She was trying to laugh off his worry, trying to calm him down with jokes. But it wouldn't work; it only pissed him off more. How could she take this all so lightly? When he was waking up in a sweat, terror in his heart, as he watched her fall to her death in the arena. She couldn't laugh this off.
"I ALMOST LOST YOU LAST NIGHT!" He shouted it, more frustrated with her than he'd ever been.
The smile was still there, but it wasn't in her eyes, and he realized it was never really there to begin with. "If I die the Avatar will be reborn again, it might take a few years, but Avatar Aang was able to beat the Fire Nation when he was 12." She led off, giving the fact up as an offering. She may have sounded calm, but he saw through it. She was more defeated than she was calm. She could never be calm.
He knew then: she did understand that it wasn't a joke. But he was still worked up, and she didn't understand how petrified he was. He needed her to understand.
He gripped her shoulders, as if willing himself to believe that yes, she was all right and she was alive; so unlike the dream that had jolted him awake that morning. "I don't care about loosing the Avatar. I almost lost you. You wouldn't be reborn into the Earth Kingdom. You would be dead."
She looked at him for a moment, her eyes wide as saucers as she made sense of what he had said. She looked so beautiful then. "Mako-" She started, in shock, but he didn't let her finish. He let go of her shoulders and took a step back.
"Look- I'm sorry. I- I shouldn't have… I shouldn't have done that." He felt bad about gripping her shoulders like he had, but also about yelling at her. Especially about yelling at her. He was embarrassed. He hadn't meant to tell her so much, but he had seen her and something snapped. A kind of reassurance that she really was alive; he felt the fear he had woken up with and it confused him even more.
But now he didn't know what to do. He didn't know what to say to her after that. He wanted to pull her into his arms, and he wanted to feel every inch of her, and he wanted to know she wasn't lifeless in the cold waters of the arena.
He was looking far away, seeing his dream in front of his eyes again. It had all been so real. As though this were the dream: a peaceful reprieve from the pain of loosing her. But then he felt her hand on his cheek and looked to her eyes. He barely caught her crooked smirk; the one she had when she pretended she knew something he didn't but they both played along. "Mako," it was all she said, softly like she was afraid she would say the wrong thing, but it was all he needed to hear.
He gripped her to him again, crushing her to his chest.
He saw her pull the water into a funnel to propel herself after Amon, in awe of the power he always made himself forget about, then he saw the water funnel give way under her. He saw the blurry image of her fighting on the dome, taking down equalists and chi blockers like he'd never seen. Then he saw the glass give way. He hugged her tighter to him and pressed his lips to her hair.
She was alive.