra in her life just as much as the day she had left for home. And perhaps Korra still felt the same. Her letter was not a heartfelt admission of love, but a confession of weakness. She was afraid she would never recover. Did that mean she would never come back?
Asami sniffed and wiped away at more tears. For the first time in months, the temptation to run away to the Southern Water Tribe tugged at her. Instead, she dug around her desk for a clean sheet of paper, found a pen, and reread Korra's letter one more time.
A/N: Hey, short chapter, but I didn't have much else to say on the time while Korra was gone. It only would get more tedious if I stretched it out, and besides, I want to get to the endgame content. Tell me, folks. Are there any off-screen Korra and Asami scenes you want me to explore between now and the finale? I'm trying to decide what chapter three should explore.