A.N. – I don't really ship any pairing, in any fandom. I just tend to write whatever strikes my fancy at the time. There's been a preponderance of Makorra on the site since the Legend of Korra debuted, and I find myself reading a lot of it and liking it. So, that's my excuse for this short-fic. It's set early, like post episode two.

Characters: Korra, Mako
Words: 625
Rating: K+

The Spaces Between

Night on Air Temple Island, when the city is lulled to as much of a sleep as it ever can be, is the only time Korra is able to meditate with any success. The blackness of the bay around her swallows up the sound of her even breathing, but cannot quell the thoughts going through her head. Empty the mind, think about nothing – Tenzin's advice is doing her precious little good this evening. While bereft of visual distraction, the silence is almost oppressive, an irritant in a way the inky blackness is not. The lack of noise allows her mind not to blank, but to wander. And lately, there's only one subject her thoughts have consistently ambled off into - Mako.

She worships his silences, the answers within the spaces in which he thinks he says nothing. After all, she does enough mouthing off for the both of them. It's a balance they unconsciously keep, tenuously at times. Korra, being the Avatar and all, believes that this should come naturally to her – it's in the job description and everything. But when Mako is involved, nothing is as easy as it seems.

So she hangs onto his few words and drinks in all of his postures and countenances. He's like air, she realizes – hard to grasp and seemingly impossible to master. Like her lone unfinished element, he's a goal dangling in front of her, and damned if she knows how to get there. Just like air – at times it feels like she'd suffocate without him.

Then why does she feel so safe in his presence? Fire is an unpredictable element, wrought with danger and destruction if mishandled. But it is warmth, too, a glow of life within everyone that only some Agni allows to externally express. His personality, she muses, certainly cannot be described as warm. Yet when she is not caught up in trying to understand Mako, she is totally at ease around him. In the ring, in a fight, he is as reliable as Naga. Plus, he's fiercely loyal to – and protective of - his brother.

His devotion to Bolin is something she finds herself wanting a part of. Being sheltered in a compound for her formative years was safe, but not exactly satisfying. Nor did it prepare her for the outside world, for a guy like Mako. She has to learn on the fly with him, and he's not the type to be a forthcoming teacher. With bending, sure, he's open to copious amounts of training to make their teamwork better. But outside the realm of Pro-Bending, he's semi-gruff and closed off around her in a way that he never is with Bolin.

So, despite all her studious contemplation of her teammate, she has yet to decode what makes him tick. There's only so much a small frown or a quirk of the eyebrows can convey. He puts her on edge, gets her unreasonably frustrated, and yet remains endearing despite it all. He's so, so…

Korra nearly falls over sideways out of her meditation pose. Her eyes fly open, and breathing that once was measured is now heaving, erratic. She stares out into the vast emptiness, seeing not what was there in front of her, but what had been in front of her. She relaxed, laid back on the floor, chuckling silently to herself. She'd been blind. For all her astute Mako-watching, perhaps she should have turned the inquisition within. Then again, he had a way of distracting her without her being aware of it.

He liked her; she liked him. Simple, yet not. Korra sat back up and readjusted her pose, slowly closing her eyes and drawing in a lungful of air. Night was, it seemed, truly the best time for meditation.