Wasted time.
I cannot say that I was ready for this.

.

.

She sees him every day as she rises in the sky. She comes around through the atmosphere and sees him descend below the horizon, going to the place she has just left. She only has a few minutes to look at his face, and she can barely do it because he shines so brightly. He looks back after a while. They are stuck staring at each other until he goes away and the sky is dark again.

He illuminates the sky during the day and she looks after the world when he is not there. They are caretakers. They look after the world.

He is the sun, and she is the moon.

They are separated.

.

.

Even though he can barely see her, because her light depends on his, and he is - damn it all - too bright to witness her fully, what he can see destroys him, knocks the light out of his soul, and stuns him. He realizes he's not supposed to be stunned - he's the sun. But the moon is the most beautiful thing he has ever seen.

And he can't get to her.

.

.

Mako thinks about what he will do if and when he can get to the moon. He walks around the spirit world after nightfall and wishes that they didn't have to take turns taking care of the world. He wants to spend time with her. He doesn't know her name because since the beginning, they have been swapping out. Looking after the earth as it turns. Lighting it up day and night. He wants a break. He wants the chance to talk to the beautiful spirit that he shares this task with.

He asks another spirit how he could do this.

The spirit tells him to send his prayers to the center of the spirit world, where maybe somebody will take up his offer. He is nonchalant at first, thinking that they are spirits and he has eternity to get to her, but when this spirit disappears, replaced by another with white hair, he is frightened. Immortal and frightened. His prayers become more frequent. He puts them on the Tree every night after he sees the new moon rise in the sky. It's because it isn't her. He tries again and again.

Soon, someone comes to him with a bargain.

.

.

Mako is sitting down under a shade tree, trying not to burn it up as he looks around the spirit world. It's odd to see things cast shadows away from you, because you yourself are the source of light, but in the spirit world, he doesn't have to worry about that. He's just another spirit here.

The creature approaches him calmly. It's a sky bison, like the ones from the physical world. It transforms into a woman, and is able to talk to Mako. He stands up.

"I have seen your prayers on the Tree," she says.

"Have you?" Mako says.

"You are the sun spirit," the woman says. "I am the sky spirit."

"What is your name?"

"Yangchen. I have come here to grant your wish," the woman says. Mako notices her flowing yellow robes and shifts his stance. He looks at the woman with hard eyes that soften as he realizes what she's offering.

"Wait...really?"

"Yes. These are the circumstances," Yangchen says before kneeling. Mako kneels with her. She conjures a picture in the ground in front of her with her hands. She uses the dust to make pictures appear. She shows a man who looks like Mako in the physical world, where there are buildings and people everywhere. He looks a little different. It clicks in his mind that this is what she has planned.

"So," Mako says, waiting, "this is..."

"I am going to make you human," Yangchen says, and Mako lets out a stunned sigh.

.

.

But when worlds collide,
and all that I have is all that I want.

.

.

Mako is incarnated into a boy whose fire flows from his hands and fists, even his mouth in certain circumstances. It's hard at first, being human, having a family, but he doesn't realize it yet. He doesn't know whose spirit lives in him. The spirit that he is.

He's an only child for only two years before his parents bring another into his world. His brother, Bolin. He's never had anyone, only the world. He thinks the baby is cute for awhile, but when they get older, he begins to annoy him.

The annoyance goes away when their parents are murdered. Mako protects Bolin now, all the time. He's learning what it means to be human.

His childhood is the most difficult thing that he's ever been thrust into. His little brother depends wholly on him for everything - food, protection, love, everything. He's never loved anyone. He thought he loved the moon spirit, and he still catches himself staring wistfully up at it as he tries to tell Bolin stories late at night, stories about the spirit world that materialize in his brain like they've been waiting around for centuries. But he's ten. He doesn't understand much, but he's beginning to.

They get off the streets when Mako is sixteen, hardened and distrustful from years of defending himself. His trusting nature was challenged into submission long ago, and now the only person he trusts is his brother, and himself. They join the pro-bending circuit and spend their nights in a building that illuminates the shore. He likes the illumination, but he doesn't know why.

He likes firebending even more. He likes seeing the flame, a substance which he can control and use to fight, in his hand. He likes its flickering. He likes the inconsistency of it, and he likes that it isn't tangible, but still dangerous. He can't explain it, but he feels tied to it spiritually. Fire is his element. It lights up the darkness.

Two years later, the arrival of the Avatar in Republic City, his hometown, is announced over the radio.

She sneaks into his match the next week.

.

.

The words seem to flow
and the thoughts, they keep running.

.

.

Mako doesn't know what to think of the girl at first. She's headstrong, and bright, and very pretty, but she's just there to watch the matches. He plays the game in a trance, because if he doesn't win, he won't have a place for his brother to lay his head. And for the person he knows best in the world, he'll do anything. Then he finds out she's the Avatar. He feels like a moron.

She blows holes in his emotional wall easily when she helps him recover his brother from the Equalists. She manages to keep making him feel like a moron, but strangely, he likes it.

He meets another girl, and they have a thing, but he really can't keep his mind off the Avatar, Korra, even when the world starts cracking at the seams and he feels drawn to her more and more, especially when she goes missing and he nearly loses his mind. He finds her again, on the back of her polar-bear dog, and his chest loosens its constriction when he sees her beautiful eyes again. She moves around. He pulls her down and she shifts in his arms.

"I was so worried," he says. "Are you alright?"

"I'm fine," she says, and he relaxes a bit, looking down at her, holding her in his arms. "I'm glad you're here."

"You're safe now," he says as he places her atop Tenzin's sky bison.

.

.

When her fortitude is tested, he feels as if his is also tested. He trusts her more than anyone now, and that feeling of having known her before is overshadowed completely by the feeling he has in his chest that pulls him toward her. It's an old feeling, and he doesn't understand it at all. It binds them. He follows her into danger willingly and protects her when she falls.

When her bending is taken, he feels helpless as she walks into the snow. Without even a jacket to keep him warm, he follow. He'll always follow.

.

.

And all that I have is yours.
All that I am is yours.

.

.

Korra walks helplessly out into the tundra and looks at her old home when she hears him following her. He calls her name. He asks her to wait.

"Go away," she says.

"I will," he says. "But I just want you to know, I'm here for you," he says sincerely. She doesn't hear the meaning behind his voice yet. He's not just there for her. Even he hasn't realized it. He's there for her.

"No, I mean, go away. Back to Republic City. Get on with your life." But he can't.

Korra's protectiveness over the world has swollen large with this incarnation of her spirit. She was always just waiting for this role.

"What are you talking about?" he says.

"I'm not the Avatar anymore. You don't have to do me any favors," she says, stepping away. He follows, stopping her with the touch of his hand on her shoulder.

"I don't care if you're the Avatar or not," he says, and her breath catches in her throat.

"Listen, when Tarrlok took you, I was losing my mind at the thought of never seeing you again. I realized..."

Korra has turned around and is looking at his face as it shifts from worry, to sympathy, to confliction, and back to determination. He steps forward and when he says it, brings and hand to hold against her face.

"I love you, Korra."

She gasps and shuts her eyes. She can't accept it yet. Her role is over. The world needs someone new, someone who can protect it.

"I...I can't."

"Korra!"

.

.

Her bending is returned by the previous Avatar, a spirit she hadn't seen before and wouldn't recognize as part of her spirit's journey until she left the physical world. But it's not that time. Her feet return to the ground, and she senses someone behind her. It's someone important. She turns as the lights leave her eyes.

It's him.

She smiles. She knows him. His shocked face dissipates quickly when he sees hers. He smiles, and walks toward her. He doesn't have to worry anymore. Neither does she. She runs at him.

He catches her.

Korra is set down, and she looks up at the firebender's eyes. They're so bright, the gold piercing into her, not her eyes, but her heart. Her soul. She puts her hand up on the side of his face.

"I love you too," she says before wrapping her hand around the back of his head and pulling him down to her to kiss him. His lips are soft, and they melt into each other. She feels his hand on her back as she tilts her head to get closer. The pulling of their souls, the inexplicable tethering of themselves to one another, doesn't go away.

.

.

.

Oh...

Painted skies

I've seen so many that cannot compare

To your ocean eyes

.

.

.

Korra sits on the looking up at the night sky, at the moon. She likes nighttime - the moon makes her waterbending stronger, and it comforts her like an old friend.

"Hey," she hears behind her, and Mako comes to sit down beside her. She smiles at him and holds her hand out. He links their fingers together. "What are you doing?"

"Just looking at the moon," Korra says. "I love the sky," she says. She's liked it much more since airbending...it had given her a new appreciation of the vast expanse and the objects in it.

"I like it too," Mako says, but instead of looking at the moon, he's looking at her.

Korra looks up, watching the huge white sphere and the twinkling stars. It's so late this night that many of the lights in Republic City are out, and everything is a lot clearer from where she sits on the dock stretching into Yue Bay.

It's been four years since they've been together. He's a policeman now, and has trained with Chief Beifong. It's sort of unprecedented, his joining of the force, as a firebender and also as a former street kid. He still doesn't feel "former". He has a kinship with the boys and girls who are on the streets day in and day out, using their skills to survive.

Korra has been defending the world, helping it work out its problems, for longer than she cares to tell. The first issue with Amon is followed by Equalist and nonbender dissent, which she works hard in the political sphere to alleviate, mediating some conflicts directly.

Mako stands by her, he has all these years, as she thinks about her place in the world, as its protector.

"Hey," he says again. She turns her head and looks at him, widening her eyes as if with a question.

"Hmm?" Korra says. He looks at the woman she's become. Her long flowing hair has grown out since they met when she was seventeen and he, eighteen. Now they are adults. Her eyes strike at something deep inside him and he feels it physically.

So blue, he thinks before his eyes close partially before he leans in, and kisses her slowly, lingering on her mouth. He's never felt anything like what he feels with her, and he's loved her longer than anyone in his life, excepting Bolin, but what he and Korra have is a different thing. It's not just love. The pull remains; it's always there.

And it doesn't go away when they get closer.

"Spirits, Korra," Mako says once their lips part.

"What?" she says, her voice breathless and amused.

"You're just so beautiful," he says. It had taken him a while to giving her such outright compliments, but once he'd started, he couldn't stop. He said it every day. How beautiful she was, how much he loves her, how he couldn't ever be without her. "Your eyes are this fantastic blue, it just...draws me in. You have captured me," he says.

Korra's amusement goes away, replaced when she looks at him with wonder and passion, and there is a question in her gaze, never icy, but warm like the ocean in the summertime, the sun heating it. The cerulean and turquoise shades have him under a spell.

"Mako," she says. "It's been four years."

"Yes," he says, sounding completely self-assured.

"Where is this going?" she says finally. She's been waiting to ask until there was a right time, but there hadn't been in the past year and a half. They've been too busy.

Mako turns away from her, putting his hand in his pocket to pull out a box, which he flips open. He pulls out a thin silver band, and looks down at it thoughtfully. He sighs.

"My father told me that when you really love someone," Mako says, "you have to make every moment count. You have to take time to make something worthwhile."

Korra hasn't been able to breathe for the last few minutes. She wants to look at the ring, but all she can see is the tension in Mako's brow as he speaks.

"I made this...it seemed like a good mix of cultures, because here, you give the woman you love a ring, but in the Water Tribes, you give her a necklace you've made yourself. I want you to wear it," he says, suddenly blushing like an eighteen-year-old again, when she'd come into his life.

"Mako?"

"Korra..." Mako finally looks up at her, and their eyes meet, emotions too heavy for words exchanged with a glance.

"Marry me," he says.

The tension grows stronger as she moves toward him. Her eyes shift quickly to the silver band, and he holds it out to her. The moon's shining on the water, though it is dark, illuminate the dock.

Korra takes the ring. She puts it on her left hand and it fits, remarkably. The patterns carved into it resemble the symbols of the Water Tribe and swirl around the outside, wrapping around. She takes it off and looks at the inside, noticing what is engraved there. She melts, and puts it back on. She takes his hand again.

"Sorry," Mako says, blushing again, but unable to look away from her hand. "I actually kind of measured you. Asami helped me."

She laughs. "Creep," Korra says. She smiles for the first time and Mako's embarrassment melts away. She sits there looking at the ring for a few minutes and looks back at Mako, her face a mixture of joy and overwhelming emotion. It knocks the breath out of her new fiancée.

"I would be honored to be your wife," she finally says. Mako takes her hand in his and sighs.

"You really have no idea," he says, his gaze intense on her face.

"What?"

"How much I love you."

.

.

The pictures you took
that cover your room,
and it was just like the sun
but more like the moon.

.

.

As they plan for their wedding, they spend more time alone together...not that they hadn't before, but they talk about everything now, everything - even their embarrassing issues and what to do when you have indigestion and why Mako has to fix his hair in the morning and what Korra does about washing clothes and does he ever take that scarf off, ever? It goes on and on and on. They live closer now, because his job brought him to the ferry across from Air Temple Island and she meets him every morning at breakfast.

She finds out he's a fantastic cook - Bolin is better at baking, incidentally, but it doesn't matter because she likes spicy noodles and curry and isn't actually that huge of a cupcake fan, though Bolin can't imagine why.

She thought she'd loved him before, but every day it was more. Every day she doesn't wake up next to him she wishes he was there, and he becomes more than ever the one constant in her life that she can always depend on.

They fight a good amount, but they always make up for it, always apologize, and there are many hugs, though they both would argue that there weren't ever enough (but not in public).

They get a reputation in town as "Mr. and Mrs. Hat Trick" in reference to their victories in pro-bending years before. The first time it happened, Mako turned so red that he had to turn away from the person who'd said it. It had been Ikki, obviously.

"I like that," Korra says, turning toward them from her work. She and Asami did a lot of things together, including shopping for the wedding and planning for it as well as discussing work with the Council.

"What?" Mako says, his face still aflame.

"Me too. It's cute. The nickname," Asami says, searching for the name of a dressmaker among thousands of business cards she'd acquired in the process of getting married to General Iroh of the United Forces.

"Oh," he says, looking at Korra, who only smiles.

.

.

Later that night, Korra is drawn to the moon from her sleep in the middle of the night. Mako is absolutely conked out in her bed, unable to move even when she shoves him. Must be a firebender thing, she thinks. She looks up at the moon and sighs, leaning into her hand as she folds her other arm beneath her in the windowsill.

What's so familiar about it?

Korra often found herself staring up at the moon as she kept getting older and older, wanting to touch and reach out at it. She wondered if her Avatar status might help her, but when she'd talked to Aang, he hadn't known anything about this strange fixation she had found with the moon. He knew Yue, a girl who had become the moon spirit, and Korra wonders what had happened to the previous one after his (or her) death.

Did spirits die forever?

.

.

Mako has a problem, too. As his marriage to Korra grows closer, with only two weeks to spare, he always feels as if he is forgetting something. He'd given her the ring, she'd been planning it, they were together, it seemed perfect, but something was wrong.

He started to worry when his firebending began changing.

He worried more when the sun began to change.

It wasn't an obvious thing; his bending would be stronger some days, weaker others - but what was happening now wasn't normal at all. It was almost like he could feel the sun's emotions - he could tell when the sun was angry, or distraught, or gleeful, but the way he knew was by feeling these emotions himself.

His firebending reflected this - when he was mad, the sun would beat down heavily on the world, and Mako would be forced to visit the gym to take out his frustrations. Everything about it was irrational. When he was happy, the sun was bright, shining, but not uncomfortable. And when it was distraught...

Mako could almost tell it had something to do with his love.

It was whenever he and Korra were separated for weeks at a time, whenever they fought, whenever she got injured or had a nightmare, he felt destroyed inside, like he couldn't protect her. It was exhausting and terrifying - and whenever it happened, it rained, without fail. The sun hid behind a cloud and never came back out until Mako's mood was alleviated by something.

It became very strange.

.

.

When they marry, it is a bit of a disaster - Bolin had forgotten Mako's suit back at the cleaners and has to go pick it up, Mako riding beside him in socks and underwear due to the rush. Korra has a hair mishap and Pema fixes it barely before she has to go down the aisle, her father at her side.

They finally make it, looking across the altar at each other, their hands clasped. Korra smiles at him and he smiles back. The lights coming through the temple windows is colored by glass and illuminates the place.

They exchange another pair of rings and Tenzin asks them the final questions, resulting in their affirmations of love and agreements to be wed: "I do," Mako says, following which Korra tightens her fingers around his and says "I do," back. There are tears collected in his eyes, and when Korra turns her head, she sees Pema dabbing at her face.

And then he kisses her, and finally all is right with the world.

.

.

Their first night they find themselves out in the mountains, camping, because Korra had wanted their honeymoon to be an adventure, and they're in a meadow late at night, looking up at the stars. Suddenly Mako feels a tightening in his chest and looks at Korra, who is telling him the story of how the moon spirit was saved by a Water Tribe girl. She sits up.

It's too close. It's so spot-on...but he tries not to think about it then.

"You know," Korra says, looking at him, "I feel like I've known you forever."

When the sun rises, and his eyes flicker open, but he's unable to go back to sleep, wanting only to embrace his wife for another hour, but the sun's rising has prevented this.

And then he knows...all of the rules come rushing back to him.

He knows why she feels like she's known him forever.

And it's because she has.

.

.

A light that can reach it all.
So now I'm branded for taking the fall.
Ohh...

.

.

One night Korra is meditating and she meets the moon spirit. Her name is Yue, she knew Sokka, Aang, and Katara seventy five years before. She's heard the stories, and now she's talking to the spirit herself.

"You will have three days," Yue says. "When you realize it, you will have three days. After the sun sets on the third day, you must give it up."

"What?" Korra asks.

"You will know," Yue says, and disappears into the sky.

.

.

Their honeymoon quickly becomes a Spirit World journey for Korra, who senses the presence of a monster in the forest they've been traveling through. She's always holding on tightly to her husband's hand, somehow afraid he'll disappear.

It comes at dawn on the morning of the crescent moon, and it speaks something she cannot ignore. It bugs her for hours before she realizes what it meant.

"Spirit," it had said.

"I know you are," she said back as it spoke, wafting through the air like a silent message.

"Moon."

"What?"

Finally, the spirit circles around to her front and whispers into her ear. Korra notices its whiteness, like smoke, and the long whiskers it has. It looks like a fish.

"Your time is done," it says.

.

.

Oh the night of the new moon, the sky goes dark. Everything disappears with the moon, even the color from their faces.

Korra and Mako look up at the sky from their place on the lake and he sighs slowly as she looks at him, and back to the empty sky.

"It's me," she says.

"I know," he says. "I gave it up to be with you."

Korra's tears roll heavily down her face as she sobs, and Mako simply takes her face in his hand and his eyes close, tight because of the discomfort in his embrace.

"I wouldn't have traded this for anything," he says. He kisses his wife roughly at first, his emotion too great, and softens, wrapping his arms around her waist and pulling her to him.

"Goodbye," he says. "I love you."

Korra's tears and the caress she gives him as she disappears slowly, like a puff of smoke, tell him that she'd never meant to leave.

He dies the next year, brokenhearted, and his time gone.

.

.

So when you say forever

can't you see

you've already captured me
.

.
.

During the day, Korra sits on the edge of the spirit pool, in a place that resembles her sky at night. She can't see the sun from here, he's beyond the horizon, floating above the world that they've sworn to protect for eternity. She remembers him from somewhere; when she sees his illuminated face pass between the worlds with the rising and setting, sensations flood her ancient soul and she wonders who he is.

This time, he hasn't forgotten, at least his heart hasn't, but her name escapes him. He remembers he is Mako, and he's the sun spirit. He always feels as if his identity had been stolen from him, and along with it, his knowledge of the moon spirit, though he knows he loves her.

One day, another man comes to take his place. He seems well suited, a kind old man with a scar on his face who willingly takes up the post. It is almost instantaneous following Mako's return to the Spirit World.

He sits beside the pool every day now, against a tree, looking at his human skin with old eyes. The sun is still alight in them, and he looks for the girl he met in a room in another life.

One day she's sitting there, looking into the pool with those blue eyes he remembers.

"Hey," he says, shifting from his spot against the tree. He walks over to where she is and sits down, crossing his legs. She has a stick which she keeps pushing into the pool, a reflection of the night sky on earth. The moon spirit is there, lighting up the night sky. He looks at the blue-eyed girl.

"What's your name?" he asks, unable to hold back.

"Korra," she says. "Yours?"

"Mako," he says.

"Do I know you?" she says, suddenly looking away from the pool, all of her attention focused on him.

"I think you did," he says.

"Oh," Korra says. She turns back and sits down fully on the ground from where she was teetering over the pool on the tips of her toes.

"So," he says.

"So," she says.

"You seem really familiar to me."

Korra laughs and stands up, offering him her hand. He takes it as she pulls him to his feet.

"I do?" With those words, everything he'd been forgetting came rushing back, flooding his mind with memories of their shared lives.

"It's good to see you again," he says, the only thing he can think of to say.

"Just good?"

"Well..."

"Let's go, City Boy," Korra says. "I have someone I want you to meet."

Mako starts laughing, feeling like he hasn't laughed in years - eons, even. Korra pulls him toward an unknown destination and he looks longingly at her back, her hand clasped around his. He remembers how crazy she had been and feels emotions he hadn't remembered welling up inside of him.

"I missed you."

.

.