As Korra finished talking, Tonraq's steely gaze slid slowly between Asami and Bolin.
The decidedly unimpressed Chief of the Southern Tribes had been standing there listening to Korra explain with the same hard, unmoving expression for what felt like hours. The sudden shift of his features was enough to make Bolin startle violently behind the two women and Asami felt a similar urge rise in her chest, but she suppressed it before her body could react.
"You're lacking one of your goons," Tonraq said.
It wasn't exactly what Asami had been expecting and it took her a moment to catch up. "We left Mako in the Reach. He's a little more... inflammatory than Bolin is."
"Was he the one who was always yelling?"
Bolin made a poor attempt at stifling his snort and even Asami had to raise her hand to surreptitiously cover her own smile. "I... wasn't aware he was being quite so disruptive."
"The whole island could hear him." Tonraq didn't so much as crack a smile as he looked back to Korra. "So this is your next big plan, huh?"
"It wasn't my idea! Well, not at first, anyway." Korra paused. "It probably should have been, though," she amended thoughtfully. "As it turns out, it's a good one."
Tonraq's jaw ticked slightly but Korra met his ire with rather a smug look and said nothing more.
"So how long, exactly, did it take your teenage hormones to tell you that you're in love with her?"
Korra rolled her eyes. "Really? 'Teenage hormones'? You literally use that excuse every time. I'm twenty one years old, dad."
Asami arched an unwilling eyebrow at 'every time', but held her tongue.
"Well, it's either that or you've completely lost the plot," Tonraq said, his flat tone unchanging for so much as a syllable. "I can't believe you've already been to the Reach and made an announcement."
Korra rolled her shoulders in a shrug. "We figured we'd knock down the hardest obstacle first. Hiroshi Sato's a lot scarier than you are." She grinned.
Asami didn't particularly understand how Korra was so calm beneath Tonraq's cool anger. She was acting like a child who got caught with her hand in the cookie jar – not a woman who had just told her father she was marrying into his mortal enemy's family. And from the look on Tonraq's face, he wasn't softening to his daughter's sly humour.
"You do realise how extraordinarily little this is going to fix, don't you?" Tonraq said, his gaze boring into Korra's. "The war may come to an end on the battlefield, but for every fire you put out in the field, a dozen more spring up somewhere else. Our people have been warring for generations – convincing people to stop hating each other by nature is going to be a full-time job for the both of you.
"Not to mention," he continued sternly as Korra opened her mouth to speak, "the rather obvious issue of the two of you being women."
Asami wasn't particularly surprised by this, though she did wonder how it fell so far on Tonraq's list of concerns. Korra, however, looked like she'd just been slapped in the face. "But you –"
"Children, Korra! Think!" Tonraq's voice raised an octave or two, but his arms remained folded across his huge chest and his expression seemed only to grow harder. "You aren't going to live forever, you know – a marriage with political ramifications of this magnitude has to be secure! You need an heir – an heir who's neither north or south, but both. A child of the two of you. It's not possible."
"We'll... we'll cross that bridge when we get to it," Korra stammered.
"You're past it!" Tonraq barked. "You're so far gone the bridge may as well have never existed!"
"Okay, let's not get dramatic," Korra drawled, apparently regaining some of her former calm.
Tonraq glared at her until the vein that had popped up in his neck settled down again. "It doesn't matter now, anyway," he said, his voice dropping back into a calmer tone. "You've already set this plan in motion. There's no stopping it now."
"You aren't going to protest this?" Asami asked.
Tonraq's gaze turned back to her. It was still hard, but the fight seemed to have gone out of those icy blue eyes. "Why should I? You've already announced to the entire north that you're engaged. If I do anything to keep it from going forward, I've got a northern prisoner on my hands. A very important prisoner," he added pointedly, narrowing his gaze at Korra. "Hiroshi would have a field day."
As much as it grated Asami to hear Tonraq talk about her father that way, she couldn't really disagree with him. In the state that Hiroshi was in now, the slightest provocation would be used as an excuse for a direct invasion of the south.
"Besides," Tonraq said, his expression softening, "Senna..."
"Mom's going to be just fine," Korra said sharply, cutting him off. "She's going to be here for the wedding and she's going to be here for plenty of anniversaries after."
Tonraq watched Korra wearily for a moment before shaking his head. "Asami, you and Bolin are welcome in the south. I'll put the word out. But please stay out of trouble, Korra," he added. "This is going to be difficult enough as it is."
Korra rolled her eyes, but then that grin was back. "So they can stay here, right?"
Tonraq levelled that familiar stony look on his daughter.
Korra's face fell. "Please?"
Tonraq grabbed his jacket and started to walk out.
"Dad."
He stopped at the sudden seriousness in Korra's voice.
"They're staying here. There isn't a single guard in all the south that I'd trust to protect them. If you won't let them stay here, I'm going to sit outside their tent myself."
Asami stared. Korra's bearing had gone from 'snide teenager' to 'giving orders' in the blink of an eye; the sudden, seamless shift both bewildered and fascinated her, but she quickly tore her eyes away to avoid outright staring. Her gaze landed on Tonraq a split second before the tiniest hint of a smile tugged at the corner of his lips. He gave a single, begrudging nod, and then left.
"What was that?" Asami asked as Korra rolled her eyes and threw her arms in the air, plainly exasperated.
"He likes to do stupid, stubborn shit sometimes so that I'll play Great Leader and tell him no," Korra explained, dropping down beside the fire. "He thinks of it as a training exercise."
Bolin let out an explosive breath. "Okay, tell me honestly. Am I still alive? Because I'm pretty sure I died at one point there."
Asami laughed as she lowered herself to sit beside Korra. "You're fine, Bolin."
"Are you sure?" Bolin started to make some show of patting himself over and checking the colour of his fingernails.
Asami hardly paid attention to him. Korra's arm had slipped around her middle, and the sudden jolt in her chest reminded her how much she'd missed this closeness.
"Are you okay?" Korra murmured quietly.
Asami gave a wry smile, leaning into Korra's side. "I think I should be the one asking you that," she said softly.
"But I haven't once asked you that since we got here." Korra's eyes betrayed her guilt and Asami raised a hand to gently cup the side of the southerner's face.
"Considering the circumstances, I think I can forgive you," Asami said, and Korra laughed quietly.
"I guess."
Asami let her hand fall and Korra's free one found it almost immediately, fingers intertwining. "And to answer your question, I'm... cold." She grinned as Korra rolled her eyes and drew her in closer. "But surprisingly okay now that we've broken the news to your father."
Korra chuckled. "Like I said, Hiroshi is way scarier than my dad."
Bolin cleared his throat then, drawing the two out of each other for a moment. He was staring wide-eyed at something behind them; turning, Asami saw they were no longer alone.
"I'm sorry!" the girl burst out, her pretty features erupting into a hot blush. "I heard that Korra was back and I –"
Korra hopped to her feet with a broad grin. "Opal, chill." She caught the girl up in a crushing hug.
Opal laughed as she returned the hug, waiting patiently for Korra to set her back on her feet. "So Tonraq just told me that you brought a girl home from your little vacation."
Asami, who had risen to her feet, smiled rather guiltily as she held her hands behind her back, closer to the fire. They were still freezing.
"You could say that," Korra said sheepishly. "Opal, this is Asami, my uh... fiancée."
The bright smile Opal had been beaming in Asami's direction faltered. "Fiancée? Korra, I was just kidding. What about –"
"And this is Bolin!" Korra interrupted, forcing Opal's attention to the furiously blushing northern boy who continued to hover awkwardly at the back of the room. "Asami and Bolin, this is Opal. Lifelong friend and pain in my ass." She laughed as she avoided a swat from Opal. "She's Su's youngest."
To her credit, Opal went along with the none-too-subtle change of subject, but Asami still caught a suspicious glance or two cast in Korra's direction. "It's so nice to meet you both," she said instead. "I've never met a northerner before. I mean, obviously."
"It's really great to meet you too, Opal!" Bolin burst out. "That's a really pretty name. I like it a lot."
"Oh, uh... thanks." Opal blushed prettily again, and Korra and Asami exchanged a knowing look.
"That didn't take long," Korra muttered.
"Pardon?"
"Nothing, Opal." Korra grinned. "Did you come out here with dad?"
Opal's face fell. "Yeah, I helped him bring Senna. Korra, I'm so –"
Korra cut her off with a hard look. "Don't," she said, echoing her earlier words to Asami. "It's not over yet. Besides, we have guests in our presence, and the Great Fair isn't too far from here. Let's show them how we party in the south." Her grin could have split her face clean in two but Asami wasn't fooled.
It didn't take them long to reach the Great Fair.
They took two snowmobiles – to save on fuel, Korra had said, ignoring Bolin's unfounded concern that it would take them longer to get there. "I'm starving," he had said, very defensively, when Asami levelled a scathing look at him.
"You're probably the least subtle person I've ever met," Asami said over her shoulder as she drove, raising her voice to be heard above the engine. Korra had very graciously offered the driver's seat to Asami while Opal was driving the other vehicle, Bolin clinging to her for dear life.
"You're in on this just as much as I am," Korra shot back, her arms tightening around Asami's middle as the northerner wove expertly through a small copse of tightly woven trees.
"What do you mean?"
"Come on. Look at Opal."
Asami spared a brief glance for the other vehicle and happened to catch Opal's eye. They grinned at one another before slamming their throttles wide open and taking off with twin cries of alarm from their passengers. So far the whole trip had been little more than a race between the two drivers, and Bolin seemed just as reluctant to let go of Opal as Korra was to let go of Asami. And probably for much the same reasons, Asami thought idly as she shifted her weight to accommodate the motions of the snowmobile. They were good vehicles, she had to admit – but she was already contemplating several modifications to improve speed and stability, her engineer's mind ticking over furiously as she drove.
Within the hour they were breaking through the trees and pulling to a stop at the crest of a long, gently sloping hill. The sun was starting to set, casting a blaze of fiery orange over the horizon, and nestled cosily in the valley below was a sprawling ocean of many-coloured lights floating amidst tents made of brightly coloured material.
"The Great Southern Fair," Korra said expansively. "Where merchants from every tribe gather to eat, get drunk, and beat each other up – amidst selling their wares to anyone with coin to spare."
Asami had read about the Fair, but she never expected to see it with her own eyes. It was far more beautiful than any book had ever prepared her for; the glow from the lights blossomed into an ethereal dome over the tents, and the darker the night grew, the stronger the glow became, as if a magical shield to ward off the dangers of the night.
She was so busy staring she hardly noticed when Opal and Bolin started down the hill toward the fair. "Beautiful, isn't it?" Korra murmured into her ear, and she blushed.
"Incredibly," she agreed.
Korra's lips brushed the crook of her jaw, and she shivered, but the contact didn't last long. "Come on," Korra said, her grin evident in her voice. "Let's get down there before Bolin eats everything in sight."