Title: Beginnings
Rating: K
Word Count: ~600
Summary: Mako doesn't know the exact moment when it began, but he knows the moment that he knew that he never wanted it to end. [For Makorra Week 2015]
Author Note: A quick write, hopefully coherent. Back to Mass Effect hell for me.
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They meet when she sneaks into the Probending Arena. She's just another bright-eyed, fangirl, eager to spend any time near anyone that spends any time flinging elements across the centerline at opponents. Most of the girls Bolin drags in don't even know the players' names, interested only in spending time with the men and women who traded voluntary physical beat-downs for small moments of glory (if you won).
Mako doesn't have a need for another permanent addition to his life. He has Bolin safely in his life with four solid walls around them at night and a roof over their head. Korra is another variable; a factor that he can neither predict nor control. Yet, as she sweeps them into the Equalist crisis and world leaders begin to refer to him by name he doesn't protest.
The change happens so quickly he barely registers it. Mako is used to noticing change. He noticed when summer in the city began, and the number of kids trying to find relief from the cold in from a momentary pulse of cold from an open icebox doubled. He noticed when the worst of winter was gone, and the cardboard sheet covering him as he huddled closely to Bolin suddenly more adequate (if it could ever be). He noticed when Bolin finally had some meat on his bones when food wasn't as scarce.
And somewhere, somehow along the way in the middle of action and bustle, a feeling bubbles up from within him. It's in his chest. It's a tightness, a weight that compels him to Korra. Yet, it lifts him, making him feel lighter as he follows her into fights and watches in awe as she effortlessly controls more power than he could ever conceive of.
He's not sure what it is at first. In fact, when he first notices it, it feels like it has always been there without start or finish. A constant sun warming him from afar, for the sun is always on the opposite side of the darkness, ever present and unwavering as she is as she pushes, struggles, and fights.
It's love, but the name of the thing is scary in itself. Things are complicated, what with Asami and looming war, not to mention his own apprehensions about diving into something (despite already being halfway to the water). It feels right.
Mako doesn't know the exact moment when it began, but he knows the moment that he knew that he never wanted it to end. He twirls her in his arms on the icy cliffs of the South Pole. Korra looks earnestly into his eyes, heart bared to his as she whispers, "I love you too."
It's a beginning, of a sort. Reality has ends. Some are abrupt, some fade, and some fray at the ends to badly you can't tell what it once was. But what they have…it's a more of a middle; a meeting of two in a union of one. It's a middle he's glad to share with her as long as it lasts
.
"For things that don't exist; I mean beginnings.
Ends and beginnings—there are no such things.
There are only middles"
Robert Frost