#avatarsecretsanta

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In this world, she walks through a glowing portal, hand in hand with someone who isn’t him.

He’s happy for her. For both of them, really.  He’s never loved someone the way he loves Korra and if her happiness means falling in love with someone else, that’s okay.  

“How are you holding up, buddy?  It must be hard to watch Korra waltz away, with your other ex-girlfriend, nonetheless.”

“Shut up, Wu.”

Of course it’s okay. He loves her and wants her to be happy.

He wants her to be happy.

He loves her.

“Hey, let’s go out tonight! There’s this great new noodle place that I’ve been meaning to try and I hear that the main chef is really stunning.”  

Wiggling eyebrows. Forced cheer. Too large a smile, even for Bolin.

“I’m not ready yet,” are the words Mako doesn’t say, even though they’re laced through his response.

“Sorry Bo, but I’m too busy.  I’m just getting back into the job and there’s paperwork that’ll take me the rest of the month to finish.  Maybe next time though.”

The skin on his arm burns, a phantom pain that creeps across his skin. He knows he should see a healer about it again and he’s tired of catching concerned glances from Bolin or hearing chiding comments from Wu of all people. He finally schedules an appointment while Beifong breathes down his neck, arms crossed, a glare he’s come to interpret as her way of showing she cares set on her features until he sets the receiver down, scrawls the date and time in his little book of notes, and she launches into the details of his next case.

His arm feels better after a few sessions with the elderly waterbender who smiles at him and tells stories about his grandchildren.  If only the healer could help with the way his chest constricts and his throat closes up when he isn’t vigilantly distracting himself from the dusty words that echo in his head.

Meant for each other.

Always.

He wants her to be happy.

He loves her.

He just wishes …

Dammit.

___

In another world, Mako stands in front of a pastel blue and yellow window, throat tight, pulse pounding. Practically oblivious to the decadent three tier cake covered in pops of pink and purple flowers, and the cupcakes with the delicately crafted white chocolate spindles and cotton candy fluff, he stares past the red “help wanted” sign in the corner of the display to the tall, stiff owner of the store and the small, wide-smiling woman beside him at the counter.

He tugs at the scarf at his neck and brushes his hand through his hair before working up the nerve to enter the store.  His brother’s girlfriend had worked there a few summers ago during college, claiming that while it was busy and stressful at times, working under deadlines with picky clients under Tenzin’s strict standards, it was a great experience.  Besides, it had to be better than working at the power plant. 

The bell chimes sweetly when he pushes open the door, the rush of cool, sugar-sweet air almost overwhelming him. 

“How may we help you?”  The woman seems nice, her sharp voice cutting through the haze of vanilla hanging around him. 

“I was wondering if I could talk to someone about the ‘help wanted’ sign in the window?” He wants to run his hand through his hair, a nervous tick, but keeps his hands by his side.  His gaze flicks between Tenzin and the woman, unsure of who to address.

“You know how to bake?”  Tenzin’s eyebrow tugs upward, seemingly sizing him up.

“I have a little experience.  I worked part-time at a bakery in high school.  But I’m, uh, actually better at decorating. Piping, fondant flowers, and the rest, um… Sir.” 

Tenzin turns and walks through the doors to the kitchen without a response, his voice muffled but still audible while he talks to whoever’s with him.

“Sorry about that, my husband’s a little intense sometimes.  My name’s Pema, and you are?”  Pema crosses to him, wipes her hand on her apron, and offers him her hand.  He shakes it in response, a moment of wavering relief from the nerves he’s trying to keep under control (he needs his hands to stay steady for him to have any chance at being hired). 

“Mako.  My brother’s girlfriend Opal worked here about two years ago, actually.”

“Opal?  We loved Opal!  Such a sweet heart, knew exactly when and how to hold her ground, even against my husband,” she says as she leans in, just close enough for Mako to feel the urge to pull away because he likes ‘personal space’ (despite that, he doesn’t pull back), and she continues in a hushed tone, “My husband likes tight, evenly spaced swirls and fondant lilies with yellow detailing.  Do those well and you’re hired, trust me."

She pulls back, smile in place, just as the kitchen door swings open and Tenzin returns with the supplies for Mako’s test, followed by a woman with bright blue eyes, flour smudged across her cheek and arms, and dark brown hair in a messy pony tail and wolf-tails.  He can feel everyone’s eyes on him as he pipes an intricate swirl pattern on the small cake covered in blue fondant and cuts the lily petal leaves, forms the flower, and dabs touches of pale yellow and light blue across the petals – but her gaze weighs on him, makes him curious about her and how she smirks at him in a way that both annoys him and makes him to find out just what makes her tick.  He steps back from his finished product and can’t help but catch her eyes while Tenzin assesses his work.

“Your shaping could use some work, but nice job.  When can you start?” 

“As soon as you need me to start, really, thank you,” Mako says, and he can feel the nervous energy finally release from his frame. Tenzin retreats through the kitchen door, half-talking, half-shouting about filling out the required paperwork and possible schedules, before Pema’s rolling her eyes with a warm smile on her face and congratulating him as she follows, her voice joining Tenzin’s in the back.

“So, Mako, uh?”

He’s left with the girl, who gives him a very obvious once over, obvious enough to make his cheeks flush in what is hopefully not too bright a pink. 

“Yep. Nice to meet you.  You’re…?” He reaches his hand out to her; he’s hardly surprised when she takes it, firmly.

“I’m Korra.  Come on, Flower Boy, let’s get you an apron.”

It’s the first time he’s met her, he hardly knows her, and something about her bugs him, but, for some reason he can’t quite place, he likes the smudge of flour that her hand leaves on his.

___

Mako meets her on a random day off, when the sky is grey and rain threatens to fall any second.

The used bookstore is new, the scent of fresh paint and wood floors just barely present under the smell of worn pages, of once loved stories that line the walls, shelves, and every surface top available.  His feet sound loud on the floor despite his usually light step as he walks through the rows of shelves, not really looking for anything in particular but looking for something. He picks up a book with faded brown binding and worn edges - “One Thousand and One Nights,” a collection of stories, it seems, as he flips through the pages of the book.

“Ah, so you like folk tales?”

Mako nearly drops the book at the bright mezzo voice that seemingly comes from above.  He glances around the shop, left and right, left again, before a laugh in the same tone sounds through the store once more.

“Up here,” he hears, accompanied by a puff of air that brushes against his face.  He spots her, finally, on the wrung of a ladder in the corner of the second floor, a perfect perch from which to view his aimless wondering.  He should have spotted he sooner; nearly a year back at his desk and he isn’t as quick as he used to be.

“Not particularly. Or, well, I don’t know really. I just enjoy reading. Is this one any good?” He flips through the pages once more as the ladder creeks beneath her movements.  He glances back up at her just as she throws a leg over the balcony and floats down on a swirl of air.  She’s tall, maybe only a few inches shorter than him, with black hair in a sleek ponytail that trails down her back when she lands.  Her features would strike him as harsh, sharp nose, angular chin and jaw, if it was not for the soft, round, blue eyes appraising him.

“I liked it. Particularly ‘The Adventures of Bulukiya.’ Journeys through cosmos and other worlds. Very interesting stuff.  Sort of the foundation of some sci-fi books, which is a genre I tend to like.” She pulls the ponytail over her shoulder, thumb brushing over the ends held in between her fingers, like it’s an unconscious habit.  It probably is, he realizes, as she turns and gestures with a nod of her head for him to follow her, and he does.

“There’s a book of poems somewhere over here that I really loved,” she says as she pulls out a slim book, pale blue in color, characters small across the cover, and hands it to him. “Or would you like mysteries?  You seem like the type of guy who’d enjoy trying to solve a mystery before the protagonist does.”

“That’s…not a bad guess, actually. I’m a detective. “ He thumbs through the book of poems, holds it atop his first book, and glances back at the girl.  She’s quick as she moves from row to row, looking for books she apparently thinks he’ll like based off of her two minutes of interaction with of him.

“A detective? Very interesting. Very fitting,” she smiles at him with a tilt of her head, and he feels slightly off-kilter in a way he hasn’t felt since… “I just moved here after training with the airbenders for a bit, but I’m from the Fire Nation originally.  The Air Nomad type of lifestyle didn’t completely suit me though, so now I’m here.  I own this shop.  I’ve read most of the books in here, actually.”

“That’s…” he isn’t sure what to say - shocking for how young she looks, a little intimidating, kind of… attractive – “Impressive.”

“I’m Ayumi.” She offers her hand, and he shakes it, predicting a soft grip from such small, elegant looking hands, but it’s surprisingly firm and somehow completely fitting.

“I’m Mako.”

She hands him another book, talking casually about books she’s enjoyed or disliked, and he finds himself responding in a voice that comes off a little over-eager, even to him, when she names one he’s already read.  He’s thrown by how easily their conversation flows despite how bad he usually is at small talk and casual conversation; how quickly the time passes in her bookstore while the rain patters against the window; how much he enjoys discussing the books he’s read, and the characters he’s found dull, and the worlds he’s enjoyed the most with this girl he’s just met, who’s full of energy but calm all at once, who plays with the end of her ponytail while she listens intently to thoughts he’s usually too embarrassed to share about the character he loves but finds frustrating as hell, who’s gaze moves between his own and random spots throughout the store when she forms her own response.

He leaves the shop with four books instead of the one he planned on buying, and finds himself wondering about the girl at the book store.  He visits again despite still needing to read one of the original books he’d bought, and, at some point, he stops returning to the shop under the pretense of buying a book at all (and they both know it).

On another grey day, weeks after the first, when he’s flipping through the pages of a thick book on the history of the Fire Nation and asking her about her life there, he finds the book being slowly pulled from his grasp before he’s being kissed, soft but strong, just like he’d expected it would be if it happened (not that he’d thought about it, much).

The sky opens, the rain pours.

He waits for the crack of thunder, the flash lightening. It doesn’t come.

But the clear skies that follow look a bit brighter than the ones that came before the rain.

____

College is supposed to be fun. Mako is supposed to be exploring her academic interests to the fullest, making friendships that last lifetimes, enjoying youth and all that.

Mako's not supposed to be crying in the history department's bathroom, having a not-quite-quarter life crisis over the fact that she undeniably, unavoidably, really does like girls, while Korra (and the source of all her confusion) rubs her back and hands her flimsily thin sheets of toilet paper when her nose starts to run.

"You know it's alright, right? So you like girls - you're still Mako, captain of the two-time champion intramural volleyball team, Master Ramen Noodle Chef, and best friend to probably the best roommate on campus, if I do say so myself," Korra says, as she wets a paper towel and dabs at Mako's reddened, tear-stained cheeks. Normally, she wouldn't let Korra get so close (she can manage her own emotional crises; she took care of herself and Bolin when they shuffled from foster home to foster home, and she doesn’t want to be viewed as someone who needs to be coddled), but it's Korra and something selfish deep in her chest wants to hold onto these affectionate moments, even if they are coming in the midst of her breakdown.

“I know, I just… felt like something was wrong with me for feeling that way for such a long time and I don’t want to feel that way anymore.  I want to be happy. I want to feel okay with myself again,” she says as she slides down against the tiled wall, watching as Korra drags the waste bin in front of the bathroom door as a barricade.  It’s only then that Mako remembers that some poor soul could walk in on her, crying in the bathroom she just happened to pick, while said poor soul cautiously tries to avoid making eye contact with the crying mess in the corner, but is desperately curious enough to glance at her every chance she gets. But that’s just part of who Korra is - pragmatic even in the midst of crises, always ready to help someone in need.

“You should feel more than okay with yourself, Mako,” Korra says as she steps over Mako’s outstretched legs and sits beside her.  Sometimes she forgets how much shorter Korra is than her (small, but made of muscle, short hair that floats around her face, a few pieces oddly out of place from where she pulls at it while studying, and crystal blue eyes framed by eyelashes long enough to sometimes distract Mako with every time Korra blinks. “You’re strong and intelligent, compassionate, and you're absolutely infuriating sometimes - like, would it kill you to loosen up a bit and take a study break for longer than 15 minutes so we could get through a show on Netflix in one sitting -- stop laughing, Mako, I’m serious -- but... I wouldn’t change anything about you.”

She feels the dried tear tracks tug at her skin when she smiles and Korra’s hand clamp around her own.

“Who you like doesn’t change who you are. It doesn’t change what I think of you and it won’t change how anyone who matters thinks of you either. So… yeah.”  Korra runs her free hand through her hair as a blush springs to her cheeks, and Mako can’t help the laugh that bubbles up and escapes.

“You’re ending with ‘so yeah’?”  She says, smile growing when Korra’s eyebrows draw together, a mix of amusement and exasperation on her face.

“I spill my feelings to you and you nitpick the closing sentence. The rest of it was good! It’s not like you’re that eloquent all the time either, and you have no excuse, with your sophisticated triple major in English, Anthropology, and Economics, Ms. Hat Trick.  You know I’m not good at emotional stuff anyways, do you remember how messy my break up with Asami was?  Cut me some slack.”  Korra’s hand shifts against hers in a feeble attempt to pull away, but Mako just holds on tighter, laughs a little more.  

“Calm down, Korra, I’m kidding,” she says, smiling a little more when she feels Korra’s hand close around hers again. “Thank you. For listening, for being here for me - for everything really. Sorry for breaking down in the middle of studying.”  

“Yeah, what was that all about?  You can’t tell me that your ‘I like girls’ realization was triggered by studying the Chinese Revolution.”  Korra squeezes her hand, twice, in quick succession, and Mako smiles at the endearing but slightly goofy grin that Korra’s wearing.

“I just got distracted by something and started thinking about it, that’s all.”

‘I was distracted by you,’ Mako wants to say. Distracted by the way her hair slips around her face when she tilts her head down to read, the way her mouth pulls into a tight line when she’s reading something she doesn’t quite get or trying to memorize a set of dates, the way she smiles when she finally does memorize the dates correctly.

She’d like to say ‘I love you,’ loud enough to hear the words vibrate off of the turquoise tiled floor and the ugly brown stalls,  let them float overhead and cover every inch of their skin like spring mist.  But, now doesn’t feel like quite the right time, so she’ll wait, she’ll keep the leash on her words for a little longer.

She lets Korra pull her up and off of the floor, her best friend’s voice just barely cutting through Mako’s distracted haze, made of what-ifs and risks and questions of timing, but the feeling of fingers that stay laced through hers as they make their way back to their neglected books leaves a pleasant warmth in its place.

____

It’s late, the radio crackling in the watch tower as the world sleeps around him.  The room is sparse, concrete walls and wide windows, almost too warm in the summer heat. At least the blue coat – cape – thing (he’s still not exactly sure what it’s called, even after a year of teachings and training) isn’t unbearably heavy.

He’s stationed at an Earth Kingdom watch center for the time being, has been for three months, before he leaves for the Fire Nation tomorrow morning for the next six months for additional training.  He had said goodbye to Bolin and Opal earlier, enjoyed hearing their stories about traveling through the various Earth Kingdom towns, helping the areas that were still struggling to recuperate, even after a few years free of Kuvira’s reign.  This is nice, though, the murmur from the old radio and a worn book in his hands.

He’s just getting into the fourteenth chapter when a knock on the door breaks the hush.  The door opens without his response, not that he’s surprised.

“Hey, you have a minute?”  Korra asks, as she pulls out the chair across from his own at the small table.

“It’s three in the morning; I think I have some time.” He smiles at her. There's a beat of silence between them, comfortable and casual, a part of the friendship they’ve developed that he has come to cherish. He'll miss moments like these between them while he's away; the small talk at six in the morning when he's at his post and she greets him after her morning run, the conversations in the cab ride with her as he and another White Lotus guard escort her to a meeting with Earth Kingdom dignitaries; late night chats when he's on duty and she can't sleep, tracks him down since she knows his schedule almost as well as he does. But his duty to serve the Avatar doesn’t always mean he’s with her; the loftier purpose of aiding the societal notion of the Avatar, of a world with balance, leads him to places he never imagined he’d visit (alone, with other members, with Korra, occasionally). 

"Are you ready for tomorrow?" She leans back in her chair and runs her finger over a chip in the table's weathered surface. 

"I'm excited to see parts of the Fire Nation for the first time. Train with the masters. It'll be a great experience, I hope. You're headed to the Southern Water Tribe from here, right?" 

She nods, a tired smile on her face. 

"It'll be nice to see my family again. Get out of this heat for a while, too."

Another pause as she looks out at the dark expanse of land before them. 

"How's your book?" She holds out her hand to him and he passes it to her, watching her with interest when she scans through the first page before flipping to the last one.

"Good. What are you doing?"

"Reading the ending."

"Korra..." 

"I know, I know, I've heard this lecture before, Mako," she says, smiling up at him as he watches her eyes track across the page. "I like this one."

"Wait, did you read it?" He's excited for a moment, wondering if he'll finally have someone with whom to talk about books again. Her smile shifts to something smaller, and he realizes he's wrong, but he can’t really bring himself to feel disappointed.  

"I remember reading this ending before. You've read this book at least three times, Mako." She slides the book back to him and pulls her legs up into a cross-legged position on the chair. 

"Well, it's really good. Parallel universes and a protagonist who's able to travel through them all. I don't know, I like it." He holds the book in his hands, flips open the cover, and tries not to let his gaze linger on the inscription written in sharp, flowing characters in the lower corner. 

“Is it from Ayumi?”

He looks up, sees her watching him from the corner of her eye, and lets out a light sigh. 

“Yeah.  She was really into science fiction and fantasy. This,” he holds up the book, leans back in his chair and tries not to show how tired he feels when he thinks of her, of her eyes and her voice, her witty comments and soft lips, of a relationship unlike any of his others and the way it crumbled (yet again) before him, “was one of her favorites. She gave me this copy on my birthday two years ago.”

This time, the silence between them is just slightly different; not stiff, but less comfortable.

“Do you miss her?” She’s staring at him in an oddly intent way; he can’t read her as well as he’d like to be able to when she falls quiet like this. He drops her gaze, traces a circular stain in the wood from a cup left to sweat upon its surface while he responds.

“Not as much as I used to. We were together for almost three years.  It’s hard to let go of someone who’s become a part of your everyday life.  But I wanted to join the White Lotus, and she wanted to get married, start a family, you know…” he pauses, glances up at her then, and feels even more lost when he finds her staring out into the dark.

“If you could make a different choice now, would you have done it?  Instead of joining the White Lotus, would you have settled down with Ayumi, started a family, and stayed in Republic City?”

And just like that, the pieces fall into place.

“No. But that’s me, Korra, that’s not to say that you and –”

“We broke up. Asami and I, we ended it.”

Her eyes glisten in the dim of the room, her gaze fixated on a speck in the darkness beyond his own sight.

“What happened?”  He asks, despite the fact that he already knows.  They’re alike in that way; their own lives built around a consistent instability that makes the concept of “settling down” nice in theory, but realistically an impossibility.

“About a year ago, we talked about starting a family.  Or, how I didn’t want to start one and she wanted to, and soon.  She’s rooted in Republic City, especially now with how well her company is doing, and she wants to be a mom.  Wanted me to be a mom.  And while she’s understands how much I have to travel and that sometimes I have to leave for months on end, I… I don’t want to be that type of parent to a child. I know Aang made it work, being the Avatar and a parent, but the world was different then and he was a different Avatar than I am.  I’m not sure I would have wanted children, even if I wasn’t the Avatar,” her voice catches, she takes a deep breath, “When we first talked about it, I told her I’d think about it more, see if I felt differently about it down the line, but… she asked me again last week, when she came to visit, and my feelings about it haven’t changed, so we… ended it.”

She runs her hand through her hair, kept short all these years, and sighs, “She wants someone I can’t be, even for her.”

“I’m so sorry, Korra. I…” He loses his words just as hers settle, a very real ache in his chest, eyes falling to the book before him.  He remembers watching Ayumi’s face fall when he said he wanted to join the White Lotus, remembers slammed doors and broken glasses, remembers holding her the night before he left, before they completely collapsed, while trying to think of a way to give her the world she wanted and take the path he need to follow, remembers coming up blank as morning dawned. “You’ll get through it. I know you will.”

He looks up at her and she smiles at him in a way that still makes him feel vulnerable, reminds him that, somehow, she still knows him best.  She’s still the girl who fell asleep beside him while searching for his brother and he the boy who carried around a picture of them in his pocket at all times, even if those versions of themselves feel like they are now worlds away. He swallows the unexpected lump that forms in his throat, and smiles back at her.

Comfortable, quiet.

Slowly, the black fades into a purple light enough for Mako to make out the grooves in the land before him, the roofs of the few houses this isolated in the lush green earth, the shadows that shift and fall in sweeping arcs across her face.  

“Hey Korra?  Do you want to borrow my book?  It’ll definitely make that last page you keep reading more meaningful.” He holds it out to her, watching as she eyes the book, uncrosses her legs, and stands.

It catches him off guard, how much lighter he feels when she takes the book from his hand.  

“If you really don’t mind, I think I will.  I should go.  I’ll send it back to you when I finish, alright? See you in six months, Mako. Good luck.”  She leaves, with a small smile and his bookmark still tucked into the early pages of chapter fourteen.

“You too, Korra.”

A month after their parting, he gets his book back with a letter, the light slant to the characters in her letters that speak of quick strokes and impatience requesting another recommendation: “I’m restless. What should I read next? I see why you like this one.  The idea of another me living some other life is pretty intriguing… Less flowery imagery though, please. You like reading about feelings, don’t you Mako?” (He writes back, smiles at how 'Korra' she sounds again, and recommends an eight hundred page book on the history of unboiled dough if “feelings” aren’t her thing.)

____

The midday sun streams in through the open windows of his bedroom and he feels the gentle heat of its rays seeping into his sheets. It’s nearly eleven a.m., the latest he’s slept since he was a kid, but the temptation to pull the sheets up around his head and sleep for another hour is overwhelming. This two day respite from work could not have come at a better time, and he’s happy to find Korra still sleeping beside him, warm and a little noisy when she rolls onto her stomach and snores, having used one of her precious sick days just to laze about their studio apartment for the entirety of the day with her soulmate.

(They’re so lucky to have found each other so early in life, they’re told, having met when they were only in their teens.  If only everyone knew of how much they fought ‘destiny’ when they had met, bickered with one another and ignored the matching marks with which they were born, until they finally fell in sync with one another, and everything – mostly - fell into place).

They play chess.  He enjoys it, finds it relaxing but mentally stimulating at the same time, and she groans audibly when he pulls out the board with a hopeful, questioning look on his face. She’s not very good at it (she could be, if she didn’t complain about the pace of the game constantly) but once in a while she whips out a surprisingly precise move. 

They make a deal, though, when Korra has had enough of the game and he wants to keep playing.

“Strip chess.  For every major piece taken, a piece of clothing must be lost,” she suggests, casually, with an upward pull of her eyebrow, and he finds himself agreeing because he usually wins, usually claims more of her pieces than she does his, which means less clothing, which hopefully leads to, well … more time tangled in the sheets of their bed.

She’s sitting across from him, down to a silver-blue bra, a pair of his boxers, and underwear with penguins patterned across the fabric that peeks out when his boxers ride low on her hips.  He’s still in his boxers and tank top, but she’s focused now, and he knows how dangerous that can be. 

He takes another piece.  She stands to wriggle out of the shorts and he momentarily forgets the strategy he had mapped out in his head when his eyes catch on the ice blue and gold characters of his name on her shoulder blade (a matching one in the same ancient script and intricate swirls trails her name up his forearm), the stunning muscles of her back, and something in his brain decides that counting the penguins stretched across the curve of her butt is far more important.  Knight to...Knight to… Shit.

When she moves to sit back down, she stretches out on the floor rather than returning to her cross-legged position, props herself up on her elbows as she debates her next move.  She’s doing this on purpose, he realizes, the view of her chest barely contained by the light blue material making his head feel fuzzy and his shorts noticeably tighter.

She takes his knight; he takes off his shirt.

He takes her rook. She takes off her bra.

He pushes the board out of the way to kiss her, hard, tangling his hands in her hair.  Technically he forfeits, just this once, but really, they both win.

____

And back in this world, the world in which she walked through a glowing portal with someone else, someone who wasn’t him, one year closes and another begins, followed by another, or three, before Mako realizes he’s in love again.

Or, rather, he has always loved her, but this time it’s different. Different than the first time he said “I love you,” different than the love he felt for her as they relearned how to be friends, different than the way he loves her as his closest friend. 

He’s in love with Korra, again.

It’s the years of letters collected in a box he takes with him wherever the Order sends him.  It’s the sense of ease and purpose she brings to him mixed with an energy that sometimes leads to intolerable bickering and hoarse voices, but, more frequently, a synchronization that makes fire surge under his skin. It’s the moment he initiates a first kiss (a second first kiss, he supposes) instead of being kissed, in the darkness of a cave, after they’ve been fighting for the millionth time about the right way out, and the world around them suddenly glows a warm green.  It’s the person she was and the person she’s become, it’s Korra, and maybe it always was. (Sometimes, he thinks it's because of the other people they loved along the way that he knows he and Korra are tied to one another in some way, supposed to be together.)

He doesn’t know what they are exactly, their lives always running parallel to one another, veering away and diverging at points, only intersecting in moments, and yet, they are.

In a rare instance, their lives sync.  Political tensions in the Northern Water tribe are high; he’s on a ship bound for snow and a set of twins that still set him on edge, but he’s beside her, and will be for the next five months (and after that, they will part for an unknown amount of time, like always, a strange sense of moving stability on the unpredictable paths of their lives).  

“Korra…. Are you happy?”

He watches as her eyes slip to the ocean below, the strands of her hair that wrap around her face when the wind caches them just right, and the slight wrinkles that form at the corners of her eyes when she smiles at him, softly.

“The happiest I’ve been in a while, actually,” she says, as she slips her hand into his, their fingers lacing together loosely.  Her thumbs trails up and down his in small, soft strokes over dry skin.  “What about you?”

The waves crash against the ship and cool air whips around them once more, stings his exposed skin and makes his eyes water, but the hand in his is soft and warm, an anchor.  Maybe it’s the wind, maybe it’s the waves, maybe it's nothing at all, but he swears he can hear the words, somehow.

Meant for each other.

Always.