Title: Nothing Gold Can Stay

Rating: K

Word Count: ~650

Summary: Mako reflects on life without Korra.

Author Note: Made this quickly after the trailer. Kind of played with the writing style. Title comes from the Robert Frost poem of the same time.

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Perhaps Mako shouldn't have been as surprised as he was to see the vibrant energy dull from her bright blue eyes. Then again, perhaps he shouldn't have been so surprised in the first place that the sequence of events left her so hurt, so damaged…so broken.

"Get better soon!" He waved after her; a fake smile plastered onto his features that he knew didn't reach his eyes.

"Soon" was a word tossed around so much recently. When will she be able to function without the wheelchair? Soon. When would they next see a genuine smile that he found so honestly beautiful out of her? Soon. When would he see her again? Soon.

The term was too subjective to get any real grasp on the lengths of time they were truly speaking of. At first, the recovery expectation was quick and hopeful. But as time passed, day-by-day as the sun sank below the horizon, soon became larger and larger. Weeks turned to months, and months to years.

His hair grew out. Suddenly his hairstyle seemed overly showy…and young. He used the same gel and slicked it back. With each year that passes, the world seemed to press on him more and more. He certainly wasn't carrying the earth on his shoulders, but the weight and responsibility seem to be catching up with him as he moved forward.

And every day, his hope that she would come back faded.

Mako waited. He devoured every single morsel of news he heard about her. Some said she was in the Si Wong Desert. Others said she was trekking back to the North Pole Spirit Portal. He read it all. Despite the time, he couldn't get her off his mind. Her features still floated into his idle daydreams when work got slow. He ended each day wondering where she was.

But most of all, he wondered why she never got in touch.

To be fair, he was lax in sending her letters when she was still recovering at the South Pole. But now, he had no place to send a letter or a location to send a call. Had the time really changed her that much? Well, he had no way of knowing after the years had passed.

Perhaps what they had (the friendship, the romance, everything) was a fleeting moment. Maybe he was lucky just to catch a narrow window with Korra, the Avatar, before she continued on her journey.

He watched her blossom in Republic City. She was beautiful as she budded, airbending masterfully falling under her control as the other elements returned to her. He watched her become leafy and full as she vanquished Vaatu, learning to further control the power within her. She transformed in front of him again and again, changing and learning with every obstacle.

But if only, if only he had realized that in the end her vibrancy in battle was a sign of what was to come next. If only he had realized that an end was coming…there were things he wanted to say.

Mako extinguished his bedside lamp, the sun well below the horizon. There was nothing else he could do today. But maybe tomorrow could bring Korra.

But there was hope. Nature worked in a cyclical way. Although the leaf would fall, Mako was sure that there would be a bud to take its barren place, only to blossom again.

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Nature's first green is gold,

Her hardest hue to hold.

Her early leaf's a flower;

But only so an hour.

Then leaf subsides to leaf.

So Eden sank to grief,

So dawn goes down to day.

Nothing gold can stay.

~ Robert Frost