Author's Note: This is a backstory sketch I did for "Except for All the Others," and it seemed interesting enough to clean up and publish as a one-shot. It's in the same AU continuity as the longer story, but it can also stand alone. I was playing around with an essentially dialogue-free style.
I have no idea whether people care about spoilers in fanfiction, but if you are following "Except for All the Others," this might be considered spoiler-ish. No major plot points are revealed here. This is just emotional context for the state of Mako and Korra's adult relationship. I felt I needed it in order to help me write their scenes. But if you are the sort of person who won't watch movie trailers or "next on" clips, you might have a different opinion than me.
The wedding celebration for Asami Sato and her new husband went into the wee hours of the morning. Nearly half of Republic City was in attendance, and the other half was gossiping about it. The bride's dress cost a mint, the rumors said, and the food was prepared by Chef Kwong himself. The Sato mansion was filled to the brim with champagne drinking celebrants, who made their way out from the overheated main room into the front parlors and sun rooms and out onto the wide lawn to fan themselves in the sultry summer air.
So hardly anyone noticed that two rather important guests had made an early exit sometime around one in the morning. And even fewer suspected that they were holed up in a central city apartment, lying sticky and naked with the window open, having finished what started as a game—her wrap falling "accidentally" over his lap so that she could reach a hand underneath, his lips grazing the curve of her ear when he leaned over to whisper a joke that made champagne bubbles go up her nose.
Mako reached out with the tip of his finger to catch a drop of sweat making a path across her collarbone. Her eyes were half closed, foggy with post-coital lassitude, a soft smile breaking across her face as they lay looking at each other in absolute quiet. He did his best to stop time, amazed that she had stayed even this long. They'd fallen into each other's arms like this a few times over the years, but she always left soon after it was over, never giving either of them time to ask why or what does it mean.
Maybe it was the heightened emotions of the evening, because it couldn't only be champagne and giddiness that drove them there. Their friend had found True Love, and there was joy in that but also loneliness. For his part, the dream of more than an empty apartment and a brother who rarely needed him was more vivid, more urgent than ever. And every option that had presented itself over the years seemed meager and wanting in comparison to the woman lying next to him.
But hers was a life of danger and uncertainty, of rootlessness and wandering. She had never imagined that kind of happy ending for herself. All she ever wanted was to be the Avatar, and so far no enticement seemed worth sacrificing one fragment of that. As she'd learned their first time around, a partner meant challenges and demands she couldn't anticipate, another person's priorities to consider, another life she might ruin. It wasn't that she was callous. It's just that she felt the pain when it all went pear-shaped like a cancer in her marrow. It was too much. Too much to risk for the luxury of staying.
But for some reason, this time she did stay. And when they woke in the morning, they made love a second and a third time, and he dared to say things he hadn't said in so long—I missed you. I'm so glad you're here. Let's do something together, just the two of us, before you have to leave town.
And to her, it felt so good to be wanted. His voice was like Naga's fur. His bed smelled like home. And she'd meant it when she said always. And so she stayed until her ship left, and while she was gone, she wrote letters—the first she'd ever written him—and even though there were pages and pages on Naga's foot problems, he kept them in his pocket until she returned.
From then on, every time she was in town, they were together. There were walks along the water, dinners in town or on Air Temple Island. They never talked about labels or said much of anything to their friends, who simply accepted this new arrangement as a matter of course. He traveled one more time to her homeland when he finally got a week off. And to her it felt like they could go on like this forever.
But one day, a few months after Asami's wedding, Korra arrived back in the city and headed over to his apartment, and when she came inside, it seemed like the living room was made of flowers. Dinner was cooking—prepared by him—and she was so afraid she almost ran. She could feel him trembling when he took her in his arms, and his lips burned against hers like a fever. Before he asked the question he'd been preparing to ask, she already knew it was coming. And it filled her with terror.
When he saw her stricken face, the tears forming at the corners of her eyes, he knew he had made a mistake, that he had read everything wrong. Shame washed over him, then grief, then anger. Because how dare she lead him on like this. But did she lead him on? Was she ever less than clear about who she was and what she wanted? Was this even the right step for them? Or was it just a way to try and make her stay, to put him more at the center of her life than he already was. He, after all,was the one who had pinned his hopes on a woman who belonged to the world. How could he expect to compete?
She was angry too. Because barring this, they could have been happy the way they were. Or at least that's what she told herself. That night she left like it was forever, and when she ran into Bolin, the congratulations died on his lips as soon as he saw her face. The next day, she was on an air bison heading in the direction of the Fire Nation.
…
Over the next year or so, she saw him only in the presence of his brother, and even then, she could barely meet his eyes. Then one day she saw him, and there was another woman on his arm. She was young, barely twenty to his twenty-five with bobbed hair that Korra told herself was ugly. Two months later, she saw that Bolin was trying to keep a secret—she could always tell—and that was how she found out Mako was engaged. And something inside her broke.
It was with four drinks and fevered blood in her veins that Korra pounded on his door after she saw him go inside alone. Her hair was wet from standing in the rain, waiting for him. When he looked at her, there was fear in her eyes softened with something that could have been love. And far less gracefully than she intended, she spilled her plea: Choose me. Pick me. Again. She threw herself onto him and pressed her lips against his. For whole minutes, he kissed back, his body one terrible ache that pinned her to the wall.
He gave in for a moment, but then he pulled back. Because she was only offering possibilities when he needed promises. Or at least that's how it seemed. So he held her by the shoulders and said the words that would close his heart to her forever. Or at least that's what he thought. I'm with her. I'm faithful to her. You said no to me already; you can't do this to me now.
She backed out the door in mortification and ran until her lungs were shredded—a very long time. And she cursed herself for what she'd done. Because while she loved and wanted him, she couldn't yet give him the guarantees he seemed to need.
When she left this time it was with the resolve to stay away for as long as it took. Republic City would have to get to her by messenger. She headed north and disappeared into the Spirit World for weeks at a time until legends started to circulate about what she did there.
A year later, the healing was mostly completed, but when she got word that his wedding had been called off, she marked the news in silence. Once or twice, he asked his friends and his brother if they had heard from her, if she was planning to come back. But they would simply shrug because she kept finding reasons not to. And she couldn't ever tell them exactly why.