Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Korra guided her chair slowly down the ramped corridor that led beneath the Fire Nation palace, Bolin ambling at her side with a quiet, almost reverent energy. The air grew cooler as they descended, filtered through layers of stone and silence, until the hall opened into the first chamber of the royal archives. It was nothing like the tidy, modern stacks in Republic City. This place breathed age. The ceiling rose in arches carved with flame motifs, each one blackened slightly by time and smoke, and narrow slits above allowed narrow shafts of amber light to pour through, dim and angled, but just enough to illuminate the worn floor stones with a dappled glow. The scent was immediate: dry ink, old ash, sun-warmed parchment, and something fainter beneath, something mineral, like the breath of the mountain itself.

The room was immense, but subdued, built for quiet study rather than grandeur. Scroll cubbies, each labelled in delicate brush script, lined the curved walls like hive cells. Deeper in, ornate drawers stood closed with bone-pinned locks, while thick, leather-bound tomes rested open on elevated reading plinths shaped like blooming lotus blossoms. Every surface was carved, not decorated but integrated, as if the very architecture had grown out of the ground with purpose. The hush that settled over the space wasn’t enforced. It was intrinsic. Sacred, even. Only the soft creak of a wheeled cart somewhere beyond the columns and the gentle rustle of turning pages disturbed it.

Her chair’s motor whirred softly, each movement low and careful so as not to echo too harshly. The joystick twitched beneath her thumb with a faint vibration, habitual, grounding. Korra’s body already felt the weight of the day. Her muscles ached in that deep, frustrating way they always did now, not with the ache of overuse, but with the dull, echoing drag of limitation. Her back twinged from sitting too long. Her temples pulsed faintly, fatigue pooling behind her eyes. But she had insisted on this trip to the archives. The dreams had returned, vivid and precise. Not just memories, but something deeper. Zaheer’s voice drifting through mist. Her captors’ faces, twisted, contorted in flickers of guilt and hunger. The air in those dreams shimmered like a spirit pool before the fall, and always, she felt it: the sensation of being watched. Not by anything cruel. Just… expectant. Unblinking. Like something waiting for her to understand it.

She didn’t know what she was looking for here. Couldn’t name it, couldn’t explain it, not even to herself. But the sensation curled at her core like a tether. Something half-remembered, or not remembered at all. A knot that tugged when she tried to look away.

“Avatar gut-feeling stuff,” Bolin had called it this morning, trying to sound casual, though his eyes had softened when she told him. He didn’t question her. Just offered to come along, fetch any scrolls too high up, carry whatever she needed. It helped, having him here. His presence was easy, familiar, and he didn’t fill the silence with noise unless she needed him to. He walked a little ahead now, peering into side alcoves, occasionally giving quiet commentary about how creepy-beautiful the place was, or how it looked like it hadn’t changed in five hundred years.

Korra let her gaze drift over the rows, her chair rolling steadily past racks of ancient bindings and seals. The light kissed the edges of the shelves, and the dust glinted like distant stars. She wasn’t sure if the pull in her chest was spiritual, or if it was just desperation dressed in intuition. She wasn’t sure it mattered. Something in this place was calling to her.

Bolin sat cross-legged beside her chair, surrounded by a fortress of books and scrolls that he had been slowly conquering one by one. The dim amber light cast shifting shadows over the uneven floor and warmed the edges of his earth-toned coat as he turned pages with a focus Korra rarely saw outside of Pai Sho or noodle menus. His brow furrowed in concentration, lips moving silently until he found a phrase strange or florid enough to share aloud. “Listen to this,” he said, holding up a heavy tome with an overly ornate binding, “‘Only in the crucible of deepest suffering can flame be reborn in purity.’ That sounds like something Tenzin would put on a tea cozy.” When she didn’t laugh right away, he looked over, one brow raised. “Too soon? Not enough tea?”

Korra snorted, the sound dry but real, and he grinned before returning to his self-assigned task. Occasionally he pulled out a weathered notebook from his satchel and added a sketch, none of them good, all of them exuberant. One resembled Naga in a robe reading philosophy, another was a stick-figure version of Korra holding a tiny lightning bolt and looking exasperated. “It helps me think,” he insisted, when she raised a bemused brow at the latest doodle. “Visual learning. Totally legitimate technique.”

She let him chatter. Let the rhythm of his voice and the scrape of parchment against parchment distract her from the fatigue dragging along her spine. Bolin meant well. He always did. And today, he was anchoring her without even knowing it. After too many nights waking half-choked in the dark, sweat-slick and breath catching in her throat, the presence of someone solid and untroubled, someone who could look at all this ancient solemnity and still make jokes, was more than she’d admit she needed. Her hands still curled in her sleep, as if reaching for something. Someone. And waking only reminded her how far she still had to go.

A fire sage passed now and then, footsteps soft on the stone floor, their robes rustling like wind through paper. Most simply nodded in silent approval. One, an older woman with weathered features and a sharp braid, stopped to deliver three scrolls sent down from Zuko’s private recommendation. She named them softly as she laid them out across the reading plinth Bolin had cleared: one on chi disruption after spiritual trauma, its script dry and full of footnotes; another cataloguing cases of firebenders regaining partial or full bending following wartime injuries, complete with medical sketches and battlefield records; and the last, a personal account from a wandering monk who had lived in silence for twenty years before writing a single scroll on the nature of the Avatar, declaring he had once seen “the Avatar, split in four, walking the desert with mouths full of ash.”

Korra skimmed them with a kind of detached urgency, as if searching through sand for a buried bone. The first was too clinical, every word tasted like antiseptic, detached and narrow in its interpretation of trauma. The second held moments of resonance, especially in its discussion of flame that moved “crooked through the body”, but it was written with the assumption of a single elemental identity, not four. The third scroll she read twice. Then a third time, slower. But even that felt metaphorical, too dreamlike to offer anything solid. Interesting, yes. Comforting, even, in a distant, mystical way. But it didn’t explain what she was living.

None of them did.

None of them touched the feeling that lingered in her core like soot, how when she tried to bend, it felt like reaching through glass. The elements came. But skewed. Delayed. Like they didn’t recognise her. Or like she was seeing her own power refracted through someone else’s shape. As if the connection had frayed and mended, but not cleanly. Not right.

She rolled her shoulders, discomfort threading through her body, and looked down at her hands. They looked the same. Scarred, steady. But inside, she felt crooked. Split. Like some part of her was still wandering that liminal space she thought she had left behind.

And no scroll, no matter how ancient or wise, had the answer to that.

The side aisle was narrow, barely wide enough for her chair to pass through without grazing the edges of carved shelves. The air in this section felt heavier, quieter still, if the main atrium of the archives was reverent, this space was cloistered, sealed in the breath of centuries. Korra’s fingers tightened on the joystick as she angled herself into the passage, her mind already drifting toward the book Zuko had mentioned in passing two nights ago over tea and firelight. Breath of the Phoenix: Rebirth through Fire and Energy. He had said the title with the weight of memory, of something inherited rather than learned. Written by a scribe who once served Avatar Roku, it was supposedly dense, lyrical, and, if the rumours were true, filled with esoteric reflections on energy transference and rebirth through spiritual fire. She needed that. Or at least the hope of it.

But someone was already there.

The woman stood motionless, her back to the aisle, one hand resting lightly on the book’s spine as if she had known exactly what Korra would come searching for. Tall, spare in movement, she was dressed in a simple sheath of fire-silk dyed the deep rust of autumn embers. Her hair was pulled into a low, exacting coil at the nape of her neck, not a strand out of place. Everything about her was composed, calculated. Even from behind, Korra saw it in her stillness, the coiled presence of someone who had been taught early to inhabit silence with authority. Her scent was barely perceptible, but present if one knew how to read it: soft citrus layered with ash, muted with scentless oils. Omega, probably, but deliberately blank, a neutral façade shaped with intention.

Korra hesitated. Her thumb hovered over the control. The woman hadn’t noticed her, no, had noticed her, clearly, but hadn’t turned. She was giving silence as answer. Korra pushed the joystick forward anyway, the soft hum of her chair cutting through the hush until she stopped just within speaking distance.

“Excuse me,” she said, keeping her voice even. “Are you going to read that?”

There wasn’t even a flicker of surprise.

The woman turned her head just enough to reveal the sharp line of her jaw, the barest hint of gold at her temple. Her voice, when it came, was clipped and cold, every syllable honed like a ceremonial dagger. “No, I just decided to come down to this restricted archive, to pick up this book and stare at it.”

The sarcasm was dry, unyielding, and utterly unamused.

Korra felt the muscles in her neck tighten. It had been a long day, her body ached in the way that didn’t fade with rest, her dreams had turned twisted again, and now this, this stranger with her paper-cut tongue and imperial bearing. “You don’t have to be rude,” she said, more sharply than she meant to. “It was a simple question.”

The woman didn’t flinch. If anything, her gaze hardened, turning to meet Korra’s full-on now. She had eyes the colour of burnt amber and the expression of someone unimpressed by most things, including the Avatar. “And I don’t have to be polite,” she replied. “I don’t know you. I don’t owe you anything. And you—” her glance flicked past Korra, toward the sound of distant footsteps and the unmistakable scrape of Bolin’s overly enthusiastic foraging, “—and your companion, clearly don’t respect the quiet aspect of this space.”

Korra’s mouth opened, a retort ready to leap out, defensive, maybe biting, but the universe, as always, had a sense of humour. Bolin’s voice echoed down the stacks, cheerful and oblivious: “Hey Korra! Did you know this guy tried to swallow a coal to ‘ignite his inner flame’ and accidentally singed his eyebrows off?”

Korra closed her eyes. Briefly. When she opened them, the stranger was watching her, eyebrow raised in a slow arc of disdain. Not cruel, not mocking, just dismissive, and deeply unimpressed.

Her face burned. With frustration, yes. Embarrassment. But also something else. The woman’s scent caught her again, almost nothing, faint enough to be mistake, but not to an alpha. It clung to the edges of her breath like smoke curling under a door. And there was a pull in the air now, fine and sharp like wire. Not attraction, but something that made Korra’s jaw tighten, her spine straighten. Something she recognised from sparring mats and council chambers. Challenge. Intrigue. Irritation wrapped around a flicker of something older, deeper, harder to name.

She glanced at the book still under the woman’s fingers. She wasn’t going to ask for it again. Not yet. The aisle felt narrower than before. The tension sharp as flint between them. For the first time in weeks, Korra’s pulse stirred with something other than fatigue.

The silence between them thickened, not with tension exactly, but with the unyielding weight of unspoken judgments. The woman didn’t greet her. Didn’t offer her name, or even the courtesy of a nod. She merely glanced down at the book beneath her fingers as if finally remembering it, then raised her eyes with that same flat, almost disdainful calm. Her voice, when it came, was sanded smooth by disinterest. “Why on earth would you want to read this anyway?”

Korra stiffened. The words cut deeper than they should have. She’d had enough of that tone, enough of being questioned, challenged, second-guessed, as if her presence in any space now came with an asterisk. It was there in the way some people looked at her chair, or worse, tried not to look at it at all. It was there in the way advisors hesitated when she spoke, in the sideways glances exchanged in council rooms, in the careful but unsubtle discussions about whether the Avatar was still what the world needed. She heard the question beneath the question. Why are you even here?

So her response was sharper than it needed to be. “Well, why do you want to read it?”

The woman smiled then. Not with kindness. It was a smirk, cool, elegant, rehearsed. The kind of expression that said she was used to winning arguments before they even began. “It’s humorous,” she replied, the word laced with quiet condescension. “A Fire Nation text that supposedly compiles the knowledge of Avatar Roku. Said to contain techniques that blend energybending and firebending to bring forth vitality or ‘rebirth’ within the body. But the language is cryptic, many of the pages are missing, and the fragments that have been translated are laughable at best.”

Korra felt her jaw lock. Her fingers curled slightly on the edge of her armrest, not quite a fist. “I think I can judge that for myself,” she snapped.

But the woman didn’t rise to meet her tone. She only shrugged with a graceful sort of detachment, as if even disagreement wasn’t worth her effort. Then, without ceremony, she dropped the book into Korra’s lap. Not roughly, but not with any reverence, either. As if it were only a curiosity, no more valuable than a hollow scrollcase.

“Suit yourself,” she said lightly. “But if you were looking for books that actually had some merit, you won’t get far in this aisle.”

The comment dug under Korra’s skin like a splinter. Her temper flared, old instincts, fire-wired and twitchy. Her spine prickled with the urge to snap something back, something scalding and pointed. She wanted to burn that smug indifference off the woman’s face. Who do you think you are? Do you know what I’ve been through just to be here?

But she didn’t. She held it in. Not out of deference, never that, but because she was tired of letting other people provoke her into becoming smaller versions of herself. Instead, she met the woman’s gaze and said, coolly, “And I suppose you would know?”

There was a pause. Not long, but long enough for Korra to sense that she’d struck something. The woman tilted her head slightly, as if weighing her, not dismissing her this time, but assessing. Her expression didn’t soften, but it shifted. Calculating. Almost intrigued.

Then, without any preamble, she turned on her heel. “Follow me,” she said.

No name. No explanation. Just two words, spoken with the casual authority of someone used to being obeyed. Korra blinked, caught off guard by the sudden pivot. Her better judgment stirred, hesitant. She didn’t make a habit of following imperious omega strangers into shadowed stacks of a restricted archive. She knew better. Spirits, she was better.

But something in the woman’s bearing, so sharp-edged, so unreadably cool, had caught on Korra’s nerves like a hook. Irritation, yes. But also curiosity. She wanted to know who this was. What she thought she knew. Why she moved through the archive like it was hers.

So she gripped the joystick, rolled the book carefully into the crook of her arm, and let the quiet hum of her chair rise in the hush of the aisle. She followed. Deeper into the low amber light and the scent of ink and heat and shadow, the woman’s silhouette leading her into the depths of something she didn’t yet understand, but already suspected she wouldn’t be able to forget.

The woman led Korra through the heart of the archives in purposeful silence, her steps deliberate and unhurried. She didn’t glance back to confirm Korra was following, she didn’t need to. She moved like someone accustomed to deference, or perhaps simply indifferent to it. Her stride was smooth and soundless on the stone floor, unbroken by hesitation or doubt, the sort of motion that suggested not only familiarity with the space, but a kind of unspoken permission granted by it. She didn’t just belong here, she moved as if the stacks themselves adjusted around her presence, as though the corridors might have curved slightly to accommodate her path.

Korra followed, her motorised chair trailing behind with a soft, steady hum. The echo of her wheels was muted by the stone, thick, old, and dense with history. Light filtered down from narrow slats cut high into the walls, casting warm, shifting shafts of amber that painted long, dappled shadows across their route. Dust swirled faintly in the air, disturbed only by their passing. The further they went, the quieter it became, as if even the whispers of the archivists and fire sages faded beneath the stone. It wasn’t silence, exactly, it was the sound of something ancient watching, listening.

When the woman finally stopped, it was in front of a small bookcase tucked into a recessed alcove. Compared to the towering shelves they had passed earlier, this one was modest in height, but every inch of it was filled. The volumes here weren’t organised in any obvious way, no clear classification system, no gilded tags, but the shelf exuded intention. The bindings were varied: some cracked with age, others wrapped in lacquered leather or pressed bark. The air smelled subtly different here, too. There was dust, yes, but beneath it lingered something older. Sandalwood, maybe. Or dried flowers, something preserved, ritualistic. A scent that didn’t belong in the rest of the archives.

“This isn’t the most extensive collection,” the woman said at last, her voice clipped, factual, yet not unkind. She didn’t look at Korra as she spoke, only began running her fingers along the spines with a deft, discerning touch. “And it’s far from exhaustive. But if you’re interested in the effects of bending movementless, healing through energy, or actually applicable techniques, not just decorative theory, this is the section you want.”

Korra blinked, still absorbing the shift in tone. There was no preamble, no effort to soften the delivery or invite participation. The woman simply began pulling volumes from the shelves and stacking them, unasked, into Korra’s lap. Her hands moved with quick, practised efficiency, flipping through covers only long enough to confirm the titles. With each book added, she narrated briefly, voice low and precise, as if reciting a catalogue she’d memorised.

“These are foundational,” she said, placing a thick volume bound in scorched hide onto the stack. “Spiritbending. Energy bending. Specialised techniques.” Another volume followed, thin and bound in red silk, its corners frayed with use. “Some of them, erroneously, banned.”

She rolled her eyes as she said the last part, a flash of expression that revealed something, disdain, certainly, but also conviction. Not the thoughtless kind of cynicism Korra had grown used to in jaded bureaucrats or old-guard council members, but something sharper. Practiced. Personal. Her fingers didn’t pause as she reached for the next book.

Korra sat quietly, letting the volumes pile in her lap, the weight of them growing tangible. She didn’t interrupt. She just watched, watched the woman’s hands, her precision, the way she moved like someone who had lived inside these archives long enough to claim corners others didn’t even know existed. She still didn’t know who this woman was or why she had taken an interest in her, if that was even the right word, but she knew one thing: this wasn’t idle arrogance. It was something else. Something pointed. The woman had come here with intention. For whatever reason, she had decided to share it.

The weight of the books in her lap was substantial, but it wasn’t just their physical heft Korra felt, it was the density of knowledge, the pull of possibilities nestled between pages that hadn’t seen the open air in decades, maybe longer. The woman, still unnamed, still unreadable, had deposited each volume with an offhanded certainty, her commentary clipped and unsentimental, but Korra felt the gravity of each selection settle through her.

The first was a scroll bound in oil-treated leather, its ends capped in aged bone: The Flow of Life: Spiritbending Techniques of the Ancients, authored by Master Fuwei, a Northern Water Tribe sage Korra had only heard of in passing. The woman had said it focused on ancient Spiritbending rituals, techniques for calming or negotiating with enraged spirits, and tenuous methods of transferring energy between the living and spiritual realms. Most of the scroll was fragmented, its script interrupted by deliberate redactions or sections lost to wartime decay. Whole rituals were described in reverent detail, only to break off mid-line with splotched ink and marginalia. “Of limited use,” the woman had remarked, her tone dry, “but foundational to understanding energetic transference.” Korra didn’t argue. Even the fragments stirred something in her, images of the Spirit World flickering behind her eyes, echoes of Raava’s voice blurred by distance.

Next came a thick-bound codex, wrapped in green silk and marked by water damage at the edges. Beyond Flesh: Bending the Body’s Hidden Currents, by Yilin, a healer of Ba Sing Se. Korra shifted beneath its weight, glancing down at the pages already thumbing apart at the corners. This was a medical manual more than anything, focused on chi redirection, potential methods for restoring sensation or movement through internal chi pathways. The diagrams were unfinished, and the annotations ran in an older Earth Kingdom dialect she could barely parse. Still, it pulsed with promise. “Controversial,” the woman had noted with a faint curl of her lip. “Which, of course, makes it more interesting.” Korra agreed, silently. She’d seen too many paths dismissed because they made people uncomfortable.

The third book was smaller but thicker, by an ancient Fire Sage whose name rang distantly in Korra’s memory. The cover was embossed with a faded symbol, and the inner text leaned heavily toward philosophy. It challenged the fundamentals of bending, arguing that physical motion was a distraction, a habit learned early but not essential. Emotional mastery, the author claimed, created a perfect internal stillness, and from there, bending could be summoned with thought alone. “Dismissed as metaphysical nonsense by most,” the woman had muttered, almost amused. “But those are usually the ones who’ve never tried.” The woman quoted a passage, “The flame waits for nothing but your will. Discipline is not the absence of desire. It is the channel through which it flows.” Korra felt something in her shift, small, uncertain, but present.

The next scroll was thinner, handwritten, and bound in linen dyed with ash. No title, no lineage. It read more like a personal journal than a formal treatise. The entries were strange, metaphor-heavy, with long meandering thoughts on breath, body, stillness, and space. There were no diagrams, no formal instructions, just musings, observations about moving energy without gesture, of feeling the currents in the air and within the bones, even when the body refused to move. “If you can stand the mysticism,” the woman had offered with a shrug, “there are truths buried in it.” Korra didn’t dismiss it. She had lived mysticism. She had broken and bled for it. If someone else had done the same and left pieces of their survival behind, she would listen.

Unseen Forces: A Study of Elemental Control Without Movement, by Yi Zhen. This was denser, more academic, clearly written for those already fluent in bending theory. Yi Zhen’s work laid out a thesis that forms were simply methods of training the body to remember, but once the spirit knew, form could be discarded. The idea was elegant. Revolutionary. Dangerous. No surprise then that the major bending schools had decried it as heresy. “He was right, of course,” the woman had murmured, her voice a brushstroke of amusement, “which is why they hated him.” Korra skimmed the margins, notations arguing that healing could begin not by forcing the body into remembered movement, but by retraining the spirit to move without it. Her chest tightened. She didn’t know if it was hope or fear.

Then came Threads of the Universe: Energybending in Theory, by Master Ilok of the Foggy Swamp Tribe. The binding was crude, but the ink was surprisingly well-preserved. This was less a manual, more a set of meditations, on chi, on the threads that connected the body to the world, to the Spirit World, to the ancestors. Ilok wrote in contradictions. In half-poems. He admitted openly that his theories were incomplete. But there was wisdom here too, a willingness to dwell in uncertainty. “A strange mind,” the woman had said, almost fondly. “But ahead of his time.” Korra traced the ink with her eyes. The words felt like stepping stones across a mist-covered river. Uneven. But possibly leading somewhere.

And lastly, a bundle wrapped in faded cloth, bound with twine, Threads of the Spirit World: Weaving Between Realms, by Ishka, a wandering healer. It was filled with chants, prayers, and ceremonial notes. Not structured. Not instructional. But deeply spiritual. The sort of knowledge passed mouth to mouth, scent to scent, between older omegas who remembered rituals the textbooks had erased. “Outdated,” the woman had conceded, “but sometimes the old ways hold echoes worth listening to.” The woman had unfolded the first page slowly before she put it in Korra’s lap. The ink smelled faintly of smoke and sea salt. Reading it out, a line near the beginning caught Korra’s attention: When the body is lost, call to the spirit. The spirit remembers the shape. 

She swallowed against the tightness in her throat. These weren’t just books. They were fragments of possibilities. Threads. And maybe, if she followed them far enough, she could begin to weave herself whole again.

By the time the woman finished speaking, Korra’s lap was an unstable tower of parchment, clothbound volumes, and brittle scrolls that smelled faintly of incense and time. She hadn’t asked for any of them. Hadn’t reached or requested or implied. But still, here they were. A precarious armload of lost teachings and borderline-heretical theories, balanced against the edge of her breath. She blinked at the stack, her spine aching slightly with the effort of holding still beneath it all. The weight wasn’t just physical. It pressed into her chest too, coiled somewhere below her sternum like an ember in ash. Because even though she hadn’t asked, something inside her had been waiting. For this. For someone.

The woman moved like someone who didn’t wait for approval and didn’t offer explanations. Her gestures were efficient, spare, precise. She didn’t look at Korra with awe or caution or even pity. And she didn’t ask if Korra could understand the texts, or whether she’d be overwhelmed. She just assumed she wouldn’t. Assumed she could, and should. It wasn’t kindness. But it wasn’t dismissal either. It felt… like a challenge. Or a dare dressed up as respect.

Korra remained still for a moment, trying to shift the balance of books against her lap without letting anything fall. Her arms couldn’t quite hold them all, and her core had grown tired hours ago. But she didn’t complain. Didn’t look away. Just stared down at the topmost cover, letting the silence settle between them. Her breath rose and fell slowly, even as her thoughts galloped.

The woman reached to the shelf again with deliberate ease, plucked a final volume, and turned it in her hands with the faintest smirk, one not meant for Korra, exactly, but not excluding her either. “This one is essential,” she said, with the air of someone dropping the final piece of a puzzle.

Korra tilted her head enough to read the spine. The Hidden Art of Minute Applications in Bending, by Zirin Lian.

Her brow furrowed in surprise. “I have that one.”

That caught the woman. She blinked, just once, but the shift was noticeable. Her eyes narrowed slightly, and for the first time, something like pleasure crept into her expression. “Do you?” she said, voice mild but now laced with genuine interest. “And?”

Korra shifted her grip slightly on the books and gave a small, self-conscious frown. “It’s interesting,” she said honestly. “But I struggle to understand it. Every time I read it, it feels like the author is mocking me.”

The woman laughed. Not cruelly, just sharply, like someone who appreciated being surprised. She tucked the book neatly back onto the shelf and said with the hint of a grin, “I assure you, she laughs at everyone.”

Korra stared. “You know her?”

The woman nodded once, droll and dry. “Far too well.”

Korra opened her mouth, a question already forming on her tongue, but before she could speak, the woman reached for another volume, this one smaller, bound in deep crimson leather, the title stamped in fading gold. She placed it squarely atop the stack Korra already carried, raising the tower so high it brushed against her chin.

“Well,” the woman said, brushing her fingers together as though dusting off the moment, “if you already have that one, you might as well read this.”

Korra tilted her head to read it, heart thudding a little faster.

Shadows in the Flame: Subtle Firebending Techniques by Zirin Lian.

“This one,” the woman explained with a scholar’s crispness, “focuses on the delicate ends of the spectrum. Techniques for igniting flame without visible sparks, for manipulating temperature changes down to fractional degrees. Even how to bend lightning in forms that haven’t been officially documented.”

Korra’s eyes narrowed slightly. Something shifted in her posture, attention tightening.

The woman continued, casually, “There’s a section, brief, but suggestive, on using lightning to stimulate or dull nerve pathways. Restoration or interruption. The techniques aren’t formal, of course, but Zirin had theories.”

That made Korra’s breath catch. Her pulse quickened, but not out of fear.

Lightning. Nerve pathways. Possibility.

She looked up, but the woman had already turned slightly away, as though expecting no thanks. Her presence wasn’t warm, but it wasn’t cold either. It was… firm. Certain. A torch, not a blanket. Korra’s eyes dropped again to the book in her lap.

She was unlit. Waiting for a spark.

The woman turned without ceremony, her movements quiet but final, and began walking away with the same fluid certainty she had shown the moment Korra first saw her. No farewell, no backward glance, just the sound of her footsteps against the stone floor, even and sure, like someone who had already said everything she intended to. Korra hesitated only a second, then pressed her joystick forward and followed, the hum of her chair rising in the hush of the archives. The stack of books on her lap teetered slightly with each turn of her wheels, but she held steady, careful not to let them shift too much as she trailed the strange woman through the narrow aisles and amber light.

They emerged back into the larger study chamber, where Bolin still sat at one of the heavy tables, oblivious to the solemnity of ancient knowledge around him. His tongue was poking out in deep concentration as he sketched something onto his parchment with a stubby pencil, his head tilted and brows furrowed. Korra could see the faint outline of what looked like a badgerfrog in armour, undoubtedly something destined for the latest letter he was crafting for Mako. Pabu was curled around his shoulders like a living stole, bright eyes half-lidded and tail twitching with idle contentment.

Bolin looked up as they approached, blinking first at Korra, her chair, her precarious burden, then at the woman beside her, his posture stiffening slightly as if something in her presence made him unsure of himself. Pabu squeaked, tilting his head and staring at the newcomer with visible curiosity. The woman didn’t acknowledge the noise, nor the way Bolin straightened like a student caught passing notes. Instead, she reached for the stack of books in Korra’s lap without asking and began to transfer them to the table in neat, decisive piles.

As she moved, her eyes swept over the texts Bolin had gathered. She made a faint sound, something between a scoff and a sigh, and narrowed her eyes at one particularly colourful tome depicting chakra pathways on its cover. Without saying a word, her expression made it abundantly clear that she thought little of what he had selected. Korra, to her own quiet horror, immediately found herself agreeing. She felt an odd, instinctual need to sweep the whole pile off the table, dismiss it entirely, based solely on the unimpressed curl of this woman’s lip. It was absurd. And yet, somehow, it wasn’t.

“Uh, Bo,” she said, turning slightly in her chair, eyes still on the woman as she arranged the volumes with precision. “This is…?”

The question trailed off before it even reached its target. Korra realised that she had no idea what to call her. No name had been offered, and none felt appropriate to assume. The woman didn’t look up, didn’t offer clarification or context or identity. Her silence was sharp, almost deliberate. It might’ve read as arrogance. It was arrogance. But there was something else behind it too, something curated, purposeful. She knew what withholding meant. Knew what presence did when it was only partially given.

Bolin swallowed hard. “I, uh—”

The woman cut in, speaking directly to Korra, not even acknowledging Bolin’s attempt. “If you have more questions,” she said coolly, “come back in three days. I’m usually here in the morning.”

Then, without waiting for a reply, she turned and walked away again, unhurried, self-contained, vanishing between the rows of shelves like a spirit that had slipped out of phase. No goodbye. No name. No reason. Just the trace of her scent lingering in the air, clean smoke, faint tea, something hard to name, and the sound of her boots echoing until even that faded too.

Korra stared after her, her hands motionless on her armrests. Bolin let out a soft breath. Pabu squeaked again. The silence they left in her wake wasn’t empty. It was charged.

“Well,” Bolin muttered, watching the space where the woman had disappeared. “She was… something.”

Korra didn’t answer. She just looked down at the books she now had, books that felt more like keys than paper, and nodded slowly, her thoughts already spiralling down into whatever door the woman had cracked open.

They spent the next few hours buried in the quiet weight of the archives, parchment rustling beneath Bolin’s hands, the filtered amber light slipping slowly across the stone floor as time passed unnoticed. The initial stack that the woman had dropped into Korra’s lap now spanned most of the long table they shared. The scrolls and books had been unpredictable in tone and age, some cracked with age, others scribbled through in newer ink, but every single one had something in it that snagged Korra’s interest. That irritated her. That challenged her to think.

Much to her chagrin, and deeper still, her quiet respect, the woman had been absolutely right. These texts were better. Not just in theory, but in relevance, in immediacy, in the raw, unvarnished sense of having been written by people who had actually lived at the edges of bending’s known limits. They weren’t filtered through the polite, polished voice of the White Lotus, or the curated safety of Republic City’s university syllabi. They were fragmented, contradictory, half-lost, and yet they vibrated with possibility. They dared her. Korra, despite herself, already wanted to go back to that shelf. Already wanted to know what else had been hidden there, neglected because it didn’t fit neatly within the conventional schools of thought.

She listened with half her mind as Bolin read aloud, halting at times, his voice tripping over the names of obscure sages or the densely poetic phrasing of long-dead firebenders. His pace was slow, too careful, and Korra’s impatience got the better of her more than once. She didn’t snap at him, she tried not to, but there were moments where her sighs grew a little too sharp, where her eyes flicked to the clock too often, her frustration bleeding through. Bolin, to his credit, didn’t take it personally. He grinned through it, steady as always, joking about how his “brilliant academic oratory skills” weren’t made for “weird lightning monk poetry,” but he kept going. Pabu helped distract her, curling up beside her elbow on the table, tail flicking gently whenever her voice tightened.

Still, for all her impatience, the words held her. The ideas burrowed into her thoughts.

One scroll theorised that air, not gesture, was the true foundation of fire. Another, penned by a rogue healer from Ba Sing Se, described chi like a river constantly rerouting itself in times of injury or grief, suggesting bending could follow the same rules if guided correctly. Some meditations described the Avatar Spirit as a loom of many lives, threaded not in a linear pattern but through spiritual intersections. Some of it was maddeningly obscure. Some of it bordered on nonsense. But none of it was inert. Every page sparked something.

Korra found herself mentally testing the concepts, visualising flows of energy as Bolin read them aloud, comparing them against the odd sensations she now lived with, how sometimes her bending felt like it passed through her instead of from her. How it curved wrong in her chest, or fizzled in her fingertips like a bad connection. These writings didn’t fix that. But they acknowledged it. They spoke to a spiritual dissonance she hadn’t been able to name. And more importantly, they gave her new frames to hold it in.

She thought of Raava then, of the silence where once there had been something bright and ever-present. Her connection hadn’t returned the way she’d hoped. Not fully. Not cleanly. And that absence still gnawed at her. But these texts offered something else. They offered a way to rebuild. Not restore what had been, but maybe… reimagine what could be. Reforge connection not as inheritance, but as intention.

As the hours crept forward, the ache in her spine deepened, her muscles growing tired in their braces. She adjusted with the joystick but made no move to stop. She was too deep into it now. Too hungry. The knowledge wasn’t easy, and it wasn’t safe, but it meant something. It pointed somewhere new.

Despite Bolin’s loyal company, his good humour, and his warmth, she missed Asami.

She could picture her, sitting in some Fire Nation conference room in sharp tailoring, nodding politely at some trade diplomat while her thoughts were probably still on Korra’s last dream, or the new brace fitting, or the hundred quiet ways she tracked Korra’s recovery. Korra knew Asami would’ve read these scrolls faster. She would’ve understood the obscure diagrams. She would’ve asked sharper questions. And more than anything, she would’ve understood what these texts meant to Korra without Korra needing to say it aloud.

But Asami was locked in meetings until late. And so, for now, Korra held the quiet within herself. She let Bolin keep reading. And she let her mind reach, again and again, for the untethered thread of something larger. Something not yet fully seen, but finally, perhaps, within reach.

When the first bell sounded, low and reverberant, to mark the closing of the archives, Korra had barely registered it. Her focus had narrowed around the delicate edge of the scroll beneath Bolin’s hand, a firebending treatise that referenced spinal chi alignment with the precision of surgical diagrams. But then the second chime came, followed by the arrival of a tall, gaunt Fire Sage archivist who moved with the deliberate air of someone who had enforced order for decades and would not be swayed now. He informed them, politely but firmly, that the library would be closing and that any borrowed materials must remain on site.

Korra had looked up, her face already hardening.

“I’m not finished,” she said simply, the edge in her voice unmistakable. The sage repeated himself, unbothered. Bolin offered a cheerful chuckle, trying to soften the moment, but Korra was already shifting her chair forward, positioning herself between the man and the texts.

“I have Fire Lord Zuko’s explicit permission,” she said, and though her voice was even, her jaw was set. “I’m not asking to steal anything. I need to work with these materials, tonight. My schedule doesn’t bend to convenience.”

The sage stood his ground. “The texts are ancient. Unstable. Several of them are restricted for off-site use.”

Korra’s frustration flared. “Do you really think I’m going to damage them? Or that they’re safer in a locked cabinet than with me?” Her voice rose a notch, cutting through the dimness like a spark.

Bolin had stopped moving. He stood blinking, a scroll half-rolled in his hands as if unsure whether to intervene or flee. Pabu had ducked behind his collar.

“I’ll sit here all night,” Korra continued, louder now. “And if you try to lock the doors on me, I will make very sure everyone knows that the Fire Nation turned the Avatar away from her own research. Zuko won’t be pleased. I promise you that.”

The sage faltered. It wasn’t the first time Korra had seen that particular brand of hesitation, the one born not of fear, but of realising too late that they’d misjudged her. She wasn’t asking. She wasn’t going to apologise for it, either. At last, with a tight nod and a flustered sigh, the man relented. A few forms were scribbled, a signature taken. The books, the scrolls, the notes, all released into her care.

By the time they returned to their suite, the lamps in the corridor had long since dimmed. Korra could hear the distinct sound of Bolin’s stomach growling, and the guilt twisted in her stomach as her chair rolled over the threshold. They had missed both lunch and dinner in the buried hours of dusty silence, and he’d never once complained.

“Asami?” Bolin called tentatively as he entered behind her, the stack of borrowed material held awkwardly in his arms.

Asami was already waiting.

She stood just inside the inner room, her posture deceptively still, a folded book in her hand. For Bolin’s sake, her expression remained neutral, composed, but Korra could read her with the same ease as reading the lines of a battlefield. Her scent, subtly tight, a little acidic around the edges, spoke of irritation. Not rage, not resentment, but the stiffened poise of someone who had waited too long with no word. Bolin set the books down carefully on the broad desk in the corner, arranging them with the same reverence he might give a ceremonial offering. Then he gave a sheepish grin.

“Guess I’ll…go get some noodles or something,” he offered. “Make up for skipping two meals, huh?”

“Go,” Korra said, grateful and tired. “Take the night off, and tomorrow morning. Thank you.”

He nodded and ducked out, Pabu riding his shoulder like a warm scarf.

The door clicked softly behind him, and the silence it left behind was immediate and weighty.

Asami didn’t move. Her arms crossed. Her tone was low, clipped. “We missed our reservation.”

Korra exhaled, already bracing. “I know. I’m sorry. I got caught up in the archives.”

The excuse felt thin even as she said it. And it wasn’t a lie, she had gotten caught up, wrapped in scrolls and old ink and dangerous new ideas, but she also knew the shape of this tension. The feeling of having let Asami down, even if she hadn’t meant to.

Asami didn’t speak immediately. Her eyes flicked to the books, then back to Korra. She didn’t need to say what she was thinking. Korra knew it already. Knew how carefully Asami had planned the evening, the only night in a full week that hadn’t been overtaken by meetings, therapy appointments, or diplomatic obligations. Knew that Asami had dressed, done her makeup, then waited. Alone.

The weight of the texts that had felt so right in her lap now settled differently in her chest. She didn’t regret the research, but she regretted the oversight. The lapse. She rolled a little closer, stopped just short of Asami’s reach.

“I should’ve sent word,” she said, quieter now. “I wasn’t thinking. I just… everything in there finally felt like it was speaking to me. I lost track of time.”

Asami’s mouth tightened faintly, but her eyes softened. Just a little. Enough.

“You always do,” she murmured.

Korra, despite everything, managed a breath of a smile. “I know.”

Asami let out a slow, measured breath, her shoulders easing by degrees as the tension began to settle between them. She stepped forward, meeting Korra’s eyes squarely, and said, not unkindly but with the full steel of command behind her words, “I’ve moved it to next week.”

Korra’s brows lifted, guilt and gratitude stirring behind her ribcage, but before she could thank her, Asami continued, voice lower but no less firm, “Don’t miss it again.”

There was no accusation in her tone, only a quiet insistence, and Korra found herself nodding at once, her reply immediate and sincere. “I won’t. I promise.”

That seemed to satisfy Asami, for now. She turned, brisk again, and crossed the room toward the small polished desk near the bedroom. Lifting the receiver from the phone that connected them to palace services, she arched a brow over one sharp cheekbone and glanced back at Korra.

“I can’t believe you missed lunch too,” she said, the dryness in her voice more fond than reproachful.

Korra had the grace to look sheepish, and as Asami spoke softly into the receiver, requesting two full dinners to be sent up to their suite, Korra rolled her chair toward the desk where Bolin had stacked the books and scrolls. The movement was instinctive now, her fingers barely brushing the joystick, the motor giving off that soft, reassuring hum. Her gaze dropped to the topmost volume, her pulse already quickening with the memory of those titles and the heat of possibilities stirring beneath her ribs.

She hadn’t dared to try formal bending since they’d arrived in the Fire Nation. Not beyond basic breathing, low-effort spiritual meditation, or the occasional, unsatisfying curl of water across a bowl. Her bending had felt distant, like grasping at silk underwater. But now? Now she had techniques. Theories. A way in.

Asami hung up the phone with a quiet clack and came to stand beside her. One of her hands reached up, curling around the back of Korra’s neck, fingers brushing over the regrowth of her undercut. Her touch was warm, familiar, and grounding.

“This,” she murmured, a trace of amusement in her voice, “is what got you all excited?”

Korra smiled, really smiled, the weariness of the day edged by something brighter, and nodded. “Yeah,” she said. “They’re actually useful, ‘Sami. These aren’t just ceremonial or academic. They’re raw. Experimental. Some of it talks about bending without movement. Lightning to activate nerve clusters. Chi redirection from the inside. And not just theory. Diagrams. Case studies. Bits of rituals I’ve never even seen mentioned before.”

She spoke quickly, the words tumbling out of her. Her hands moved in small gestures, even if they didn’t accomplish much; her energy filled the space. Asami stayed beside her, listening while the attendants arrived, soft knocks at the door, the quiet rustle of dishes being laid out on the low table, the muted clink of porcelain under covered trays. Dinner arrived, and Korra allowed herself to be helped to the bathroom, the process so routine now that it passed without awkwardness or commentary. Still, she kept talking through it all.

And when she finally wheeled herself back toward the dining area, Asami already pouring tea into two delicate cups, Korra reached the part she hadn’t quite figured out how to frame.

“There was this woman,” she said, her tone shifting. “She was the one who gave me the books. She just, knew things. Moved like she owned the archives. Knew what to pull without checking a single index.”

Asami set the teapot down gently. Her brows drew together in that particular way Korra had come to know too well, measured concern masquerading as curiosity.

“And you don’t know who she is?” she asked. “She didn’t give you a name?”

Korra shook her head, already anticipating the direction this was going. “No. But she said she’d be back in a few days. Told me to come find her if I had more questions.”

Asami’s frown deepened slightly. “And you’re just… taking her word for it?”

Korra rolled her eyes and leaned back, though her smile was still fond. “Does it really matter? She clearly knows what she’s doing. More than anyone I’ve spoken to in months. And she said she’d answer my questions.”

Asami hesitated, weighing her next words. “Just be careful, Korra. People don’t just walk into restricted royal archives without clearance. That kind of access means something.”

Korra gave a small, huffed laugh. “Yeah. Probably that she’s not a mass murderer, ‘Sami.”

Asami didn’t laugh, not right away. But the tension in her shoulders faded again, her lips quirking into something softer. She reached for Korra’s hand and gave it a light squeeze. “Just promise me you’ll keep your guard up.”

Korra looked at her then, really looked, the worry just beneath the surface, the strength held tight in her fingers. And she nodded again. “I promise.”

She stared at the sprawling collection of scrolls, brittle parchment edges curling faintly in the warm air, the spines of clothbound texts stacked with casual reverence across the polished table. Her gaze drifted over her earlier notes, Bolin’s uneven handwriting scrawled across the corner of a page, an arrow drawn through the margin where they’d tried to cross-reference an obscure chi technique with one of the forbidden firebending texts. A frown tugged at her brow as she tilted her head slightly, neck straining with the effort.

“I think maybe I should hire someone,” she said suddenly, her voice low and contemplative.

Across from her, Asami glanced up from where she had been carefully wiping down the lacquered surface near their dinner trays. “Hire someone?” she echoed, arching a brow. “Why?”

Korra’s head gave a small jerk in the direction of the table. “I love Bo,” she said, and she meant it, her voice was warm despite the frustration she carried. “But he’s not exactly a scribe. It’s not fair to keep making him do this with me. I was getting frustrated today because it wasn’t moving fast enough. I need someone who can actually keep pace. Someone who reads fast, writes faster. Someone who can track what I’m seeing, make connections, brainstorm with me in real time. Study in the evenings.”

Her eyes dropped to her lap, to the braces that wrapped around her wrists and the familiar stillness of her hands resting atop her thighs. Her throat tightened a little, but she pushed through the words anyway. “I never thought I’d miss being able to do homework. But Spirits, I miss writing. I miss being able to flip through things myself, to mark the pages I need without having to ask.”

The silence that followed was gentle, not heavy. Asami stood across from her, shoulders still, her gaze not quite on Korra but not far off either. When she finally spoke, her voice was quiet, tentative. “I can help more, if you—”

“No,” Korra said, more forcefully than she meant to. The word cut across the room, sharper than she intended. She softened her tone almost immediately, but her expression remained steady. “Asami. You’ve already got so much going on.”

She paused, chewing on the inside of her cheek. The thought had been turning over in her chest all day, how to say it without sounding like a rejection. Without hurting her. But there wasn’t a clean way. Only the truth, carefully offered.

“It’s not that I don’t want you,” Korra said, frowning, her voice roughened with emotion she hadn’t quite named yet. “It’s just… I need this to be independent. A little. I need to know I can do this without leaning on you for everything. You need your space, too. Time to decompress. I don’t want us to be… all obligation and no oxygen.”

Asami’s expression didn’t flicker, not at first. But her posture changed, subtly, her arms lowering to her sides, her fingers uncurling. She stepped closer, slowly, then leaned against the edge of the desk, gazing at Korra not with wounded pride, but quiet understanding.

“I get it,” she said finally, and Korra heard the truth in that, too.

They stood in silence for a while, one seated, one leaning, both drawn toward the same stack of ancient, dangerous, brilliant knowledge. And for the first time that evening, Korra felt like the weight of what she was building, what she was trying to reclaim, might actually be possible to carry. Even if she couldn’t do it with her own hands. Not anymore. But with the right help, she could still shape the fire.

Korra glanced back at Asami, suddenly struck with a pang of guilt that settled cold and low in her chest. The flickering candlelight cast gold across the edge of Asami’s jaw, catching faint on the ridge of her cheekbone, and Korra’s heart ached, not with longing, but with the sharp recognition of neglect. “Speaking of,” she said, her voice quieter than before, “I haven’t even asked about your day.”

She hated how guilty that made her feel, how obvious the oversight became once spoken aloud. Their original dinner plans hadn’t just been about food or appearances, they were supposed to be a moment of reconnection, a breath between the constant weight of everything else. Instead, the entire evening had revolved around her again, her frustrations, her discoveries, her research, her wounds. It wasn’t intentional, but it was still a pattern, and one that had begun to gnaw at her in quieter hours. She felt like she’d been talking non-stop since coming in the door. That bothered her more than she could name.

But Asami’s expression softened the moment the words left Korra’s mouth. She tilted her head slightly, eyes kind, voice low. “Let’s go to bed,” she said. “I’ll tell you all about it. Including the jackass I had to deal with in the permits office.”

Korra couldn’t help the small smile that ghosted across her lips at Asami’s tone, fond and biting in equal measure. She nodded and let Asami take over, letting herself be maneuvered, gently and efficiently, from her chair. Asami didn’t call the attendants this time. She didn’t need to. Her hands were deft and sure. She spoke the entire time, her voice calm and steady as she recounted the events of her day, the bureaucratic hurdles, the passive-aggressive delays, the board member who tried to override a permit with a smile and a bribe. Korra listened quietly, her arms limp against her sides, head resting lightly against Asami’s collarbone while she was eased onto the mattress, blankets pulled up around her.

They lay together in the quiet dark, the walls of their suite muffling the distant city sounds. Asami curled close, her head resting on Korra’s chest, her arm draped loosely across her stomach. She didn’t stop talking, not yet. Her voice stayed low, her words drifting in gentle waves, filling the space with a warmth that had nothing to do with the ambient heat of the Fire Nation. Korra listened, her breathing steady, grateful. She knew these stories didn’t solve anything. But they were a reminder, of balance, of partnership, of how Asami still carved out pieces of her own life, even as she made space for Korra’s.

Asami murmured on, voice soft and wry, and Korra let it carry her, not needing to respond. Just holding her, hearing her, breathing her in. The evening had not gone the way they’d planned, but somehow, this quiet communion in the dark felt just as necessary.

The new Future Industries office, though still incomplete, was beginning to show hints of its eventual shape, sleek, angular lines softened with warm wood paneling and brass accents that gleamed beneath the morning light. Asami had designed it to reflect balance: industry without sterility, innovation without harshness. But at that moment, all she could see was chaos. Boxes lined the walls like unclaimed luggage. Half the desks still lacked drawers. Wiring snaked like vines from open wall panels, and technicians shouted over each other while trying to calibrate the internal systems. The scent of fresh paint hadn’t yet faded, mingling uneasily with metal dust and soldering fumes.

Asami stood near the central operations desk, a clipboard balanced against her hip, her free hand pinching the bridge of her nose as another minor crisis unfolded at her side. The phone installation, something that should have been routine, had devolved into its own unique nightmare. Two separate teams were misaligned. One insisted on using the city-standard junctions; the other had tried to install a proprietary grid meant for high-security diplomatic networks. The result was a patchwork system that could barely make internal calls, let alone connect to the palace switchboard or the mainline in Republic City. She’d already listened to three different department heads complain about being unreachable, and the fourth was currently watching her from across the room, clearly waiting his turn.

She didn’t flinch, but the tension in her shoulders never fully eased. The office was supposed to have been operational three days ago. Every delay had a domino effect, disrupting meetings, missing opportunities, and redirecting supply trucks to the wrong loading bay. She could feel the pressure building beneath her skin, sharp and constant like the onset of a migraine. And she hadn’t even opened the design proposals for the new prosthetics division, which were stacked on her temporary desk in a too-neat pile of expectation.

Asami moved through the floor with a kind of deliberate grace that was more muscle memory than ease. She checked wiring diagrams, questioned technicians, rerouted one particularly anxious junior engineer to a quieter part of the building. She kept her voice calm, her tone crisp, but there was no mistaking the authority in it. People moved when she spoke. They always had. But inside, she felt like she was sprinting across sand, fighting to make progress with every step while everything shifted underneath her.

Every now and then, she glanced toward the corner of the office where she’d planned to set up a private call room, soundproof, sleek, perfect for Korra’s occasional need to reach her in privacy. The room was still bare, the insulation half-installed, the glass walls unsealed. A symbol of how much remained unfinished. Asami swallowed that particular thought and turned back to the mess of cables being threaded into the master communications hub. Another short circuit sparked, and someone cursed.

She didn’t sigh. She couldn’t afford to. But her grip on the clipboard tightened until her knuckles paled. This was growth, she reminded herself. Just another stage. And every empire had to be built over scaffolding and static before it could run smoothly. She’d get through it. She always did. But that didn’t stop her from wishing, for just a moment, that she were back in their suite, wrapped in silence, listening to Korra breathe.

Asami could feel the ache beginning just behind her eyes again, a slow, crawling tension that pressed inwards like stormclouds gathering behind her forehead. It had started during the third meeting of the day and refused to let go, a dull, persistent reminder that navigating Fire Nation bureaucracy was something akin to swimming through lava in silk heels. The arguments were always the same, thinly veiled in protocol and historical precedent. This time it was tax brackets, adjusted specifically for “foreign innovation ventures”, which, translated, meant you don’t belong here unless we can milk you for profit without giving anything real in return. She’d tried, again, to explain the long-term benefits. Infrastructure. Jobs. Interconnected economies. She’d shown them models, spreadsheets, even projections signed off by neutral economists. They nodded politely. Smiled stiffly. Then told her they’d need to “revisit the terms after reassessing regional cultural protections.”

What that meant, Asami thought bitterly, was nothing. It meant another two weeks of circular paperwork and another polite rejection wrapped in a ceremonial envelope.

She sat at the temporary boardroom table, just barely assembled and still missing its corner inlay, and tried to will her jaw to unclench. Her pen hovered over the papers in front of her, notes half-written, half-abandoned. The Fire Nation had a long and proud industrial history. She respected that. Admired it, even. But they were still holding onto models and methods that hadn’t evolved since before the Hundred-Year War. And the more she listened to the cautious, rigid ways their bureaucrats parsed innovation, the more the frustration built, molten beneath her ribs.

I want to honour your culture too, she thought, sharp and silent, but you are falling behind the rest of the world. And if you don’t adapt, no one will be looking to the Fire Nation at all for manufacturing in another generation.

But of course, she didn’t say that aloud.

Because Future Industries was still, legally, a foreign company. Because her name wasn’t Fire Nation. Because her employees, her factories, her materials, no matter how much she sourced locally, no matter how many skilled nationals she hired, would always carry the implication of Republic City influence. It didn’t matter that the son of Fire Lord Izumi, General Iroh himself, was serving in the United Forces. It didn’t matter that the lines between nations had blurred in so many ways since the war ended. The Fire Nation clung to their separateness like a moral high ground, even when it hurt them. Even when it made no economic sense.

Asami had to bite the inside of her cheek when one particularly pompous tax clerk muttered something about “preserving the dignity of sovereign process.” She wanted to snap. To throw open the schematics she’d spent months refining and shout, I’m not here to colonise your history. I’m trying to help you build your future. But even her anger had to be precise. She had to keep her tone level, her language inoffensive, her posture soft but firm. She had to look like collaboration, not correction. Every hour she spent here was another careful negotiation between diplomacy and urgency. Between wanting to help and being allowed to.

Because she believed in this. She really did. She wanted to see the Fire Nation rise, not just in spirit or ceremony, but in substance. She wanted to see its people working in positions of pride and innovation. She wanted their welders and their engineers and their machinists to look around ten years from now and say, We did this. We mattered. And if she had to fight another dozen red-stamped forms and twice that many smug paper-pushers to make that happen, she would. But spirits, it was exhausting.

Her hand tightened around the pen. She took a slow, deliberate breath. Then she forced herself to relax her shoulders, to close the file she’d been editing, and to stand. She had calls to make. A factory to inspect. And if the Fire Nation wanted proof of partnership, of respect, of shared investment, they’d get it. One bolt, one worker, one policy at a time.

Asami had been half-listening, half-dictating as her design assistant fumbled with the new layout schematics, trying to reconcile fireproof material regulations with the latest expansion notes from the safety committee. The sound of overlapping voices, distant hammering from the lower floors, and a phone ringing incessantly at the far end of the unfinished office space made the morning feel like a cacophony she’d been conducting for hours. Her eyes narrowed at the shape of a stairwell that simply would not fit the footprint they were working with, when the glass door behind her opened with a whisper, and a courier entered the room with careful steps.

He moved through the chaos like it didn’t touch him, dressed crisply, bearing a bouquet in his arms so vivid it pulled every eye in the room. Fire lilies. Bright, luminous petals in blazing reds and deep oranges, glowing like they’d been plucked straight from an ember-lit dream. Asami blinked at them, momentarily thrown, her mind caught between schematics and the very real, very beautiful intrusion now occupying the space in front of her.

“For you, Sato-san,” the courier said, polite, unreadable. He handed her the bouquet first, and for one absurd moment Asami actually thought: Investor? Flirtation? Some bored noble thinking flowers will get them a seat on my board?

Then she saw the card.

Just a small square of cream cardstock, nestled between the stems. Handwritten, clearly dictated. The pen strokes were precise and unfamiliar, but the message was unmistakably hers.

I’ve been thinking about you all day. I’m sorry I missed dinner. I promise to make it up to you.

Asami’s fingers curled around the bouquet’s wrapping, and her entire posture softened, tension bleeding from her shoulders like a punctured steam valve. She smiled. Not the tight, diplomatic smile she wore in meetings. Not the neutral curve she offered when being observed. This was quieter, smaller. Real.

The courier, still standing with careful poise, then offered her an envelope. No seal, just a simple fold and her name written across the front in the same tidy script. Asami opened it without ceremony, still standing at the center of her half-assembled office, and when she drew out the contents, her breath caught.

Two tickets. Not just any tickets, but those tickets. The Fire Nation Ballet’s limited engagement performance of The Ash-Marked Phoenix, a legendary production brought out of retirement for the first time in a decade. The date was printed in elegant script. The seats were excellent. Asami had tried three times to procure them since their arrival in the capital, only to be met with apologetic shrugs and exclusive waiting lists.

Korra had gotten them.

Asami blinked, eyes flicking over the tickets again, her chest tightening in a way that had nothing to do with stress or politics. It wasn’t just that Korra had remembered. It was that Korra had gone out of her way, called in a favour, probably leaned on Zuko himself, and all without prompting. Korra didn’t care for the ballet. She barely tolerated it. But Asami loved it, the craft, the precision, the quiet power of it. And now, amidst all the chaos of rehabilitation and research and political pressure, Korra had sent her this small, perfect reminder: You matter. I see you.

Any flicker of resentment Asami had harboured over the missed reservation dissolved in an instant. She glanced down at the bouquet again, fingers brushing one of the flame-hued petals, and felt her throat tighten. The smell was sharp, alive, like summer wind across scorched stone.

Asami looked up, nodded to the courier, and said quietly, “Thank you.”

Then she turned back to the layout schematics and the waiting assistant, her mind newly focused, her heart buoyed. She felt steadier now, like something inside her had clicked back into place. Later, she’d call Korra during her break. Or maybe she wouldn’t. Maybe she’d just show up tonight, press a kiss to her temple, and whisper, “You’re forgiven.” Because she was. Completely.

The courtyard was quiet in the late morning haze, ringed by sandstone walls that had been warmed through by the sun. Korra sat motionless near the centre, her motorised chair stilled beneath her, hands resting slack in her lap, eyes closed. The training yard was a private one, booked under her name with quiet insistence earlier that day, a rare request granted out of courtesy or perhaps curiosity. No guards lingered, no attendants hovered. Just her, and the deep, sunlit silence. Her breathing was steady. She’d been sitting like that for almost half an hour, waiting not for stillness, but for awareness.

This wasn’t the kind of training she had grown up with. There were no kata sequences, no mirrored movements, no spiralling motions of arms or feet, no sweat or burn in her legs to ground her. All of that was gone. But that was precisely why she was here. The scroll she’d been reading, one of the brittle, whisper-thin ones recommended by the mysterious woman in the archives, had described bending as something both more and less than motion. As presence. A listening. A harmonising with the world, not through dominance or gesture, but resonance.

She had dismissed it at first, too vague, too philosophical, but the more she reread it, the more it echoed something deeper inside her. Something she hadn’t had words for since the injury. A sensation she’d only dimly felt when her bending did work lately, in those flickering, inexplicable moments: not through the push of her will but the reception of something already there. And this scroll, with its half-faded symbols and non-linear diagrams, had put that into words. Energy didn’t start with her. It existed everywhere, in all things. She just had to meet it.

So she sat. And breathed. The breath, the scroll had insisted, was key. Not because it powered bending, but because it revealed the rhythm of life moving through and beyond the body. She inhaled slowly, feeling it ripple through her ribs, through the tightness in her shoulders and the weight of her spine against the backrest. Her legs didn’t move. Her fingers couldn’t twitch. But she felt, the rise and fall of her chest, the pulse fluttering in her neck, the slow warmth of her blood circulating, the tiny spasms of muscle she couldn’t command but still lived.

Energy.

She let the breath go.

The exhale was long and slow, trailing out into the air, and with it, she reached, not with hands or voice or even thought, but with intent. She imagined the air thickening around her, responding to her awareness. Not being pushed but invited. A breeze stirred, subtle at first. Her eyes remained closed, but she could feel it. She didn’t move a muscle. Didn’t need to. It was there, light, circling, an extension of breath. She concentrated, guiding it like one might guide a memory, or a feeling, through invisible channels. It looped around the courtyard once, then again, playful. On the third pass, it nudged a wind chime strung beneath the overhang of the far wall.

The sound rang clear, a single, crystalline note. Then silence.

Korra opened her eyes slowly. The courtyard was still. Her body was unchanged. Her arms hadn’t stirred, and her chair had not moved. But something inside her had shifted, subtly, assuredly. She’d done it. Not perfectly. Not with power. But with presence. With awareness. Her lips parted slightly, not quite a smile, but something close. There was no one to see it, no one to witness what had just happened. But that didn’t matter. She had felt it. More than that, she had understood.

Korra’s head snapped toward the sound the moment it began, slow, deliberate clapping that echoed faintly off the warm stone walls. Her hand twitched instinctively near the joystick as her eyes landed on a familiar silhouette leaning against one of the wooden support posts on the far end of the courtyard. The woman. The same sharp-angled stranger from the archives. In the daylight she looked taller somehow, more severe in her plain red robes, as if the firelight had etched her sharper. Her hair was coiled back the same way, severe and elegant, and something in the cut of her face teased at recognition Korra couldn’t quite place. She wasn’t smiling. Not really. Just watching.

Korra couldn’t tell if the applause was mocking or impressed. It had the cadence of both. That unsettled her more than she liked to admit. A ripple of unease curled through her chest, quiet but unmistakable, and with it came Asami’s voice in the back of her mind, you don’t even know who she is. No, she didn’t. And that had never sat well with her.

She squared her shoulders and turned her chair to face the woman fully. “How did you get in here?” she asked, voice low and tight.

The woman lifted her brows, entirely unbothered. “Dropped in from the sky, maybe,” she replied, tone dry. “Or sprouted from the dirt. Does it matter?”

Korra didn’t appreciate the evasion. Her jaw clenched. “This is a private training session,” she said, sharper this time.

The woman’s eyes flicked up toward the open sky, the courtyard’s high boundary walls. “Oh, please,” she said, voice flattening into clear dismissal. “You twisted a bit of wind around. Does that really need to be private?”

Korra bristled. The old edge of her temper flared up, she could feel it under her skin, the thrum of irritation at being belittled in her own space, after weeks of clawing back the smallest fragments of control. “Who do you think you are?” she asked, teeth gritted.

The woman began to walk forward, not quickly, but with the kind of self-possessed pace that suggested she’d never hurried for anyone in her life. Her eyes were focused, pinning, as if she were cataloguing everything Korra was without needing to be impressed by any of it. And yet her mouth curled in a faint expression of boredom, a contradiction Korra couldn’t read.

“Why does that matter?” the woman said, circling to Korra’s right, her gaze dragging over the training ground as if it were mildly disappointing. “I’d like to know who I’m talking to,” Korra shot back, turning the chair as the woman moved, not willing to let her slip behind her field of vision.

The woman paused, looking up at the sky as if searching for patience, and said in a voice full of dry disdain, “And I’d like it if the winters were cooler in the capital, but we can’t all get what we want.”

Korra opened her mouth, ready to bite out something sharper, but the woman’s attention shifted suddenly, tilted downward, eyeing the frame of Korra’s chair. Her head cocked slightly, not in pity, but in scrutiny.

“Brilliant design, really,” she murmured, and the sarcasm slipped from her voice, replaced by something quieter. “Your mate’s work, I assume?”

The shift in tone caught Korra off guard. She blinked, tension still simmering under her skin, but it cooled slightly at the mention of Asami. Her pride surfaced then, reflexive and warm. She nodded once.

The woman nodded too, a rare moment of apparent sincerity passing between them. “Impressive,” she said again, softer this time. “Truly.”

And in spite of herself, Korra felt her pulse ease, just slightly. Asami’s name, her touch, her work, always had that effect on her. Even now. Even here, with this infuriating stranger watching her like she was something under glass.

The woman’s gaze lingered on the chair for another heartbeat before she straightened, brushing invisible dust from her sleeve with a casual flick of her fingers. Her eyes slid back to Korra’s, dry amusement glinting at the edges. “It’s a good thing your mate’s expanding here,” she said, voice full of arid judgment. “Even if the red tape here is mountainous. About time someone dragged this nation into the modern world. You’d think we never left the end of the Hundred Year War with the way people still whine about tradition.”

She rolled her eyes, the gesture imperious and familiar, as if the entire Fire Nation bureaucracy had personally offended her. Korra wasn’t sure whether to be offended herself or to agree. Before she could decide, the woman’s expression sharpened again, gaze sliding to the wind chime Korra’s breath had rattled. “I see you’ve actually been reading what I gave you,” she said, arms folding loosely across her chest.

Korra’s jaw tightened. “They’ve been very helpful,” she replied, trying to keep the heat out of her voice and failing.

A smirk curled at the corner of the woman’s mouth. “I’m sure,” she said, and there was something mocking in the lilt, but not unkind. She was testing, Korra realised. Always testing. “Of course,” the woman added, stepping away again without warning, “there’s only so far you’ll be able to get on your own.”

Korra exhaled, guiding the chair to turn with her as the woman meandered toward the edge of the courtyard. The stone tiles passed beneath her wheels with a low grind. “And I suppose you’re offering to help?” she said dryly.

The woman didn’t turn around, only lifted one shoulder in a shrug. “With the theory, maybe. The breathwork. But the other stuff?” She finally looked over her shoulder then, voice losing its sardonic edge. “The stuff I know you really want? I’m afraid I’m no good there.”

Korra’s spine went taut. Her voice, when it came, was sharp with suspicion. “What do you think you know about what I want?”

The woman turned back fully then, her face unreadable in the golden light. She didn’t blink. She didn’t smirk. She simply looked at Korra with unsettling clarity and said, “You want to walk again.”

The words struck like a thrown stone, small, direct, and cruel in how precisely they landed. Korra’s breath caught in her throat. Her fingers spasmed faintly at the armrest, more out of instinct than function. The air in her lungs felt too still, as though it had frozen in place.

For a moment, she could only stare, chest tight with a silence she hadn’t meant to let settle there. There was something obscene in hearing it spoken aloud, as if the wish was too raw, too sacred to be said in daylight. It made her feel seen and small all at once. And worse, it made her feel foolish. As if the thought were childish. Naive. Transparent.

The woman didn’t apologise. She didn’t soften. She simply watched, gaze neither cruel nor kind, just aware.

Korra looked away first. She sat motionless in the chair, the morning sun filtered through the garden’s thin lattice casting shifting lines across her legs, legs that hadn’t moved under their own power in months. Her jaw flexed once before her voice came, low and unfinished. “Everyone thinks it’s impossible,” she said, half to herself, half to the woman still standing near the edge of the courtyard. “The doctors, the healers. This kind of injury is…” Her voice caught, and she swallowed, her tongue thick behind her teeth. “I might get some sensation back,” she added after a moment, but the words landed like a stone dropped into a dry well. Hollow. Already echoing with doubt.

The woman didn’t move, didn’t fill the space with soft reassurances or empty comforts. Instead, her reply was blunt and disarming. “Well, you obviously don’t think so if you’re looking for a solution,” she said. Her voice held no edge, only a factual, almost clinical kind of certainty. “And none of the authors you’re reading think so either.”

Korra’s eyes narrowed, her chest tightening, not with anger, exactly, but with the strange contradiction of being seen so clearly and so quickly. She didn’t know why she argued, didn’t even quite register herself doing it until the words were already out. “It’s all just theory though, in the end,” she said, arms locked still at her sides. Her tone was bitter, more resignation than defiance. “Fragments. Old stories. Notes in the margins of something no one has been able to replicate.”

The woman finally stepped closer, the sound of her sandals a whisper on the stone. She tilted her head, her gaze steady, quiet, unyielding. “You’ve only scratched the surface of what a bender is capable of,” she said, and her voice had changed again, no longer sardonic or elusive, but imbued with something fierce, something that vibrated like the low hum of lightning behind the clouds. It was the tone of someone who had seen what others dismissed. Who had lived in the dark corners of bending lore where the light didn’t always reach.

Korra’s heart skipped a beat. Something in the woman’s expression made her breath catch, a glimmer of knowledge too vast to be posturing. It pulled at her in the same way the ancient texts did, or the Spirit World when it came to her in dreams: that aching, unnamed sense that there was more, always more, if only she knew where to look. And yet, the doubt still curled inside her chest like a stubborn ember refusing to catch. Too many voices, Katara’s caution, her father’s worry, the polite but firm verdicts from healers and sages and every well-meaning specialist who had looked at her spine and gently shaken their head.

The woman didn’t press further. She didn’t need to. The words had already lodged inside Korra’s chest like a splinter. They would stay there, aching quietly, long after the conversation had ended.

Korra’s jaw had tensed the moment she felt that flicker of vulnerability in herself, of belief, however fleeting, that this woman might actually understand something deeper than she’d let on. So, instinctively, she pushed back. The defensive edge in her voice slipped in before she could stop it. “So,” she said, her tone just a little too sharp, a little too mocking, “have you fully realised your bending prowess then? Can you make flames shoot out of your eyeballs or something?”

The woman arched a single eyebrow, elegantly, unimpressed, and the expression was so uncannily familiar that Korra felt a pang of recognition. It was the exact same look Asami gave her whenever she said something particularly stupid in public. A perfect blend of disapproval and bemused restraint.

Then the woman said, coolly, “Why would you assume I’m a firebender?”

Korra blinked, caught off guard by the question, then quickly looked the woman over again, her posture, the lines of her silk robes, the regal bearing, the dry sarcasm and obvious sense of superiority. “Uh… because?” Korra offered with a helpless shrug, gesturing vaguely at her. “You kind of scream Fire Nation.”

The woman gave a soft, derisive sound and clicked her tongue in disapproval. “Such stereotyping,” she said, the smirk never leaving her face. “I’ll have you know, I’ve never so much as bent a lick of flame in my life.”

Korra blinked again, confused. “Oh,” she said after a pause, “non-bender then?”

That was when everything shifted.

The woman stilled. Not dramatically, there was no theatrical gasp or stiffening of the spine, but completely. Her body went motionless in a way that made Korra’s stomach tense, the air between them suddenly taut with something electric. Her eyes were unreadable, but they narrowed ever so slightly, as if she were taking Korra’s measure all over again.

“For a time,” she said at last, her voice lower, more precise.

Then she exhaled. Just a breath, controlled, deliberate, quiet, and in its wake, the air moved.

It wasn’t aggressive or showy. There were no gusts or gales. But the breeze that coiled through the space between them was impossibly refined, threaded like silk, weaving over Korra’s skin and around her shoulders before vanishing into the sunlight beyond. No hands, no gestures. No fanfare. It was clean, fluid, utterly effortless.

Korra’s mouth fell open. “You’re an airbender?” she asked, incredulous.

The woman pressed a single finger to her lips, the motion delicate, conspiratorial. “Let’s just keep that detail between us.”

“But…” Korra’s mind raced, scrambling to find some kind of order to this new revelation. “But you could train with the Air Nation. You could tell Master Tenzin, he’ll—”

The woman cut her off with a sharp glance, her lip curling with faint disdain. “I have zero interest in joining up for team bonding with a bunch of monks,” she said flatly. “You think I’ve worked this hard just to spend my mornings singing breathing chants with children?”

Korra was too stunned to respond immediately. The sheer gall of the woman, and yet, now more than ever, she wanted to know who the hell she was.

She watched her with a frown tightening across her face, something knotted and restless in her chest. The revelation of the woman’s bending had unsettled something in her. Not just the secrecy of it, but the ease. The silence. The fact that someone could wield that much control and refuse the structure, the teachings, the legacy that had once meant everything to Korra herself. So she blurted the first thing that came to mind, her voice unsure but edged with insistence.

“But don’t you need, don’t you want, training?”

The woman turned back slightly, just enough to glance over her shoulder. Her expression remained unchanged: calm, faintly amused, deeply unconvinced. “There are plenty of ways to train in airbending,” she said dryly, “without signing up to shave my head and contemplate world peace.”

Korra opened her mouth to respond, but no words came. She didn’t even know what she wanted to say, some tangle of protest, of confusion, of wanting to understand how someone like her could exist outside the framework of everything Korra had ever been taught. The world didn’t make space for benders like that. And yet here she was.

But the woman didn’t wait for Korra to find her footing. She turned fully, her steps light but decisive as she began to move away across the yard. Her voice came just before she slipped out of reach, slipping into the space like a final thread pulled from a tapestry.

“When you’re doing your breath work,” she said, “start trying to differentiate between heavy and light air. The moisture changes how smoothly the energy moves.”

Korra sat up straighter, instinctively absorbing the instruction, even as she blinked at its odd specificity. She wanted to ask what that meant, why it mattered, how to even begin to sense the difference. But before she could form a question, the woman was gone, vanished back into whatever shadow or door or corner of the world she’d emerged from, leaving Korra alone once again in the sunlit yard with the wind chime still swaying from her earlier bending and her pulse thudding faintly in her throat.

She let out a breath, slow and uncertain, and tried not to feel like the world had shifted again, just slightly, beneath her wheels.

Asami took her time getting ready, lingering over each detail with the quiet patience of ritual. The evening was special, not because of where they were going, but because of who it was with, and who it was for. The Fire Nation ballet had always held a place in her heart. It wasn’t just the art or the discipline. It was the atmosphere. The reverence. Korra had insisted, stubbornly, sweetly, that the attendants handle her preparations tonight. She’d said she wanted to surprise Asami. “Like a date,” Korra had said with that familiar glint in her eyes. Asami had rolled hers in return, muttered something sarcastic, but when she’d turned away, she’d smiled. A real smile. There were few things in life that made her happier than when Korra tried to be romantic. Because it wasn’t easy for her, not like it had once been. And that made it all the more precious.

She’d chosen a jade-coloured silk dress, floor-length, fitted at the waist, with an elegant fall over her hips. The neckline dipped modestly, shaped like a soft leaf, and the cap sleeves left her shoulders free for the drape of a sheer wrap she would add last. Her jewellery was minimal but deliberate: delicate gold earrings shaped like cascading fire lilies, a matching bracelet of thin interlocking vines, and a single ring Korra had given her. Her hair she wore swept up and pinned in place with a pair of carved combs, little gilded accents peeking through the waves. It made her neck feel long, bare, and deliberate, especially when she leaned close to dab her chosen perfume at her throat, the scent light, powdery, with notes of orchid and amber. Then came the omega scent oil, rubbed with slow fingers along the inner wrists, behind her ears, and, more carefully, more reverently, over the faint ridge of her mate mark. Her breath hitched as she touched it, a private moment, one she shared only with herself and the memory of Korra’s mouth, her hands, her promise.

Finally, she slipped on her heels and the wrap, a gossamer-thin length of silvered green silk that shimmered subtly as she moved. When she stepped into the entrance room of their suite, she felt the hush of anticipation rise like a tide inside her. The quiet that came just before a performance began. She stood still and waited, adjusting the fall of her wrap across her shoulders.

Half a minute passed before she heard it, that familiar, gentle hum of Korra’s motorised chair whirring over the tile. Asami turned toward the sound, and when Korra appeared, her breath caught audibly in her throat.

Korra looked devastating. Dressed in a sharply tailored Fire Nation fashion suit, it blended modern edges with traditional accents: black silk threaded with subtle dark red piping at the cuffs and lapels, a high Mandarin-style collar, and a narrow crimson bow tie knotted just below her throat. The jacket framed her torso in a way that accentuated both strength and elegance, and the clean lines of her pants broke perfectly over polished dark boots. Her hair had been freshly trimmed, her undercut neat and shining, and her expression, when she looked at Asami, held that rare, open sort of awe that always undid her.

Korra rolled forward, her eyes sweeping over Asami with no attempt at subtlety, and then said, softly but with complete conviction, “You look beautiful.”

Asami felt her cheeks warm, and she didn’t look away. “So do you,” she replied, the words breathier than she intended. “You really… pulled this off.”

Korra grinned. “Wait ‘til you see what I remembered about ballet etiquette.”

Asami laughed, stepped closer, and reached to adjust Korra’s lapel, just an excuse to touch her, really. The evening hadn’t even begun, and already, it felt like magic.

The palace corridors echoed with a quiet, polished elegance as Asami and Korra made their way toward the entrance hall where the van would be waiting. Their steps Asami’s heels clicking in slow rhythm beside the soft hum of Korra’s motorised chair, moved through a route that had clearly been cleared in advance. Fire Nation attendants, dressed in formal hues of crimson and gold, offered respectful nods as they passed, their eyes never lingering. Lanterns lit the arched hallway in a warm, flattering glow, and Asami couldn’t help but feel the way their presence transformed the space. It was easy to forget, sometimes, what they looked like together, Avatar and heiress, bonded Alpha and Omega, war hero and CEO. But nights like this made it hard to ignore. Their image turned heads. Their silence carried weight.

Security was, as always, tight. Tighter, even, since their arrival in the Fire Nation weeks ago. Fire Lord Izumi had insisted, as had Zuko, both still quietly haunted by the attack that had nearly taken Korra’s life. But it hadn’t just been the royals this time. Asami had asked too. After Republic City, after the bombings, the fear, the sleepless stretches where every knock on the door made her heart stop, she didn’t care how many guards it took to keep Korra safe. Or herself, for that matter. And Korra, surprisingly, hadn’t pushed back. Not once. She’d coordinated everything tonight herself, down to the last detail, not even letting Asami glimpse the logistics.

Two guards, one White Lotus and one Imperial, flanked the marbled stairs as they exited through the main palace doors, both nodding crisply as they opened the way. The van outside was sleek and dark, reinforced, polished so cleanly that Asami could see the double reflection of herself and Korra in the doors. Another car was already idling ahead, four more guards inside, and another identical vehicle waited behind. Altogether, ten people had been deployed tonight for their security. That didn’t count the ones already stationed at the opera house, nor those posted along the route.

Asami noted it all with a quiet sense of awe and appreciation. It had taken an enormous amount of organisation, negotiation, and coordination. Permits filed. Routes vetted. The opera house swept twice, security clearance given to the staff, exit plans approved in case of emergency. And Korra had handled it without complaint, without fanfare, without telling her a thing. That alone made something warm twist in Asami’s chest. It wasn’t just the gesture, it was the care behind it. Korra hadn’t wanted her to worry about anything tonight.

And she hadn’t. For the first time in what felt like months, Asami simply stepped forward into the evening with Korra at her side, guarded but not encaged, seen but not put on display. It felt like the start of something soft and rare, a night that was just for them.

The opera house loomed above them in sweeping arcs of crimson stone and gilded eaves, lanterns glowing like molten gold beneath its elaborate facade. The square outside was already bustling, couples and families streaming in, swathed in their finest silks and brocades, voices low and refined in the early evening air. It was the kind of glamour that Asami had always appreciated from a distance, the quiet opulence of culture on display, each attendee performing their own small role in the theatre before the theatre. She stepped from the van smoothly, hand adjusting the fall of her wrap as her heels clicked softly on the pale stone. Beside her, Korra followed, pausing as one of the security guards stepped forward to lower the specially-installed temporary ramp with a mechanical click.

Asami’s jaw tightened just slightly. Even now, even with their careful planning, their status, and every possible diplomatic courtesy, the ramp was a rushed afterthought. A necessity, but not an integration. She said nothing, but she glanced sideways as Korra made her way up it, motor humming, posture perfect. Her mate’s expression was composed, smiling, almost casual. But Asami caught the faintest shift beneath her scent, an uptick in her pheromones, subtle but clear. A soft wave of anxiety, not strong enough to trigger concern, but not entirely hidden either. Korra was stressed. And of course she was. Even now, even here, every outing was a performance of strength and grace, and the weight of that often fell heavier than anyone realised.

They moved through the crowd with ease as security cleared a path, the murmur of recognition following in their wake like a tide. People bowed, or stared, or turned to whisper, some in awe, some in confusion, some in poorly concealed judgment. Asami ignored them all. She focused on Korra. She made sure they kept moving, through the marble entry, past the main halls with their towering paintings and ornate chandeliers, until they reached the quiet of the elevator and the blessed hush that followed when the doors closed.

Their private box was located high and central, with a clear view of the stage and plush seats separated from the world below by heavy velvet drapes and subtle wards. The moment they stepped inside, the chaos receded. The lighting was low, warm, almost amber. A waiter was already present, a young woman in formal black, who bowed low before offering two glasses of champagne, one into Asami’s hand with grace, the other placed on the small table beside Korra’s chair. Then, as swiftly as she had arrived, she vanished.

Asami turned toward Korra, her shoulders relaxing as she took in the hush of the space, the quiet wealth of it. Just them. No officials, no cameras, no responsibilities. She let the silence stretch for a breath, the flicker of golden stage lights below them still dimmed, the orchestra tuning faintly in the distance. She sipped her champagne. Then she reached out, brushing her fingers lightly over Korra’s hand on the armrest, careful and slow.

“We made it,” she said, softly, a private smile tugging at her lips.

With the box closed behind them and the whole night ahead, it felt like they finally had.

Asami settled into her seat with a rustle of silk, smoothing the folds of her jade-colored gown over her lap as Korra maneuvered her chair into the space beside her. The box had clearly been arranged with them in mind, there was no stray chair to move, no awkward reshuffling to make space. Just a smooth, open area where Korra could glide into place without interruption. Asami turned toward her, already reaching to help. With a few motions, she fitted the tray attachment to Korra’s chair, careful not to disturb the line of her suit. She set the champagne glass gently on the tray, adjusted the bendable straw toward Korra’s mouth, and gave her a quiet smile as Korra leaned forward and took a slow sip.

Together, they looked out over the grand sweep of the opera house floor as it gradually filled, couples in formalwear, diplomats in traditional dress, dignitaries and high-society elites whose names Asami only sometimes recognised. The buzz of conversation drifted upward like a soft tide, blending with the tentative warmups from the orchestra pit: a flutter of strings, a low hum from a horn, the light testing of keys. The lights above the audience shimmered in wide chandeliers, each carved glass petal catching the gold of the sconces along the red and black lacquered balconies. It was Fire Nation architecture at its most majestic, angular, ornate, and reverent. The ceilings arched like open fans, covered in muraled skies of crimson and burnished gold, dragons curling through clouds, phoenixes spreading their wings. Everything about the space evoked power and history, but it was beautiful too, deeply so. Lush, warm, and unapologetically proud.

Asami let herself stare for a moment, struck by the craftsmanship. Her mother would have loved this. Not just the show, but the building itself, the symmetry, the subtle symbolism etched into every archway, the way the walls held the hush of generations past. It had been built before the Hundred Year War, untouched by its ravages, spared the scars of conflict that so many other historical sites bore. There was a kind of peace in that. A reminder that some legacies could endure untarnished.

She turned to Korra and asked, her voice lowered and almost reverent, “This is the imperial box, isn’t it?”

Korra nodded without ceremony, straw still in her mouth as she took another sip. Her expression was casual, but her eyes were soft, watching Asami with the faintest trace of mischief.

Asami gave a low laugh and shook her head, smiling as she murmured, “I didn’t know there were so many perks to being mated to the Avatar.”

Korra’s lips curled into a grin around the straw. “At least leadership here likes me,” she replied dryly. “I think Raiko’s never been happier than I’ve been out of the city.”

Asami took another sip of her own champagne and hummed thoughtfully. “That’s just because he doesn’t like you holding him accountable in meetings.”

That earned a sheepish look from Korra, her shoulders shifting in a way that might have been a shrug if she had full range of motion. Asami recognised it instantly, that little ripple of self-effacement Korra always did when someone complimented her competence. It tugged at something tender inside her.

She reached out and took Korra’s hand gently, threading their fingers together as best she could. The two fingers on Korra’s right hand that still moved twitched lightly in return. It was a simple gesture, but Asami felt the weight of it, intimate, grounding, real.

“Thank you,” she said softly, not just for the box or the ballet or the tickets, but for everything. For trying. For thinking of her. “For tonight.”

Korra’s eyes met hers, warm and steady. “You deserve it, my love,” she answered, voice low and sure.

The words weren’t extravagant, but they were perfect. Asami felt her chest go soft, her entire body settling into that glow of being seen and chosen. Cherished. She leaned in just a little, their shoulders touching, and let the lights dim around them as the overture began.

Asami reached for one of the programs that had been laid out on the low lacquered table between their seats, its thick parchment edged in gold ink, the stylised phoenix on the cover rising from a swirl of ash in deep vermilion. She unfolded it with careful fingers, the page creasing softly as she began to scan through the contents. The Ash-Marked Phoenix. A reimagining of one of the Fire Nation’s most cherished legends, the ballet told the story of a phoenix spirit exiled for refusing to burn a village, marked with ash instead of flame, and her journey through war, ruin, and silence until her rebirth not through fire, but love. It was haunting and rich with emotion, a tragic but ultimately redemptive tale, one that Asami had read about in her youth, tucked into the margins of old Republic anthologies. Seeing it performed here, in its homeland, with the full support of a traditional Fire Nation ballet company, it thrilled her in a way she hadn’t expected.

Her fingers traced over the cast list, eyes lighting up at the name of the prima ballerina, Lien Sa, a legend in her own right. Asami had seen her perform once before in Republic City, nearly five years ago, and it had moved her to tears. She began speaking before she realised she was doing it, her voice low with enthusiasm. “Lien Sa is dancing the Phoenix. Spirits, she’s incredible. Do you remember the excerpts they broadcasted a few years ago? She barely touches the stage, it’s like she’s floating. And her lines, Korra, you’ve never seen anything like it, she can hold a penché for half a minute without wavering.”

She flipped to the next page, going on without waiting for acknowledgment. “And the score’s all live tonight. Original arrangement by Mako Ten, the composer who worked with the Conservatory of Flame. He uses chimes and deep bass horns for the Spirit World transitions, it’s so eerie and beautiful. And the lighting effects are done with actual firebending choreographed to the dancers’ movements, here, see?”

She angled the program slightly so Korra could see the page’s annotated diagrams of the stage setup, the projected lighting techniques and flame paths drawn in elegant little curves. Korra didn’t speak immediately, and when Asami looked over, she caught the expression on her face, soft, a little amused, entirely tender.

“What?” Asami asked, self-conscious now, though her cheeks already felt warm.

Korra just smiled at her, eyes gleaming with something so open, so full of quiet love it made Asami’s breath catch. “It’s lovely to see you so excited,” she said gently.

Asami flushed for real then, ducking her head slightly even as a smile curled at her lips. It wasn’t often she let herself indulge like this. She was usually the one booking appointments, arranging logistics, organising contingencies, managing. Not gushing over ballet scores or fire-staged set pieces. But here, in the warmth of Korra’s gaze, in their own private box high above the gold and red chamber, it felt okay. Safe. Right.

She relaxed back in her seat, letting herself enjoy the press of her mate’s presence beside her, the shimmer of flame-lit chandeliers reflected in Korra’s eyes. The constant pressure that had sat tight and iron-banded around her chest these past weeks loosened, just slightly.

Korra leaned in a little, speaking low near her ear. “We should do more things you like,” she said. “We’re in a foreign country. We should explore more, not just work and meetings and—” she gestured with her chin toward the program, “—whatever magic this is.”

Asami let out a quiet breath, the sound half a laugh. “You’re the one who’s supposed to be recovering,” she murmured. “But… I’d like that.”

She meant it. Not just the exploring, but the feeling. Letting herself share joy openly. Letting Korra see it, be part of it, love her in it. Not despite her ambition, or her control, or her sharpness, but including all of that, and also this: her wonder, her softness, her hunger for beauty.

The lights dimmed with the reverent hush of an entire hall falling into silence, the curtain sweeping upward in a fluid, near ceremonial motion. Asami’s breath caught as the first chords of the overture spilled into the air, delicate strings paired with the quiet hum of wind chimes, a sound like the whisper of wings through ash. On stage, the dancers emerged from shadow like phantoms, their movements fluid, otherworldly, as though they were made not of flesh and bone, but of smoke and memory. The lighting, subtle and masterful, bathed everything in a low, reddish glow, and when the phoenix appeared, clad in sheer silks that caught every flicker of light, Asami’s entire body responded. She leaned forward slightly in her seat, lips parted, enraptured.

She reached out blindly, not tearing her gaze from the stage, until her fingers found Korra’s hand, where it rested atop her tray, her two moveable fingers twitching in surprised response before gently curling around hers. Asami squeezed softly, her own hand cool against the lingering heat of Korra’s skin. The music built, layered with deep percussion and the occasional cry of a solo flute, echoing with the sense of mourning and yearning that defined the piece’s early acts. Every leap, every flutter of costume and limb, was timed with breathtaking precision.

By the time the curtain fell at intermission, Asami sat with dampness glinting at the corner of one eye, the ache in her chest blooming in a strangely satisfying way. She lifted a tissue from her clutch and dabbed discreetly before turning to Korra, her expression still full of unfiltered wonder. “So?” she asked, her voice hushed with emotion. “What did you think?”

Korra, clearly aware of how much the moment meant, straightened a little and offered a slow, thoughtful nod. “The costumes were really something,” she said. “And that one bit? When they moved in a circle, the fire shot up with every step. That was… yeah. That was cool.”

It wasn’t exactly a rapturous review, but Asami could tell Korra had been trying. Her tone was honest, her effort genuine, and that meant more than any shared love of ballet. Asami smiled, her heart tender with affection. She began speaking again, voice gaining momentum as she talked through the story so far, the staging, the symbolism of the phoenix’s ash-marked body, the ways the choreography emphasised her alienation from the other spirits. She gestured with her hand as she spoke, fingers dancing through the air like punctuation marks. She hardly noticed when the waiter reappeared, quiet and deferential, offering a second glass of champagne, which she accepted with a grateful nod and barely a pause in her retelling.

She was just recounting the moment where the phoenix cradled a burned sapling and breathed life into it, her voice thickening with feeling, when it hit her.

A slow, thick curl of scent.

It was subtle at first, easily mistaken for the rich perfume of her own oils or the sandalwood-tinged warmth of the opera house. But no, this was familiar, specific. Heavy with musk and the low, instinctual hum of desire. Alpha. Korra. Dense and unfurling, like velvet smoke, filling the small enclosed space of their box with an unintended but unmistakable shift.

Asami blinked, her breath catching in her throat. Her mouth went dry. She recrossed her legs, her movements fluid but just a touch too slow, too deliberate. Her own scent spiked before she could help it, the floral sweetness of omega pheromones blooming in response, winding together with Korra’s like a memory made physical. She swallowed hard, placing her champagne glass back on the tray with far more focus than required. When she looked at Korra again, her mate was still watching her, still pretending nothing had changed, even as her nostrils flared slightly, her jaw tight.

It hadn’t been on purpose. It never was with Korra, not lately. Her instincts were in constant flux since the injury, her scent a barometer of her emotions. But this wasn’t grief or fear. This was want. Simple, unguarded, unspoken want.

And Asami, well. She wasn’t made of stone.

She smiled faintly, turning her eyes back to the stage where the curtain hung heavy in preparation for the second act, and let her fingers graze Korra’s hand again, slower this time. There was still a performance to watch. But her heart was beating louder than the overture, and she could feel the warmth of Korra’s scent curling through her like fire in her blood.

Asami tilted her head toward Korra slightly, the gentle murmur of the opera house softening as the second act drew near. In the golden hush between scenes, with the hush of anticipation like a breath held in the dark, she found herself speaking lowly, almost absentmindedly. “I used to love dancing, you know,” she said, her voice coloured with something wistful. “When I was little. Before my mother died.”

Korra turned to her, brows lifting just slightly, the ambient light catching on her eyes. “I’m not surprised,” she said after a moment. “You move so gracefully. Like… you were meant for it.”

The compliment made Asami smile, small and slow, but it was fleeting. The expression faded like candlelight cupped by a sudden wind. She looked down at her glass, then at their linked hands, thumb brushing the edge of Korra’s wristplate. “I stopped after she passed,” she said, quieter now. “My father didn’t think it was… practical. He wanted me to focus on self-defence. Martial arts. Said I needed to be able to protect myself.” She paused, the weight of that old directive pressing like stones in her chest. “I think I believed him. For a long time.”

Korra’s brow knit slightly, her scent shifting, low and grounding, tinged with steady compassion. But it was her silence that first acknowledged the grief layered in Asami’s voice. The quiet way her head tilted forward, just slightly, was enough to signal she understood. That the grief wasn’t only for the loss of her mother, but for her father, too, his memory a complicated tapestry of love, betrayal, absence, and pain.

Korra’s voice broke the stillness, low and sure. “You’re stunning to watch when you fight,” she said. “Truly. But I think you’d be just as beautiful dancing. Maybe you should start again.”

Asami blinked, the idea foreign enough to make her lips quirk. She waved a hand, brushing off the notion even as it sparked something faint and unfamiliar in her chest. “I’m too old to start ballet again,” she said lightly. “I’d probably tear something by the second plié.”

Korra shook her head, the motion firm with that unmistakable blend of faith and stubbornness that had defined her since the moment they met. “No,” she said. “You’re not. You can do it. Who knows? Maybe you’ll be up there one day.”

Asami let out a genuine laugh at that, her body warming with affection. “I think I’ve got too much going on to become a prima ballerina,” she said, shaking her head, “but I appreciate the compliment.”

“You should follow your passions, ‘Sami,” Korra said, her tone soft but certain. “You deserve to be happy.”

That quiet declaration landed with more weight than Asami expected. She turned to Korra and squeezed her hand, letting the warmth of her mate’s sincerity settle into her. “I am happy, darling,” she said. And she meant it. The aching, the grief, the stress, they were real. But this? Korra’s hand in hers, her laughter, her belief? That was joy.

Korra didn’t look away. “Okay,” she said after a beat. “Then you deserve to be even happier.”

Asami opened her mouth, maybe to reply, maybe to argue, but then the lights dimmed. The orchestra struck its first reverent notes for the second act, and the curtain rose with the hush of breathless attention. She turned toward the stage again, her fingers still laced with Korra’s, and let the music carry them both forward.

The final act unfolded like the breaking of a storm, all molten fire and quiet devastation, bodies in perfect motion, limbs flung with abandon and caught again with aching grace. The Ash-Marked Phoenix, having wandered through ruin and rebirth, at last rose in a storm of silk and light, her final solo not a dance of triumph, but one of defiant sorrow. The music swelled around her like wind through open temple halls, ancient and aching, and when the last note struck, held like a question in the hush before breath returned to the audience, Asami’s cheeks were wet with tears.

She wasn’t alone. The entire opera house rose with her, thunderous applause shaking the balconies. Asami stood, clapping with careful restraint, but her chest still felt cracked open. Her breath trembled, and her hands stung from the force of her praise. But it was when she turned that she nearly forgot the stage altogether. Korra was watching her, not the performers, not the house, but her. Her eyes were soft, lips curved in a small, private smile. Her two working fingers tapped rhythmically against her thighrest, a quiet, measured beat: her version of applause.

Asami melted. There was no other word for it. Her heart folded, utterly undone by the sight of Korra like that, supportive, present, trying. For her. Without thinking, without caring about formality or timing or even modesty, Asami bent over her mate and kissed her, deep and warm and grateful, lips pressing hard and hungry over Korra’s. She felt Korra’s breath hitch, a soft muffled sound blooming against her mouth, and she didn’t stop. She slid down, settling awkwardly but insistently across Korra’s lap, her wrap falling loose from her shoulders, her body pressing flush to the contours of Korra’s suit and chair alike.

It was inelegant, messy in a way no one in that pristine, historical building would expect from two finely dressed women in the imperial box. But she didn’t care. Korra didn’t either. She was kissing back, fervent and breathless, her arm strained but holding where she could, mouth chasing Asami’s like a lifeline.

They didn’t stop until the curtains finally lowered, the orchestra bowed, and the room around them began to stir again with shifting coats and rising voices. Asami pulled away slowly, her lips tingling, heart full to bursting. Korra’s cheeks were flushed, her eyes glassy with emotion and some barely-contained mix of surprise and affection.

“We have to wait a little while,” Korra said, her voice still quiet, still catching, “for the roads to clear. Then they’ll take us back.”

Asami nodded, smoothing the bodice of her dress where it had bunched from her haphazard straddle. Then she leaned in once more, her lips brushing tenderly over Korra’s. “Good,” she murmured. “Then I’ve still got a few more minutes to be shameless.”

Asami unpinned her hair slowly, fingers working through the combs until her curls fell loose around her shoulders in soft, languid waves. The silence between them wasn’t awkward, it was dense with meaning, full of the tension that had been building all night in glances and half-held smiles, in the lingering weight of Korra’s gaze and the low hum of her scent warming the private air between them. The suite was quiet save for the subtle sounds of the city below and the occasional shift of fabric as they moved together in unspoken rhythm, untangling the hours from their bodies one breath at a time.

Korra sat on the bed now, against the headboard, torso upright, arms relaxed but hands still, letting Asami come to her. Her jacket was sharply tailored, still pristine from the evening, but it held the scent of the night like a vessel, the subtle heat of the opera, the warmth of close proximity, the trace of fire lilies clinging faintly from Asami’s skin. She stepped forward and knelt between Korra’s legs without a word, her wrap already draped over the nearest chair, her gown rustling around her ankles like falling leaves.

She reached up and unfastened the single clasp at Korra’s collar, letting her fingertips linger a little longer than necessary over the fabric. Her hands were deliberate, slow, reverent. The jacket peeled back inch by inch, and Asami pressed her lips to each newly revealed space like it was something holy. The slope of her shoulder, the curve of her collarbone, the exposed column of her throat. Korra’s skin was warm beneath her mouth, and as the jacket slid from her arms and pooled on the bed behind her, Asami trailed kisses down her neck, soft and slow, each one a kind of prayer.

“You looked so beautiful tonight,” she murmured between kisses, her voice low and near reverent. “Like something out of legend. Every time I looked at you, I couldn’t breathe.”

Korra let out a soft sound, somewhere between protest and surrender. “I’m tired,” she said, the words heavy but not resisting, not really. Her body didn’t draw back. Her breath wasn’t even.

Asami smiled against her skin. “I know,” she whispered, brushing her lips over the hollow beneath Korra’s throat. “But your scent tells a different story.”

And it did. Asami could feel it, curling and thickening around them, that low, unintentional exhale of arousal that came from deep within Korra’s chest and spread outward in invisible waves. Not a rut, no urgency, no spike of dominance, but want. Pure and simple. Quiet, yearning hunger that had been building all night under the surface. The kind Korra didn’t always know how to name anymore. But Asami knew. She had learned to read it like weather, to feel the change in the air between them.

Her hands slid lower, skimming the hem of Korra’s inner vest. She peeled that back too, revealing the soft tank beneath, the scars along Korra’s side catching what little light there was. Asami didn’t pause. She didn’t flinch. She leaned in and kissed one, then another, then traced her tongue along the seam of healed flesh like she would any other sacred line of her lover’s body. Korra inhaled sharply, her hand twitching once on the bed beside her thighrest.

“You’re strong,” Asami whispered, her voice trembling slightly with how much she meant it. “Not just because of what you’ve endured. But because of how you love. How you try. Every day.”

She reached for the scent oil then, the small glass vial already warming in her palm. She’d worn a lighter application of it earlier, a subtle invitation, but now she poured a few drops into her hand and rubbed her palms together, activating the aroma. It unfurled like a second skin, sweet and resinous, notes of orchid and golden amber, of honeyed petals and grounded earth. She leaned in and pressed her oiled hands to Korra’s hips, working slow circles there with her thumbs, just above the band of her trousers.

The scent caught Korra’s immediately. The shift in her breathing was subtle but unmistakable. A low, aching exhale. Her own scent responded, woodsmoke and spice, once controlled, now curling with something deeper. Richer. Thicker. Asami felt it wrap around her like velvet, tinged with longing, with need. Not for release, but for closeness. For this. For her.

Asami massaged her way upward, careful of pressure, mindful of Korra’s nerve responses. She traced along the lines of her abdomen, skimming past scars, old tension, healed bruises. She knew this body. Every inch. She had held it through agony and tremors, through silence and rage. And now, she held it with love.

“You’re loved,” she whispered, her lips brushing against the underside of Korra’s jaw. “Every inch of you. Every breath you take. Every part of you, then and now and always.”

Her hands moved lower, to Korra’s thighs, to the sensitive stretch of muscle just inside them. She worked slowly, purposefully, scent oil warming further as she massaged upward, watching Korra’s eyes flutter closed, her shoulders loosening by degrees. Her breath came faster now, not with exhaustion but with surrender. Her scent filled the room, musk and ember, forest and heat, and Asami let it anchor her, wrap around her, pull her closer.

She pressed another kiss to Korra’s throat, then her collarbone, then down toward the swell of her chest, murmuring soft things between every breath, not asking for anything, not rushing, only giving. Only offering. Korra, slowly, began to yield.

Asami moved with the same quiet deliberation that had defined every moment of their night, from the fall of her wrap at the opera to the first kiss traced along the vulnerable hollow of Korra’s throat. She undressed them both not like a lover in haste but like a priestess tending to something sacred, her fingers skilled, slow, reverent. Korra allowed it, barely speaking, watching her through hooded eyes that shimmered with something between awe and dread. Asami saw it, but she didn’t speak to it yet. She let her hands tell the story first, unfastening the clasp of Korra’s last underlayer, easing the thin fabric from her body with all the gentleness of wind parting the petals of a lotus. Every time more skin was revealed, Asami leaned forward and kissed it, her mouth soft and sure, her breath a silent offering.

She helped Korra recline fully, the motion a blend of instinct and tender precision. Pillows were arranged beneath her mate’s head and shoulders, another carefully tucked under her knees to ease the strain on her lower back. Korra didn’t speak, but her eyes followed every movement. Her hands lay at her sides, still but not limp, resting on the edge of will, as though waiting for a command that her nerves couldn’t fulfill. Asami smoothed the sheet over her, then pulled it back again, this time slower, as though unveiling a painting long kept hidden. Her breath caught when she looked down, because no matter how many times she saw Korra like this, it always struck her anew. The strength she held, the softness she allowed, the way vulnerability could look like majesty when wrapped in the body of someone she loved.

She kissed Korra’s knees, then the inside of her thighs, her mouth moving slowly, reverently, following the trail of scent that had begun to thicken in the air. It was more than just desire, it was instinct, response, the silent flare of Alpha heat rising without command. The scent was unmistakable: dense and musky, edged in firewood and spice, with that darker, richer core that only surfaced when Korra truly let go. Asami felt it flood her lungs, saturate her senses, tug something deep and carnal loose inside her. But she didn’t rush. She only breathed her in, nestled between her thighs, kissing the soft skin there as though it alone were holy.

When her mouth finally found Korra’s clit, she didn’t go fast, didn’t press hard. She kissed it first, just the barest brush of lips, light and trembling as a vow. Then again, firmer. She let her tongue circle slowly, tasting the way Korra’s scent shifted as she moaned, a soft, ragged sound torn from her throat from shock at being touched so gently. So fully. Asami sealed her lips around the tender swell and drew her in, tongue laving along the underside in long, slow pulls. She could feel the way Korra began to swell in her mouth, how the skin thickened, sensitised, as the pleasure built, not with motion, but with depth. With presence.

“You don’t have to do anything,” she murmured between strokes of her tongue, her voice husky, full of reverence. “Just feel. Let me take care of you.”

Korra let out a breath like she’d been struck, the sound cracked and high. Her hands twitched at her sides, curling into the sheets like they could find leverage there, like if she only tried harder, they would move. But they didn’t. Not how she wanted. And Asami felt the tension spike, not in her body, but in the way her scent wavered, anxiety creeping through the musk, souring the edge of arousal with the tang of shame.

“You don't have to-” The words broke unevenly, not because of lack of desire, but because of fear. The shame that came from being seen. From needing. From not being able to meet touch with motion.

Asami lifted her head just enough to see her, her lips glistening, her face open, flushed, unashamed. She reached up and laid a hand gently on Korra’s abdomen, her palm pressing over the soft, trembling skin. “Hush,” she said, the word more breath than command. “You’re still everything to me.”

She leaned up, kissed Korra’s navel, then her ribs, then the edge of her breast, soft, adoring. “Let me be your hands.”

Korra’s breath caught, her throat working around a sound she couldn’t quite make. And then the tension in her scent gave way, broke apart like ash in water, and what rose in its place was need. Pure, unfiltered, helpless need. Her scent rolled through the room like smoke, thick, heady waves of Alpha desire that filled every breath Asami took. It wasn’t rut, but it was close. Her glands were flaring, the heat of them pulsing in time with her breath, her body flushing pink and red and gold with want.

Her hips couldn’t move, but her voice did. Raw, open, moaning now with every pass of Asami’s tongue. Each long, slow suck drew her higher, deeper into sensation. Asami alternated pressure and pace, soft flicks followed by deep, anchoring pulls, her mouth worshipping Korra’s clit like it was the only thing that mattered in the world. Because in this moment, it was.

Korra cried out, helpless, desperate, her hands twitching again as though they could reach, as though they could hold. But they didn’t need to. Asami was already there. Holding everything. Being everything. Her own scent had bloomed now, syrupy and floral, sweet as ripe fruit in summer, wrapping around Korra’s like silk, like home. Asami didn’t stop. Didn’t falter. She licked, she kissed, she worshipped, until Korra’s voice broke open entirely, and the only word she could form was her name.

Asami moved slowly, reverently, her body flushed with warmth and slick with scent, the very air between them shimmering with the weight of unspoken desire. She rose from between Korra’s thighs like mist curling from the sea, her mouth damp with devotion, her breath still trembling with the memory of her mate’s taste. The sheets shifted as she knelt above her, straddling Korra’s lap with deliberate grace, her knees sinking into the mattress on either side of Korra’s hips, her hands braced lightly on the bed beside them. Her body hovered just above, and then she began to move, grinding, slow and subtle, her slick already seeping, already hot and ready as it spread across Korra’s full, rigid length.

The contact made Korra shudder beneath her, her mouth parting around a breathless sound, and Asami’s own scent surged in answer. It rose in thick, sweet spirals, all crushed orchid and golden musk, warm and ripe with omega heat, her body answering without hesitation, without fear. It wasn’t just arousal. It was instinct, need, love, all of it blooming at once into a scent so rich it filled the space around them like incense. She ground herself down a little harder, not for friction but for coating, for readiness. Her own breath caught as the head of Korra’s cock slid through the slick folds of her sex, brushing against the soft, sensitive skin again and again until she was soaked, her body humming with ache.

Below her, Korra was watching her with glassy, stunned eyes, her mouth slack with wonder and strain, her throat working around a dry swallow. Her hands twitched helplessly against the bed, and when she finally spoke, her voice was low, raspy, almost disbelieving. “You can ride me,” she murmured. “If you want to.”

Asami leaned forward and kissed her, slow and sure, letting her lips part over Korra’s mouth until their breath mingled. Her answer was steady, a whisper spoken against her lips. “I know,” she said. “I’m going to.”

She reached between them with one hand, guiding Korra’s length. Her other hand rested lightly on Korra’s abdomen, grounding them both. She angled her hips, took a breath, and began to sink down. It was slow. Painfully slow. Her body stretched, slick and ready but still tight, still cautious. Korra filled her inch by inch, and every movement forward was deliberate, tender, unstoppable. Asami’s thighs trembled with the effort to stay controlled, and her breath stuttered in her throat. When she finally settled fully, seated all the way down with the solid weight of Korra inside her, her head tipped back and she let out a quiet, helpless gasp, her body trembling from the stretch, the pressure, the fullness of it.

Korra’s chest rose in a jerking breath beneath her. Her head fell back against the pillows, her eyes wild with feeling, her teeth bared as she growled low in her throat, a sound not of aggression but of desperation, of want so thick it had no place to go. “Take it,” she panted, barely able to shape the words. “Take what you need. Omega. Please.”

Asami opened her eyes and looked down at her, and what she saw nearly undid her. Korra’s scent was rolling off her like storm clouds, smoke and heat and musk so thick it blurred the edges of the room. Her eyes shone with a raw, pleading light, and Asami could feel the desperation of her stillness, the agony of her restraint. And still, she didn’t beg for control. She begged to give. To be taken. To be made useful.

Asami rocked her hips, slow and steady, the motion sending a deep ache through her core. Every shift dragged Korra’s cock against the sensitive swell of her walls, nudging deep in ways that made her breath catch, made her thighs shake harder. She could feel the pressure already, Korra’s knot beginning to swell, not yet locking but promising. Her hands found balance on Korra’s chest, smoothing over the steady rise and fall of her breath, stroking gently across her scent glands and the warm skin between her breasts.

“You’re perfect,” she whispered, voice husky with awe. “You’re mine.”

Korra made a choked sound, barely audible, her body arched as much as it could. Asami kept moving, slow, deliberate rolls that deepened the angle, the pace, until Korra’s knot caught and locked deep inside her with a sudden, swollen pressure that made Asami cry out, her whole body jolting with the force of it. She bowed forward, clutching at Korra’s shoulders as the knot locked them together, her face pressed against Korra’s neck, breath shallow, body shaking with too much sensation.

They couldn’t move, not really, not anymore, but the connection was deeper than motion. It was the scent, the bond, the way their bodies clung and hummed together like wires pulled taut with fire. Korra sobbed once, then again, the sound torn from her chest in ragged bursts. Not from pain. Not from grief. But from the overwhelming flood of being wanted. Of being inside. Of being whole.

“I can feel you,” she gasped, voice wet and trembling. “Spirits, I feel you everywhere.”

Their scents filled the room completely, clashing and folding into each other, Korra’s sharp and smoky, Asami’s thick and honey-sweet, the aroma of bond and need and worship blending into something heavier than air. It soaked the sheets. It curled around the walls. It wrapped them both in a cocoon of heat and home.

Asami stayed knotted to her mate, her thighs still trembling, her breath slowing as she came down. She stroked Korra’s arms, her scent glands, the curve of her cheek with fingers so gentle they barely touched. “You’re still mine,” she whispered into her hair. “Even when you can’t move. Especially then.”

Korra couldn’t stop crying, but they were soft tears now, slow and endless, the kind that came only when the body finally believed it was safe. They weren’t just tears of release. They were tears of being seen. Of being chosen again. Of being loved not despite her brokenness, but because of it.

Eventually, they slept, still locked, still bonded, scent-marked and entangled. The room was thick with the heat of them, with the love of them, with everything they were and everything they had survived to become.

The light in the archives felt too bright that morning, even though it hadn’t changed. It bounced off the polished stone and aged parchment like a judgment, needling at the back of Korra’s skull with a dull, persistent throb. Her headache had been blooming since she opened her eyes, low and nagging, like something trapped behind her temples trying to claw its way out. No matter how many headache remedies the healers prescribed, or how many soothing teas Asami had coaxed her into drinking, the fog didn’t lift. It hung around her thoughts, clinging like smoke, making it harder to concentrate, harder to breathe, harder not to snap.

She’d known the moment she woke that it would be a bad day. The weight of her limbs had felt off, heavier than usual, her movements jerky and less precise as the attendants transferred her to her chair. Her thoughts had arrived sluggishly, as if she were still wading through dream-murk. Her eyes had met Asami’s across the suite, and when Asami asked, gently, with too much worry behind her voice, if she might be having a flare-up, Korra had only nodded. Jaw tight. Words trapped behind clenched teeth. Because yes, she was, and no, she didn’t want to talk about it. Not when everything inside her felt like a cracked teapot barely holding pressure.

Asami had made her tea anyway, and summoned the healer on duty. Korra had let the woman check her over, because protesting would take more energy than tolerating the brief prodding. Her vitals were steady. No fever. No warning signs of another seizure. Just the regular soup of cognitive disruption and neural inflammation they’d all stopped pretending they could predict. Korra had thanked her through gritted teeth, then asked, politely, too politely, for the attendants to dress her for the day.

She hadn’t missed the way Asami’s mouth had pressed into a line, or the way her shoulders had tightened. She knew exactly what her mate had wanted to say. Rest. Lie down. Breathe. Let the world wait. But Korra couldn’t. Not today. Not with the summit starting next week, with diplomats arriving in waves and schedules about to erupt in a storm of handshakes and speeches. She had only a few more days to bury herself in this research, to try and dig out something useful before ceremony and responsibility closed their jaws around her again. She didn’t have time to pause. Not for her brain. Not for her body. Not for anything.

So now she sat in the archives, shoulders hunched slightly forward, her chair parked beside the same ancient table she’d claimed earlier in the week. Bolin sat across from her, surrounded by a growing sprawl of notes and books, one pencil tucked behind his ear and another scribbling in a large, blocky hand on a scroll that was supposed to be a clean copy of the last chapter they’d translated. He was humming to himself, off-key and cheerful, entirely unaffected by Korra’s foul mood, thank the spirits.

Still, even his relentless optimism grated more than usual today. Korra found herself wincing at the screech of his pencil, the way he cleared his throat before reading out quotes, the tap-tap-tap of Pabu’s claws as the fire ferret scampered around the desk. She didn’t say anything. She didn’t want to hurt him, didn’t want to direct the roiling frustration anywhere except inward, where it belonged. But it took effort, more than it should have, to hold the line between quiet resolve and cruel outburst.

The scrolls weren’t helping. Not today. The text swam slightly when she tried to focus on it. Symbols blurred at the edges, requiring her to blink twice as often, her already-slow reading now reduced to a crawl. And the words themselves, concepts she normally found grounding, felt elusive. Slippery. Like her mind couldn’t hold them long enough to draw meaning. She hated that feeling. Hated that it had taken her nearly twenty minutes to understand a single paragraph on chi redirection, when earlier this week she’d been dissecting ancient bending philosophies with clarity and confidence.

She tried to stretch her neck, shifting slightly in her chair, but the movement did little to help. The tension had settled in like an unwanted guest, and she knew, as much as she didn’t want to admit it, that she probably should have stayed in bed. But there was too much at stake. Too many questions unanswered. Too many what-ifs clawing at the inside of her skull.

This work mattered. Her bending recovery, her connection to Raava, her hope, fragile and flickering as it was, hinged on what she could learn here. And it wasn’t just about her. It was about what she could become, what she could still be, even now, even like this. The world still needed her. The balance still needed her. And she needed to believe that this body, this damaged, paralysed, struggling body, could still hold power in it. Could still be the Avatar.

So she stayed. Head aching. Thoughts dragging. Jaw clenched and spine locked as she forced herself to read, to dictate, to nod along as Bolin read passages out loud, his voice echoing faintly off the carved stone walls. She didn’t speak much. Not unless she had to. But her silence wasn’t emptiness, it was sheer, burning will. A refusal to stop. To rest. To surrender.

She spotted her from the corner of her eye first, movement where there shouldn’t have been any, a fluid figure slipping around the end of a tall, dusty shelf of sealed manuscripts. Korra stiffened slightly, her neck twinging as she half-turned her head, already bracing herself. Of course it was her. That same infuriatingly calm, maddeningly evasive woman with the unreadable eyes and the inconvenient habit of showing up exactly when Korra wasn’t ready for it. She looked just as she had in the courtyard: collected, unsmiling, hair pinned back with utilitarian elegance, scrolls tucked under one arm as if she’d simply wandered here by accident.

Korra groaned inwardly, the motion rattling against the dull pain simmering through her skull. Spirits. Not today. Her headache had only just dipped below the threshold of stabbing, and this woman’s voice alone felt like it could send it roaring back to full blaze. And yet…and yet, alongside the irritation came something else. Not quite comfort, certainly not trust, but a quiet note of anticipation. Relief, maybe. Or curiosity dressed in the teeth of frustration. Something in her presence sharpened Korra’s dull mind, like flint striking against steel. It made things spark.

The woman didn’t ask permission. She never did. She simply stepped forward and slid into the seat beside Korra as if it belonged to her, as if she had always meant to sit there, ignoring Bolin completely, again. The poor man blinked, clearly caught between polite confusion and a desire to flee. Korra shot him a quick glance, a silent apology she didn’t have the energy to voice, but he just gave her a thin, brave smile and held his pencil like it might protect him.

Without so much as a greeting, the woman unrolled one of her scrolls. The paper was worn, ink-stained, nearly brittle with age, and Korra immediately recognised the type: banned or at least discouraged literature, archived more for containment than accessibility. The kind of work Zuko had quietly authorised her to examine was only after three separate levels of permission and three pages of warnings.

“What do you think of this?” the woman asked, her voice low and even, as if they’d been mid-conversation all along. She tapped the scroll and began to speak, her words fast but precise, each syllable cutting clean through Korra’s haze.

“It’s a treatise by Xi Quan,” she continued. “Exiled scholar. Lived on Mount Shao for nearly a decade before the monks drove him out. ‘Bending the Ether: Manipulating the Unseen Element.’ Ever heard of it?”

Korra hadn’t. But her body reacted before her brain caught up, her spine straightening slightly, her eyes narrowing. She could already feel her headache tightening, the content far too dense to absorb in her current state, but the title alone stirred something ancient and half-remembered in her chest.

The woman spoke on, fingers gliding over the aged scroll like she’d read it a thousand times. “Xi Quan’s theories build on the idea that there’s a fifth element. Ether. Not air, not spirit, not chi. Something beyond, fundamental. He claimed that a true master of the four could access it. Not through movement or force, but through stillness. Through mental discipline so refined that even flame and stone would respond without a flick of the hand.”

Korra stared at the script, her eyes barely making sense of the densely written passages, and scowled, not out of disbelief, but because she believed too much. Her breath caught at the mention of stillness. Of bending without movement. It echoed everything she’d been chasing since she lost the use of her limbs, everything she’d suspected in the quiet moments when the wind responded to nothing but her will.

She didn’t trust this woman. Not one bit. And yet her fascination tangled hard with resentment, her instinct to pull away dulled by the ache of wanting. She wanted this information. Wanted more.

Across the table, Bolin had stopped pretending to work. He glanced from Korra to the woman and back again, clearly bewildered. He opened his mouth to speak and then thought better of it, chewing his lip nervously as Pabu curled tighter around his neck.

Korra’s headache throbbed harder behind her eyes. Her thoughts, already thick and slow, now stumbled into something between awe and helplessness. It was too much, her broken body, her fraying mind, and now this impossible theory whispered to her by a stranger who wouldn’t even give her a name. She wanted to shout. She wanted to cry. Instead, she just sat there, jaw locked, throat tight, unable to look away from the scroll.

The brittle edge of the parchment curled slightly at the corners, revealing layer after layer of densely inked commentary, annotations, and small diagrams that danced perilously close to being nonsense, but weren’t. Not quite. Korra leaned in despite herself, letting her chair hum quietly forward, the mechanical arms settling into a resting position as she balanced the edge of her forearm against the tray. She didn’t expect the woman to move, but she did, tilting the scroll slightly toward Korra without a word, adjusting her posture as if they had been study partners for years.

And somehow, the rhythm of conversation began to flow. Unevenly at first, but it steadied.

They dissected the scroll’s theories line by line. The text was fragmented, half speculation, half metaphor, with Xi Quan describing ether as “the breath of the void” and the “thread between all opposites.” Korra scoffed at some of it, and the woman matched her sarcasm note for note, dryly pointing out that metaphysical poetry was a symptom of scholars left alone with too much incense and not enough feedback. But neither dismissed the core idea. Not fully. They debated the mechanics, whether it was a fifth element or merely a state of spiritual alignment so intense it simulated a new form of bending. They poured over the author’s references to breath control, neural re-mapping, and how the mind might one day override physical limitations entirely.

It was irritating how good the woman was at this.

Snarky, yes. Arrogant, absolutely. But also perceptive and alarmingly well-read. She challenged Korra without posturing, without the thinly veiled reverence or fear Korra so often encountered from scholars who knew her title but not her mind. This woman, whoever she was, didn’t seem impressed by the Avatar at all, and maybe that was why it worked. It reminded her of Asami, the way she thought through problems with piercing logic and confidence, except where Asami was precise and empathetic, this woman wielded intelligence like a blade.

Korra didn’t like her. Not really. But she was perfect to study with.

It was halfway through their discussion, when they were both bent low over a particularly tangled paragraph on neural gate theory, that the woman suddenly stilled and looked at her with narrowed eyes.

“What’s wrong with you?” she asked bluntly, as if it were the most natural thing in the world. “You keep wincing.”

Korra grimaced, both at the question and at the way her temples throbbed as if summoned by it. She shifted slightly in her chair, jaw tight, her shoulders curling protectively, though the motion did little. Her fingers, those that could move, twitched once, involuntarily.

She didn’t want to talk about it. Not with her. Not when she still didn’t even know her name. But hiding it wasn’t going to work. The pain was written across her face, heavy and stubborn, and her restraint was already thinned to its edge.

“TBI,” she muttered, voice low and flat. “Flare-ups happen.”

The woman blinked at her, once, her expression unreadable. “Haven’t figured out a way to fix that yet?”

That did it.

Korra’s back straightened as much as it could. Her voice was sharper now, cutting and wounded at once. “Yes,” she snapped, “on top of everything else I’m trying to do, rediscover my bending, rebuild my body, manage a summit, figure out how to connect to Raava again, I’ve also found time to heal my own fucking brain.”

The words hit the air like flint on steel. Her headache roared behind her eyes, but her anger flared hotter, sudden and brittle.

The woman didn’t flinch. But she did fall quiet for a beat too long. Not defensive. Not apologetic. Just watching Korra, as if weighing the outburst for content rather than volume. As if trying to understand what had cracked to let that heat out.

Korra looked away first, furious at herself for rising to it. And even more furious for wanting to say more. She was still scowling into the mysterious ether when the woman shocked her again.

“Did you bring your medical records with you?”

Korra blinked, eyes dragging upward, caught off guard not just by the question but by the precision of it, how casually it had been dropped between lines of text about metaphysical bending. She turned to look at Bolin, who had been valiantly pretending to read a half-legible scroll while sneaking glances between them. Now, he looked like he was caught between awe and the need to crawl under the nearest table before this strange, commanding woman noticed him.

The woman didn’t clarify her question. She didn’t need to.

Korra said slowly, warily, “They’re in my rooms.”

The woman arched an eyebrow and stood, gathering her scrolls without further explanation. “Show me.”

There were at least six reasons Korra should’ve refused. Six dozen. She still didn’t know this woman’s name, didn’t know where she came from or what gave her the right to speak with such authority, to move through the world like no walls applied to her. And now she wanted access to Korra’s most personal information, her health, her prognosis, the documentation of every failure, every limitation?

Korra should’ve said no. But instead, she found herself already turning, her chair whirring softly beneath her as it reversed and angled itself toward the hallway. The scroll she’d been reviewing still hovered half-open on the table. Bolin scrambled, flustered, scooping up the rest of their notes and materials with a glance toward Korra that plainly asked, What are you doing? Korra couldn’t answer. She didn’t know.

The woman swanned past the Fire Sage posted at the archive exit without slowing. She didn’t acknowledge him, didn’t bow, didn’t pause, and he didn’t stop her. Just watched her go with a small incline of his head, respectful and vaguely anxious.

Korra frowned. “You can take scrolls out of here?”

“Of course,” the woman replied, tone dry, like the answer was obvious and Korra was being dense for asking.

And that was when Korra noticed it. There was a subtle ripple around them as they moved. The way workers, attendants, and even a few nobles shifted out of the woman’s path, not in fear, but in practised deference. Some bowed. Others simply avoided her gaze. No one asked who she was. No one challenged her presence.

Korra’s mind raced, filing through possibilities. Scholar. Advisor. A noblewoman so embedded in the Fire Nation’s upper hierarchy that even the sages deferred to her. But none of the guesses quite fit. The woman moved like she didn’t care about politics. Like her authority wasn’t derived from rank, but from something older and more implicit. Like the world had simply rearranged itself around her and she had grown used to the gravity.

Still, Korra said nothing. Just kept rolling behind her, through the grand corridors of the royal wing, until they reached the suite she shared with Asami.

Inside, Korra led her past the sitting room, toward the dual desk setup near the windows, her own facing Asami’s, each workspace symmetrical in design but cluttered with their separate lives. Bolin, ever-helpful, set their papers down while Korra gestured toward the bottom left drawer. “Can you get that box, Bo?”

He did, lifting the lacquered case with care. It wasn’t large, but it was dense, thick with folders, sealed envelopes, healer’s notes, and months worth of clinical print-outs from Republic City and the Fire Nation’s medics alike.

They carried it back to the main sitting room. The woman settled onto the couch as if it were a throne, legs crossed, scrolls tucked beside her, and lifted the lid without ceremony. No request for permission. No hesitation. She just began reading, flipping pages with quick fingers, her brow furrowed slightly as she parsed the details.

Korra wheeled to a stop and watched her. She didn’t say anything. Not yet. Bolin lowered himself gingerly into the nearby armchair and looked at Korra with an expression somewhere between curiosity and panic.

What are you doing? His eyes asked again.

Korra met his gaze, jaw clenched, shoulders hunched, her own expression grim and baffled in equal measure.

I don’t know, it said plainly. I don’t know.

The woman read with a kind of detached intensity that Korra had only ever seen in people whose minds never truly stopped working. She didn’t skim or glance over anything, she consumed the records like they were strategic maps, each page feeding into a lattice of conclusions forming quietly behind her impassive eyes. She read mostly in silence, lips pressed thin, her posture unbending. Occasionally, though, she spoke, not idle commentary, but questions that struck like pinpricks of heat.

“Your spinal cord injury. Incomplete?”

Korra nodded stiffly, and when that wasn’t enough, added, “Lower thoracic. It’s classified as incomplete but… very little motor response below.”

The woman only nodded, flipping to the next section. “You’ve had surgical stabilisation?”

“Yeah. A full fusion, plates and rods. Metal in my lower spine, right hip, left knee.”

“Which is artificial?”

“Both hip and knee. Republic City surgeons replaced them.” Korra paused, mouth dry, the familiar chill crawling down her arms as she added, “There’s also a structural brace inside my pelvic girdle. Reinforced titanium. Keeps things aligned.”

Still, the woman didn’t flinch. Didn’t soften or look away like others often did. She just kept reading, asking in a voice so even it bordered on serene, “Sensation. Where can you feel?”

Korra shifted a little in her chair, her fingers clenching against the armrest. “Depends. Shoulders, upper back. Chest, obviously. Skin on my hips, recently. Not deep muscle, but surface touch. My scent glands are reactive again. My knot. Cock, when I—” She broke off. Flushed. “When I’m aroused.”

The woman didn’t even blink. “Toes?”

“My left pinky toe, sometimes.” She let out a breath. “And my hands… two fingers that respond, barely.”

“And the brain injury?”

Korra exhaled through her nose. “Traumatic. Damage to the cerebellum and frontal lobe mostly. Cognitive impairment. Memory disruption. Emotional dysregulation. I’ve been doing rehab since I woke up. Speech therapy. Occupational work. Some of it’s helped. Some of it hasn’t.”

The woman hummed faintly, flipping through the rehab notes like a surgeon studying incision diagrams. “Muscle tone’s deteriorated?”

“I work out when I can,” Korra said, too sharply. “But yeah. It’s hard. The spasticity gets worse during flare-ups.”

There was no pity in the woman’s face, just comprehension. Deep, clinical comprehension. She made no judgment, showed no awkward sympathy. Her gaze didn’t linger too long or soften with saccharine compassion. It was almost a relief.

Bolin, however, remained frozen in his seat across the room. He’d barely moved in over half an hour, his posture rigid, hands clenched in his lap. Every now and then, he’d glance at Korra as if silently asking if she was alright, if she wanted him to step in or speak up. Once, he half-stood, but Korra waved him down with a quick motion of her wrist and said gently, “Bo. You can go.”

He didn’t move. His eyebrows pinched together, eyes cutting toward the woman who still hadn’t acknowledged him. She remained fully engrossed in the stack of documentation on her lap.

Korra gave him a quiet look, insistent, though not unkind. Bolin lingered another minute before finally rising, slow and reluctant. He packed up what was left of their notes, then paused at the door and looked back at her, clearly torn. Korra gave him a small nod, letting him know she’d be fine. That she wanted this. Even if she didn’t fully understand why.

He left without a word, the door clicking shut behind him.

And still, the woman read, page after page, like she was building something from the ruins of Korra’s medical history. Like her silence wasn’t avoidance, but intent.

The woman finished reading with a slowness that seemed deliberately weighted, like she was marking the final page not because she was done, but because she had reached a necessary pause. Her fingers lifted from the last sheet as though relinquishing something fragile, and she leaned back against the couch cushions, her posture still composed but no longer rigid. She didn’t say anything. She simply sat there, watching Korra in that infuriating way, like she was a riddle, an unfinished equation, something to be examined under layers of quiet, calculated scrutiny.

Korra’s shoulders tensed. Her head was throbbing at the temples now, and the sharp hum behind her eyes made her vision feel too tight in her skull. She narrowed her gaze and said flatly, “Why are you looking at me like that?”

The woman tilted her head. “I’m trying to decide if you’re ready or not.”

Korra scowled. “Ready for what?”

No answer.

Korra’s patience, already threadbare from the lingering migraine and the ceaseless mental fog, frayed further. Her fists clenched weakly in her lap, and her jaw clicked tight enough to ache. She hated this cryptic performance, this woman who swept in like mist and left Korra clutching at nothing but half-formed thoughts. She’d been humoured. Humoured by scholars, humoured by her healers, humoured by the public. But this wasn’t humour, it was obscurity sharpened into condescension.

The woman glanced toward the box of records and said, as if it were an afterthought, “Can I take this? I need to talk to someone I trust.”

Korra’s eyes narrowed. “Why? What are you—can’t you just tell me what the fuck is going on? Who are you?”

The woman looked back at her then, a flicker of something almost apologetic in her gaze. “Someone who’s trying to help,” she said. “At least for the moment.”

Korra let out a bitter breath, pushing her head back into the cushioning of her chair. “Fine,” she snapped. “Take them. What do I care.”

The woman nodded once, businesslike. She moved to the box, lifting it in both arms with a quiet strength that Korra wouldn’t have guessed she had in that tall, lean frame. She adjusted it against her hip and turned toward the door. For a moment, she hesitated there, her back half-turned, then glanced over her shoulder and said, “For what it’s worth, I’m not usually so cryptic. But some… delicacy is required.”

And then she was gone. No name, no bow, not even the civility of a door softly closed. The portal to the hallway remained open behind her, as if daring someone else to follow, or daring Korra to rise and slam it shut.

She didn’t. She just stared after the woman for a long, slow beat, her scowl settling deeper across her face.

Her head throbbed again, a dull, miserable warning that the flare-up she’d been holding at bay was finally sinking its teeth in. She felt clammy. Cold in her fingertips and spine. Her stomach was churning with exhaustion, not nausea, just that bone-deep fatigue that came when her body began misfiring all its signals.

With a groan, Korra turned her chair toward the doorway and called, voice lower than usual, “Can someone help me, please?”

An attendant appeared within seconds, young, Fire Nation, eyes wide and polite. She stepped in and offered her arm with professionalism. Korra allowed the transfer without complaint, though her teeth clenched through the whole awkward lift and adjustment. When she was finally horizontal, limbs heavy and head buzzing faintly, she exhaled into the pillow. She didn’t bother to ask for anything else. Not tea, not books, not her board or her notes. She didn’t have the energy to plan or fight or think.

She just hoped sleep would come. And that, by the time she woke, she’d have something, anything, more than fragments and riddles.

Asami had managed to finish her day earlier than planned. She’d shifted a few meetings, postponed a technical review she was meant to lead, and delegated a minor supply chain issue that could wait until morning. Her mind hadn’t been in it anyway, not after the way Korra had looked that morning, drawn and fogged and irritable, barely holding herself upright through the conversation, her fingers twitching with the strain of holding back a growl. The healer had said it was a mild flare, but Asami had known her mate long enough to recognise when something was gnawing deeper than the surface. So she’d stepped away from the new Future Industries offices early, taking a side street to a specialist’s apothecary nestled in the inner ring of the capital. The woman there, an elderly herbalist with quick hands and a sharper mind, had prepared a mix of Fire Lily root, spirit balm, and crushed moonleaf. Perfect for TBI-related headaches, she’d claimed. Asami had cradled the small paper bag to her chest like a talisman all the way back to the palace.

The royal suites were still and dim when she let herself inside, the amber firelight left low along the sconces. She slipped her shoes off at the door and padded over the rugs with quiet steps, already calling softly, “Korra?”

A pause, then a familiar rasp: “In here.”

Asami exhaled. At least she was resting. She let herself smile a little as she crossed toward the bedroom, one hand already loosening the tie at her waist, the other still clutching the tea pouch. She imagined curling up beside Korra, letting her pheromones ease whatever sharp edges her mate hadn’t been able to shed on her own. She imagined rubbing slow circles into her shoulders, letting her fingers drift along the line of her undercut, whispering soft, coaxing nothings until Korra’s breathing evened out.

But then she stopped.

Her feet stilled in the doorway, a visceral coldness sliding down her spine. She breathed in once, and then again, slower.

The scent was not hers. Not Korra’s. Not Bolin’s either. No hint of the usual trace scent of the attendants, who always used blockers before entering, leaving the air neutral, undisturbed. No, this was fresh.

It hit her low in her stomach, deep in her chest, coiling like something primal. Omega. Female.

Not faint. Not a ghost of scent. It was recent, strong, close. And it was wrapped around Korra’s.

Not overlaying it like it would if it clung from the hallway, but interwoven. As if she’d been near Korra. Close enough to touch. Close enough to whisper.

Asami blinked. Her grip on the tea bag tightened, paper crackling under her fingers. Her nostrils flared, involuntarily. That scent, smoky and cool all at once, with an undertone of something too hard to place, something like cold iron and bitter herbs. It clashed horribly with Korra’s. The instinctual part of Asami, the one beneath the polish and poise, recoiled. Her body bristled in a way that felt ancient and unshakable. Another omega had been in here. In their rooms. With Korra.

Her brain began working rapidly, trying to fill in blanks, who, when, why, but the scent pressed in like static, short-circuiting everything that wasn’t raw emotion. Possessiveness flared, not in a jealous, petty way, but in the old, wired-into-her-blood way that came from sharing a bond that ran deeper than words. Asami knew her mate’s scent in every iteration, calm, aroused, wounded, relaxed. And now? It was clinging to this other omega’s, as if—

She bit the inside of her cheek, halting that thought.

Korra had a woman in here. An omega. A stranger. And Asami had not been told. Her heart pounded. Not with panic. With fury. And underneath that: pain. A jagged, splintered confusion she hadn’t felt in a long time.

The tea bag crinkled in her hand again as she took one step back, then another. She wasn’t sure what would happen next, what she would do, or say. Only that the room suddenly felt wrong, and her mate was just beyond the doorway, unaware that Asami was seconds away from either walking out, or walking in with fire in her eyes.

Asami stepped into the bedroom like she was stepping onto a battlefield, her body tight with restraint, each movement taut with fury she barely kept beneath the surface of her skin. Her omega instincts were still snarling, teeth bared and wild behind her ribs, demanding she defend what was hers. She forced her breathing to stay even, tried to hold on to the composed woman the world knew her to be, but it was thin. Brittle. Paper-thin. The scent in the room hadn’t dissipated. It lingered in the air like smoke, like ash, like something trying to worm its way into the space that had always been sacred between them. Their space. Their den.

Korra was lying there flat on her back, eyes closed, the room dim, the curtains drawn against the Fire Nation sun. She looked like she hadn’t moved in hours. But even that, her stillness, her obliviousness, only made Asami angrier. Because the scent was on her too. Traces of it clung to her skin like dust. Maybe Korra hadn’t even noticed it. Maybe she hadn’t thought it mattered.

Asami walked to the bedside and all but slammed the pouch of tea onto the nightstand. The sound snapped through the room like a whipcrack. “Who is she?”

Korra’s eyes opened sluggishly, the glassy fog of her headache still clinging to them. She blinked, brow furrowing. “What?”

Asami didn’t mean to snarl, but the sound came out anyway, low and sharp and unmistakably omega, territorial and possessive in a way that bypassed civility. “The omega,” she snapped, voice clipped and acidic. “The one whose scent is all over our den. All over you.”

Korra flinched, confused and clearly still dazed. Her mouth opened, but nothing came out fast enough to matter.

That might have been an exaggeration. The scent wasn’t truly everywhere, not like heat pheromones or sex. But it didn’t need to be. Asami didn’t care. Her instincts didn’t care. It was wrong. It was invasive. It was a trespass, and her body, her bond, was reacting as if someone had walked into their bedroom and marked the bed. The bitterness of it had hit the back of her throat like bile. She’d never minded other omegas around Korra before. Never cared about meetings or events or even the friends Korra had made healer circles. But this—

This wasn’t a friend. This was something else. This scent was too sharp, too bold, threaded with something cunning and cool and knowing. It didn’t smell of accident. It smelled like claim.

And Korra had let her.

Asami’s mind raced with accusations. Who did this woman think she was? Walking into her space, her den, her home, and putting herself so close to Asami’s mate. Her Alpha. What kind of omega did that? She knew better. Omegas knew better. You didn’t get close like that. Not to a bonded Alpha. Not in their territory.

And Korra, who Asami would forgive for nearly anything, hadn’t stopped her. Hadn’t set the boundary. Hadn’t pushed her away. The fire in Asami’s chest turned bitter and hot, curling up her throat, threatening to pour out in something worse than words.

She crossed her arms tightly over her chest, knuckles white, and stared down at her mate like she was waiting for an explanation that could unburn a bridge. “Tell me,” she said coldly, “why the fuck she was here.”

Korra still looked half-lost beneath the low curtain light, her eyes shadowed and a little pained, the deep lines of her headache still etched across her brow. She rubbed them into her expression like a stain, and her scent told Asami more than Korra seemed to know herself, confusion, irritation, the dregs of pain sharpening everything. But not guilt. Not understanding. That was what burned. That was what hurt. There was no awareness of the boundary broken, no instinctive flinch that should have come from bringing another omega into their space, into Asami’s space, without permission.

Korra exhaled through her nose, frustrated, and finally said, “It was her again. The mystery woman. She just showed up at the archives.”

Asami’s spine went rigid, her arms still crossed. She didn’t speak. She didn’t trust herself to.

“She started talking about one of the scrolls she brought,” Korra went on, waving a hand weakly in vague emphasis. “It was about ether bending, something theoretical and completely out there, but fascinating. She’s infuriating, but she’s… smart. Really smart. We started studying together. Then she asked to see my medical records.”

Asami’s jaw twitched. She still said nothing.

“She didn’t come to our rooms on purpose,” Korra said, brow furrowing now as her irritation rose to match Asami’s. “I brought her. To the sitting room. She didn’t even go into the bedroom, Asami.”

“That doesn’t matter,” Asami said, her voice low and precise, every syllable carved sharp. “Her scent is all over you. She was here. You brought her here.”

Korra frowned harder, still not understanding, her scent a jagged blend of defensive confusion and fatigue. “She wanted to help. She said she needed to look through everything properly, talk with someone else, someone she trusts. I said yes.”

“You let her read your medical records?” The words snapped out before Asami could soften them, her voice like ice beneath velvet. “You let a woman you don’t even know the name of read the most personal, vulnerable, intimate details of your body, and you didn’t even think to ask me first?”

Korra stiffened. “She’s not just some woman. She’s connected to the palace, she has clearance—”

“That’s not the point,” Asami cut in, furious now, trying not to raise her voice but failing anyway. “Why do you keep entertaining her, Korra? Why do you keep letting her in? She won’t even tell you her name, and now she’s in our den, going through your records, our records. How can you not see how completely insane that is?”

Korra’s mouth opened, then closed, her throat working with something unspoken, but nothing came out. Her scent twisted, irritation, but now tinged with guilt. Still not enough for Asami to feel settled. Still no understanding in her eyes. Just that maddening stubbornness Korra always carried like a second skin.

Asami shook her head once, sharply, trying to keep her voice from breaking. “Do you have any idea how it feels to walk into our home and smell another omega wrapped up in your scent like she belongs there?”

Korra blinked. For the first time, something shifted in her expression. But Asami didn’t wait for her to answer. She turned and walked to the window instead, needing space before her scent grew feral with jealousy again. The kind that would do something reckless. The kind that had nearly taken over when she first stepped into the room.

She pressed her fingers to her temple, breathing through the burn. “I don’t care how smart she is,” she said, quieter now but no less raw. “You don’t bring someone into our space like that. Not without telling me. Not when you know what you mean to me. Not when I—” She stopped. Shook her head again.

The silence behind her was taut. And still, still, her body screamed for her to storm back across the room and scent-mark Korra until nothing else remained on her skin.

Asami stood at the window, her arms folded tight against her chest, every muscle in her body locked in place like if she so much as shifted her weight, it would all come spilling out, the fear, the jealousy, the rage. Behind her, she heard Korra let out a breath, quiet and uneven, and then, softly, “’Sami… I promise I would never… I don’t think of her that way. I don’t even like her. You’re my mate. You’re the only woman I want.”

The words were honest. She could feel it in Korra’s scent. Even dulled by pain and stress, Korra’s emotions were always readable to her. And she wasn’t lying. She meant every word of that promise. But Asami’s fingers clenched at her elbows, her jaw tight.

She didn’t turn around. She didn’t want to see the look on Korra’s face. Didn’t want to see her confusion, her exhaustion, her complete and utter lack of understanding for why this had clawed its way under Asami’s skin so deeply. So she kept staring out the window, her voice clipped and tight when she finally spoke.

“That’s not the point, and you know it.”

The silence behind her was heavy. Dense with something wounded. But Asami pushed through it, her voice sharpening further, rough with something that bordered on tremble. “How would you feel if I brought back an alpha you didn’t know, when you weren’t here, and just… let them… let them touch your things? Smell your scent? Sit where you sit?” Her voice dropped lower, thick with something darker now. “Let them into our space. Into your space. Into mine.”

She finally turned then, her expression composed but her scent still rolling in tight, defensive waves. “You’d lose your mind.”

Korra’s eyes met hers, and Asami could see it, how the reality of the situation was finally settling into her mate’s mind. Slowly, like the sluggish draw of a tide. Korra looked like she wanted to argue. To explain again. To say something that would make it better. But there was nothing. No clever phrase. No apology that would undo the visceral insult of another omega’s presence in their den.

Asami shook her head, not to dismiss her mate but to force the burning edge of her emotions back down. “It’s not about trust,” she said, quieter now, her voice rough. “It’s about respect. About instincts. About knowing that this—” she gestured around them, “—is sacred. And she doesn’t belong here.” Her voice thickened. “She never should have been here.”

Korra exhaled softly, the sound low and worn, the kind that came from deep in her chest, threaded with regret. A heartbeat later, her scent shifted, subtle but immediate. It softened at the edges, turning low and sweet, conciliatory. It was the olfactory language of surrender, of apology. The scent of an Alpha laying down her weapons, baring her throat, offering no fight. Not to her Omega. Not to Asami.

“I’m sorry,” Korra said, and the sincerity in her voice rang clear even through the ache and the fatigue that lined it. “You’re right. I shouldn’t have let her come here. I wasn’t thinking.” She looked down, shoulders heavy against the pillows, the quiet plea in her scent rising again, trying to smooth the tension between them.

Asami stood rooted for a moment longer, her back half-turned, her arms still crossed over her chest like they might hold in the swell of fury and hurt battling inside her. She wanted to soften, to go to her, to wrap herself around her mate and feel her body against her own until her instincts calmed. But the scent, her scent, still lingered in the corners of the room, faint but offensive, as though the other woman had left a thumbprint on their walls, on their sheets, on Korra.

She couldn’t take it.

After a long breath, she turned fully to face Korra again, her mouth set into a firm line. The sight of Korra like this, looking up at her with weary eyes and lowered posture, a trace of pain behind her attempts at peace, only made the ache in Asami’s chest burn sharper. She hated seeing her like this. But she also hated the scent of another omega embedded in their den.

She walked toward her mate with quiet, deliberate steps, stopping only once she stood beside the bed. Her voice was flat, stripped down to the careful control she wielded when she didn’t trust herself to speak without bleeding too much. “I’m going for a walk,” she said, each word clipped but even. “I need space.”

Korra’s expression flickered, hurt, resignation, but not surprise.

Asami’s gaze swept the room, disgust rippling through her again as her nose caught that phantom trace of her. “Call the attendants,” she said, her voice tightening again. “Have them clean out the stench. In the room. And on you.”

She glanced toward the tea packed had set down on the nightstand. “And drink the fucking tea,” she bit out, her voice colder than she meant it to be, but she couldn’t stop it.

Then she turned on her heel and walked out, her footsteps brisk, her shoulders set. The door closed behind her with a decisive click, the echo of it cutting the air like a blade.

Asami walked briskly, her heels clicking against the polished stone pathways of the Fire Nation palace gardens, though she barely registered the sound. Her jaw ached from how tightly she was clenching it, her hands balled into fists at her sides. Every few steps she exhaled hard through her nose, as though trying to force the tension out of her body by sheer will. Her muscles thrummed with it, an irritation that refused to fade. Not just anger, though that was certainly there, but something sharper, rawer, more feral. She could still feel it gnawing at her ribs, the primal omega instinct that had flared white-hot the moment she’d smelled her. That other woman.

Asami didn’t think she’d ever reacted like that before. Not even in her worst heat. It was embarrassing, almost. A loss of composure that didn’t fit with how she saw herself, how she worked so hard to present herself. And yet, she clenched her teeth again, it had been so justified. That woman had crossed a line. She’d stepped into their den, had left her scent all over Korra, their rooms, the air they slept in. And Korra had let her. Had opened the door, had not only entertained her presence but had allowed her access to personal medical records, the most intimate and vulnerable details of Korra’s condition. Of their life.

And Korra hadn’t even seen it.

That was what stung most of all. The complete lack of awareness. Asami didn’t believe for a second that Korra had any romantic or sexual interest in the other omega, Korra was a terrible liar and wore her emotions like a torch, but that didn’t mean it didn’t matter. Korra had trusted someone who hadn’t earned it. Who refused to even share her name. And that woman had waltzed into their shared space as though she belonged there. As though Asami herself didn’t.

She walked until the palace began to quiet around her, the ambient hum of evening settling in. The koi ponds lay ahead, serene and softly glowing in the amber light of the setting sun. Asami slowed only then, the bite of her shoes giving way to the hush of gravel as she stepped off the main path and made her way to a familiar stone bench near the water’s edge.

She sat down heavily, crossing one leg over the other, her arms folded. Her posture was closed off, bristling, and still, even seated, she couldn’t quite relax. Turtle ducks floated gently across the water, their reflections rippling in golden waves. One of the palace attendants passed quietly behind her, lighting the nearby lanterns with a flick of precise firebending, and then vanished again into the growing dusk.

Asami stared at the water, jaw still tight, her brow drawn. She didn’t cry, but her chest felt raw and tender, bruised by frustration and a still simmering sense of betrayal. It wasn’t that Korra had done something unforgivable, not exactly. It was the obliviousness. The way Korra, who could be so intuitive in battle, so precise with her energy, was sometimes completely dense when it came to people. When it came to her. Asami sighed, pressing a thumb to her temple, massaging slowly.

Why did her mate have to be so boneheaded?

The turtle ducks glided closer, one letting out a faint whistle as it nudged a lily pad. Asami let her eyes soften, just a fraction. The air was cooling. She’d have to go back soon. But not yet. Not until the knot in her chest loosened. Not until the scent of that other woman was gone from their home.

Asami remained on the bench a while longer, her posture still stiff, her thoughts spinning in relentless circles. The koi in the pond glided lazily beneath the mirrored surface, unbothered by the weight of human conflict. The sky was streaked now with soft purples and the fading embers of orange, the warm glow of the lanterns beginning to pool against the gathering shadows. She rubbed one wrist absently, the memory of her own sharp, possessive scent still clinging to her awareness like smoke.

It wasn’t until she heard the sound of footfalls, two pairs, measured and deliberate, that she looked up. Male voices, familiar in tone, drifted toward her from along the garden path, low and thoughtful, speaking of policy and planning in that broad cadence that spoke of years spent in leadership. Tenzin appeared first from behind a hedgerow, his long robes catching the light like drifting air currents. Beside him walked Fire Lord Zuko, his hands folded behind his back, his brow knit with the kind of deep, reflective concentration that only seemed to lift when he spotted her.

Both men paused at the sight of her. Zuko gave a small nod of recognition, his face softening slightly; Tenzin smiled more openly and said, “Asami, good evening.”

Asami stood politely, offering a faint smile. “Good evening, Lord Zuko, Master Tenzin.”

Tenzin inclined his head in greeting. “We didn’t expect to find you out here.”

“I needed a walk,” Asami replied, her voice carefully even. “It’s been a long day.”

Zuko studied her face for a moment, then turned his gaze out toward the pond. “It usually is, these days,” he said. “Especially with the summit so close. How are preparations going on your end?”

“Smoothly,” she said. “Mostly. There’s been progress on the infrastructure proposals, and our local hiring initiative is nearly finalized. We’ve had a few tangles with the city zoning board, but nothing unmanageable.”

“You’ve done impressive work,” Tenzin said, the compliment earnest. “The city’s lucky to have you here.”

Asami inclined her head again, murmuring a quiet thank you. She kept her expression composed, serene, not allowing even the smallest hint of her earlier fury to crack through. This wasn’t the time or place. Whatever had happened back in their rooms, it remained between her and Korra. She wasn’t going to spill blood in public, not even metaphorically.

Still, both men were seasoned enough to sense when something was amiss.

Tenzin hesitated before speaking again, his voice gentler this time. “You and Korra… everything all right?”

Asami smiled, the expression well-practiced and deliberately opaque. “She’s just working very hard. I think we’re both a little overtired.”

Tenzin didn’t press her. He nodded, but his eyes lingered a beat too long. “I understand. The summit will pass soon enough. Until then, take care of yourself, and her.”

Then, with the polite grace of a man with too many appointments, Tenzin offered his farewells and moved down the path, robes trailing after him like slow waves of silk.

Zuko remained, though. He stepped forward, settling on the bench beside her with a quiet sigh. The wood creaked softly beneath his weight.

For a time, neither of them spoke. They simply watched the koi gliding under the reflections of lanterns, the scent of jasmine and old stone wafting on the night air. When Zuko finally did speak, his voice was low, measured.

“You don’t have to say anything,” he said, “but you seem upset.”

Asami stared forward, her lips pressed into a tight line, a breath held still in her chest. Then, slowly, she let it out. Not everything, but just enough to let the presence of another trusted soul sink into her bristling tension. She didn’t say the words, not exactly. She didn’t speak of the scent in her home or the ache in her chest. But she said enough. Enough for Zuko to understand.

He didn’t offer advice. He didn’t try to fix it. He simply nodded, eyes on the water, and said, “It’s hard, sometimes, being in love with someone strong. They don’t always see how easily they hurt the ones who are just trying to keep them standing.”

Asami said nothing for a long time.

But eventually, she nodded.

The soft rustle of the koi pond, punctuated by the distant calls of evening birds and the low crackle of lanterns being lit, settled around them like a comforting shawl. Asami sat with her hands folded in her lap, her shoulders still tense from everything that had built up inside her over the past few hours. She was grateful for the quiet beside her, Zuko had a way of occupying silence without pressing it into something sharp. They sat like that for a little while, not speaking, until Asami finally turned her head slightly, her voice quiet but composed.

“Thank you for the imperial box at the ballet,” she said, her tone formal, but not cold. “It meant a lot. I… I think I needed it more than I realised.”

Zuko looked at her sidelong, a faint warmth flickering behind his scarred eye. “You don’t have to thank me for that. Korra asked. Quite firmly, I might add. I was just smart enough to say yes.”

That brought the smallest tug of a smile to her lips, though it didn’t quite reach her eyes. “Of course she did,” she said, her voice soft. “She’s always like that. Determined.”

“Stubborn,” Zuko amended mildly. “But it’s always for the people she loves.”

Asami looked away, down at her own fingers. Her nails were short from work, her knuckles stiff from design tools and writing instruments. “She is. It’s one of the things I admire most about her.” She paused, her throat tight. “It’s also one of the things that makes it so hard to stay mad at her.”

Zuko didn’t comment at first. He simply waited, like someone who had learned through pain that silence sometimes invited more truth than questions. Eventually, Asami let out a slow breath and continued, her voice lower now.

“I trust her. I do. But sometimes I think she forgets how easily her choices ripple outward. She’ll let someone in, without thinking, without explaining, and I’m left having to react to the aftermath. Today… wasn’t easy.”

Zuko shifted slightly beside her, not in discomfort but in a quiet gesture of attention. “There are parts of her that she doesn’t quite understand herself,” he said. “That was true even when she was younger. She holds so much power, spiritual, political, emotional, and she still hasn’t figured out how to wield it gently. But she’s trying.”

Asami nodded once, tightly. “I know. Spirits, I know. I see it every day. And I see how hard she’s pushing herself… even when her body is breaking under the strain. She doesn’t want to stop. She’s terrified of being seen as weak.”

“She’s not,” Zuko said.

“No,” Asami agreed. “But she doesn’t believe that, not really. Not when she’s hurting. Not when she’s… not whole.”

Zuko sighed, the sound deep and filled with the kind of weariness that came from having lived through too much. “She reminds me of myself, sometimes. Refusing to rest, because rest felt like surrender. But surrender can be strength too. Letting others hold you up when you can’t walk alone, that’s not weakness.”

Asami turned to look at him properly now, her brow softening. “Did you ever feel like this? With Mai?”

Zuko’s mouth twitched into something that wasn’t quite a smile. “All the time,” he said. “I didn’t always handle it well, either. But we learned to speak honestly, eventually. Not just in words. In scent, in silence, in space. Some things can’t be forced. But they can be nurtured.”

Asami nodded, the knot in her chest loosening slightly, just enough to let in a sliver of calm. “I think I needed to hear that,” she murmured.

“You’re not alone, Asami,” Zuko said quietly. “Not in this palace, and certainly not with her.”

They fell into silence again, a little easier this time. The koi moved in rippling arcs beneath the lantern light, the water catching flashes of gold and bronze as it shifted. The night deepened, but Asami felt a little steadier in her skin. Still hurt, still angry. But not lost. Never lost, not while she still had her own strength, and people who reminded her how to use it.

Asami lingered with Zuko just a little longer, their conversation winding down with a few quieter exchanges, nothing too heavy, just the kind of simple, human moments that helped her spine settle back into place. He offered her a respectful nod when they stood, and she returned it with a small, grateful smile before taking her leave. The walk back through the palace corridors was peaceful, lit with golden lanterns and guarded by quiet attendants who bowed as she passed. She didn’t hurry. Her heels tapped softly on the polished floors, echoing her thoughts as she tried to breathe herself into a calmer state of mind.

When she reached their suite, the air greeted her differently than it had before. The moment she stepped inside, the tension in her shoulders began to melt, not all at once, but enough to make her take pause. The scent that had sent her blood roiling earlier was gone, scrubbed out by attendants who had clearly worked thoroughly. In its place was the smell of clean linens, fresh soap, and subtle notes of the calming oil blend she’d commissioned back in Republic City. The room smelled like her home again.

She exhaled slowly, a breath that released not just anger, but the brittle weight of carrying too much. She let the door close behind her, silent on its hinges.

Korra was there. Sitting at the dining table in her chair, posture upright but expression quietly devastated. Her hair was damp, darker at the ends where it curled against her jaw, and Asami could smell the sharp tang of her freshly applied shampoo beneath the heavier scent of guilt. The air around her still clung to that, guilt, remorse, and a nervous tension that made her scent twitch faintly as Asami stepped further into the suite.

There were two covered plates on the table, one placed carefully in front of the other seat, hers. Korra had set it all up, clearly with thought, with the hope that it might soothe things between them. But she hadn’t lit candles, hadn’t tried to add romance. Just a meal. A quiet offering. Her way of saying she wanted to try, but didn’t know how to bridge the gap yet.

Korra looked up as Asami entered, but didn’t speak. Her mouth parted slightly, as if a greeting had hovered there, but she seemed to swallow it back. She didn’t want to say the wrong thing. She looked like she’d spent the time since Asami left scrubbing both her body and her soul raw, trying to rinse herself clean of a mistake that had never meant to hurt. Her eyes were soft, heavy-lidded with pain and the fading edges of her TBI flare. Her scent wavered, unsure of what was safe to release.

Asami stood there for a moment, not speaking either, taking in the quiet stillness of their rooms. And in that stillness, the tiniest shift occurred, the crumbling edge of fury softening into ache. Something tired and tender and fraying at the seams. Her eyes stayed on Korra, and slowly, she exhaled again, this time, without anger.

Asami sat down without a word, her movements quiet and composed, though a tightness still lingered behind her ribs. She reached for the tray covers, lifting them one by one with the grace of habit, revealing a meal likely chosen for comfort, simple rice, gently seasoned vegetables, soft white fish, a miso broth in a covered bowl still faintly steaming. It smelled like home, or at least something close to it, and she was grateful for that. She didn’t look at Korra as she began to eat, instead taking the first few bites mechanically, tasting little but letting the routine of it settle her.

Then, just as naturally, she turned and picked up a small spoonful from Korra’s tray, brought it to her lips, and fed her. They moved like that for a while, bite for herself, bite for her mate, the rhythm old, instinctual, grounding. They didn’t speak, but they didn’t need to. Their scents began to shift in tandem, the silence between them thick not with anger, but with a kind of tender negotiation. Asami’s scent remained a little sharp at the edges, residual ache and tension, but Korra’s was soft. Low and steady and gently curling in the air like an apology. Not demanding, not dominant. Just present. Just there. It spoke in the language of bonded pairs, of instincts deeper than words: I’m here. I’m sorry. I’m your mate. I belong to you, with you.

It soothed her, slowly. Like hands rubbing over a frayed rope, easing the tension out one strand at a time.

When the meal was done, the plates were cleared with a quiet knock and soft words from the attendants. Asami stood then, walked to the couch, and sank down into it with a long, quiet breath. The room smelled clean now, no trace of anything that wasn’t theirs, and she was grateful for it. Not just for the scent, but for the control it gave her back. Across from her, Korra turned her chair to face her directly, but didn’t say anything. She just waited. Patient. Still. Her expression was hard to read, not because it was closed, but because it was open, raw and full of a complicated kind of hope that made Asami ache.

So she spoke first.

“I overreacted,” she said softly, not quite meeting Korra’s eyes. “You shouldn’t have to ask my permission to have a guest come in.”

Korra’s head tilted slightly, her expression unreadable, but then she nodded. “I understand why you were upset,” she said. “And you were right. I would have been too, if I smelled an alpha I didn’t know in here.”

There was something about the way Korra said it, without defensiveness, without qualification, that let the last of the tightness in Asami’s chest begin to unwind. She looked down at her hands, at the rings on her fingers, her palms resting on her knees. Then she spoke again, more quietly this time.

“Her scent wasn’t… she didn’t mark anything. It wasn’t that. It was just… here. And I—” She stopped, mouth pressing into a thin line. Then she swallowed and turned her head away. “I got jealous.”

It stung to admit. It wasn’t a feeling she was proud of. But it was true.

“I still don’t like that she hasn’t told you her name,” she added after a moment. “But… I trust your judgement.”

The silence stretched for a breath. Then another. And then Korra’s chair moved slightly, whirring forward just a fraction, close enough that the edge of her front wheel brushed Asami’s foot. Not a touch exactly, but a request. Asami didn’t move, not yet. But the tension between them, no longer angry, no longer brittle, shifted into something quieter. Something that waited.

Asami sat with her hands lightly clasped between her knees, fingers curling against the soft fabric of her skirt. The words tugged at her from within, unwilling to be ignored. She looked at Korra, then away again, unable to meet her gaze at first. The admission felt raw, ridiculous, and true all at once. When she finally spoke, her voice was quieter than before, softened by vulnerability and the lingering sting of shame.

“It was her scent markers,” she murmured. “Omega. Female. The notes in it… they were unbonded. Strong.” Her throat worked around the next part, and she almost didn’t say it. But honesty had always been their bedrock, even when it hurt. “She smelled like your type.”

She didn’t elaborate. She didn’t need to. Inwardly, Asami winced at herself, at the spiralling insecurity that had taken hold, even if it had come wrapped in instinct, wrapped in the deep, primal wiring of her omega self. The scent had hit her like a challenge. Not an open one, not one spoken aloud, but one her body understood regardless. Her nostrils had flared. Her heart had jumped. Her stomach had coiled. The woman had smelled familiar. The wrong kind of familiar. A little too close to her. And something in Asami had snarled at the resemblance.

Korra blinked, her expression shifting from confusion to a tender sort of astonishment. “You thought she was my type?” she said, as though the very idea startled her. Then, with soft force, “Asami, you’re my type. Only you.”

Korra moved her chair closer, the wheels making the softest sound against the polished floor as she bridged the final space between them. “How can you not know?” she said, and there was almost a wonder to her tone. “No one can compare to you. How could they?”

Asami bit her lip. The ache in her chest cracked wider, this time not from pain but from the delicate weight of being seen. Her eyes finally met Korra’s then, and she saw it there, clear and unwavering, the fierce, quiet conviction in her mate’s gaze. That bone-deep certainty Korra always carried when she meant something from the heart. No one could compare to you. It wasn’t spoken like a line or a placation. It was said like a truth Korra hadn’t even known could be doubted.

With that, the last of Asami’s defensiveness dissolved. The memory of the other omega’s scent, that strange undercurrent of challenge, was still there, but it no longer mattered. It was drowned out by Korra’s scent, rich and familiar and utterly hers. She let out a soft breath, full of sheepish release, and shook her head at herself. Silly. She felt silly. But also loved.

Territorial instincts or not, this was her mate. And she was still here.

Asami stood without fully deciding to, her body pulled toward Korra by something deeper than thought. She stepped in close, close enough to feel the warm exhale of her mate’s breath against her collarbone, close enough to be wrapped in that grounding scent that always brought her back to herself. She bent low over Korra’s chair, hands braced on the arms of it, and nuzzled her face slowly into the crook of Korra’s neck.

Korra tilted her head almost instinctively, wordlessly offering herself, the line of her throat bared in complete, unguarded trust. A sound reverberated from deep in her chest, not quite a growl, not quite a sigh, just a soft, low rumble of response that vibrated under Asami’s lips. It made her heart flutter in her ribcage. That sound always did. She answered with her own, low, resonant, a purr that welled up from within her and flowed across Korra’s skin, an echo of affection, of apology, of possession.

Her nose pressed in deeper, rubbing her scent deliberately into the warm skin of Korra’s neck. She mouthed the pulse point gently, her breath warm and even. She could feel the slow thrum of blood beneath her lips. One hand slid to Korra’s collar, her fingers deftly working the top few buttons free, revealing the elegant slope of her collarbone and, just below it, the faint, perfect mark of their bond. Her mark.

Asami exhaled against it, her breath reverent, then leaned in to press a kiss directly to it, one, then another, then a third with just the barest graze of teeth. She lingered there, her tongue sweeping over the ridge of scarred skin where her teeth had broken flesh so long ago, reinforcing what was already written in their bones.

She breathed in deeply, lips resting over the mark, taking in the richness of them, hers and Korra’s scents woven together. Strong. Present. Undimmed. Reinforced again and again in every night they spent pressed together, in every morning where a kiss preceded speech, in every day where hands brushed, and gazes held a little too long. Asami closed her eyes and let it fill her, crowding out the jealousy, the sting of insecurity. This was what was real. This was what remained. This was theirs.

Korra slept deeply, her breathing slow and even, face turned toward the window where a thin wash of moonlight filtered in through gauzy curtains. Her body, still and supported by cushions and the contours of the adaptive mattress, betrayed none of the journey her mind was on. Somewhere far below the surface of sleep, she moved, walking not in the waking world or in the vivid surrealism of the Spirit World proper, but in that strange, liminal space that had become increasingly familiar to her in recent months. The grey place. Neither here nor there.

It was a dream, but not a dream. She knew that now. The grey space defied the usual logic of dreams; there was no narrative, no shifting, nonsensical symbols, no memory fragments floating to the surface of her mind. Instead, it was blurred outlines of mountains and trees that swayed without wind. A stone path that curved and disappeared and reappeared at random, splitting apart, reforming again beneath her bare feet. The landscape had no edges, no end, just a horizon swallowed in soft fog. There was no sun. No moon. Only a diffuse silver light that bathed everything in a sort of quiet unrealness. Her steps made no sound. Her breath left no mark in the stillness. It was neither warm nor cold, yet her skin prickled with awareness.

For once, she wasn’t searching. She wasn’t straining for a way back, clawing at the fabric between realms to get to her body or to the Spirits. She had given up on that impulse, at least for now. The desperation that once clung to her in this place had gone still. She simply walked, without aim, without purpose, just existing in the muted space. Each step forward was weightless, suspended in meaninglessness. And yet, she felt that presence again. She always felt it here.

Watching.

It didn’t hide, exactly, but neither did it come forward. It lingered just at the edges of perception, as if the fog itself had eyes, as if the distant silhouette of a tree or a structure might uncoil at any moment and reveal itself as the source. She felt it in the base of her skull, in the tightening between her shoulder blades, scrutiny without malice. Intense. Evaluative. Cold, but not cruel. Whoever, whatever it was, it was studying her. Always studying.

Korra didn’t speak. Didn’t challenge it this time. She didn’t demand it come forward or give her answers. There was nothing left in her tonight but this muted surrender. So she let it watch, and she walked. Alone in the fog, under the watchful eyes of something ancient and unnamed, she moved quietly through the grey. The path never ended. The watcher never left. And still, Korra walked.

Korra walked, her feet striking stone now instead of mist-thick path, though she hadn’t noticed the transition until the wall of grey rose in front of her, dense, shapeless, like fog made solid. For a breath, she hesitated, staring at its surface. There was no reflection in it, no hint of what lay beyond, but something in her knew she had to step through. And so she did.

The moment she passed through the veil, the air changed. It grew colder, all the warmth leached from the dream-place in an instant. Her lungs stung as she drew in breath, and the sky, or what passed for it, darkened. No more gentle fog. No more endless grey. Just black stone underfoot and an abyss yawning in every direction, lit by nothing but the echo of her own presence.

She stopped. Stillness closed in. The watcher was closer now.

It pressed on her back like a physical weight, like a hand hovering just over her spine, and she turned, heart hammering in her chest. She couldn’t see it, not truly, but she felt the burn of its gaze settle deep into her core. She opened her mouth, unsure if she meant to shout, to challenge, or to beg, but the voice spoke first. Low.

“You’re ready.”

There was no time to respond. No time to think.

The ground dropped out from beneath her.

She fell, not physically, but in the dream-sense, the way one can plummet in a nightmare without moving at all. And then she was there. Back in the dark. The air was stale, metallic, humming with the echo of old screams. The cavern. She knew it even before the jagged rock formed around her. The place where the Red Lotus had bound her. Broken her. But this time, there was no chanting. No Zaheer. No P’Li or Ghazan. No one waiting with cruel, righteous eyes.

Just her. Chains clinked softly in the darkness.

She stood in the centre of the cave, frozen. Across from her, draped in long, matted hair, was herself. Or something like her. Avatar State eyes blazed in a face identical to her own, only hollow, drawn, and impossibly calm. Chains wound around the other Korra’s limbs, anchoring her to the cave floor. But she wasn’t struggling. She wasn’t trying to escape. She was waiting.

Watching.

Korra backed away, pulse racing. She raised a hand, tried to summon water, air, anything. Nothing answered. Her body was just a shell here.

The other her moved.

It wasn’t a leap or a lunge. It was a glide, chain-linked and surreal. The first strike caught Korra off guard, a length of chain snapping through the air and slicing across her forearm. She gasped, stumbled, pain flashing white. She turned, tried to run, but her legs dragged like lead. Another strike landed, then another. Not brutal, measured. Like a lesson.

“Stop,” Korra rasped, but the sound fell flat.

She flailed, arms raised in defence, but the other Korra didn’t slow. She didn’t speak. She didn’t waver. The chains coiled again and slammed into Korra’s ribs, knocking her to the stone. Then she was on her back. Helpless. Breath ragged. Blood, maybe hers, pooling warm beneath her shoulder. When she looked up, the other her stood over her. Not victorious. Not angry.

Just present. Watching.

Korra screamed. In the dream and in waking. She sat up with a violent jolt, the scream caught in her throat but tearing through her body, sweat dampening her skin. Her breath came in frantic gasps. Her eyes were wide, terrified. Then they widened further.

She saw her. The shadow of the other Korra. Still in the room. Still there.

Lurking in the corner by the fire screen, half-shrouded in shadow, her eyes glowing like open wounds. Her feet moved, no sound, toward the bed. Korra tried to move. Tried to scream again. She couldn’t. Her body locked. Frozen. Her limbs refused her. She whimpered. Trapped. Terrified. Asami jolted awake beside her, already half-reaching before her eyes had fully opened.

“Korra?” she said quickly, already pulling herself upright. “Korra, hey—what’s wrong? What’s happening?”

Korra couldn’t answer. She could only breathe, sharp and fast, tears springing to her eyes.

But Asami knew. She knew this terror. Knew this paralysis. Her hands found Korra’s face, her voice dropped into the tone she only used in the worst storms, and she said, “It’s not real. You’re safe. I’m here. Breathe, darling. Just breathe.”

Korra tried. She tried. But her eyes were still fixed on the shadow in the corner and the shadow was still watching her.

Korra couldn’t stop crying. Her hands trembled as her fingers curled uselessly over the bedsheets, the dull sting of pressure from her two working ones the only reminder that her body was still hers. Her eyes squeezed shut against the image, but it was burned into the backs of her lids, the glowing white of her own Avatar eyes, the sickening stillness of that figure in the corner, the uncanny silence of something so powerful watching her without moving. It didn’t matter that the room was warm or that Asami’s voice was close, soft, real. The burn was still there. Not fire, but exposure. Being seen by something vast and old and inside her. The tears wouldn’t stop. Her chest heaved. She could hardly breathe.

Asami didn’t stop talking. Her voice, usually so polished and precise, had gone soft with worry, strained with love. “Korra, you’re here. You’re safe. It’s just me. I’ve got you. Come back to me, darling. You’re safe.”

But she wasn’t. Not really. Not with the shadow of herself carved into her soul like that. Not with the scream still raw in her throat.

Asami did the thing they only ever did when nothing else would work, when Korra was too far gone to climb out of the spiral on her own. Asami shifted the covers back and gently, but with complete certainty, rolled on top of her. The weight of her body settled over Korra’s like a blanket, firm and encompassing. Korra still couldn’t feel everything, the dull pressure along her legs was barely a whisper, but she felt enough. Her body registered the heat, the shape, the familiar curve of Asami’s form bracing over her ribs and belly. And her scent.

Spiced amber, faint vanilla, and something distinctly her. It washed over Korra like the tide, flooding every sharp edge of panic, every jagged breath. Her omega. Her mate. She wasn’t just pressing into her, she was wrapping Korra in the scent of home. Of safety. Asami’s mouth pressed to the space just below her ear, her lips brushing her hairline, and she whispered again and again, murmuring like a lullaby.

“I’ve got you. I’ve got you. You’re safe. It’s over. I’m here. I’m right here, darling.”

Each word was quiet, low, barely louder than the rustle of the sheets, but it laced straight into Korra’s bones. Her heart still raced, and the tears still slid down her cheeks, but the edge of panic began to soften. Not disappear, not fully, not yet, but shift. The darkness didn’t feel so close. The fire in her chest began to cool.

Asami didn’t let up. She rubbed her cheek into Korra’s neck, brushing against the line of her jaw, her mark. Her scent glands. The places she knew Korra could still feel, places that responded even now, not with arousal but recognition. Korra’s breath hitched, then eased, and she tilted her head just a little, giving Asami more space. Submitting. Trusting.

It was the smallest surrender. But it was enough.

Asami held her closer. Her thighs bracketed Korra’s hips, her arms braced just enough to keep her weight steady and unthreatening, and her scent thickened, calming, anchoring, dominant in the most careful, loving way. There were no more glowing eyes in the corner. No chains. No cavern. Only her mate. Only the bed. Only this.

And slowly, Korra’s tears began to slow. Her eyes fluttered open, dazed and red-rimmed, but clearer. She took a breath, then another, the first full ones in what felt like an eternity.

“I’m here,” Asami whispered again, barely more than a breath against her skin.

And this time, Korra believed her.

She lay there, still trembling faintly beneath the surface, but her heartbeat had begun to slow, each thud easing away from the panicked drumbeat that had seized her chest only minutes earlier. Asami hadn’t moved. Her mate’s weight remained a constant, grounding pressure over her torso, the soothing drag of her scent glands brushing slowly, rhythmically along the opposite side of her neck now. Asami’s scent was strong and steady, amber-warm and laced with comfort, like firelight through thick curtains. Korra let her eyes open again, lashes sticky from tears, and turned her gaze back to the corner where the dark mirror of herself had stood.

It was gone. The space was empty. No glowing eyes, no avatar-state figure haunting her from the veil. Just shadow and fabric and stillness.

Relief washed over her so sharply she nearly wept again, but this time it wasn’t terror that spiked in her throat, it was the release of it. The fragile, overwhelming realisation that whatever that presence had been, it wasn’t here now. It had watched. It had spoken. And it had left.

Asami shifted gently, pressing her nose into the hollow of Korra’s neck, scenting her again with slow strokes, back and forth like a lullaby. Her body was warm, her hair a soft curtain brushing Korra’s cheek. After a while, her voice came, low and tender.

“Want to talk about it?”

Korra shook her head against the pillow. It was a small movement, and she didn’t trust herself to speak. Sometimes it helped, talking. Putting words to the things that chased her through the dark. But not tonight. Not when she was still half-convinced her brain had conjured something real and impossibly wrong. It had felt too vivid, too aware. But the more she tried to catch the details, the more they dissolved, like breath against glass. So she didn’t answer. Just closed her eyes again and pressed her nose to Asami’s temple, inhaling her scent, focusing on that instead. The quiet. The rhythm of Asami’s chest against hers. The slow fading of terror into fatigue.

Their breathing evened out gradually, like a pair of dancers returning to rest after a long performance. Korra’s body remained tense in patches, but it was no longer clenched with panic. Her mind still echoed with the image, chains and mist, her other self’s eyes like ghost-fire, but it was already blurring around the edges, dulled by the warmth of her mate’s touch.

Asami’s breath slowed against her collarbone, the rhythm of her chest soft and heavy now. She’d fallen asleep without shifting, still half-curled over Korra protectively, a living shield against the dark. Korra didn’t move. She didn’t want to. She stayed there, breathing her in, the last of her strength bleeding out in small exhales, until the weight on her chest wasn’t fear anymore, but love. She drifted. Slowly, quietly. And this time, when sleep came to reclaim her, it didn’t come with fire or eyes or darkness.

It came with Asami.