date posted: 2024-04-12
summary: If Korra knew better, she wouldn't flinch at the sight.
word count: 1,306 words
content warnings: explicit sex, violence, prison setting
notes: title from graceless lady by big blood
Kuvira's back is slumped against the wall, as she pants hard, her bottom lip swollen, and Korra runs a thumb across that lip, her head tilted back.
"Admiring your handiwork?" Kuvira quips, breathless. Korra rolls her eyes.
"Not now, Kuvira," she responds, and digs her knees into the stony, hard tiled ground, feels Kuvira shift her legs, opening them more, faux-casual, faux-relaxed, but Korra can see how taut they are, how tight Kuvira still holds herself in this moment.
Korra's free hand slides from Kuvira's cheek down to her shoulder, and she eyes the blood running down Kuvira's face from her nose, the blooming, dark spot swelling on one side, remembers the sickeningly satisfying crack she heard when her fist made contact with Kuvira's face.
Kuvira's head tips back, knocks against the stone wall behind her, all web-like cracks and lines etched into each other. The sterile, emerald green light of the cell illuminates Kuvira's face, shadows casted on her face from her loose hair a cover from the piercing light.
Abruptly, Korra hears the clatter of chains, sees Kuvira struggling against their rigid weight straining from the pull of their root in the ground, struggling to raise a hand to Korra.
If Korra knew better, she wouldn't flinch at the sight.
But the sound makes her relent, just for a moment, and she looks from Kuvira's cuffs to her eyes again in a split second, and recognizes the glint in Kuvira's eyes, the knowledge that something cracked in Korra, for a moment: an in.
Kuvira seizes the moment, the breath in Korra's chest, to grip her by the shoulder, and capture her in another punishing, bruising kiss. Korra gasps into her mouth, reluctant, but doesn't pull away as Kuvira forces her way in, bites down on Korra's tongue, enough to leave a mark.
Kuvira shoves her away, then, suddenly, shoves her back with a rattle of her chains, too tight, probably enough to bruise her wrists, and Korra looks her in the eye again, tastes something metallic in her mouth.
"I know why you keep coming, Avatar," Kuvira says, smirking, something cutting in her gaze.
Korra's head tips back ever so slightly, looking down at Kuvira, and smiles.
"You're wrong," she near growls, and grabs Kuvira by the shoulder again, pushing her into the wall.
She leans in close to the crook of Kuvira’s neck, up to her ear, another hand snaking down to push Kuvira's legs further open, then snaking up and under her shoddy, threadbare prison uniform's pants, until she feels Kuvira's core, white-hot and waiting, and feels Kuvira jolt at her touch.
Korra holds her there, breathing into Kuvira's neck, making quick work of her cunt, as she slips two fingers up and around her clit, until she slides down, teases at Kuvira's slit, and hears Kuvira's heavy sigh, her breath hot against Korra's cheek.
"I know," she bites out, voice stony, "why I’m here, Kuvira," as she slips a finger in, slowly and teasing, before sliding in and out, her fingers already slick from Kuvira, her fingers meeting little resistance. She sees Kuvira’s head knock back and relax against the wall.
"Tell me, Avatar," Kuvira says, grinning, her eyebrows relaxed, eyes half-lidded, but glinting with the curiosity, the bite that Kuvira always had in battle, even to her final moments as the Uniter.
Korra seizes the opportunity to slip another finger inside Kuvira, and hears the other woman gasp at the intrusion. Korra’s head leans back, away from Kuvira, until those chains rattle again and Korra finds her head pulled back closer to Kuvira, forced to stare right at her, the chains pulling and straining from their root.
"I said," Kuvira bites out, stern, "tell me," and it’s unforgiving, but Korra can hear the desperation, hears how close she is in the quiver of her voice, the shudder of her lips.
Korra pumps her fingers faster, in and out, feels her own cunt throb at the sight of the Uniter laid out before her like this, and a better woman, a better Avatar, would be repulsed at the thought, but she’s neither of those, she’s everything the world thought of her in those three lost years and more, in that first year in Republic City, and in these stolen moments in a war criminal’s cell, she embraces every bit of the narrative forced upon her the day she set foot outside the White Lotus compound, the day she felt the grit of the earth in her teeth in an Earth Kingdom arena, the day she chased her own reflection up and around stairs and buildings and cities of ghosts.
Kuvira groans as she climaxes, spoiled and wanton, everything a criminal like her should not feel. Korra gives it to her, gives her these feelings, grants them conditionally, with every visit of hers.
"I," Korra starts, her voice rasping, her cunt hot and throbbing, as she sees Kuvira ride out her orgasm, lost in the afterglow, "don’t owe you a thing, Kuvira," she says, biting.
At that, something twisted builds and erupts out of Kuvira, something wretched, as laughter ruptures from her, broken and gnarled, weak, weary, but with all of the force a defeated war criminal can muster, with all the scraps of her pride gathered together.
Korra’s hand, with a mind of its own, raises and shoves Kuvira into the wall, with enough force for a crack to be heard, and Kuvira’s head knocks back half unnaturally as laughter rips out of her.
"Oh, Avatar," she says, her voice mockingly teasing, and it enrages Korra, her eyebrows furrowing, and it takes everything in her to not grab Kuvira by the chains and pull her forward until she stops in her tracks from the shock, to not seize Kuvira by the throat and choke the laughter out of her until she rasps and croaks like Korra did when the air was ripped out of her lungs, in a false, forced Avatar state, the air faux-gentle wrapped around her as it slipped out from her lungs with the same ease of Korra’s fingers in Kuvira, and the thought of Korra in that moment, her hair long and tangled then, short and poking her neck now, makes that ugly side of her want to seize control and become the wretched, evil force the world already sees of her, despite all she’s done, all she’s fought for, the control she’s so desperately fought to regain, that she holds at her fingertips with every visit to this same cell.
"Say it," Korra chokes out, angry and cold, "say what you mean, for once, Kuvira."
The woman before her tilts her head ever so slightly up, her eyes sliding down the woman before her, the undoubtedly wrecked, unforgivable sight a joy to Kuvira’s eyes.
She chuckles more, and Korra almost wants to rip the words out of her like Korra ripped herself free from the root of her own chains at that time, unleashed and shackled both from the poison, but powerful enough to jerk them from the root and raise hell with the earth underneath her upon her captors.
Kuvira then stops, her laughter trailing off in exhaustion, her legs still spread and open, Korra’s hand still partly between her pants, her thumb at the waistband.
"You think everything is so conditional, Korra," and something blazes in her, prideful and angry, at the use of her name, for once, instead of her title, "but we both know that this," she pauses, looking down in her lap, gesturing at her condition with a tug of her chains, "is all for you."
"What do you mean by that?"
"You tell me, Avatar," Kuvira says, mustering as much disgust as she can, and Korra knows what she’s implying.
The worst part, she knows, is that Kuvira is right.