A/N: I felt compelled to write a fluffy little ficlet thing. This hasn't been edited, so apologies for typos and complete lack of polish. Set in The Cave universe, many many years after the main body of The Cave II: Shadows of the City. There are more Cave Fragments to come, and hopefully they will be longer and more polished than this. ;)

Note: the first chapter of this fic was originally "Afterglow", but this little drabble comes a few hours before it, so I decided to lump them together into one fic. Sorry for the confusion!

Note: this won't make a lick of sense if you haven't read at least The Cave. Sorry! :3

Wrinkles

Amon stepped out of the shower; out of the corner of his eye, he saw a grey-haired man. He fell into fighting stance and whirled to face the man, then relaxed when he saw that he was challenging a mirror.

A bit embarrassed, he stepped closer and reached out a wrinkled hand to wipe off the fog. A face, his but not his, stared back at him. His eyes were sunken in a pool of wrinkles; his once full lips were shrivelled. His nose seemed longer, the sharp tip beginning to droop. The scarred skin around his forehead and cheeks sagged, and his hair was silver, just barely thinning on top. He frowned – the motion completely reshaped the wrinkles on his face – and touched his jaw as he tilted his head to examine different angles.

A knock sounded at the door. "You okay in there?"

He pulled on his mask and snapped the band behind his head. "You can come in."

The door opened, and Korra stepped through, nose buried in a pamphlet. "Did you know they have a cave where you can go spelunking? I thought it might be fun to visit. Maybe we can sneak off and—" She stopped as her eyes caught his. "You okay?"

"I am entertaining thoughts that I should not be entertaining." He trailed his gaze down her body, lamenting the growing differences between them. As the Avatar, she aged at a slower rate than he did, and youth had been to her advantage to begin with. Her long hair was barely streaked with grey, the brown still rich and healthy. There were fine lines by her eyes and mouth, but her eyes were vibrant and her skin glowed. She carried herself well, with none of the aches and pains that were starting to plague him. She looked like a woman in her forties, not her seventies, and studying her now brought into focus the topic they had purposefully avoided discussing, one that was becoming more relevant as time passed.

He glanced back at the mirror. "I'm growing aware of my own mortality."

She approached him from behind and slung her arms around his shoulders. Her hands slid down his muscled chest and abdomen; his body, at least, still retained an approximate shape of his youth.

"But you believe in reincarnation," she said. "So death doesn't matter."

"It's not death I fear," he said softly. "It is separation."

In the mirror, he saw her face collapse. "I don't want to think about it."

"There is no escaping the inevitable, Korra."

"I don't want to think about it," she said again, her arms tightening around him. He closed his eyes and sank back into the soft warmth of her body. He tried to slow his breaths, in and out through the slit of his mask.

"What brought this on?" she asked gently.

He hesitated. "We have no mirrors in the bathroom at home, and when I wear my mask, I cannot see how old I have become…"

There was a pause, then she gripped his arm and spun him to look at her. "Wait, you're upset about your appearance? I thought this was about mortality."

He cleared his throat, but couldn't meet her eyes. "They are interlinked. My haggard appearance-"

She cut him off with a soft laugh. "Haggard? I didn't realize you were so vain, Amon. Here, bend down." She lifted the mask off of his face and set it on the table, then reached up, on her tiptoes. Her fingers traced his hairline, down his sideburns, across his scarred chin. "This is a beautiful face."

"Wrinkled," he said.

"Weathered," she corrected.

"Scarred."

"It has a story to tell."

"Leathery."

She paused. "Age-appropriately textured."

He felt himself smiling, amused by her persistence, and she smiled back. Her hand tugged his chin until he bent down to her eye level. "Amon, you have to understand something: each of those wrinkles was written by expressions you made while we were together, while we built this life together." She kissed the tip of his nose. "I love your wrinkles. And I love you. In this life and any that follow."

He let his forehead rest against hers for a moment, relishing the sensation of her breath against his lips, and he found that the uncertainty of their future no longer mattered.

"I love you, too," he whispered.