Disclaimer: I do hereby disclaim all rights and responsibilities for the characters in this collection. Kudos to Bryke, indeed.
Pairing: Tahno/Korra, Mako/Korra, one-sided Bolin/Korra
Genre: Romance/Friendship/Drama
Word Count: 8,143
Rating: PG-13/T
Summary: The life and love of running, autumn, and cross-country. — Tahno/Korra, Mako/Korra. AU.
Author's Notes: Like with Bros & Broomball and Equal Pay, I'd love to one day continue this. :P Eventually. But for right now it remains a two-shot to be completed... whenever.
As my undergrad graduation steadily approaches, I am looking more and more on my high school days with softer eyes. And of course, autumn always brings out an especially wistful side of me.
This is dedicated to all of my fellow runners out there, to all of the x-country runners, and especially anyone who has experienced the breathtaking beauty of fall in New England.
Musical Inspiration: "Bloom" by Paper Kites, "We're going to Be Friends" by the White Stripes, and "The Wolves" by Ben Howard.
Beta'd by the ever-reliable ebonyquill. :)
1
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She wondered
if she were a leaf floating in the wind,
where would she end up?
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What if she never landed at all?
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"Korra, are you listening to me?" came a very distressed voice from beside her.
Korra jerked, as if flinging herself awake, and tore her gaze from outside the small, dusty windows of the school bus. Bolin was looking at her, his expression alert and his body practically bouncing in his seat. He's the kind of guy who's going to make wearing school bus seat belts mandatory one of these days.
"Korra!"
"Sorry," she coughed. "What?"
"I was saying that you completely blew their mind! Seriously, that was amazing! You're a natural. Coach Tenzin will make you Varsity for sure!"
Korra blinks. "But I just got here," she replied. "Aren't I supposed to have some seniority or something? And I know barely anything about the sport."
"Maybe seniority means something in other schools, but here it's 'if you're fast, you're fast'. And you are definitely fast! Seriously! What's your P.R.?"
"My P—what?"
"Your personal record," Bolin gestured wildly, as if he could almost taste the numbers. Too bad she didn't have them.
"I don't know," she shrugged. "I've never really been much of a runner before."
"Never been—much of a—what? How?" Bolin sputtered. "Impossible! You must have done some kind of running sport!"
Korra wondered if ice fishing was something Bolin would consider a sport at all. "Nope. Today was my first race."
"But what about at your old high school?"
Korra hid her wince. "I... was home-schooled until this year."
"Whoah, really?" Bolin looked on, surprised. "But you seem so normal!" Korra shot him a rather questioning brow, and Bolin backpedaled rapidly. "I didn't mean—I just thought—"
"It's okay," Korra waved off the rest of his apology attempt. "I know what you mean. I get it." He looked like he was about to go on, and while Korra appreciated that he was trying to make sure she wasn't offended, she really wasn't in the mood to talk about it. "I only ever did hiking and then some... rock-climbing on the side. I did a little Copoeira for a while too, but eventually didn't have enough time for it."
"Hiking! Rock-climbing! Man, you do the coolest stuff," Bolin beamed at her, and Korra could feel the heart inside of her chest beginning to put itself back together again. You know, she thought. Maybe I've been thinking about this place all wrong.
"Thanks," Korra smiled, feeling a little lighter than she did, say, fifteen minutes ago. "You know, it is pretty cool. I've been really lucky."
"And now we're lucky to have you!" Bolin elbowed her playfully, scooting lower into his seat to join her. He wasn't as careful with his knees though, and one of their teammates immediately turned around to send Bolin a mild glare for stabbing he and his seat partner in the back. Bolin quickly ushered out another hasty apology, at which point Korra was sent into a quiet fit of laughter, and the next thing she knew, he and the other teammate ahead of them were play-wrestling around the edge of the narrow aisle. With a final burst of laughter, Korra pulled on his arm to move him from the fray, and the teammates in front of them turned back around to face forward, teasing Bolin good-naturedly about how he'd already stabbed too many people in the back this season and how he was going to pay for it eventually.
"I see that you make friends rather easily," Korra joked, but only because she thought it was very, very true.
Bolin laughed, but it gave Korra pause; it sounded almost sheepish, especially with the way he was rubbing the back of his neck. "Yeah, well. You know how it goes."
No, actually, Korra thought to herself. I'm not sure I do.
She didn't respond, but Bolin quickly resumed their topic, anyway. She forced herself to keep smiling throughout the whole conversation, all the while clinging onto the little bit of light that was trying to enter back into her system after what just happened twenty minutes ago. It wasn't something she wanted to talk about... and definitely not with Bolin.
"I meant what I said earlier, you know," Bolin continued on. "After the way you ran today, there's no way Coach will have any excuse not toconsider pushing you up for the top seven!"
While Korra was pretty sure she agreed, she wasn't entirely sure how she felt about it just yet. She hadn't yet told anybody that Coach Tenzin was actually Uncle Tenzin, though not exactly in the biological sense. Even so, she wasn't really certain that she wanted anyone to find out. Besides, Korra knew on some level that she was pretty fast, but for these kids running was placed on an entirely different level; it was a completely different world to her. Did she really want to get shifted up? She'd only joined the team at Tenzin's insistence, and rather reluctantly at that. Plus, it'd only been three weeks into school and she was already feeling the fullness of her plate. Not to mention...
A soft laugh trickled down the aisle from the back of the bus, swerving in and around the chattering student athletes with freakishly perfect aim, as if the voice's owner had set the course specifically for Korra's sensitive ears alone. It was paranoia, of course, because one, it had only been three weeks and two, Asami wasn't the kind of girl to do that sort of thing.
At least, Korra hoped not.
Regardless, she slumped down even farther down into the seat, shifting her knees into the backrest in front of her and feeling the rough pleather vinyl drag along her skin as she tried to get more comfortable.
"I mean, you were working really hard for this, right? To be a Varsity runner with the rest of us? It's what you wanted, isn't it?" he asked.
"Yeah," she muttered to Bolin, plastering on what she hoped looked like a thoughtful smile. With any luck, he'd just peg her as tired. "That'd be... cool."
That night, at Tenzin's prodding, Korra went for an easy run. In the end, she didn't follow the stretching routine that he'd also recommended, although she told him otherwise, and instead spent that time laying out in the prickly grass of their backyard in the chilly, evening air.
She watched the sun whisk away into dusk and thought about how funny life could be. For example, it was funny how you could sometimes delude yourself into thinking that the boy you liked felt the same way about you. It was even funnier when it turned out that this boy, this captain of the Boys' Varsity team, already had a girlfriend, who—big surprise—was captain of the Girls'.
It was funny because she'd always heard about all of those So-Cal kids in the movies and on TV shows who came to the Northeast and went on and on about the first time they'd ever seen the snow. For someone who had spent most of her life traveling through craggy cliffs and snow-capped mountains and blue-iced glaciers, a few layers snowflakes didn't really seem like they'd be worth all the fuss.
Korra laid on her back in the yard, feeling the chilly autumn breeze, and watched the green leaves tinged with yellow rustle in the wind.
But eventually, Aunt Pema called her in for dinner and she picked herself up, leaving the leaves behind.
The next day at school wasn't as awkward as it could have been, though Korra thought that it might have been largely due to how forcefully she and Mako avoided each other during practice.
Her homework was stacked high on her desk, but Korra couldn't seem to remove herself from her bed. The desk was certainly nice enough; a secondhand wooden piece that Pema had thoughtfully picked up for her at a yard sale the weekend before she arrived, with just the right amount of character and drawer space that Korra could appreciate. For some reason, however, Korra's body just didn't want to leave the space of her bed. It wasn't particularly warm or soft since she had left the window open all day, but she was still sprawled out over it and she couldn't really find it within herself to move.
Until a chime from her cell phone had her glance toward the windowsill, anyway. It was Bolin, asking if she wanted to hang out that weekend.
She flipped the phone shut, feeling the cover shutter back over the keypad in sync with her heart, and gently tapped the brand logo with her fingernails.
Without warning, Korra sat up, retied the laces on her sneakers, and left through the backdoor.
She was running before she hit the sidewalk.
"Hey, Bolin?"
There was a pause as a voice sounded from the receiver.
"Yeah, I'd really like that. What about Saturday after the big meet?"
"You nervous?"
"What?" Korra nearly snapped. She was nothing more than a giant bundle of twisted nerves, but that didn't stop her from looking Asami straight in the eye and saying, "Of course not. Just, you know, pumping myself up."
Asami smiled thoughtfully, giving her a very knowing look, and Korra's stomach somersaulted twice over. She told herself that it was probably just because she was still bouncing in place, trying to get out all of her nervous energy, trying to keep warm, but she knew that she probably wasn't doing a very good job of fooling anybody anymore. And especially not Asami. Especially not if Mako had mentioned anything about what happened a few days before when—
"It's okay to be a little nervous, you know," Asami smiled considerately. "We all were during our first big meets. Don't worry, you're gonna do great."
Korra wanted to say something after that, anything to tell Asami that she was wrong, that she didn't need any sort of pep talk, but the idyllic captain was already making her way through the throngs of the rest of their team, pumping the other girls up and leading a few active stretches. Korra tried to follow along eventually, but she just couldn't focus on feeling the warmth in her muscles. Her mind was such a jumble of thoughts that she had to wonder if she might be doing them more harm than good.
What's wrong with you? she thought lowly, already feeling short of breath. You're Korra. This is supposed to be easy. You eat challenges for breakfast.
But before she knew it, she was being called forward to the line, and the gun went off.
"I told you!" Bolin shouted, clapping her on the back and jumping high into the air with a whoop. "Fifty-third place! Now that's what I'm talking about."
"What are you saying?" Korra rasped between breaths. The stitch in her side was burning and she'd be lying if she said she wasn't trying to visualize whether or not this might be what having appendicitis might feel like. "It's fifty-third, Bolin."
"Uh, yeah, out of more than two hundred!" he exclaims, taking her by the elbow to lead her farther away from the finish line's chute. "This is your first big meet and what will surely be your first time running as a Varsity team member—this is so not a bad thing!"
"Did I qualify then?" Korra asked aloud. "Was I one of the first seven on our team to make it across?"
"You'd have to be!" Bolin assured her. "With how fast I saw you run on Wednesday, I'd be willing to be money on it."
Korra curled over, placing her hands on her knees to catch her breath, and looked up at him with a burgeoning smile. She tried to ignore the beads of sweat dripping into her eyes, but she still ended up squinting at him, just a bit. "Really?"
"Really," he nodded. "You know, we can go check the listings right now. Your chip should have connected to the tracker automatically. If you're really that curious about it, we can go see."
"But don't you have to go get ready for your own race?" Korra asked, slowly inching her way back upright. Crap. Did her stitch just switch sides?
"I've got a half hour before Mako will start to get frantic," Bolin waved dismissively, and Korra's smile faltered momentarily. Luckily, Bolin was already leading the way before he caught sight of her slip.
They had to trek halfway across the grounds to get to the results table, and by the time they reached the score listings, Korra was already starting to feel good about how things had gone. Bolin kept her entertained with all sorts of information about what to expect at the restaurant that he was taking her to that night and soon the stitch in her side was completely unrelated to her performance. Also, she hadn't thrown up at any point during the race, although she had passed by at least one or two other girls who had, plus she wasn't even all that banged up. She could just imagine her mom's face when she went home that night and wrote her an e-mail. It would be the first time in years that she could say that she'd come home from an outing and didn't have at least twelve black-and-blue bruises to show for—
"Oh," Bolin said quietly. His face had fallen as soon as his finger had come to rest along one of the lines on the paper. Something within Korra twisted. She didn't dare look away from Bolin's profile.
"What is it?" Bolin's hand slipped away from the chart in front of him, falling limply to his side, and she knew what he was going to say before he even looked at her. Korra straightened her stance, lifting her chin high. "What place did I get?" she asked carefully, carelessly, already determined to brush it off.
Luckily, Bolin seemed more than ready to play along. "I guess the runners are a bit more prepared this year. There are a lot of really good times on here that we aren't as used to seeing."
"What place on the team, Bolin?" He started making his way back to the start-up line and Korra followed, promising herself that she would go back and see the times for herself while he was out running through the wooded portion of the race. "Bolin, just tell me, I can—"
"Twelfth," he replied, unable to completely keep his voice clear of apology. Korra blinked.
Twelfth.
"Well," she muttered. "So much for making Varsity this soon into the year, huh?"
"I'm sorry for getting your—"
"Save it," Korra swiftly shook her head. "It's my first race. Don't worry about it. I'll get 'em next time. But you still have to run yours, so get your butt in gear and get over there before your stick-in-the-mud brother gives himself a hernia."
Bolin offered her a bright, cheeky grin, a mock-salute, and: "Sí, sí, Señorita. As long as you escort me to the battle grounds?"
"So long as you don't ever butcher Spanish like that again," she laughed.
Bolin looked surprised. "You speak Spanish?"
Korra shrugged. "Enough to get by."
She wasn't sure how she felt about him smiling at her like that, like she was something special or different. She'd never had any qualms about getting a little spotlight before... but then, perhaps it had less to do with the way she was being looked at and more to do with who was doing the looking.
Speaking of.
"Bolin," Korra began, feeling more than a little strange for bringing this up. At first she'd thought she was just imagining things, but the closer they'd gotten back to the warm-up line, the more Korra realized that there was definitely a group of kids eyeing them, walking just a little ways off to the side. And they weren't exactly sending the friendliest looks.
"Hey," Korra began again, dropping her voice low. "Who's that creepy guy over there who keeps glaring at us?"
Not to mention the posse that was following him. And talk about taking school jerseys to the next level. The whole group was decked out in black and silver, all lean muscles and long limbs. Korra could practically see the high price tags of their mesh uniforms from yards away. There were only a couple of runners in the group from the looks of it and the rest were dressed in street clothes. Who are they? Fan girls?
Bolin glanced over to where Korra was openly looking, but immediately turned away. "Ohh, man," he intoned, low and deep. "That's Tahno and the Wolverines, the reigning champs, three years running. Don't make eye contact."
"What's so special about them?" Korra asked aloud, not bothering to maintain Bolin's level of caution. She let her eyes trail over the shiny uniforms, the giggling groupies, and the stern, smirking faces of the boys in the top-notch spandex. Huh, she scoffed. The other school's runners were still walking alongside them, separated only by a mere five meters or so and the occasional group of passersby trickling in between, but Bolin was determined to look anywhere else. The leader of the pack, however—the Tahno guy—kept sending over glances that send her spine crawling.
"Oh, you know, the usual," Bolin scoffed, and Korra was surprised to hear a trail of bitterness creep into his tone. "Fancy private school, fancy funding, fancy overpaid coach... Essentially everything you'd expect from a school that gets by on paying people off rather than its own merit."
Korra looked closely at Bolin then, carefully, as if she were seeing him in a new light. She'd never heard Bolin talk this way before. She was just about to tell him so, just about to consider this new, solid Bolin that she'd never really noticed before, when:
"Uh-oh, here he comes," Bolin muttered, picking up his pace ever-so-slightly. "Now don't mess with this guy, he's a nasty dude."
Korra turned back to see what Bolin meant, but Tahno was already beside her.
"Well, well, well, if it isn't the Fire Ferrets. The tri-state region's saddest excuse for a team," he drawled, never once breaking his stride. Behind him, the girls tittered and giggled, and the boys in uniform exchanged smirking glances over their shoulders.
"It's the Fire Foxes, thank you," Korra sniped, continuing forward. She didn't follow Bolin's lead and quicken her pace, however; she was in no rush to get to the starting line, and she wasn't about to let a pack of scrawny weasels chase her there.
"Which is almost worse, when you think about it," he continued, his voice—sleazy, sleazy, sleazy—sounding for all the world to be good-natured, if not for the serrated blade lying underneath it. Korra breathed deeply, keeping her focus forward. "You know there's a problem when a team's mascot is outshone by an internet browser."
"Better than a mascot known for scavenging the dead carcasses of animals it was too weak to pick off itself," Korra snapped.
A few muffled feminine gasps from the left gave Korra the most delicious, vindictive pleasure, but she held onto her smirk for later. Tahno scoffed. "I don't know if anybody's gotten around to telling you this yet, new girl, but that's how this sport works." Korra could feel him facing her more fully now, but she kept walking, eyes on the hordes of start-up runners just ahead. "You win by picking off the rest of the competition, passing the weaker, slower runners... one-by-one-by-one."
"Is it now?" she quipped."Well, I'm sure blinding your competitors with the especially reflective quality of your uniforms comes in handy. In fact, I wouldn't be all that surprised if you were caught staring into it like a mirror, distracted by the sight of your own ridiculous hairstyle."
She could hear one of the girls huffing on his behalf, but Tahno merely let the smirk spread wider across his face. "Tell me," he said smoothly, and Korra felt the goosebumps raise along her bare arms. Stupid wind, she simmered, walking ahead with purposeful strides. They were almost to the start-up point, but Tahno was still going. "How did a couple of amateur couch-to-5K runners like you manage to stick around for this long? Especially you, new girl."
Keep walking, she breathed.
"You know, if you'd like to learn how an elite runner trains, I could give you some... private lessons."
Korra stopped in her tracks. Bolin and the rest of the Wolverines' seemingly mute posse stumbled over themselves, caught off guard by the sudden halt, but not Tahno; he was already there, waiting for her, hovering right above, right where he thought he could intimidate her most. You wanna bet?
"You wanna go toe-to-toe with me, pretty boy?" she crossed her arms, glaring up into his stupid eyes.
"Go for it," he encouraged. "That is, if you can think of a way to get around the fact that my body is naturally equipped to be the superior runner."
Korra could feel her grip growing almost painful on her arms, her fingernails squeezing into her biceps with surprising strength, when Bolin cut in. "Korra, don't," he whispered. "He's just trying to bait you. If you hit him, we're out of the meet. The whole team."
Korra couldn't quite seem to hear him. She knew that there were words and that Bolin had said them, but that was about all she could gather. All she knew was that Tahno the Wolverine was standing right there in front of her, over her, leering down at her race-flushed face with something akin to intrigue, and that she wasn't going to be the first to back down.
But then the ten-minute warning whistle cut through the air and Korra nearly jumped at the sound. Tahno blinked and, just like that, the spell was broken.
"Crap, Korra, we got to get over there," Bolin urged from behind her. Tahno spared a glance to her teammate, eyes flickering with some easy-to-guess look of condescension that made Korra's toes curl with anger, and then back to hers.
"Looks like we'll have to cut the fun short, new girl," he straightened, keeping her eyes hooked on his as he leant back. "Be sure to keep an eye out for me when the runners cross the finish line," he said, releasing a laugh so deep and low that it seemed to spread across the grass. "It shouldn't be too difficult."
And with that, he turned and fluidly walked away, his company always in tow. A few of the girls sent her scathing looks from over their shoulders, but she paid them no mind; it was all she could do to not chase after Tahno and sucker-punch him to the ground. Then we'll see whose body is better naturally equipped, huh?
"Uhh, Korra?"
"What, Bolin?"
"I don't really get what you just said, and I'm not sure I really want to know, but we really need to get going."
Korra looked up, dazed, to where Bolin stood right beside her. He was staring at her warily, not quite sure what he should be doing, but she could tell that he was anxious to get started with the rest of the team.
"Oh, crap!" Korra exclaimed. "Bolin, I'm sorry! Quick, get over there!"
Bolin and Korra broke out into a light jog, making their way to the nearest entry point, box six, which is where the Fire Fox boys were located. Mako was leading the rest of the boys through a series of warm-up routines, but he was looking straight at them.
And he did not look happy.
"Bolin!" he shouted. "Where were you?"
"Sorry, man, I just—"
"The team started ten minutes ago," Mako interrupted, eyes hard. "If you're going to trash-talk the competition, you better make sure you can carry your weight on the course. And you do that by prepping with the rest of your team when you're supposed to."
"I know, it's just—"
"And you," Mako turned to a surprised Korra, who recoiled slightly from the genuine anger she saw in his expression. "You already had your race. Get back with the rest of the girls' team behind the barrier to watch."
Korra opened her mouth to protest, or at least to call him out on his bossy rudeness, but Bolin sent a pleading look at her from where he was now doing burpees on the ground, and Korra was left standing stock-still in the swirling chaos of all of the moving bodies around her. Just as she had formed the words on the tip of her tongue, a voice called out to her from behind.
"Come on, Korra!" her captain cried cheerfully. "Back here! We're going to go for a cool-down run—but first, let's cheer our boys on!"
Biting her tongue so hard that she thought she might lose it, Korra turned on her heel, feeling her spikes ripping into the cold, solid ground. She pushed her way past the flimsy barrier ribbon until she was standing alongside the rest of her cheering teammates, all of whom were calling out to the men on their team with waving hands and high-pitched voices.
Korra couldn't bring herself to shout out to Bolin or to any of the other guys representing her school—guhh, Mako, why did she have to be so stupid?—as they all lined up along the white spray paint in the grass. In fact, she was mostly grateful that she'd been able to keep quiet at all, instead of hurling herself into an hour-long rampage, which was mostly what she felt like doing. She stood among the cheering teenagers, realizing not for the first time in many days that she still had no idea how to act around so many people her age all at once. There was still so much about the science and structure of the high school social system that she simply didn't understand. She almost preferred the glaciers.
She almost felt alone.
And on an instinct that she wasn't yet totally ready to describe, Korra looked up. Not at box six, but at box one.
There was Tahno, staring back at her.
They held gazes for a full eternity, the cheers of the spectators and the sound of her pounding heart ringing loudly in her ears, and she scarcely breathed. Then, in the split-second before the gun went off, Tahno faced forward, eyes fierce, and he was off.
The gunshot echoed through her ribcage and shocked the breath back into her lungs.
When Tahno was the first to cross the finish line, Korra didn't bother to make up much of a creative excuse for not wanting to stick around for the awards ceremony. Bolin came in third overall, so most of her team lagged behind at the podium. She sent him a wave from the outskirts of the crowd and a thumbs-up when he had gotten sight of her.
Then she finished tying up her street shoes, put on her hoodie, and headed back onto the bus early to wait.
"You know," his deep voice filled up the whole space of the car. "If you decide that this isn't for you, you don't have to do it."
Korra frowned, her furrowed brow smudging against what used to be a clean window. "Are you saying I'm no good at it?"
"That's not what I was saying at all," Tenzin sighed, glancing at her from the corner of his eye. "I just mean that if you try cross-country, and you give it your all, but you still decide that it's not what your passionate about, then I'd rather that you do something that will be better for you."
"I already know what I'm passionate about," Korra muttered after a beat.
Tenzin sighed again, feeling a heavy weight settle onto his shoulders. "The mountains of Patagonia are no place for someone aspiring to get a college degree. All that time in the Tierra del Fuego and your education is—"
"My parents taught me just fine, thank you."
The car was cold and still; Tenzin wasn't the kind of person who liked to listen to anything made by composers who were still alive and Korra wasn't the kind of person who had the kind of patience needed for classical music.
"Do you have any plans for the evening?" Tenzin asked quietly, deciding that a change in topic was probably the safest bet.
Korra sighed, feeling even heavier than before. "Bolin's gonna take me to this place he found down the highway later."
"Bolin?" Tenzin sounded confused. "But what about—"
"I don't want to talk about it."
Tenzin paused, considering the implications, then nodded sagely. "Very well, then."
The rest of the car ride home was silent and for that, Korra was grateful.
Only Korra never ended up going.
She was halfway through her shower when it hit her; she realized what it was that she really wanted to do, right then, more than anything.
One apologetic phone call and a messy, half-real excuse about family obligations later, Korra was free for the evening. She left a note to Tenzin and Pema and the kids for if they got home before her, just in case, and tore off down the sidewalk, running.
According to the map she'd searched online beforehand, it was at least three miles before she reached her destination: a wide open arboretum in the middle of what Korra thought was considered pretty much a forest anyway. She didn't get why they'd slap a fancy title and some pretty stone walls around one section of nature and leave the rest of it out to dry, but she figured that was probably for the civil engineers to decide, and not for the girl who spent most of her life growing up in the wilderness in either an igloo or a hut.
She kept running, even after her legs started to burn. She'd run a 5K only that morning and she should have been taking it easy, being a novice runner and all, but Korra didn't care. She passed through gates, spun through falling leaves, sprinted up and over bridges and along winding pathways. In the back of her mind, it occurred to Korra that she was going to have to run all the way back, that she was probably going to have to actually stretch that night unless she wanted some serious muscle tightness the next day, but she let all of those thoughts go. She was just Korra. She was running.
Soon she came across a wide open pathway entirely housed under at least half a mile of glowing, bright red leaves. Korra slowed her pace, staring up in awe at the colors surrounding her, completely drawn by the beauty and the peace of the moment until she had come to a total stop. It couldn't compare to standing at the precipice of a glacier, of course, Korra's mind hurriedly compared. Obviously not.
But still.
There was something...
Something there.
Korra snapped her head downward, immediately assuming a defensive stance. She stiffened, eyeing the figure across the way with narrowed eyes.
"Whoah," he said lowly, quickly holding up his hands; he somehow managed to provoke her and to shrink back away from her in the very same breath. "Calm your horses, new girl."
Korra released a quick huff, letting the flood of adrenaline flush itself out as she lowered her guard. Well, maybe this energy will help my abused muscles, at least... But then the fight or flight left her, and it occurred to her who was standing just a few feet down the path.
"Tahno," she announced disdainfully. "What are you doing here?"
He narrowed his eyes. "It's a public park. And if you'd take a second to look around you before trying to go all Kung Fu on people, you'd see that I'm here for the same reason as you."
Mistrustfully, she glanced down, only to see that he was wearing a basic gray t-shirt and some long, dark black shorts. His sneakers were muddy, just like hers.
"I don't get it," Korra crossed her arms. "What are you doing all the way out here?"
Tahno shook his head quickly, as if waving off an irritating fly. "Have you bothered to check a map since you moved here? Do you even know where White Falls is?"
Korra frowned more forcefully. "Dude, it's not exactly like it was on my to-do list."
He scoffed and crossed his arms in turn. "It's a neighboring district," he explained, tiredly, as if shehad asked for an explanation. "The border cuts through this park."
A moment of awkward silence passed, in which Korra and Tahno stood before one another, arms crossed, without much of anything else to say.
"Swell," Korra mumbled. "Well, thanks for the geography lesson or whatever. I'll be going now."
"Hold up," Tahno turned, facing her as she tried to pass him. "How far did you run to get out here? Your school district is across town and your school choice zone is all the way on the other side of that."
She faltered. "That's awfully creepy of you to know," she bit out, squaring her shoulders.
Leave it to the creepy guy to be way too informed about school zones... and about which school zone she should have belonged to, you know, had she not been living with Tenzin's family on Temple Street instead.
"Creepy?" Tahno scoffed, taking another step. Korra didn't shift back, but instead dug her heel deeper into the ground. Although Tahno was considering her carefully, he didn't seem to notice her discomfort. Or care. "You really haven't been running for very long, have you?"
"What's that got to do with anything?" she demanded, back on the defensive.
Tahno eyed her thoughtfully, his shifty mind visibly churning behind his gaze... and then he released a laugh. Apparently, Korra noted with annoyance, something was rather funny. She had obviously missed it, and so she waited, warily.
"A runner explores," he snidely explained. "Sooner or later, running around familiar territory isn't good enough anymore. You get to know your neighbors' pretty well."
Korra waited for another comment, perhaps something scathing or incendiary—or even something of the same arrogant, sexist nature that she experienced earlier that day—but nothing came. She cocked her head to the side slightly, wondering at how visibly relaxed his stance was. Had he looked this at ease when she first looked up at him just a few minutes ago? He certainly hadn't looked like this at the meet this morning.
"So you're saying that you like to trespass on Fire Fox turf every once in a while?" she jabbed, but without any real animosity. Believe it, she tried, but... there was something about the leaves, she mused. It was hard to feel anything but calm amidst the fire of the leaves.
Tahno shrugged, a smirk slowly curling the edges of his lips, and confessed, "Only when I think the scenery is worthwhile."
"Duly noted," Korra said quietly. The truth was that she was barely paying him any attention anymore; she was suddenly very much captivated by the total, utter peace surrounding them. She was almost hesitant to break it. It wasn't long before her eyes caught sight of the trees above her once more and she stared up at the fiery canopy, gaping openly, Tahno or no Tahno. She could still feel him standing beside her, could feel when he took one step closer, but she paid him no mind. How long will it take for all the leaves to fall?
"Where are you from?" he asked.
Now there's a loaded question.
But instead of answering, she asked one of her own, her eyes always on the leaves above. "Who told you it was ever a good idea to ask something like that before asking for a person's name?"
She could actually hear him laugh beneath his breath, just as soft as the rustling leaves. "I already know yours, Korra."
Her head snapped down so quickly, she almost felt dizzy. But then again, that could have also been from her mounting frustration. "You knew? And yet you still called me 'new girl' all day?"
"Well," he faltered, a little unnerved by the sudden flash of anger in her eyes. "I didn't know until after I checked the result rosters." Unfortunately, his answer only stoked the flames even more, because it meant that he, Tahno of the White Falls Wolverines, number one finisher in the first big meet of the season, incredible creep and most dedicated jerk of the tri-state area, had seen her lousy placement.
"And that's not creepy?" she demanded, already shifting to start running away, to flee before he could make any comments about her horrible time.
"Whoah," he called after her, before striding into place at her side as she jogged down the path. "That's public knowledge."
"What are you doing?" Korra demanded again, glancing out of the corner of her eye to where he was running alongside her.
"What does it look like I'm doing?" Tahno retorted, though honestly, to Korra it looked like he was trying to come up with an answer just as much for himself as he was for her.
"I didn't ask for a running buddy, you know."
"Who said this wasn't a race?"
"Even you wouldn't be stupid enough to challenge somebody after having just had a meet this morning."
"Maybe if the opponent was slow enough, I could take the risk."
"Well, I'm not willing."
She could feel the smirk growing wider across his face. "Oh, yeah?"
Korra scoffed, willing her legs to go faster to just lose him already. "I'm not chicken."
"Could have fooled me."
"Just because it's not today doesn't mean that I'm not going to be up for it later. Besides, I still have a bone to pick with you about the crap you said earlier."
"By all means, pick away."
"Oh, no," Korra jabbed a finger into his shoulder. Hard. "I came out here for a quiet run through the park. Not to get all worked up by beating a sexist, chauvinistic asshole into the ground."
Tahno's brows rose, but he kept their pace. "I beg your pardon?"
"You heard me."
A puzzled brow. "I don't know what you're talking about."
Korra scoffed. She didn't come out here to play feminist educator. She just wanted to run. "Whatever. I've still got some ground to cover and I'm not interested in having a conversation the whole way."
Tahno's jaw tightened, but he didn't leave her side. "Well, don't let me stop you."
Don't worry.
She glared at him from her peripheral vision, hard, but was determined to ignore him, and so she said nothing.
I won't.
Soon the frustration gave way to the peace of the park, and Korra was able to block out his irritating presence completely. They ran in silence for some minutes, breathing deep, measured breaths as they circled through the perimeter of the park's inner walls. They started small, following the paths around the small ponds, then worked their way into the muddy trails through the public garden plots, ducking under and around wide, still-green branches of foliage from the owners' neglectful care. When they came across a thick patch of trees, Korra made a move to follow the path that swerved around, but barreled straight into Tahno's shoulder. Surprised, Korra glared at the sleeve of his offending t-shirt, wondering why on earth it had thought to move in her way. When she looked up into his face, Tahno was nodding toward the thicket of trees, glancing back at her with a question in his eyes. Korra simply stared, confused, until he broke out his typical smug expression and made a beeline for the underbrush of the trees. With a jolt, Korra jerked up, and followed him.
It only occurred to her several hours later that this would have been the perfect opportunity for her to have finally split.
They zig-zagged through the trees, ducking under branches and jumping over gnarly roots. The leapt across streams and balanced over fallen, mossy logs and scrambled up shallow river banks, and before Korra knew it, she was laughing. She had only a vague idea of their direction, but Tahno seemed familiar enough with the area off the path and they always stayed within the confines of the park. There was a breeze in her hair, small branches catching her skin as she sprinted through them, the golden, soon-to-be setting sun shining down through the canopy of yellow and orange trees overhead, and—
She was definitely winning.
Korra was at a full-out run—lungs heaving, legs burning, stomach tumbling, throat rasping—by the time she made it out into the open clearing, the red, wooden bridge just a few steps farther. Korra could hear herself cackling like a maniac—oxygen deprivation, deprivation, deprivation—but he was still probably picking himself up after taking such a heavy fall over that tree root and she wasn't about to let him take back one second of her advantage. The few final steps leading up to the bridge were torturous, so much that she wanted to collapse on the ground right then and there on the grass, but she kept going, right up until the point when she ran straight into the wooden railing, nearly hurling over the side into the shallow creek as she broke her run.
Gasping for air and ignoring the metallic taste in her mouth, she remained like that for a few short moments. She stayed absolutely still, trying to catch her breath and calm her head, and then came the sound of someone bursting from the trees, the sound she had been waiting for. Korra slowly unrolled herself upward, a huge smile plastered over her face as she gazed onward, watching him slow his pace as he looked up and saw her already waiting there at the bridge.
She stumbled forward onto the stepping stones, feeling rather dizzy, and every cell in her blood was calling out to brag.
"That," he rasped, breathing heavily. "Was cheating."
But Korra just shook her head, the smile set firmly across her lips, and watched him near the grassy clearing because she simply didn't have the lung capacity for much else.
"You knew that tree root was there," he accused, finally reaching her. He didn't actually look all that intimidating, what with his hair disheveled and his face flushed and the beads of sweat gathering at his temples. He didn't even seem all that angry. She told herself the only reason she looked for so long was just to be sure.
"I'm the new girl, remember?" she quipped in between ragged breaths. Really, she had to admit that she was rather impressed; after all that, how on earth did he still have the ability to speak as easily as he did? "I don't know anything about anything apparently."
"You had to have cheated," he declared once more, trying to narrow his eyes back into something serious, but to Korra the effect was already lost.
"Yeah, well, whenever you figure out how, let me know," she muttered offhandedly, waving a dismissive hand. And with that, she plopped down onto the grass just off to the side, and let herself sprawl.
"What are you doing?" she heard his voice from above. At some point, she'd let her eyelids swing shut, and now she was simply laying there, still on the grass with the sunshine on her face.
"What does it look like I'm doing?"
There was a moment of uncertainty, a beat of decision, a shuffling of fabric, and then he was laying down on the ground beside her. Korra released a breath she hadn't realized she'd been holding.
And for a few minutes, there was only quiet.
"You seem... different," Korra observed.
Tahno shrugged. "I lost."
"No, I mean... it's almost like you're a different person. From the meet."
Tahno turned his head slightly, looking at the space above her out of the corner of his eye. "Is that supposed to be a good thing or a bad thing?"
"A confusing thing. How is it that you can speak to me right now so calmly and civilly—well, mostly—but this morning you were so...?"
"The moments before a race bring out different sides of us, I guess."
"A different side?" Korra asked incredulously, twisting to face him more fully. "Try a different personality!"
Tahno looked at her then, thrown by the intensity of the feeling she put into her words. "I—"
"I would never have known, you know," Korra tried again, a little more steadily. "About you being able to be like this, like... a semi-decent person. And it's not like I'm even actually positive about that part just yet, but the point is I would have kept on thinking that you were nothing more than a misogynistic, arrogant—"
"Whoah, what?"
"But I'm starting to get how these high school social cliques work," Korra admitted quietly, and perhaps a tad wistfully, in a show of uncharacteristic vulnerability. "You act one way with your team, but another way in private, right?"
"Well," Tahno hesitated, momentarily caught by the implications of private. "I guess it kind of goes for all parts of your life. You adapt to the people that surround you."
"What a stupid system," she groused, flinging a pebble at a nearby trashcan. Tahno laughed—a disarming, easy sort of laugh—and when Korra looked down, she almost forgot what they had been talking about; she was pretty sure she wasn't supposed to, but she liked his smile.
"Welcome to high school?" he tried, voice thick with amusement. "And you know, you're not so bad when you're not trying to play it tough."
Korra smirked. "I don't play tough; I am." He rolled his eyes, looking back to the sky, but then Korra thought about it for a minute, and said:
"You know, you're no so bad right now either."
"Oh, yeah?" Tahno's smooth voice questioned, gliding through the air. "So does that mean I get a congratulations on my win today?"
She rolled onto her side, propped herself up by an elbow, and smiled. "Not until you congratulate mine."
After a moment, Tahno huffed out another laugh. "Fair enough, I guess."
Korra waited. "So where is it?"
He shifted toward her then, just slightly, and Korra wondered at how comfortable it all felt: to be lying in the cold grass next to a boy she'd only met—and detested—a few hours earlier.
To finally feel like she wasn't doing something wrong.
"I'll give you yours when you've earned it," he told her.
"Then it looks like we're at an impasse," she announced gravely, still unable to hide the hint of a smile from her eyes. "I'll have to withhold yours until you can convince me otherwise."
"Don't worry," he smirked from below. "We've got all season."
And then Korra realized:
Yeah. We do.
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How far could one fly before the fall?
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