Bumi can always make me laugh. No matter how foul a mood I'm in, no matter how unwilling I am to smile for him, he can always coax me into a good mood. It was very hard when my mother died. Tenzin had just ended our relationship of over a decade, and I'd been depending on her to be the rock that I could lean on when the rest of my life was turned upside down. My father was buried long ago, and I found myself completely adrift and alone in the world. I refused to turn to Tenzin after what he'd done to me, and our mutual friends had made it plain enough that they took his and Pema's side in the matter. I suppose you could call it pride, but I couldn't bring myself to go crawling back to them.
I spent sleepless nights staring at my ceiling and listless days wandering aimlessly about my house. I ignored the soft, hesitating knocks on my door, and those stopped soon enough. But after about a week of quiet misery, he came bursting in without even bothering to knock. I stood there in shock, but he crossed the room in a two long strides and swept me up in his arms, saying that I must be feeling awful. I was stiff against him for a few seconds before I wrapped my arms around him and buried my face in his shoulder, sobbing like I hadn't been able to in days.
Through the tears I just managed to realize that he was in full uniform and smelled of the sea. Had he come straight from a ship? The last time I'd seen him he'd come with Tenzin to help remove his brother's belongings from the house and I'd screamed myself hoarse at both of them. He'd sailed out of town the next day and we hadn't spoken since. While I was still trying to puzzle out why he would come here, he carefully picked me up in his arms and carried me over to a couch to sit. I was a little more in aware of myself by that point and blushed hard at how badly I'd lost command of myself.
I kept my face pressed against his chest so he couldn't see how red and puffy my eyes must be. He gently rubbed my back as I tried to pull myself back under control. He started talking absently, not anything of substance, just little nothing stories from our childhood. It was a welcome distraction, but I found myself getting caught up in the little things he remembered. When he told me about the time he'd helped a five-year-old Tenzin paint on airbender tattoos, I surprised myself with a watery gurgle of laughter. After a while I felt better enough to lift my head and watch him as he told the stories. When he smiled at me, it was impossible not to smile back.
After that, he made a point of visiting me as often as he could every time he was in town. He told me he was just buttering up the police chief in case he got arrested, but his visits were always high points of my days. He made me laugh at him, at myself, at everything. It took me too many years, years that I now curse as wasted, to understand why I wished that I could see him more often than the leave he could take from the Navy. We both look forward to the day I can retire from police work and he can retire from the military and live in quiet happiness together. I still wish that I could see him more, but now his visits are spent living in one house together, and while he's here I never stop smiling.