Korra's waking breath came and went as a sharp and precise stabbing sensation that charged through her oesophagus. She coughed, unwilling to open her eyes as she assessed every new injury before she met her waking world. Letting herself linger in her own darkness, sure that whatever was waiting for her may not have been as friendly as her memories.

The Rookie officer missed the absent soothing fingers on her throat when she woke, granted it wasn't often Asami felt the need to hold her there. After nightmares or dark thoughts which, to be honest frequented them both, it wasn't a surprise that the heiress felt the need to check that Korra was still alive and real beside her. Pulse tapping at her fingers rapidly as her lover woke and blushed at the intimate contact. Gentle touches turned to tracing scars, and silent consolation in her arms was just the trick to calm them both before standing against the world. Korra still couldn't believe at how brilliantly Asami was handling everything, the woman of such logic simply accepting a universe that included teleporting best friends and spirit rays. And after everything she still found the will to not be terrified all the time, to be romantic. She put up with Korra's early morning dancing, horrible table manners and supernatural abilities like they weren't even flaws. Korra swore that she might have even liked them.

Korra had as yet found zero flaws in the CEO herself, in over a decade of knowing her, Asami only ever proved herself more perfect with each passing day, even when she was crying. Even on two hours sleep through three days and Korra had to carry her from her office, slumped over her mahogany Earth Kingdom Import Desk, plucking paperwork from clumsy fingers and post-its plastered to her cheek. Who was she kidding that was adorable. Korra wanted to spend the rest of her life with this woman.

Korra's heart skipped as she panicked for a second, latching her hand onto her pocket to make sure her necklace was still safe. As she breathed a sigh of relief, her next breath was a surprised indignant sputter and ungraceful gurgling noise.

"Whaduya!" She reeled surging up, blue eyes open and wide.

"We had to make sure you awake." She recognised the girl she had healed before the crash, behind the woman who spoke.

The water was bitingly cold, a stark contrast to the blistering heat. Despite The Water Tribe woman's predisposition for the cold, it wasn't the same when ice water is jammed half way through her lungs.

"I suppose I should be thankful for that." She mumbled in a choked breath. Korra arched her back eyes catching a bloody bandage over her forearm. An odd throb graced her temple, the woman in front of her had already inched closer to unravel the cloth from around her head. Korra flinched and caught her hands.

"Wrap need replacing," she explained.

"It's okay." Korra urged, sliding a palm over the wound, refraining herself from cringing. The little girl grabbed her companion, urging her to still and watch in her own language. Korra gave her an understanding half smile, as her eyes began to glow. When it was over she let them inspect her fresh forehead, taking in their gobsmacked expressions with her own sense of smugness. The girl grinned ear to ear, tracing delicate fingers over Korra's brow. She pursed her lips, scrunching her face in concentration, Korra wasn't sure what she was going to do until finally she spoke.

"Why you do this?"

"My girlfriend will get mad if I come home with any more scars." Korra laughed, and made eye contact both girls to make sure everyone could understand, at least the jist of it all. She gestured to the room around her, which she now realised wasn't as much of a bomb site as she'd expected. She must've been out for quite some time. "She worries." She added that last part softly, concentrating instead on the pit steadily growing in her stomach.

"Your eyes." She was snapped out of her languor by the older girl, "They stopped glowing after five days. And then you wake."

Everything was wrong with that statement.

xxx

Asami closed her eyes as she basked in the glory of those two words. Acting on impulse her arms curled behind Korra's neck and pulled her flush against her. She listened to the surprised laugh that bubbled through her, she knew as she memorised each grateful jolt that she would revisit this before going to sleep that night. Right now she was wide awake, a myriad of emotions thrumming throughout her body, clinging to Korra. She considered telling her she loved her, but after this grief and state of utter disbelief she didn't trust what would come after she opened her mouth again.

She had been so sure of that void, and yet she knew the body in her arms better that her own. The kinks and perfect imperfections, the weight of her palms pressing into her back. The familiar feathery breath on the crook of her neck. It was a purely unconscious move the way Asami's hands slipped her hands under Korra's shirt hem. Mapping the scars and comparing them to her own memories. Still there and soft her thumb traced the long healed lesions up the Police Officer's arching spine.

"It's me." she urged, pressing a kiss onto the heiress' temple, still slick with tears. Asami sat back to look at her face again. Taking in every cell that she had kissed somewhere between a week, and twenty years from now. She pursed her lips, unable to articulate any of her anger or fear as she reached up to push the loose strands on Korra's cheeks back with the soft blades of her fingers. She sniffled and Korra couldn't help the grin tugging at her lips. The heiress' heart squeezed as she smiled back, her happiness emerging all at once and erupting in an unrestrained laugh.

"You're so old."

Surprised Korra laughed back, gesturing to all of her.

"And what are you using to stay young? Future Industries anti ageing serum or the blood of the innocent?"

Asami snickered, dragging the heel of her palm to wipe the wetness from her eyes, still clinging with her free hand as if she might disappear any moment.

"Did you have a ring there?"

"And a necklace." The Water Tribe woman reached up to Asami's throat, touching her pulse and feeling the ghost of what was to come. "I still want some surprises you know."

Asami blanched as she studied the subtle marks. She'd read about Water Tribe betrothal traditions, and there had never been any mention of rings, that seemed to be a rest of the world thing. Still, she thought, none of her relationship with Korra was conventional, somehow mixing traditions seemed a perfect solution. Her mind flew back to her mother's engagement ring, left to her since her death Asami had only ever touched it once to bury it in the deepest most pockets of her intricate and elaborate jewellery box. The clear jewel carved to tessellate and catch any light in the room. It took breaths and burned corneas with its beauty. Seeing her father pry it off her mother's finger while choking back tears was possibly one of the sharpest memories Asami had in her already stunning repertoire. A ring like that should have a purpose, she thought. The pain of it seemed to lessen as she looked down and imagined its spirit-like light twinkle over Korra's mocha skin. That's if her memories did it any justice.

"You came back?"

"We're going to be together for a long time Asami."

"You're not keeping spoilers anymore?"

"I figured out how you were so perfect all these years. How you were so certain about us." Korra knotted her fingers through Asami's, grazing her thumb along a puckered strip of skin that the heiress had been cut with dragging her body onto the beach of Yue Bay. "You knew,"

"What that if I'd ruin our friendship we'd have great sex?"

"That we're the best people for each other. That our friendship was always destined for more." Asami looked down at their hands and spied the tan line on Korra's right hand, "That we'd have these long years happy together."

The heiress had a habit of imagining her future when around Korra, silently, without verbalising the ghosts that danced at the edge of her vision. Waking up to twinkling dancing lights and crisp perfect presents. Kissing on the rooftop as the ball dropped. The cold wedding with the warmest people on the planet. Toddling toes. Dancing separately, lullingly, but still as a family. The family of one Officer Korra Sato.

As much as she'd racked her brains to figure out whether or not they would end up together if Korra hadn't accidentally given her a confidence boost at Kwongs in 2014, she always hoped that her original plan, to wait and gauge and plan a little more before asking Korra out would have worked. That was if Kuvira's spirit ray didn't obliterate her, or give her super powers. Asami snapped out of her languor, feeling like maybe she should put these questions to the only time traveller in the room. As she sieved through her questions her psyche slowly began to fill with a new emotion, dread came pooling in her chest and lungs. Her soft breathing became a little erratic as she tightened her hold and opened her mouth.

"Why couldn't I find you?"

"There's this moment, in time that I can't get to again. It's like this tear, and exposure is rendering me…catatonic. For this week in December. Like," Korra's eyes lit up bright blue for a second, and then returned to normal seemingly at her own will. "I tried to get back sooner but it's like an explosion, I'm stuck at the epicentre, and the time around you, it's inaccessible to me without a key."

"You seem to have a lot more control."

"Twenty years will do that to a person. Plus I had the smartest familiar there ever was to help me. Thanks to you I'm the best there is."

"If you can't get back to, now, how come you're here?"

"You called me." Korra eyes darkened, something that only happened when she was feeling overwhelmingly guilty. Asami could deduce it was her her past and present throwing fresh perspective on her absences, while she couldn't help them, they still hurt. "I feel your pain twenty years from now. I think it's because it's me," gestured to herself, reaching up to play with the brush at the end of her braid. "That you wanted. This version of me, only six months after I Jumped back to stop Kuvira. Calls are more or less a direct line to the epicentre of a place, if I want to go to a time it takes a lot out of me. It's less dangerous too."

"Dangerous?"

"You can't expect what I do comes without consequence Asami. If I land where The Spirit Realm is weak the bigger the tear. Me and explosions, me and time travel the tears open, exposing more energy to more areas. Like radiation. We don't want to cause another rift."

"A rift?"

"Spirit rifts. They can freeze, accelerate or obliterate time…in theory."

"But it's spiritual if anything that means your powers keep balance."

"Or tip it." The heiress felt her hands squeezing on her fingers. "With the wrong hands."

"And you came back knowing this?" Korra's lips smiled a reckless, adorable half smile, eyes brightening as she took in Asami's drawn eyebrows and glittering eyes.

"You needed me." Her azure eyes hit the heiress and incapacitated any chides she was preparing. "Your pain…I couldn't bear it." Her voice was soft but firm, it came with an intonation of her shoulders, turning her body unconsciously toward Asami. "It felt like you were purging me..."

One year or twenty, it didn't matter, there was an eternity of love in that look. All questions and accusations filtered away, end of the world, obliterating time yadda yadda, Asami could feel her resolve melting under her earnest gaze. Korra was all she had left, her parent's were back in the Water Tribe and here they were each other's lifeline. Everything between them was that much more precious.

Asami barely felt the moment that led to her mouth touching the older woman's. She pondered briefly if she considered this a kind of cheating, she wasn't exactly the other woman, but she wasn't exactly this Korra's Asami either. Perhaps she was a stepping stone, alas she couldn't find it in her to care. The odd thought blipped in her mind and almost made her laugh but her need to assure herself and Korra that everything would be okay was too great, and so, straddled her girlfriend, initiating those strong warm hands to come pawing up her spine. She swore she could feel the callous skin through her chemise. She dotted her kisses along her jaw, to her ear, not pressing just tasting. Wordlessly staking her claim. Beautiful. Hers.

Her emotions were still thick and muddled but more than anything else she felt a need for Korra, acute to the point of pain. Her arms wrapped around her shoulders again, muffled against the Officer's neck she whimpered.

"I thought I'd lost you."

"Look at me, you're not gonna."

"When will I get you back?"

"When do you think?"

The heiress hummed as her mind conjured the smell of coffee on the horizon in response. A chorus of Hey You's in her ears and that first gentile kiss eleven months and twenty eight days ago.

Korra arched back. Smiling, arm across the CEO's back and the other holding her hand between their faces. She flipped Asami's hand in her own, tracing the lines of her palm with a finger, biting her lip before asking, "You know what I can't get my head around?"

Asami shook her head before pressing a light kiss to Korra's fingers.

"Why me? Why not sooner in my timeline?" Asami looked down, and then at anywhere but Korra, like it was some dark secret.

"I guess I needed proof." Her gaze snapped back as a slow hand slipped down onto the small of her back, "You're the best proof there is that we're untouchable. At least for a while. Everything is going to be okay…For at least twenty years. We have a future."

"Do you want to know what we are when we grow up?"

"I think I know Officer Sato."

"Kids?"

"I'll be happy whoever we have."

"Car?"

"The best. Obviously. Give me a hard one and tell me I'm wrong."

"Spoilers."

"Liar." Asami laughed, pitching down, touching her forehead, "Even waiting for you never lasts long. I love you Korra. I'll love whatever life I have with you."

There was a look that crossed Korra's face that she hadn't seen in a long time. Truth or dare, it said, what next would equate to consequence.

"Things start to fall apart here." Asami's already pounding heart kicked into overdrive, a sheath of cold sweat swept through her, but she kept her nerve with open ears. She tucked her chin into her chest briefly, before raising her eyes and finally looking her age. "Our world is a lot bigger than you know…we've been lied to by some of the most important people in our lives."

"You're not making any sense."

"I know why your father is in prison Asami."

Headcanon future Korra hair - that is all

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