Chapter Text
Kyoshi Island looked almost exactly as it had in her memory all these years, but Asami wondered if she would've had the same thought no matter how the island appeared in front of her now. Her memory, vague and fuzzy like a dissipating dream, was probably only 5-10% constructed from what she'd actually observed as a four-year-old. The rest was made up of the stories she'd heard and told afterwards, the things she'd imagined to fill in the blanks, and—at the moment—something like hope. Or perhaps that was desperation. She wasn't all that sure what the difference was, anyway.
Her letter to the old warriors had been brief. They'd only ever been very distant acquaintances of her parents, and she'd had her doubts that they would remember her. Just the act of writing had felt like an imposition. Who was she to intrude on their solitude? Friend of the Avatar? Daughter of a once great international mogul? What would any of this mean to an old retired couple trying to live the remainder of their lives in peace?
So she hadn't belabored her request. Eleven and a half weeks ago, she'd buried her father. She'd spent the following eleven and a half weeks mourning in isolation. During one midnight wander through her too-large, too-empty house—in reality no more empty than it had been following her father's arrest, but in all other ways, infinitely emptier than ever before—she'd ended up numbly rummaging through old boxes. Some of it she recognized as sentiment. Some of it, junk. Much of it was both. Old drawings from childhood. Old letters from people she didn't know. Old newspaper articles saved for indiscernible reasons. Old toys… But in particular, a corroding tin of building blocks that scratched at something buried in the back of her mind…small, smooth stone disks and a clutter of brightly-colored sticks, and a smiling old man who'd encouraged her even though she'd dumped them all over the floor.
A few weeks later, itchy with both the memory and the need to be anywhere but Republic City, she wrote to Master Suki and Master Sokka of Kyoshi Island to tell them she wanted to thank them in person for the impact they'd had on her father's life.
To her surprise, a letter came back about as quickly as was physically possible telling her she was welcome to visit the island any time and then, in a messier scrawl, suggesting that bringing a carton of Varri-cakes would only sweeten the deal further (and then in smaller writing in the margin, "He does NOT need the sugar").
So, Varri-cakes in hand, Asami stepped onto Kyoshi Island's docks after disembarking the ferry she'd taken from Chin Village. The island had a small, regional airship port she could've flown into—if her research was correct, Sokka himself had been responsible for its construction—but something appealed to her about approaching by boat, with the salty sea air in her face and the breeze in her hair and the gentle mountains of the island growing slowly closer as she rocked on the waves. It reminded her of driving outside the edges of the city in her roadster, top down.
As soon as she was on land, a young woman in traditional Kyoshi Warrior armor approached her. Asami took a second to contemplate whether she was related to the Warriors' elderly former captain—a granddaughter, perhaps?—but her black hair and dark eyes bore little resemblance to either of the heroes she was here to see.
"Miss Asami Sato?" the young woman asked, bowing. Asami returned her bow, and the Kyoshi Warrior stepped to the side. "Would you like to be escorted to your room at the inn?"
"Oh! That won't be necessary, I can find my way—"
"Master Suki insisted. But if you prefer, I can show you straight to her cottage."
"Okay. Sure. Thank you."
With another bow, the young woman led her up the beach and into the village. This far south this time of year, the leaves of the trees at the base of the mountains had transformed into a brilliant cherry red, and the pathways were lined with them, fluttering delicately around Asami's boots as she passed. The air was pleasantly heavy with woodsmoke, the sort of sharp, earthy smell that was so often masked by the industrial coal fires of the city. She couldn't help but breathe it in deep.
After a bit of a hike, beyond the main square, where the land just began to grow rugged, her escort stopped in front of a squat wooden house with a steeply-pitched, thick straw roof. One of the island's glorious red-leafed trees stretched and bent over a tiled awning that shadowed a long wooden porch, which itself was laden with drying laundry, aerating tatami mats, and pots housing flowers, or vegetables, or strange assortments of hand tools. It wasn't unlike the chaos of her workshop, and Asami smiled.
"They're expecting you, Miss Sato. I'll return after dinner to escort you to the inn."
Before she had a chance to tell the young Kyoshi Warrior that she really didn't need an escort, the other woman bowed and left. So with a sigh, Asami turned back to the house—the sliding front door was open wide, as clear an invitation as any, but she hesitated. She hadn't seen these people in nearly two decades. What could they possibly have to say to each other? Of all the places she could've run away to, why did she come here?
Just then, a loud crash rang out from somewhere beyond the house, making Asami jump. It was followed by a tentative, "Suks?"
"What now?" another voice answered.
The first voice shouted back, "I said, 'Suks?'"
"I heard you!" The second voice sounded both amused and exasperated. "I asked, 'what now?'"
After a brief moment of silence, the first voice said, "Have you seen my cane?"
"Oh for Kyoshi's sake…"
As the voices lowered to a murmur, Asami's eyes fell on something propped by the front door: a tall, smoothly-lacquered stick with a well-worn handle. She shook her head with a chuckle and strode up to the house.
"Hello?" she called into the open doorway, taking the cane with her free hand. "Master Suki? Master Sokka?"
There was a shuffling sound and another crash. "Coming!"
"Do you need some help?"
"No, no! Just a minute!"
A moment later, two figures emerged from an open door at the back of the house, and Asami stepped forward, lifting the cane. "Looking for something?"
"Asami Sato!" Sokka cried, clapping his hands together. He limped into the middle of the room, favoring his right leg, and Asami rushed over to hand him his cane. He took it with a tip of his head and then held out his right arm. Asami clasped it in the traditional Water Tribe greeting. "You're just in time. I need your help with a little experiment out back."
The old hero's face was weathered and lined, but his blue eyes sparkled with the mischief of a much younger man. Asami took him in for a moment—wiry but not weak, standing tall but for the slight lean into his cane—and waited for a spark of familiarity to warm her. His hair and goatee reminded her of Korra's father, albeit thinner and gray, but that was it. Too much time had passed, and her memory was too weak, for this reunion to transport her back to their first meeting. Back to all five of them in a room together…
"Sokka," Suki scolded, "Miss Sato just got here! Let her catch her breath from the walk at least."
"No, that's alright. I'd like to help." It was much better than being idle and wondering what on earth she thought she would gain by coming here.
Sokka beamed, and Suki pursed her lips at him.
"She's got the lungs of youth, Suki-Suk. She doesn't need to catch her breath like we do. Remember?" he said, quirking his shaggy gray brows. "When we didn't need to catch our breath?"
Suki swatted his arm with a tch!, and Asami choked, not sure whether she was laughing or coughing or dying of embarrassment.
"Uh…" she stuttered. "I, um…brought Varri-cakes."
Sokka's eyes went wide. "Did you?" But before he could grab the box, Suki reached behind him and, although Asami couldn't see what happened, she would've, based on the way Sokka yelped, bet the entire Sato estate that the old woman had just pinched her husband's butt.
"I'll take those." She graciously relieved Asami of her burden and then, with a wry smile, she added, "We can try them after dinner, big guy. Why don't you show Asami where she can drop her bags?"
Sokka watched his wife walk away, looking as love-sick as a teenager, then turned back to Asami with a grin. "C'mon. The lab awaits. You can leave those by the door on the way out."
Out back, to one side of the house, was a compact rock garden featuring trim moss and a well-manicured tree with small yellowing foliage. To the other side was a haphazardly-placed work table that was overflowing with tools, slabs of metal, wood shavings, and—most curiously of all—rice. For a fraction of a second, something shimmered at the edges of her memory, a sense that she'd stood here before, looking out at a messy work table and the slope of rock rising beyond it, but when she tried to grasp it, the memory scattered and drifted, like swiping at dust motes in a sunbeam.
"I'm trying to make a mechanical mochi pounder," Sokka was saying as he shambled up to the table. "I figured I could hook a paddle up to a crank that would move the paddle around this bowl, but either the rice goes flying or the bowl does, so…it needs some tweaking."
"Ah…" Asami felt her mouth twitch on one side. "And you'd made the latest tweak just as I arrived?"
"Whatever I did to the gears on the crank tweaked the whole thing right off the table," Sokka grumbled, rubbing his chin, and Asami chuckled. "Care to take a look?"
"Sure." She had a feeling he could figure out the problem just fine without her, but she of course understood how bouncing ideas off someone else could unlock the possibilities in your brain better than wrestling with it alone. So she bent down to examine what Sokka had already built. "Why a paddle at the bottom of the bowl instead of trying to replicate the pounding motion of the traditional mallet? Wait, never mind…" She straightened and found Sokka watching her expectantly, a smile at the corners of his eyes. "You'd have to have something at the bottom of the bowl anyway to keeping flipping and turning the dough. Or you'd have to stick your own hands in there."
"Learned that lesson the hard way," Sokka said with a grimace and a waggle of his fingers.
Asami winced and laughed. "I've electrocuted myself so many times in my own lab that these fingers have permanent blisters." Then she held up her right hand and wiggled her pinky and ring finger. "It's actually been a while since I've worked on something purely mechanical like this. May I?"
Sokka held out his hand obligingly and rounded to the other side of the table as she began dismantling the mochi making machine. "I actually met a man once who, in the very noble pursuit of scientific discovery and progress, managed to lose three of his fingers on one hand."
"Spirits! Doing what?"
"Making a finger-safe knife sharpener."
Her head jerked up, staring at him with her face twisted in bemusement and disbelief.
"Total truth," he said airily, shrugging, and then they both burst out laughing. "You know," Sokka continued, rifling through the pile of gears on the work table, "he and I built the very first war balloon together. That was the foundation of my involvement in aeronautics. I shared everything I knew with your parents."
Asami's throat tightened, but she kept disassembling the machine in front of her.
"I was sorry to hear about what happened to your dad. And your mom, all those years ago."
"Yes…" she said, refusing to look up. "Thank you." Her voice was flat and lifeless, even to her own ears. She hated to think how ungrateful she sounded to someone who was only trying to offer sympathy, and company. Her eyes stung, but she bit her lip and shook her head and unscrewed the last piece off the mochi machine.
"So…" Sokka said, pushing a handful of gears in an assortment of sizes right below her face. "What do you think?"
She looked up at him, chose one at random, and smiled.