Title: No Life
Rating: K
Word Count: ~900
Summary: Mako doesn't like the new Avatar Korra statue, not one bit. Book 4 spoilers from the newly released clip.
Author Note: Headcanons attacked and I had to write this (despite being super busy today). Maybe not my best, but it was quick.
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Mako doesn't like the new Avatar Korra statue, not one bit.
He decides this from the moment the sketches are presented on the steps of City Hall when President Raiko signs off on the official build order in a ceremony that has more pomp than he thinks necessary. After all, it's just a piece of paper with a blueprint.
Of course, they ask his opinion. How could they not? Mako was a member of what people were now calling the Avatar's "inner circle." He, Asami, and Bolin were flocked to close the vacuum that Korra's departure left in the city. The reaction the planning committee gets out of him was the opposite of what they were expecting.
"She doesn't need a statue," Mako crosses his arms.
"But she's done so much!"
In Mako's time in Republic City, he has become well acquainted with all the statues and monuments that littered the grid of city blocks. The statues of Aang, Sokka, and the various plaques with names of people dead and long forgotten in old conflicts had one thing in common: they were all dead. They are artifacts of the past preserved in the present for people to loiter and spit on.
There is something…off about giving Korra a statue now. It was almost macabre to place a representation of someone among the dead like that.
But the committee is insistent. "The people need this!"
So they ask his opinion again, this time of the statue itself.
"It doesn't look like her," Mako shakes his head.
"We've been assured that the photos we are working off are accurate! We have the best sculptors ready!"
In all honesty, it looks like her. But anyone who thought that they could capture her visage accurately was kidding themselves. Korra had a certain vibrancy about her that stood out against any and all backgrounds. The statue had her piercing blue eyes dulled to a flat gray. Her arms just didn't look strong enough. Her mouth was set in a slim line of determination as she looked out to the tops of the skyscrapers.
Why can't they make her smile? Why can't they give her posture the looseness that she usually stood with instead of making it…well stony and stiff? It is far too impersonal. Korra isn't dead; she is healing.
When it become clear that he wasn't going to be satisfied, the committee rolls up the plans and gives him a quick nod of thanks.
The plan is to put the statue up in the park so that all of the citizens of Republic City could enjoy it. But Mako knows that a statue becomes part of the landscape, forgotten.
The unveiling of the statue has more excitement than Founding Day, celebrating the formation of Republic City. People show up in droves, eager to catch a look at the Avatar they had heard so much of (and seen so little). They shoot of fireworks of red, green, blue, and white, representing all the elements of the world.
They offer to have him up front on the platform, but instead he takes the security shift and stands with his arms crossed in the back. His eyes watch the crowd instead of the statue of Korra. He can't help but think that she wouldn't have liked this. Maybe she would have knocked it down herself. He smiles to himself, cataloguing that thought away to smile at again later.
Eventually the excitement settles down. As predicted, the statue fades into the landscape. People stroll by it and sit at the base of Korra's gigantic statue feet, enjoying the good weather as it lasts. At least she would have liked that they put it in the park.
Yet, as much as he tries to keep his eyes away, its presence is unavoidable. Mako finds himself taking a new route to work that takes him by the park. His new studio apartment is only a few blocks from the precinct he reports to. This stroll, well…it's the only time he gets to see her every day. The photo of them at the Glacier Spirits festival is starting to wear at the edges, so he places it in a safe frame in his bedside drawer. He has to make that moment last until he gets to capture the next one.
Every time he passes the statue, a pang of something echoes from deep within his chest. It's a painful longing; mixed with regret and what ifs that are so numerous he cannot separate one from the other. It's Korra, but at the same time it isn't at all.
Hopefully when Republic City welcomes its Avatar home, the people who look upon her image every day could get to know her as someone with life; someone with air in her lungs and a spark in her eye. Then again, part of him has given up that a Korra like that will ever come home.
"Come home Korra…" he stands a good ways away from the statue so he can get a good look at her, her hair and clothing frozen mid ripple in the wind. "Come home…"