content warnings: obsession, manipulation, and possessiveness. references to captivity, implied violence, and slight gore (esp. in eska's and lin's parts). all characters intended to be read as of age.
divider source: @uzmacchiato.
atla edition.
KORRA is possessive.
arms like spirit vines, reaching out to drag you down into her lap; body underneath you solid, an insulating cocoon, as much a shelter as it is a cage. if you are smart, you know not to claw your way through: there’s a structure to these things, lines to follow, weak spots to trail to, and all trying to tear a path out will leave you with is bruises—korra’s not someone you can overpower, and she has never been. instead you must embrace patience as your virtue, moving with the current, not against it, so that one day you may find a membrane thin enough to break through. so that one day you may catch a breath. but only one day and only one breath—then a moment passes, and she’s back to you again, an unstoppable cosmic force drawn to an immovable earthly object. she doesn’t mean to sequester you away—she’s tasted the bitterness of the isolation, and she’s not so cruel as to want it for you, but she does need somebody in her corner, somebody to take her side when the tides inevitably turn against her, and she does need them to be safe, which leaves her with only so many options. fortunately for her, the safest place to keep you in is right here, in her arms. unfortunately for you, fitting one life into another without any of its parts getting cut off is too tall an ask even for the revered avatar.
ESKA is impassioned.
you’re fooled by her flat affect, at first. with the surface so still, the dangers lurking beneath seem fictional, far-off enough to lose their edge: what is there to fear, you wonder, in the waters so dispassionate? you think not of hidden currents and monstrous creatures—you are close enough to the shore, so dipping your limbs in seems a safe enough endeavor. when a chill runs down your spine, you blame it on the coolness of the tide. you’re sure you can get out, if you want to. you’re sure you’re too smart to get pulled in. that’s why it’s such a nasty shock to look around and see rows of thin, sharp teeth, jaws locking you up in the cavity of her mouth: you may have known eska not to be harmless, but you couldn’t have guessed her to be so impassioned. you didn’t think she’d care enough to keep you for a pet. stuck by her side, you become less of a person and more of a sexual parasite, mouth pressed deep into the skin until there’s nothing left for you but to bite, no choice given but to fuse, and you are alive, in the end, but just barely: safe and sound though you may finally be, your lover the scariest of the predators this side of the ocean, acting as a replacement for her missing funny bone hardly feels much like living.
LIN is abrasive.
her hands are rough from years of fieldwork; her voice is hoarse from barking out orders. when she tries to soften either of them out, the attempt itself feels incriminating, a public admission of guilt—she doesn’t know how to love you gently. in fact, she doesn’t know how to love you at all, so, really, she’d rather save herself the humiliation. she can’t, of course; she’s tried. when you get under the shell she’s hidden herself in, the comfort of its restriction greater than the pain, her blunt nails are quick to tear into the tender, sensitive meat of her body, and once her thrashing proves futile, once she has to admit that she can’t claw you out, her efforts rewarded with the sting of the wound reopened, she does her best to keep her blood flowing: as long as the bleeding doesn’t stop, the scar tissue cannot form, and the two of you won’t be bound. she’s wrong. naturally. everything must come to an end—not even she can keep hurting herself forever, and so, in spite of her most fervent wishes, lin’s stuck with you. permanently. though you aren’t the worst thing she’s had to learn to live with, you are the most embarrassing one by far, and that embarrassment turns her brittle, turns her brash, turns her brutal. it reminds her that, at the end of the day, all she can ever do is try.
SUYIN is smooth.
it’s cruel—even her name is melodious. it rolls off your tongue, pleasant as ever in your mouth, and the smile she gives upon hearing it is a private one, the kind that makes you feel as though you are her partner in crime, her precious confidante. it’s not difficult to believe them, those sweet nothings whispered in that mellifluous voice, so believe them you do: you let the tale, however ludicrous, seduce you. to the pull of her hands, guiding you through your days and nights until their flow is flawless, each component coming to completion in one fluid arc, you provide no push, and to the caress of her palm, smoothing out an anxious crease of your brow with the ease of an experienced lover, you lean in eagerly. the fluidity of it all, the magic of the metal turned so pliant and malleable it might as well be silk, lulls you into slumber, dulling down your senses, so it takes a while for you to notice that there are no stars in zaofu. were it not for the narcotic nectar of her lips, you might have realized sooner that the flower su’s lured you to is platinum-petaled, rooted deeply in a mountain-cupped, secure valley, but you hadn’t, and by the time that you do, it’s already too late: it would take a miracle to pluck you out of her gentle grasp, and, however delighted to fulfill your wishes, not even she is that generous.
KUVIRA is extreme.
you’d think that one would cancel the other out, wouldn’t you? she can’t be a guard dog and a black sheep, a family prodigy and a family failure. if she’s cold and calculating, she shouldn’t be hot and impulsive, and if her palms are harsh and forceful, they shouldn’t come with tender, delicate fingers. smart enough to recognize flattery, yet accepting of it for her hunger for recognition; efficient enough to live off the scraps, yet too voracious not to climb up the table for more, she’s layered, as complex as the armor she sheathes herself in, and the swiftness with which she unfurls, strips peeled apart by no more than a thought, a beautiful bracelet turned a noble sword—turned a deadly whip, is startling enough to give you whiplash. making peace with this, learning to trace the shrapnel in the soft tissue of your shared flesh without gasping and trembling, is part and parcel of surviving kuvira. you have to accept that she’s pulled apart by her extremes, not mellowed out by them, and you have to understand that you are no exception for her: though you may be her lover, you are also her problem, an impure stream threatening to corrode the sterile walls of her mind, so it’s both to preserve and eradicate you that she’s tempted, two desires intertwined. you’d be wise to remember that one cannot exist with the other, in her heart.
PEMA is audacious.
it’s hard to explain why you feel so duped: after all, it’s not as though she’s lied to you. no, it was you who took one look at her doe-looking eyes, irises the shade of boiled greens—served daily in the canteens of the air temple island, and decided that she must be a benign, innocuous woman. a glance, and you felt as though you knew her already—if not from personal experience, then from the stories of others, fictional worlds populated with timid-looking, mousy women, all equally eager to boast about the stacks of recipes they keep in the biscuit tins on the topmost shelves, away from their loving, but absent-minded partners and their well-meaning, but mischievous children. baby bangs over a forgettable face—quite cute, obviously, but not exactly someone you expect anything exceptional out of. which is, in retrospect, pretty stupid: anyone who’d take a back-breaking slab of wood over a cushy, feathery bed must have some guts, at the very least, so it shouldn’t surprise you that, once she’s made up her mind about you, pema pursues you with the passion of a true believer. she isn’t repelled by your uncertainty, your unease, and she takes your recoil at having been proclaimed her soulmate in stride, a knowing smile on her lips. there is no uncertainty, not with her—she’ll get what she wants. the universe has a way of rewarding those who wait.
ASAMI is desperate.
she’s good at hiding it. there are plenty of places to store her longing in, back at the sato estate, and if she takes it out, key twisted in the chest until the innards spill out, it’s to stare at it thoughtfully, her clear, intelligent mind picking itself apart. she knows what the problem is—she’s too much of a strategist not to, and her issues are easy to trace, a family history of a girl without a family, so she has no excuse to avoid fixing them, has no choice but to course-correct. what she wants most of all is a home, something different from the cavernous halls void of tenderness and the tiered towers housing grief, and what she needs for that is somebody to fill it up—what she needs is you. she’s made mistakes before. she’s looked away when she should have dug in; she’s held on when she should have let go. it’s crushed her, and she’s had to build herself back up from the rubble, so she’s a bit of an expert in all matters reconstruction by now. she can handle creating you. and as long as she’s careful, as long as she picks up on the weak spots while you’re still at the blueprint stage, she can get herself the right lover, the lover she’s needed all along. it’s a sweet dream to have, but asami isn’t just a dreamer—her moisturized, well-manicured hands have never been afraid of hard work. one way or another, she’ll engineer a life worth living in.
