Korrasami Week Day One

I made a field guide about the Korok Forest (but it’s magical!)

Crush ❤️

The threat of a rubber band 😖

Korrasami Week Day Four

I wanted to try something a little different with this one. Hopefully it’s okay. Also, I fell behind with the schedule, busy day. Don’t know if I’ll get next up in time, but I’ll do my best. As usual, enjoy :)

---------------

Prompt: longing

"Hello?"

"You have reached Air Temple Island, this is Master Meelo speaking. How shall I assist you today?"

"... that sounded vaguely threatening."

"I'm merely being professional, ma'am."

"Yeah. I bet you could land any job at a front desk. I could put a good word for you if you want. Uh, is Korra there?"

"Please, state your business with the Avatar."

"Business? Meelo, it's me, Asami."

"Pretty lady!"

"Uh, that's me. Could I speak with my girlfriend, please? Is she busy?"

"I dunno. Why would you want to speak to her when there's a real bender right here? Don't you prefer the company of a powerful airbender?"

"You know she's the Avatar, right? She's as powerful as-"

"Pf, I fought and won against a giant mecha of metal once. I saved Republic City from an invasion."

"... that you did. But I'm sure of my decision Meelo. Thank you for the offer, though."

"Your wish shall be my command, then, wonderful lady... Korraaaaa! Your pretty lady is on the phoooooone... We shall meet again soon, beautiful woman, and in the meanwhile do think of me fondly if you can..."

"I'll... I'll do my best, I guess."

"Give me that phone, Meelo, thank you... Hello? Asami?"

"I'll let you know Meelo has more game than you, oh mighty Avatar."

"Ugh, he's just a nuisance."

"A nuisance way smoother than you. I remember our first dates when you struggled with forming barely coherent sentences. Nevermind a whole conversation."

"I was nervous because I wanted to impress a beautiful girl."

"Your nervous rambling was so cute."

"And you're an absolutely awful person."

"Aw, I love you too, Korra."

"You say you love me, but next thing I know you're running after a dashing airbender, much younger than both of us. Mh, I didn't peg you to be like one of those ladies, who only have eyes for younger flesh."

"Ah Korra, you know me so well."

"He's definitely a keeper, though. But wait until you hear about his most famous airbending technique. A brave and challenging pose, one that requires an impressive display of skill and a, let's say, a complete bodily effort. He puts every inch of himself behind this technique."

"Mmm."

"Really impressive."

"..."

"..."

"You should stop making fun of poor Meelo, Korra."

"As soon as he stops making advances at you..."

"Don't worry, dear. He knows I'm happily taken. And I have no intentions of letting go."

"Sounds right. You have no idea how good it is to hear your voice, 'Sami."

"I think I might have a slight idea."

"Is everything okay?"

"Surprisingly enough, we only had just minor problems. Guess I got used to the urgency of your Avatar related problems. But even if they're small, when you pile them all together-"

"Even the smallest inevitably becomes an annoying inconvenience. Yeah, I get that feeling. Tell me more, if you want?"

"Ranting isn't sexy, Korra."

"Everything about you is sexy, Asami. Even when you complain about misogynistic ancient business men. I love watching them flail as you tear them apart with your words and your looks."

"Looks like somebody took a page from Meelo's guide for flirting."

"Please, I'm not that desperate. And it's not my fault my girlfriend is so hot I can't help my mouth. Oh, don't get me started on that adorable snort of yours-"

"Korra!"

"But I digress. Tell me more about your day?"

"Nothing unusual. Roadblocks between construction projects, whiny workers, complaints... I didn't imagine Zaofu to be so conservative, being a place born from refugees. Oh, we discovered some kind of building? Buried underground? They're not exactly sure what it could be, but it's slowing things down at the construction site. We can't risk damaging what could be an artistic treasure."

"Could it be spiritual-related?"

"Unlikely. It looked like a storage building more than anything else. Maybe a library of some kind... But you're just trying to make it spiritual-related, right?"

"The Avatar is the bridge between spirits and humans, after all. And I'm always happy to give a hand."

"Mh, and since you'd be here we could make that trip to Omashu?"

"You know I've always wanted to go with you there."

"I'm sorry, dear. No matter how much I wish you could come here, I'm afraid it will end up being a boring warehouse, instead of a mysterious temple. But I'm flattered you would make that up for me."

"Hey, if I can't even take advantage of the Avatar status every once in a while to see my girlfriend, what kind of girlfriend would I be?"

"The best kind."

"Mmm. And who's taking a page from Meelo's book, now?"

"Oh, shut up. How are things otherwise in Republic City?"

"Thankfully busy."

"Thankfully?"

"This way I don't have the time to miss you any more than I already do. It would drive me crazy."

"I thought I was supposed to be the workaholic one in this relationship. Promise me you won't pick up my bad habits, dear."

"I promise only if you promise to actually work on those bad habits. You're cute when you're sleeping, but hunched on your desk? Not so much."

"I promise I'll do my best, dear. Now, what about Republic City?"

"Oh, yes. Everything has been quiet lately. I'm mostly running errands with Tenzin, helping here and there. I even went to a couple of press conferences with Zhu Li, too. She definitely has a better handshake than Raiko. Less sweaty, for starters."

"Did you end up going to that gala held in your honor?"

"Yeah. Bolin and Opal came with me, so we ended up having fun. And the food was nice, too. Even if everyone wanted to meet me only to tell me what an honor it is to be meeting me."

"They only want to thank the greatest Avatar ever. You can't complain if people love you and keep throwing parties for you."

"Says the lady who built a giant version of me in the middle of the city."

"You deserved it, Korra! A statue is the less we could do. Especially after everything you had done for the city. First Amon, then Unalaq and Zaheer. And Kuvira... You are amazing, Korra, both as a person and as the Avatar, so it's only fair people recognize it."

"Should I expect to see a new statue next time I visit the Beifong's?"

"... it depends if the people prefer Huan's art to my project, I guess."

"You're incorrigible."

"Yeah, well. And I miss you."

"I miss you too, Asami."

"It's only a few days. As soon as things start to run smoothly I'll take the first airship back to Republic City. I'll even pilot one myself, if I need to."

"I have no doubt. But take as much time as you need, Asami. I'll be here, waiting for you and being proud."

"Isn't it a little weird, uh?"

"Being proud of you?"

"No, I mean. Me being the one who's away and you staying at home in Republic City. It's usually the opposite with us."

"I can't fault people for wanting to exploit my girlfriend's genius. You're the best at what you do."

"Still, I can't help but miss you."

"Hey, how about when you come back we have dinner together? Down by the bay? At that water tribe restaurant you like?"

"Only if you promise we can go for a ride on a turtle-duck boat after."

"Then it's a date."

YES YES YES

Fic update!

she’s cursed

chapter 9, mistakes

on ao3

•••

“Babies aren’t weird!”

OWLS

Metallo!Lena AU Pt 3

The air feels different.

The warehouse had been damp, perpetually chill, and echoed with emptiness. As Lena slowly wakes, the air around her presses warm and dry against her skin, enveloping her in gentle sounds.

Beeping monitors, now a fixture of her reality.

Muffled voices, urgent yet distant, as though muffled through a door.

Faint snores, from someone sleeping in the room next to her bed.

With considerable effort, Lena pries open her sleep crusted eyes. The ceiling overhead is too close, too white. She blinks against the disorientation, and when she tries again she can count the ceiling tiles between the air vents, and suddenly it doesn't feel like the room is caving in on her anymore.

More surprising, though, is when she turns and finds the snores are issuing from Supergirl herself.

Alarm sears against her senses, and Lena gasps when her heart starts to pound. Supergirl jolts awake at the sound, bolting upright even as Lena recoils.

"Get away!" Lena chokes out. "Get away from me, please--"

Supergirl lifts her hands placatingly. "I'm not going to hurt you--"

"I don't want to hurt YOU--"

"You won't," Supergirl promises gently. Lena pauses when the hero nods towards her chest, hands still aloft. "Look."

Lena reaches for the collar of her hospital gown, peeking beneath to see that the chunk of kryptonite is covered by a portion of her leaded apron, now secured by shoulder straps over each arm and a buckle around her ribs.

"We're both safe," Supergirl continues. "I promise."

Sagging, Lena sucks in a ragged breath. All she wants is to curl into a ball, close her eyes, and pretend none of this had happened at all, but she hasn't the strength. Tears start to come, burning hot against her eyes.

"I'm sorry," she says again, her voice cracking under the strain. "I'm sorry. I never wanted to hurt anyone."

Supergirl nods, slowly bending to perch on the seat she'd just been dozing in. "I know. But I'm okay. We're more concerned about you."

Lena blinks up at the ceiling. "You can't remove it, can you."

"No," Supergirl responds after a beat. "The kryptonite is fully grafted into all of your neurological and circulatory systems. It's... It's the only thing keeping you alive."

It comes as zero shock to Lena-- Lillian has made no effort to spare Lena the details of her condition, or the success of her work in resurrecting her. Lillian has never been one to sugar coat.

"I know you've been through a lot," Supergirl continues. Her eyebrows crinkle in the middle. Lena doesn't quite know what to do with the concern in the hero's gaze. Or the sympathy. "But we were hoping you could help us."

"How?"

"The people who did this to you... we think they're part of a group called Cadmus. We think the person behind is--"

"Her name is Lillian Luthor," Lena surrenders readily, bitterness rising in her throat. "She's my mother."

Lena's jaw tightens. She meets the hero's gaze.

"What do you want to know?"

It’s in my DNA. So please, just stop believing in me, okay? I am not worth it.

"Do you think I could use horseradish as fuel?"

Kara paused in her hammering to cast the alien an apprehensive look, "It depends on how advanced your technology is."

"We don't usually rely on vegetables for powering up our spaceships, but this one- this one glows..." the alien trailed off, frowning at the luminous tuber clutched in her hands.

"Your vegetables aren't of the glowing kind?"

The alien offered an overwhelmed shrug.

"Will you show me another cool transmutation trick? From vegetable to fuel?"

Something creased the thin line of the alien's mouth, "That was just dried grape fruit. Astronaut foods. It wasn't a real sugar cube, it just looked like one."

Kara didn't frown back. She offered an helpless shrug instead, one that made the hammer slip out of her clammy grip. The tool plummeted to the ground, awkward and way too loud for what was going on. The alien chuckled at her clumsiness, sniffling and Kara ignored the wet note stuck in her voice.

The air grew quiet as Kara turned to stand shoulder to shoulder with the lost castaway. Together, they stared at the crumpled skeleton of the spaceship as smoke slowly rose from its corpse.

The alien crouched to toss back the horseradish in its crate, where other vegetables were mutely glowing in a rainbow of neon colours. The movement shifted the tattered bandage fastened around her head.

"It's not like-" Kara extricated her sweaty fingers around the hammer's handle, hoping that freedom of movement would improve her eloquence, "I mean, even if you had fuel, it's not like you could fly with a gaping hole in your flank, right?" she muttered, awkwardly pinching the side of her wrist.

The alien's shoulders just deflated, the slope of her spine tilting. Fingertips nervously drumming the side of the hammer, Kara felt she had never known such helplessness before.

(Maybe once.)

"Look, Lena-" the name rumbled like a sticky vibration on Kara's tongue, unfamiliar with the strangeness of such a foreign tonality. By the passing expression on the alien's face, the same weird feeling must have resounded in her ears.

Feeling a bubble of unease burst in her chest, Kara gnawed on her bottom lip. "It's going to be okay," she pressed, "Next time the cargo ship comes, you can come with me to the market. I'm sure you'll find something for repairs and-and..."

Lingering words got lost in the stark profile that Lena cast over rows of drooping gladiolus, under the twinkling light of the pair of suns. Kara swallowed, fighting the distinct urge to hug the lost alien, who was merely a stranger with a crashed spaceship and frowning lines.

"I promise."

But the frown didn't lift from Lena's forehead, settling deeper in the circles in her eyes. Kara had never encountered such a frowny alien before.

She fell silent, dreading whatever clunky attempt at comfort her mouth would sprout next.

(She used to be better at this.)

She aligned her knuckles back in her grip around the hammer and turned back to work. She let herself get lost in the rhythm of mindless hammering, palming dark veins in wooden planks. There was always something to mend or repair around the farm, dull tasks that became plain boring during the sourer days. But Kara didn't mind the dust and the boredom, she liked the hard work. Making something with her hands.

It took Lena three boards and seventeen nails to turn away from the broken remains of the spaceship.

"What are you doing?" she asked quietly, tugging at the loose end of one of her sleeves.

Kneeling in the dirt, Kara tossed an easy smile over her shoulder, grateful for the lighter tone of Lena's question. "Oh! Just trying to fix this pond. It’s been leaking something awful and I could hardly keep it full.”

Lena still looked caught up in her head, but Kara couldn't help a relieved breath when Lena sat down with her on the naked ground, legs folding over each other. The slope of her shoulders curled inwards.

"I was worried the ducks wouldn't have liked it anymore with such little water," Kara continued, conversational, eyes flicking to a grease stain on Lena's forearm.

Lena didn't reply to that. She just changed her position, the white of her pants brushing against the ground. It painted a smudge of dirt on the cloth, the only dainty pair of trousers Kara had been able to salvage from the crash and the blood. It was a pity to stain such a rich fabric, but living on a farm did tend to have that effect on things. And on people, too.

She looked like a lost person, with her crossed legs and closed eyes. Like a fragment of a star in a galaxy of asteroids.

Turning on the water to refill the pond, Kara straightened with a jolt, head snapping up. A couple of bones cracked in her back and elbow as she released a satisfying sigh. Cheek cradled in one hand, Lena peeked at her from the corner of one eye, "Ouch," she winced, offering a tight grin.

Kara shrugged cheekily. She rummaged for a moment through the pebbles at her feet, before choosing a single rock and weighed it in her hand. It was flat and small and she could hold it in one palm.

Lena's gaze got lost in the repetitive movement of the water, until Kara tossed the pebble across the surface of her newly repaired pond, watching it glumly sink in the middle of lazy ripples.

Lena turned to face her, both eyes open. Kara felt herself blushing under her stare, "I was trying to skip a rock."

"It didn't skip."

The blush reached the tips of Kara's ears.

"Why would you do that?"

Shuffling closer to the pond, Kara knelt to inspect the mended planks, if only to hide the redness dusted on her cheeks, "I thought it would skip."

A huff of laughter reached her ears and Kara watched the shards of a smile paint itself across Lena's frown. It was the first time she could see a trace of pure joy in the alien's smile. She should have tried to skip rocks earlier.

When Lena's laughter grew into a comfortable silence, Kara turned back towards the setting suns. She had just enough time before darkness to check on the grapevines, to check the soil for-

"Oh."

Kara watched as Lena's lips morphed into a mou of surprise.

A chaotic procession of ducks suddenly unfolded in front of them, a fluttery of green feathers. Two, three, six animals wandered past the pair, wobbling unsteadily on webbed feet. Only the bravest of the flock hobbled close to Lena to inspect the frayed hem of her nice pants.

"Uuuh," Lena's hand hovered.

"Ssh," Kara shushed gently, "I think he likes you."

The curious duck hesitated maybe three more seconds before he blinked his purple irises at Lena, batting one eyelid at a time. He lifted one wing and started preening. The other ducks were swimming lazy circles in the pond.

Kara leaned back on her feet to stare, flashing a proud smile.

Lena didn't meet her eye, busy doing some simple math under her breath. "He has... four wings."

Hammer tucked back in her belt, Kara sat again in the dirt, sending a fleeting apology to the grapevines, "Yes," the duck fluttered his wings, "You've never seen a duck before?"

"Of course I have- of course," said Lena, and then hesitated for a handful of choppy seconds, "We have ducks on... back on my home planet, but these... I've never seen alien ducks before."

Kara wrinkled her nose, "These aren't alien ducks," she pointed out.

"Of course they are, Kara. They have four wings, four-"

"That doesn't make them aliens."

"Ducks have two wings, Kara, two! Not four. Back on my...," she stumbled, "Back on..."

The first of the two suns the planet orbited around disappeared under the horizon, a trail of magenta embers left behind.

The breath that pushed out of Lena was long, sharp and Kara noticed the way it took another chip of tension out of her body. It dissolved into a hiccuping laughter, like syrupy bubbles clawing their way out of her throat. Lena kept chuckling even when her eyes filled with tears.

Done with his preening, the duck ambled towards the pond, tail wagging, his animal heart too young to comprehend the entirety of Lena's splintered feelings. Kara felt more in tune with him for a cursory instant.

Lena leaned back on her elbows, "I'm an alien."

Kara wondered if there was mercy in discovering another part of your soul, lost in such a minuscule place.

When Lena's tears dried, they revealed an hesitant grin buried underneath.