Pshhh I can't believe I'm writing fanfiction for this already... But hey, some people were writing it before they even saw the show! :D

Had to edit it - Tenzin & Pema actually have a 16 year age difference. Only a few words were changed so don't worry. :)

"Are you okay?" Pema asks him the day after they return home from the South Pole. Tenzin doesn't reply for a long moment, only sits beside his pregnant wife on their bed and stares at his hands. She doesn't say a word. She doesn't need to say anything. All she does is put the book she was reading down and she moves so she is sitting beside him, their arms brushing, not pressing him to speak but letting him know that there is someone here for him.

It's been seventeen years. Tenzin thinks. He wants to say that he should be over it, but Pema told him once, after her mother died, that death wasn't something you "got over". Grief didn't leave in hours or days, and sometimes, years could pass without any healing happening.

Seeing Korra, listening to her, watching her, he found it hard to detect any trace of his father in the young woman who had mastered three of the four elements. She didn't move as gracefully and she was oddly disconnected with her spiritual side, even more so than the previous masters had made it sound. Maybe it was because she was disconnected with the Avatar's spiritual side.

"I'm fine." Tenzin tells her.

"Really?" She asks, looking up at him. She knows him well – they've been friends since they were children. She knows that he's not okay, that he misses his father. He gets like that when Pema's father visits, because he got to meet his grandchildren. Aang never got to meet Tenzin's children – he only knew of Kya's twins, named after her husband and her grandfather. Koda and Akna were babies seventeen years ago. He wonders where they are now – if they stayed in the Northern Water Tribe with Kya or went traveling with their Uncle Bumi like Koda always said he wanted to do.

"Are you really okay?" Pema asks again, shaking him from the memories.

He looks at her, the woman he's known forever and loved just as long. Her hair is messy and she has bags under her eyes, but she's the most beautiful woman he's ever seen. Not in what she looks like, just in what she says, in who she is. "I will be." Pema nods and puts her hand over his. She rests her head on his shoulder, and he rests his head on hers.

"Let's get some sleep," She tells him. She lays down and absentmindedly rubs her stomach. "I have a feeling the next few weeks are going to be long."