Of course she'd held hope for those first few mornings, the clock hand swinging to twelve came a slap to her face. Quietly she'd collected herself, her things her now empty coffee cup. Forever Girl, scrawled on the card of the one she left behind. Silently she marched back to their apartment. Ignoring the patter of rain sprinkling on her Armani blazer. Pursing red lips, clenching her fingers around her keys. She stripped, her bag, her jacket, her hair ties so meticulously braided, even her shoes, bright red pumps that she knew Korra's ears could identify after a single step in a crowded room. Keys on the bed, Naga cocked her head as one half of the humans she loved most dear, specifically the tall one who fed her, placed her hands on the apartment harbour side window. A thin layer of ice separating the heiress from the world and the sheer drop below her feet, now poised on tippy toes.
Asami pressed her forehead to the cool window looking out into the world. Rain tap tap tapping against her brain expectantly, as if waiting for her to start thinking again. Aside from the obvious; once again Korra was gone. She'd fucked her and left her for the second time. She could still feel the ghosts of teeth marks and bruises along her inner thigh, the hickey on her throat. The lingering stiffness in the way she held her hips. Asami missed it.
Naga let out a keening whine from the bed, if Asami didn't know any better she'd think the creature was trying to show concern. Maybe trying to assure her that everything would be okay. Eventually.
But the fact of the matter was that Asami's timeline for Korra had run out, she was faced with an abysmal abyss of no answers and shady future that granted every one else in the world had. She supposed it was that far future Korra that enticed her senses. Poster paint still clinging to her peripherals, that half smile, starting to crinkle, ageing in a way that was turning the Water Tribe woman into a delicious and fine vintage. All for her.
She closed her eyes and remembered her past, monster blanket Korra would be curling her fingers around her stomach right about now. Whispering gleefully into her hair. Kissing wherever she was exposed with the most chaste and gentlest care. She let the vertigo wash over her, a veil of madness crossed with her desperate need to connect. The cold streamed into her mind and stilled it, but this didn't stop Asami from carrying on the delusion with the absentmindedness of her own lips.
"Hey you."
The jingle of keys jolted her out of her entropy.
Asami whirled, wiping tears, straightening her shirt and hoping to pull the misery she had been leaking back into its invisible hiding place within her chest. Alas in front of Opal, it was difficult to hide.
It would taste a lie to call it a coincidence that Opal Beifong found herself under the employ of Asami Sato. She'd hoped to be subtle and tactful by offering the young woman an internship four months ago, based on her impressive dissertation on the technological advancements of aeronautics in the next ten years. Her designs were graceful, powerful and efficient, three traits the new Future Industries valued, and Asami had also noted the way Opal had made no mention of using her ideas for military purposes. Surprising giving the backgrounds of her brother and adoptive sister; both had been military. Kuvira a promising young captain before her change, and Bataar a brain for the Research and Development of the covert. It made sense that the pair would seek private education from the likes of Varrick in order to better protect and serve their country. To the best of their abilities at least.
Asami understood that it had been a long and tiring conflict that split the Beifong family, while it was universally accepted that any Beifong was brilliant, it made for all out war at the christmas table were anyone to take up the issue of national defence and their role in it.
She never admitted out loud that she wanted to keep tabs on them, especially in front of Korra. Opal was a competent assistant, and with her own inside knowledge of the Jumpers and their mission, Asami was glad she had another person she didn't have to lie to. Asami might even go far as to say she was a friend. She was actually, more than she was an assistant. Asami had never had one before, inviting her to dinner with the Jumpers upon hiring her. Korra had called her cute for thinking that way and immediately set about igniting the flame that hit Bolin's eyes the moment he saw her. Clambering over the table ever so ungracefully to sit next her own girlfriend, allowing Opal to scoot closer to the blushing body builder.
Korra was good like that, she could see pain and the pieces that could be used to replace it. Opal and Bolin fit together seamlessly, and even though nothing could ever soothe the ache that came with losing a brother, these new friends Asami had inadvertently surrounded her with actually allowed her to heal some.
"How do you do it?" Korra had mused.
"What?" Asami's breath skipped remembering the way Korra traced her fingers along her jaw as deep blue eyes inspected her.
"Handle everything so perfectly?"
The heiress sucked in a breath as she focused herself on her now and looked up, watching as the chatty emerald-eyed girl went about her routine of laying the latest engineering magazines and FI stock options on Asami's desk.
"Who were you talking to?" Turning to her, her smile dropped at the watery gaze Asami couldn't wipe away. She glanced down at the magazines and shuffled their covers so the more pleasing articles were face up. "You don't want to listen to a bunch of homophobic old turds stuffed in Armani do you?"
Asami laughed, the smile not reaching her eyes.
"I wish it were that." She mumbled, feeding her fingers into her own hair and pacing to her purse in search of war paint, or any other form of safety blanket. "Korra was supposed to meet me today."
"I thought you said you were meeting her yesterday?"
"Then too." Sato couldn't keep the bitter edge from tainting her voice. Unable to raise her eyes she let Opal's soothing words wash over her.
"I'm sure she won't be held up for long, I mean she's a teleporter, as soon as she's done poof she's here with you."
"You're probably right, how much trouble can she get in with Mako and Bolin by her side." Opal froze for a moment, Asami saw the unspoken truth that flittered between them. "They're not with her are they?"
"Bolin hasn't had a calling for two weeks."
"And Mako?"
"He was in their apartment all last night. When I, um, had dinner there." Opal blushed as she watched Asami's expression fall. She could hardly feel the tight hug Opal suddenly gifted her with. She was perhaps one of the few people who knew this kind of ardent pain. Except hers only lasted hours at most, not days.
Asami felt her tears pearl on her lashes and drip, if she were blinking she certainly couldn't feel it. She'd covered her mouth with her palm to keep from making a sound, holding on to her dignity because it was the last thing her fingers could touch and grip.
"She's going to be okay." She assured herself, "I'm just being stupid." She hated the way she accidentally repeated lines out of her times with Korra. She could hear her soft snarky comeback now. Teasing her from wherever she wasn't.
"Time Magazine's most influential woman of 2015 is being stupid. This dooms us on so many levels." There was nothing that Asami wanted more then, than to have Korra's mocha hand lock with hers and squeeze reassuringly as it had then. Opal hadn't said a thing and yet she had heard the voice loud and clear, which was disconcerting.
"I'll call the others." Opal leaned back to look her in the eyes, jaw set, gaze determined, "We'll find her."
It takes no time at all for the others to gather and Jump to the other side of town, Asami and Opal in tow. Mako, Bolin, Zhu Li, Varrick, Kai and Jinora, all came at the drop of two words. "Korra's missing." Asami was overwhelmed by the response, rationalising that it was for Korra they were all here, and somehow that made sense. After all she'd saved them all twice. The concern etched in their faces irked the heiress, she felt like as Korra's familiar she should have stopped her. She should have told her everything. She glared at Zhu Li, her warnings echoing through her mind as it raced and twisted.
If Korra is as powerful as you say she is, there's no telling the damage she could do…There are high risks that come with this practice. Most importantly for herself.
Asami felt shame in incapacitating waves. Wishing she was brave enough to tell them everything. Korra could time travel, but what good is that if she can't tell them what's going to happen next. Speech after speech never made it past her lips, so instead she chewed on her nails, watching Varrick tinker with what she could only deduce was an amplifying device of some kind. This man was mad. This man was brilliant. This man was fixing something to the nape of her neck.
"Varrick have you tested this thing?"
"Relax this contraption has no internal consequences what-so ever. At worst maybe some inner ear functions but that's it. Right Bolin?"
Asami watched Opal nudge Bolin from his pensive state and point.
"What's that Iknik?"
"Ugh-" Mako began, only Varrick had already started his rampage of explanation.
"The machine registers Varrickules and their various pairings, specifically within Jumpers and the soul guardians."
"Like soul mates?" Kai perked up, almost involuntarily, his cheeks flared as every eye in the room hit him, specifically when his familiar side glanced at him with a coy knowing smile.
"Regular soul mates have got nothing on these babies sister." Seeing Kai blushed Mako murmured to him.
"Relax he calls everyone sister."
"Guuh." Kai palmed his face, if Asami didn't feel so hollow she would have laughed.
"By my calculations, Soul Guardians are connected to their jumpers by the more than soul mates power of twenty Zhu Li's!"
Asami wished he would stop naming units of measurements after people he knew. If he hadn't contributed so much to the technological world and spiritual sciences he might have been a laughing stock. Still she felt a certain amount of pride learning that a Zhu Li was only a tenth of a Korra, as a thanks for tearing open the fabric of space and time to stop a six foot tank of a woman from obliterating the people of Republic City. Her name would be remembered throughout the ages, via this obscure, odd and impossible science.
"We'll connect you up through your chi paths…" he clicked more clasps to Asami's palms as if to illustrate, "while you meditate, like we do to call the newbies. Using Asami's connection to Korra call her back lickety split."
"This wont be painful?"
"You wont feel a thing sweetie."
"And Korra?"
"That remains to be seen." Varrick's expression visibly softened. Doubt creeped in where hope should have been, Asami knew the odds as well as he did. The only differences between their perspectives was that Asami had seen her wife amongst the ether. She'd smiled at her, blown a kiss that pounded squarely on her heart. And Asami was already planning the design of the necklace in the peripherals of her mind. That was enough. She was determined. She would be with Korra.
The Jumpers took lotus positions beside Asami, knee to knee, fists together. Varrick, with Opal to assist, took to the consoles and checked levels, turning on the power that gave a soothing, non threatening hum. For a while there was nothing, yet Asami wouldn't dare allow herself to speak and break concentration. She filled her mind with Korra, Yue Bay, New York, their first date, she steered her memories away from the explicit, half aware that it was entirely possible everyone in the circle could see them.
There was a moment of absolute clarity, she actually felt a connection with those around her, a concentration and a net cast wide from their presence. Their minds searching, and using Asami's specific connection to search for the woman she loved.
Korra in her new uniform. She remembered their first kiss, her first kiss with Korra, inside Kwong's. That was where she was right? Or should she imagine the Korra from this current timeline? Could they end up pulling her out of the wrong one? Could time itself fold over and crumple as these sentinels drag her from where she was supposed to be? Asami's heart began to pump and her mind spiral and panic. She tried to get back to that soothing place, Hozier, dancing, kissing, sex, their apartment, that half smile, the way her scars tasted and thighs felt around her hips. She let out a sopping gasp clutching her own hands over her chest, it was too much and as much as she tried to reach out she simply couldn't break the barrier within her own mind to find her. There was less a connection and more a collection. A tiny tangent universe dedicated to her beautiful Water Tribe girlfriend.
She felt several hands catch her, unlatch the contraption from her chi as the world spun. Her name fell from her lips in broken pieces. Asami writhed and felt a snap, as she reached and searched for Korra, she was greeted only by a void. Her emerald eyes opened, bright white light pouring in her pupils shrank painfully, but it was nothing compared to the piercing of her own heart. Korra could not be reached. It was almost like she had been obliterated.
Asami lay there numb to her friends coddling her, she mused quietly, that whatever took Korra could have been so powerful that it propelled her into different tangents of time, thrown her back, and then brought an echo from the future back too, to torture Asami. In the realms of theoretical physics, it was all possible. Even a dimension where they were together right now. How she envied that Asami Sato.
There was nothing left to say. After watching Opal frantically try to gauge what had happened to her boss/friend from the Jumper's in the room she watched her expression match the six other pitying faces in the room.
The bruises on her thigh tingled, and her fingertips felt sore now that she had stopped biting them.
Asami didn't know what to think. She didn't want to. She let Mako pick her up, her temple grazing the concave of his chest while he teleported her to her apartment.
His throat was filled with sawdust, and the awkward cop had no idea how to comfort a mourning friend. Bolin stood by Opal weepy eyed, watching his girlfriend sit beside Asami and Asami drawing the minutest amount of strength from her surroundings. Don't cry because it's over. Her mother's grave inscription flittered in the back of her mind, Smile because it happened. The shell she'd delicately plastered there burned her eyes. She opened them to spot Korra's uniform, hanging ready, prim and proper on the back of the door. Despite her best efforts she hadn't made so much as a tear in its fabric. She looked up at Mako, so tall and unaware of just how looming he was. It was adorable really.
"Thank you for helping her with the academy. She was so happy when she came home." His lips twitched into a smile, and he nodded in acknowledgement, barely able to pull his chin out from his own chest. Opal's hand stroked the back of her head, turning her into her and wrapping twig like arms around her. Not strong, not firm, spindly and jarring and infinitely un-Korra-like.
"Do you need me to get you anything?"
Her.
"Nothing you can find." she knew her words stung them. She watched Jinora clutching at Kai's arm by the fireplace, spying the crest there. "I'm going to have to tell her parents this aren't I?"
"It can wait Asami. It can all wait."
"What do you need baby?" Asami flinched, Opal couldn't know what those words did to her. Where they brought her.
"Just leave." she breathed, "for now, just let me think. Alone."
Of course they were reluctant, yet one by one, once they were sure Asami wouldn't do anything stupid on her own, they filtered away. She curled up in bed, Naga lay across her feet, pinning them, worried puppy dog eyes that she couldn't bare to look at staring up at her, she turned to face the sunset with an unblinking gaze.
"Goodbye Officer Sato." Her lips played around the words, but she never actually said them.
The sun was but a sliver atop the ocean when her eyes began to close. Her senses began to trick her, and for the moment, she let them. Coffee lingered in her peripherals, as did quiet footsteps on the floor, trying to keep her from waking. If Naga wasn't already warming her belly she was sure that the beast had sat herself on the edge of the mattress, because it dipped.
She stopped breathing. Warmth flitted from the bedside table, the candles were bing lit. She couldn't move. She pretended, she let herself have this stupid fantasy for but a moment longer before she found the will to open her lips and dive off the precipice.
"Korra?" Her voice was weak and full of desperation. What came next made her unable to care.
"Not the one you'd expect." She turned, Naga groaned out of her slumber and yapped, ecstatic. Chest heaving, eyes wide and hair tousled, Asami looked a perfect picture to Korra, blue eyes bright. Shoulder muscles taught, as her braid balanced on her left shoulder, tendrils of soft chestnut hair fallen over her cheek just begging to be pushed back.
Asami sat up, now hovering her fingers over Korra's lips and the wrinkles that were starting to cut into her cheeks, laughter lines they looked like. Korra let her inspect, smug half smile pulling at her mouth. Her thumb touched her brow, and the scar that split her left eyebrow, new to the heiress. Korra closed her eyes as though she was remembering. Soundless waves of love in that one expression that sent shivers scoring through the heiress. She touched her throat and felt the steady pump beneath that delicious brown skin. She traced her collarbone, the arch of her shoulders, both hands parting in symmetry and tracing muscles as if carving stone.
Korra was watching her now, letting her have her fill, no longer smug. Asami could place that look, only it had evolved, no longer shy, this gaze of utter admiration took her breath and heart and held it hostage. Asami's numbness was reprieved when the Water Tribe woman's thumb graced her cheek, wiping away a cool tear. She knew what she was about to say before she even opened her mouth.
"Hey you."
