Work Text:
"I can't believe this," Korra says, pacing up and down the kitchen of their apartment. "This is unbelievable!"
Asami sighs. She pours herself another cup of tea and tries to appeal to reason one more time. "Korra--"
"I can't believe I love our daughter more than you do!"
Reason, apparently, is not going to get the job done.
"Yes, Korra." Asami considers the remains of their breakfast, and the unusual sight of Korra's unfinished plate. She decides, based on the quantity of uneaten food, that Korra's distress is insufficient to warrant toning down her sarcasm. "That's why I'm refusing to let you ruin Ai's first--"
"Although, actually I did call that, right?" Korra pauses, eyeing Asami thoughtfully. "The loving-Ai-more-than-you thing? Pretty sure I called that."
"Yes, that's true." Asami says, abandoning sarcasm and escalating to Autumnal cold snap levels of frost. "You 'called' being overly emotionally involved in our daughter's life."
"Not that it's a competition that I'm winning, but... wait." Korra frowns. "You mean invested. I'm healthily invested!"
Confident that she has Korra's attention, Asami takes a pointed sip of tea. "Remind me what you're so invested in this morning?"
Korra winces, but she thrusts her jaw out stubbornly. "I'm invested in our daughter's dating life, Asami! Are you telling me you're not worried that's she's going on a date today? At fourteen? With a boy? A fourteen-year-old boy? A fourteen-year-old boy called Jiro? What fourteen-year-old goes around calling themselves Jiro? You can't tell me that's not suspicious!"
"I suspect Jiro didn't name himself, Korra." Asami allows her tone to thaw. "And if Ai weren't going with someone, whatever their name was, it wouldn't be much of a date."
"Ah! Aha!" Korra waves a finger in what Asami thinks Korra thinks is triumph. "You're being flippant! This is serious, Asami, and you're being flippant! Which means I'm so winning this mom fight!"
"Korra." Asami tries to conceal the way her jaw flexes. "They're going to Sweet Auntie Yin's Bobba Tea Parlour after school. It caters almost exclusively to teenagers. It's not a triad front for an opium den. It's a tea house. A teen tea house."
"Tean house, yeah." Korra pauses, perhaps beginning to see how badly she's overreacting. More likely, Asami thinks gloomily, she's simply enjoying her pun. "With biiig windows on the front instead of walls! You can see the whole tea house clearly from across the street! Which is why--"
"Korra--"
"We should go on a date--"
"Will you please listen--"
"To Uncle Kwok's Dumpling Delicacies, right across the street! We can get a table at their window, and then we could...keep an eye on things. That's all I'm saying, Asami! Come on, it'll practically be a double date!" Korra's winning smile loses purchase on her lips after a fraction of a second. "A...double date where the other couple will in no way know we're watching them date, but...yeah. Basically a double date...close enough, anyway! Until Jiro tries something, of course. Something like, like holding hands and refusing to let go when Ai asks him to let go and then he'll try to kiss her and then I'll go over there and hold his dumb fourteen-year-old hands for him!"
Korra's knuckles pop when she bunches her hands into fists.
"Given everything Ai has told us, Jiro sounds like a nice boy, Korra." Asami massages her temples. "We have to trust Ai.This isn't about our--"
"I so trust Ai! I don't trust Jiro, though. And there's a world full of people like Jiro out there! Every single slimy, suspicious Jiro in the world with their clammy hands and aggressive kissing policies is the issue, not Ai!"
"I think there's a different issue here." Asami takes her time finishing her cup of tea. She watches Korra carefully, watching the way Korra forces her uncertainty down and begins to pout. When Korra opens her mouth again, Asami cuts her off, keeping her tone mild. "I'm not going on a date with you to spy on our daughter, Korra. But we could try a different tactic."
"Oh?" Korra eyes her suspiciously. "Like what?"
"We could start our own tea house." Asami dabs at the corners of her mouth with her napkin. "We could build it somewhere remote. Put walls around it. Keep it guarded at all times. If we keep Ai inside at all times and fully control who comes and goes, that way no one dangerous will ever get close to Ai. She'll be perfectly safe. How does that sound?"
It hurts Asami, watching the blood drain from Korra's face and every trace of defiance leave her posture, but she tells herself she had no other choice if she wanted to get through to her.
Korra walks to the dining table and dumps herself in her seat. "It sounds really bad. Was that how bad I sounded just now?"
"You've had better ideas than spying on our daughter, Korra," Asami says softly, reaching her hand across the table. Korra bites her lip. Asami has to watch the woman she loves torture herself for a couple of seconds before she allows herself to accept the comfort she's being offered, lacing their fingers together. "I know you worry about her, Korra. I know you'd do anything to protect her. Do you really think I wouldn't?"
"Of course not!" Korra lifts Asami's hand, kissing her knuckles. "I know how much you love her. How much you love us both."
Asami gently squeezes Korra's hand. "You know there are some things we can't protect her from, don't you? We can't make her mistakes for her. We can't stop her following her heart because we're afraid it might get broken. It might. And if Jiro hurts Ai, our job will be to act as her mothers. Our job will be to pick up the pieces. That's all we can do."
"...yeah." Korra sighs, her body sagging. "I do trust Ai. I trust her judgement. And her roundhouse kick. And her ability to apply joint locks. I trust all of those things."
"Well, we taught her how to fight...and she knows how to think for herself." Asami chuckles. She thinks about their daughter, and smiles. "She's grown so much. I'm so proud of her. Even if she is dating a boy called Jiro."
Korra doesn't say anything. She's staring into the distance, her eyes unfocused, her mouth turned down.
"Korra?"
"Hm?" Korra meets her eyes and smiles weakly. "Sorry. I am...I'm sorry."
"Apology accepted." Asami waits, but when Korra sinks back into silence she squeezes her hand again. "Hey. Where did you go just now?"
"Back...home. I was thinking about the compound." Evidently, Asami does a poor job of masking the stab of guilt that causes her because Korra stirs, leaning across the table with a slightly more convincing smile on her lips. "It's okay. I was just...for a long time it was just normal. Normal for the Avatar at least. And then I got out, and I kept tripping over things I never got a chance to discover for myself. And after a while I got to thinking...and then for years I wondered why my parents let the White Lotus raise me that way."
"Did..." Asami hesitates, but when Korra squeezes her hand, she asks, "Have you ever talked to them about it?"
"I never knew how," Korra admits, her voice soft. "Especially when I found out about the Red Lotus trying to kidnap me. I didn't think there was any point. What could they say? What could I say that wouldn't hurt us all? And then Ai came into our lives and I felt like...I could understand why they did it. I just...told myself I'd never make the same choice."
"You haven't! Ai loves her school. She loves her life, Korra! As...far as I can tell these days." Asami sighs. "She is fourteen..."
"She's such a good kid. Especially considering she has the Avatar for a mom." Korra's smile dims. "I don't want to be a bad mom, Asami."
"You are a wonderful mother," Asami says in her most confident voice. "Even if you need to be reined in sometimes. But you always know when you're going too far. Sooner or later."
"Because you're here," Korra chuckles. "Good thing, too, or I'd be borrowing Bolin's fake moustaches and sneaking into Ai's school to keep an eye on her."
"Students in Ai's school don't have moustaches. That'd be a bad disguise. Also, they're teenagers. Physically, you're a couple of decades past that point."
"I was...thinking I'd be a teacher?"
"Oh. I was thinking about your maturity level. You'd never pass as a teacher."
"Hey!" Korra laughs, her body straightening out. "I'd be great as a teacher with a moustache! Wait, no, I mean I'm so mature! I'm the maturest! I have the highest, maturest levels! That's what I mean."
"Uh huh." Asami smiles. "So, my maturest wife, does that mean that you don't want to try this new kind of tea that the teens love so much?"
"I...but...I mean...I can be the maturest and still want to try fruity and delicious-looking things!" Korra blinks. "Can't I?"
"You can, just so long as...?"
Korra sighs. "We make sure we visit the tea shop only when we know Ai isn't going to be there? Because we're going to give her space. We're going to let her make her own choices, her own mistakes. We're going to support even if she's dating a boy called Jiro. And if something makes her sad..." Korra clenches her free hand into a white-knuckled fist. "We're going to the kind of moms who hug Ai so hard, we'll hug her sadness to actual death!"
"That sounds like a very maturest attitude, Korra."
Asami laughs, and leans across the table to kiss her wife.