-. Better Beginnings .-

PART V

A bottle of sake. A storm. A hotel elevator.

The very ingredients that had led to this mess of a situation, now all crammed together for a most miserable reunion. Except this time the drink was, wisely, still corked and Mako and Korra were careful to remain on complete opposite sides of the cage as it ascended.

Korra hated how awkward this was. How awkward she had made it. Once best friends now couldn't even look each other in the eye, all thanks to a mere ten minutes of foolishness more than a decade prior.

After escorting her from the rooftop, they had marched the twenty-three blocks between City Hall and the Four Elements in tense silence. Six feet of impenetrable space stretched between them and neither made any attempt to shelter from the downpour, lest it hint at fallibility. Mako had had every intention of abandoning her at the nearest corner, mission as complete as possible, when she stopped him with a shout.

"I just want to talk," she had said after ensuring they were out of the doormen's earshot. The statement wasn't entirely honest, but true enough.

"Now? Now you want to talk?" Mako had chuckled humorlessly, as if the very concept were clearly insane. The sound summoned vexation beneath the entire surface of her skin, causing veins to throb and digits to twitch.

"Yes. Now I'm ready to talk. To explain."

"I don't need your excuses, Korra. We never needed that. So goodnight."

He had been about to walk away again. Perhaps out of her life forever. For whatever reason, that wasn't an option she could allow tonight.

"I read your letters!"

It was the only thing she could think to say.

It was enough.

He froze mid-step, reconsidering. "What letters?"

"You know. The box? 'Dear Korra'?" He blinked but otherwise didn't react. With her heart lodged in her throat, she dared to continue. "I read every single one of them. All three hundred and nineteen. Twice. So I can't just let you walk away now. Okay? Please, please don't walk away."

Neither breathed for long seconds.

Eventually, he seemed to have come to a decision, taking a moment to turn his collar up and pull the brim of his fedora low over his brow for some semblance of anonymity. "Fine," he had said, brusquely stepping past her on the way to the lobby doors. "Let's talk."

The chime of the elevator arriving may as well have been a gunshot.

Both knew that neither would be leaving this place in the same state that they enterred.

She welcomed him into her suite like one would a diplomat, stiffly suggesting that he make himself comfortable as she fetched some towels and put on a pot of tea. First he scanned the room, as if expecting to encounter booby-traps, before hanging his dripping hat and coat onto the nearby rack. His gaze was then drawn to the dining table. It was a rather strange sight, she supposed, in this elegantly decorated space. The entirety of its surface was covered with carefully arranged piles of paper - his letters - blanketing the wood as completely as a thick layer of snow.

He reached out to touch one, brushing away the remnants of ash, brows furrowed. Alone in the kitchenette, Korra was trying and failing not to stare. The kettle was blindly pushed onto the burner but then, thinking better of it, she instead reached into her rucksack for Jinora's offering.

"I don't know about you," she muttered before uncorking the bottle with her teeth and spitting it onto the counter. "But I could use a drink."

With shaking hands, she filled two small, porcelain cups and Mako felt his own nervousness ease upon seeing the evidence that she was still human. The emotionless, beautiful-like-frost-was-beautiful, Avatar mannequin from the party was gone. This was warm blooded Korra is all her tangled, dirt-covered, no-holds-barred glory. It was the Korra he had fallen in love with and continued to love in the form of Rei.

There was no need to remind her of how similar they were. He must have listed hundreds of examples in the letters. From the gusto with which she slurped her noodles to the crooked grin to the obsession with all things in competitive bending.

Over the last two weeks, Korra had memorized it all. A little lifetime's worth of scraped knees and tiny failures and loneliness but also air scooter victories, first crushes and smiles. He wondered if she had felt her first surge of maternal pride when reading about the new pro bending rule book that Rei and her friends were trying to get published, as it included a fourth airbending teammate into the fray.

They didn't talk about any of that though. Not yet. He silently decided that they had had enough of the past.

What mattered now was the future.

"She's going to figure it out soon enough," Mako felt need to warn before accepting the offered cup. "She's smart. And you hanging around the temple is only making it more obvious. She already knows that we were teammates and that our relationship was...complicated."

Korra nodded as she took a hearty sip, more as a delay tactic than anything, completely disregarding Jinora's suggested excuse to toast the solstice.

After the scene she had pulled to get him here, she maddeningly found herself without any idea of what to say. Alternatively, Mako, who had originally planned on staying silent, found he could not shut himself up.

"She asked about you only once. Again, she's smart. She knows me better than anyone. She knows that it hurts to talk about. So she doesn't. She's kind."

Korra nodded again, swigging until her cup was drained.

"It's been hard. She was far from a patient kid. That's changing. Slowly. She's growing up. It's quite amazing to watch, actually." With a staggered breath, Mako stared into the abyss of his drink as Korra began to refill hers.

He hadn't consumed a drop of alcohol since he lost his Chief title back in the Republic. Not because he thought he still couldn't show restraint, that especially dark period had been eternally brightened by Rei's arrival, but because he simply hadn't felt the need to indulge since. Being a parent, a role model, had been his sole and unencumbered focus for so long now, he had forgotten how to be anything else.

Tonight, he managed to carve a loophole out of the carefully constructed, intangible contract that dictated his every decision. The serving was knocked back so that she could refill his cup immediately after hers. They then took seats at opposite ends of the table, the letters resting between them, radiating years of pain and hate and anger but above all love.

Another few sips and finally, as the effects spread through her system, Korra could feel her tongue begin to loosen; straining to match a smidgen of the heart-wrenching facts that he had drowned her in with ink. "I suppose I should tell you...tell you how this all happened."

"I know how it happened, Korra," he said through a scoff. "I was there. And I have the scars to prove it."

It took all of Korra's willpower to remain in her seat, fists clenching into paper until a grating crunch bounced off the damasked walls. "Look, I know I'm not perfect. I know I've made mistakes but - newsflash - so have you. So...so for just a few, damn, minutes, will you please just shut up and listen? Please?"

In response, Mako leaned back into his chair, sweeping his hand across the table as if summoning a jester for entertainment.

Korra swallowed the rage spurred by his nonchalance, letting it boil and reduce low in her belly. She supposed he was allowed a few minutes of being a jerk. It was a small price to pay for his undivided attention, made obvious by his practically unblinking eyes.

He was listening. So Korra spoke.

Firstly, she told him about how she had been in denial for weeks after their encounter. As construction began on the new South Pole Healing Center, she ignored the changes to her body like most would a pimple or an insect bite. That is until the frequent and intense bouts of nausea forced her to seek Katara's advice. Of course, the waterbending Master was able to diagnose her "ailment" in less than a minute.

Back then, instinctively, Korra had burst out laughing. It was still a well publicized fact that she had last been romantically involved with a woman. One of the many pros to the relationship was the impossibility of such consequences. The idea was simply preposterous. Literally, inconceivable.

It took a full hour and another mortifying loss of her stomach contents in the middle of the Center's freshly tiled lobby before she allowed herself to remember. And when reality finally dawned, instead of crying or cursing or any other sort of humane reaction, she instead punched a hole straight through the nearest wall of solid ice.

In the present, dim light of the Ba Sing Se hotel suite, Korra paused her tale to crack the still sensitive knuckles of her right hand. Another drink was necessary to dull the pangs.

After a deep gulp, she continued.

She told him that as Katara set and healed the broken bones, she had tried so very hard to dredge up some wisps of enthusiasm. A baby, no matter its origins, was a blessing. When that failed, after nearly a week of soul-crushing depression, unwilling and unable to eat or sleep or even leave her room, only then did the waterbending master offer her an escape while it was still early enough. If she really couldn't go through with it, then the women of their tribe had their secret ways. Only in the most dire circumstances, it was believed better to end the life than have it fester in such a poisonous environment.

It was that offer, the horrifying idea of purposefully killing a piece of his spirit, that forced her to pull it together long enough to survive the incubation period.

Hapless accident or not, the being deserved a chance.

"I was going to tell you. Katara really wanted me to. I wrote at least twenty versions of the same letter but...well, last we spoke, your life seemed so damn close to perfect." With a sigh, she filled their cups yet again. "I knew this would change everything. Ruin all that you had worked so hard for. I knew Lin was about to make you Chief and you were gonna marry that pretty, reporter girl. I couldn't take that away. And even if I could, what would it have served? We didn't and would never work."

Though Korra's eyes remained fixed downward, she heard him shift a little in his seat. Still, he said nothing.

She moved on.

She told him about how sick and weak she had continued to become, despite genuine efforts. How near the end she barely had enough energy to light a match with her bending and thus had had no choice but to move back in with her parents, shutting herself inside the palace when her situation became too obvious the ignore. It was like being paralyzed all over again and she could feel herself growing more bitter, more resentful with every passing day.

Finally, Korra told him about the night Rei came into the world. Which was much much earlier than she should have. She told him that the pain had been worse than the Red Lotus' poison. How the blood was everywhere. How her mother had sobbed while mopping up the red pools with one hand and desperately gripping her fingers with the other, begging her to hold on just a little longer. How Tonraq had broken his arm in a snowmobile crash while travelling at ludicrous speeds to fetch Katara and yet that still hadn't slowed him down.

Korra told Mako how she had died that night.

All she could remember was pain and blood and screaming and, throughout it all, the glow of her waterbending Master's gentle hands working furiously.

When she woke up, days later, she remembered discovering the jagged stitches across her abdomen, being informed that key parts of her anatomy had been damaged beyond repair - there would be no other children in her future - and then, to add devastation to injury, her mother lastly broke the news that in the midst of it all - by pure, coincidental bad timing - Katara had been welcomed by the spirits.

Neither Tonraq nor Senna ever explicitly said it, still, Korra knew that the Master had spent more energy than she had in stock to save them both. Thus, even without the multitude of other, practical reasons for not wanting to take on such a responsibility, her relationship with the tiny being was doomed from the start.

She couldn't love the child. She simply couldn't.

"Too much had already been sacrificed," Korra stated this as an unarguable fact. As though it were a simple, algebraic equation with only one possible outcome. Two plus two equals hate.

Thus, the adoption had been set up swiftly and quietly. That horrific chapter was intended to fade in time and she could continue her Avatar duties with newfound dedication. Everyone, the whole world and Mako especially, were supposed to be happier as a result.

That had been the plan. Until Tonraq took matters into his own giant, clumsy hands...

When she finished, Mako could only nod. Not because he agreed but because the only other possible reaction was to shake her for being so ridiculously shortsighted. After downing the bottle's dregs, he stood and strode briskly towards the door without so much as a goodbye.

He couldn't deal with this pity party. His life hadn't been all smiles and sunshine either, but he still would never - could never - abandon family. No matter how crazy things got. Such selfishness, though human, was unforgivable. You didn't excuse the person dropping shards of themselves onto the track just because stragglers managed to limp across the finish line with minimal blood loss.

He had just started to turn the knob when the metal suddenly turned to putty within his palm, melting around the lock and barring the exit.

"Are you going to tell her?" Korra asked, sounding uncharacteristically meek. "About me? About what I did?"

Mako released a deep, furious exhale. "No. But if she asks, I won't deny. I won't lie to her."

Korra nodded. "Okay. That's fair I guess."

"The door, Korra," he growled. He needed to get out of there. Though not entirely drunk, years of abstinence led to him getting more muddled than expected. And simmering below the surface of his anger was something else. Something that he hadn't felt stir in ages.

It terrified him.

"Right. I'll-I'll get it." Instead of bending the mechanism back into shape from the table, she instead walked over to join him at the entrance. With a delicacy reserved for only the most sensitive of tasks, she braced a hand on his lower back as she leaned around to grasp the knob. She reformed its elaborate shape in inestimably small increments, stretching the moment - the contact - like a rubber band begging to snap.

They both knew what she was hinting at. What she was silently asking. It was so stupid, so ludicrously inappropriate post-confessional, that Mako considered blasting the door off its hinges just to get away.

Because worse than her asking, was his wanting her to ask.

It was almost like that fateful night all over again. They were drawn to each other. Like magnets. The insistent pressure of her fingers burned like a hot iron even though the layers of his clothing, reminding him that, apparently, there was to be no middle ground here. They either had to live dimensions apart or clash completely, as close as two beings could get.

When she kissed him - and they both knew she would eventually kiss him, so there was no point in stalling - he threw a decade's worth of frustration into his reciprocation - as they both knew he would indeed reciprocate. His lips pressed against hers so forcefully that the back of her head hit the wall with bruising force and he pinned her wrists up in similar fashion.

She let him. Of course both were aware that he could be sent sprawling with a flick of her fingers if she really wanted to, but the roughness was encouraged, understanding that he needed to feel like he had some - any - influence on her actions or inactions.

All of a sudden, it was exactly like that fateful night.

It started fast and desperate; two people still trying to find their place in the world and temporarily seeing it in one another's skin. He wanted to reenact a shadow of the passion they used to share; to be reminded that such raw, senseless feeling could and did still exist in him. She, alternatively, wanted to forget; to fold time to the seam where they were teenagers giddily in love and eagerly exploring newfound sensation.

Most of all, both simply wanted to get lost alongside one another; to enter a state where nothing they did or would ever do to each other mattered. They could just be Mako and Korra with a virgin clean slate; two strangers will little else to care about except impending release.

Maybe that was how it started. After a few minutes of groping and pulling and please, just as her breathing started to rise in pitch, Mako lost the fire. The fevered anger was receding and he was starting to remember how this used to happen. Back at the start. Before the primal overwhelmed the sentiment and they began doing this sort of stuff more to shut each other up and vent fury rather than to actually be together.

This wasn't how it was supposed to be.

He pulled away from her lips - it was like ripping off a limb - and instead buried his face into the crook of her neck, both breathing deeply in a desperate effort to cool down.

"You should have told me," he muttered into her shoulder.

Damn it. His voice; it was so obviously broken.

He felt Korra nod against his cheek and she trembled all over, fingers clenched into his hair for a tether. All of it was a silent plea for him not to let go, no matter what came out her mouth next.

"Yes. In retrospect, I should have told you. But even if I had, if we're being ourselves and honest tonight…" She pulled his head away until their eyes met. Gleaming amber and frost-bitten blue, both burning. "I still would have left. You wouldn't be any less angry, less hurt today."

"You don't know that." The completed family image he had always conjured in dark times began flickering behind his eyes like a dying lightbulb. "We could have been happy. I could have made you happy."

"I'm the Avatar. I'm not meant to be happy. You of all people should know that by now."

"Then what's the point of this?" He gestured at what little space remained between them. "Of us?"

"The point, Mako, for me at least, is to forge a connection. To touch upon that which I am built to protect so that I actually want to protect it and can convince the spirits to also. I'm still alive, still fighting, all because of you." She kissed him again, gently this time, tears gathering under her lashes at the crude intensity of it all. "So please...please remind me of what I've given my life up for? Remind me why humanity is worth preserving?"

Without really knowing why or how, he felt himself nod. Calmly. A man with a purpose detached from any affiliation with logic.

In a couple of fumbling, graceless steps, they made their way to the suite bedroom, knocking the table covered with the letters and sending most of them cascading to the floor. He took his time to strip her bare, piece by piece, purposefully slow and delicate even though she was trying to rush. Eventually, she succumbed to the change in pace and her hands took a less frantic path, moving like waves through his hair, down his back, around his biceps and on repeat, discovering and memorizing the slight changes to his body.

When the thick scars on her lower abdomen were revealed, she couldn't help but immediately try to cover the mess with her hands, but he kissed around them until the nervous tension eased and was replaced with a whole other type as his lips traveller lower, stoking the flames higher with every brush of his tongue and fingers.

He hadn't performed this specific act in an especially long time, not even during the last few weeks of their relationship. There had never been the time or space as trysts were usually on the clock in semi public places. But he still remembered, he could never forget, the first time he got it right. She had continued trembling for minutes afterward, thighs clenching around his ears, breathing erratic, unable to form coherent sentences. It was a memory he used to summon while alone after working the beat in Republic City. When they were still friends and the guilt and anger had just started to take root but had yet to blossom. He summoned those skills and pressed into her with purpose, determined to coax a much delayed encore.

As her sighs turned to staggered gasps, so did the whine of the electric lamps, buzzing with incremental energy. He felt a breeze flutter through his hair even though he knew all the windows were closed. And when she finally hit her peak, the earth shook in time with her spasms.

It was all a jarring reminder of how unrealistic his family fantasy had been. She would never belong to him. They would never have had the quiet, lazy kind of love he had at one point expected and always wanted. Not permanently at least. She belonged to the planet, to the Spirits, to serve every human that lived.

Later, after she took charge and brought him home inside of her, he felt the years of anger and hurt flow from his veins as if she were bending poison out.

It wasn't fast. It wasn't frenzied. They had done that often enough and the satisfaction was shockingly temporary. This was a new beginning and an end. A welcoming embrace of a new friend in addition to a tearful goodbye to a past lover.

He finally understood. He accepted her choices. And he now knew, beyond any shadow of a doubt, that she had kept the promise they had made to one another the day they decided to end their relationship.

She still and would always love him.

"I can't stay," she told him in the afterglow, as they both watched the barely discernable glow of spirits dancing across the ceiling, having been attracted by the power surge from their Avatar.

Mako nodded. "I know. I get it. This was a one time thing."

Korra's brows scrunched together as she considered. "We keep saying that, but it never is, is it?"

He laughed. He couldn't help it. It was undeniably ridiculous how many times they ended up entwined despite all efforts to the contrary. "You're right."

"So. How about this time, we don't say it? How about this time," her fingers threaded with his and he swore he could see a glimpse of glowing threads tying them together "how about we say until we meet again? Huh? Personally, I think it has a much better ring to it."

"Until we meet again. Hmm." He let the words marinate for a while. His past self would have insisted on all or nothing. She either committed to him fully and wholeheartedly or they'd tear apart - tear him apart - and he'd try to move on. Try to find some fraction of the heat she inspired but in the arms of another.

Maybe because he felt too old, too exhausted, to even feign such a potential. He didn't want another life. He hadn't felt that stirring, the intense need to lose himself in someone else's body since before Rei was handed to him and exploded any concept of calm. It hadn't been a priority. Not until Korra dared to show her face again.

If this was all she had to offer, it was enough.

"Until we meet again," he said more decisively, pressing a kiss into her hair.

Korra smiled, truly at peace for the first time in what felt like ten thousand years.

As she fell asleep within the cradle of his arms, Mako decided that he no longer cared to track down whoever had had the gall to steal and ship those private letters of his. Whoever they were, he owed them nothing but gratitude.

When Rei told him that Master Kai had cleared her for her tattoos, Mako almost fainted. The idea of his little girl not only committing herself to the airbenders, but choosing to go through the hours of hand carved bamboo needles breaking her skin repeatedly...it was enough to make him want to lock her in her room and throw away the key.

But she was eighteen now. Far past any real influence, though she feigned otherwise sometimes. If only to humor him.

He participated in the ritual gathering of the mountain, blue moss alongside her friends and teachers, as it required close to twenty pounds of the stuff to create just enough ink for one set. It was an especially laborious process that modern tools had probably abolished the need for, but she explained that that wasn't the point.

A new airbending Master needed the support of the entire community to take that final step. She needed to prove in the most basic of ways that she was committed to their causes, their way of life, and would never dare to take shortcuts.

Moving into her new quarters in the Ba Sing Se Air Temple was technically easy since she wasn't allowed any large, earthly possessions. It was hard to keep his eyes from burning as he watched her make the circuit of her room, picking up each object and then putting it down as it was deemed not important enough. Not the stuffed fire-ferret she had slept with every night since he could remember. Not the probending helmet from her high school's championship game. Not even the jewelry box filled with ropes of beads composited by her best friend and cousin, the now twenty-five year old Kira.

In the end, she took only a few loose photographs and the beaded comb Mako had bought her for the temple's inauguration party five years prior. Even though, very soon, they both knew that she wouldn't have a use for it. Its purpose was more security blanket than accessory.

He didn't sleep a wink that first night, haunted by what he knew were unlikely scenarios of her breaking down in tears at the first swipe of the razor across her scalp or screaming wildly, having to be held down when the needles dipped in blue ink pressed into the tops of her hands.

He half expected her to rush into his arms the next morning, begging to be allowed back home, insisting that this had all been an experiment gone horribly, horribly wrong. But as he took his seat in the front row reserved for family, he caught a glimpse of her waiting behind the altar in a hooded robe, and she waved with more exuberance than usual, practically beaming.

They were a minute from starting, the other apprentices lighting the incense and adjusting the chimes, when she entered the temple.

He felt Korra's presence in the form of a chill running up his spine, making the hairs stand up on the base of his neck. This was only the fourth time she had returned to the city since they had made their pact. Though she had always been sure to alert him of her arrivals, needing him to be fully aware of where and when they could find privacy and disappear into each other for a few hours, this was the first time she ventured into the public.

Turning his head, he watched as she shuffled down a middle row, intending to find a seat among acolytes that she didn't know the names of. He was surprised by the bubble of irritation that rose in his throat. Without thinking too much about consequences, he gestured for her to join him in the front.

Even from the distance, he could see the uncertainty in her eyes. It dulled a little as Jinora and Kai, the Master and Mistress of this faction, took to the altar along with their young son, Aang, and then Tenzin, Kya, Bumi, Pema, Meelo, Ikki, Bolin, Opal and their five children, Kira, Jade, Mei-Lin, Reno, Toph, and so many other friends filled the remaining row's spaces. Mako kept his hand on the seat next to him in reservation, his eyes never leaving hers, an inviting smile on his perfect lips.

She practically had no choice.

She was glad.

The bells rung out their first, haunting notes just as Korra settled beside him and the anointing ceremony began. When Jinora pulled back Rei's hood, revealing her newly shaved and inked head, Mako couldn't help but gasp, his chest tight, moisture gathering in the corners of his eyes to his horror. Automatically, Korra's hand covered his on his thigh and she felt him relax as their fingers intertwined.

He must have been holding his breath the entire time, for he took a deep, shuddering gulp of air when the applause started. He didn't let go of Korra's hand. Even as the rest of the audience rose in standing ovation, he was rooted to his seat, perhaps afraid that if he moved he would float away.

Korra not only let him, but held on more tightly, knowing that the least she could do was act as an anchor now. When her eyes flicked back toward the stage, the airbending Master Rei was found to be watching them, a barely discernible, crooked grin on her lips which Korra could not help but mirror almost exactly.

The Avatar kept her distance in a dark corner throughout most of the after party, watching with equal parts curiosity and pride as the young woman received a long line of well wishers, her enthusiasm and appreciation never wavering.

"She's a very talented airbender." Korra was startled by a voice whispering into her left ear. She hadn't noticed Tenzin sliding in until it was too late. "Best I've seen in this generation. Despite an admittedly rocky beginning. Her primary strength is that she cares. Youths like her are the reason I can retire comfortably now, knowing that the temples to come will be taken care of. I hope you don't mind me saying, but you should be very proud."

Korra exhaled deeply before daring to meet his wisened, grey eyes. An old man now, looking at more years behind than ahead, she was surprised to see that he now walked with a cane. All her life, he had always seemed so impervious, but she was reminded on a daily basis that all beginnings had an eventual end.

Time was the true master of the elements; wearing away at rocks, snuffing out flames, trapping air and evaporating water.

"Thank you," she responded genuinely, even though she loathed to take credit for any fragment of the new Master's successes.

Only one person deserved that.

"Avatar Korra?" A few minutes later, after Tenzin had been re-absorbed into his ever growing family circle, Korra found herself alone when Rei approached. She swallowed the urge to run and instead stood straighter, bending up the earth a little around her boot heels as extra incentive to remain still.

"Master Rei. Hello." They both bowed with equal formality. At this close range, Korra couldn't help but notice that the girl had grown slightly taller than her. "And congratulations. The Air Nation is lucky to have you."

"You honor me with your presence. I appreciate it. Greatly." She stated this as honest fact. No question as to why the Avatar had crossed dimensions and half the continent to attend a technically insignificant anointment. Korra strongly suspected that any explanation would be redundant.

Actually, at this point, she was sure of it.

"So. I guess...Why did...Urgh." A hand was slapped to her forehead with trademarked tactlessness. There was no point beating around the bush. "How long have you known?"

Rei smirked that same, hauntingly familiar, crooked smirk. "Does it matter?"

After a moment's deliberation, Korra shook her head. It really didn't. Anyone who glanced at them side by side could easily come to the same conclusion, let alone someone with insider knowledge of Mako's past. Another thought, for the first time, then hit her like a bolt of lightning and her eyes grew into shimmering pools. "It was you, wasn't it? You brought the letters to my hotel room after the inauguration?"

Rei's smirk didn't budge. She remained purposefully, completely silent.

Korra would have been annoyed at the blatant manipulation if she hadn't been so grateful of the result. Over Rei's shoulder, she could see Mako watching their exchange. Where he once shown only fear at any minor interaction, today he was found to be smiling softly.

"You'll take care of him, won't you?" Korra's gaze whipped back towards Rei. Gone was the easygoingness that had held fast all day. Now, in this dark corner with her back to the party, did she dare to let the expression slip, lips quivering and brows together with obvious worry. "He's delicate. And I can't be around to keep him together anymore. Promise me you won't hurt him?"

It was the only thing Korra couldn't promise. Her very existence hurt Mako. That wouldn't change until the day she died. But there was one thing she could offer.

"I'll try. I promise that I will never stop trying."

Rei closed her eyes and took a cleansing breath. When they opened again, the bright amber color as intense as ever, her smile had snapped back in place.

It was enough.

Out of nowhere, a gaggle of orange-robed apprentices swarmed and lifted Rei up onto their shoulders, giggling manically about something called the "traditional dunking" and Korra took the opportunity to escape to the staircase. A minute later, she was experiencing the party in the way she preferred; quiet and detached, monitoring from a balcony above like a gargoyle perched on a spire.

When warm arms snaked around her waist from behind, she remembered that detached wasn't always an adjective she liked to assume. Especially as scorching lips pressed against the side of her neck, making her shudder. She immediately spun in his embrace and captured his mouth with her own, determined to try keeping her promise to Rei - the only thing she had ever promised their daughter - in the only way she knew how.

"Take me home," she whispered between frantic kisses.

She felt him hesitate. Just for a second. Considering.

His apartment was only a few blocks away, much closer than her Upper Ring hotel, and it had become so insufferably dark and empty since Rei's departure.

Perhaps a visit from the Spirit of Light was the exact renovation it needed.

Hand in hand, they left the party, never once looking back.

Author's Note: Thank you all who follow me, notes me, review me and have been entertained by this story. It will never cease to amuse/amaze me how sometimes I start writing these one-shots and they become these giant, chaptered monsters. I hope the ending was satisfactory. Till next time. Makorra [with Korrasami acknowledgments] forever!