"the lost get found"
A/N: Done for the livejournal LoK ficathon: Waves of Change. Prompt was: "Borra | "There you are! I've been looking everywhere for you!" Reincarnation fic."
Korra leaves quietly.
The room is filled with the sound of breathing and emptiness, while outside the window, a snowstorm rages like the world is fighting to hold on to this shell of brittle bones and skin.
Bolin fights to hold on too, pressing kisses into hands that fit in his perfectly, whispering stories woven from memories and kinder days.
"…and then I told you that you were the smartest, funniest, toughest, buffest, talented incrediblest girl in the world."
She laughs, blue eyes as clear and strong as the day they first met, crinkling at the corners with mirth. "Oh yeah, I remember now; and I thought you were full of it."
He smoothes a hand through her hair, smiling through the pain. "But I wasn't."
She presses her fingers against the betrothal necklace at the hollow of her throat, hewn from years of fine-tuned Earthbending and clumsy love. "No. You really weren't."
(Yes! Who's the luckiest guy in the world? Right here! Bolin!)
Outside, the wind begins to die down into a whisper of snow and melancholy.
Then, so quietly it scares him: "Hey."
He fights to hold on. "Yeah?"
"Who's the luckiest girl in the world?"
Bolin lets himself cry.
Korra leaves quietly, and she takes a piece of him with her.
Ten long years later, they finally find the boy.
The White Lotus seal completes the letter, and Bolin lets it sit on his nightstand for a full week, heavy as the other empty half of the bed.
Mako visits him on the eight day, and brings a paper bag dumplings with him.
"I met the kid," he starts casually, setting up a teapot to boil.
Bolin grunts, hiding behind his daily paper.
"You should see him, too."
Silence. Outside, the last few snowflakes of the winter drift wearily in the wind.
"Bo."
The newspaper rustles.
"He's got her eyes."
Bolin looks up.
Mako's smile is sad.
The kid's name is Ming. It means 'bright'.
The kid himself, however, is the saddest, smallest Earthbender Bolin's ever seen – all timid back and world-weary shoulders. The Order chalks it up to homesickness, though Bolin senses the vulnerability in his stance, the slight tremble in his fingers as he calls to the water.
Ming is nothing like Korra.
Bolin lurks from the sidelines, unwilling to greet this new Avatar in front of so many prying and judging eyes. Mako leaves him be, and after a few minutes of worried glances, finally wanders off with a half-hearted excuse to give his brother some much-appreciated space.
It quickly grows apparent, though, that Bolin is not seeing what he is always looking for – there isn't a shred of Korra to be found anywhere within a five-mile radius of the boy. And after Ming is knocked off his soaking feet for the fifth time in the span of five minutes, Bolin decides it's time to call it a day.
After all, Korra took a piece of him with her when she left, and in the Spirit World, what's lost stays lost.
The sifus finally decide to move the poor kid away from Waterbending and into some Earthbending exercises. Bolin shivers, drawing his coat around his shoulder tighter, and turns to leave.
He makes it three steps when the Earth moves.
And for the first time in ten years, he hears a voice he's never dreamt of hearing again.
(she's laughing, steady as the ground they dance on – "c'mon Twinkletoes!")
Bolin turns.
Behind him, a Guard is yelling. "Ming! Control your bending!"
The kid turns, too.
(Bolin fights to hold on, but he thinks he might be fighting a losing battle.)
He's got her eyes.
Bolin surprises himself but no one else when he volunteers to mentor the new young Avatar in Earthbending.
Mako slings a heavy but comforting arm around his shoulders, and says nothing.
That night, Bolin dreams of warm brown skin and eyes like the sky.
He arrives at the compound around noon with a sack of Earth discs slung over a shoulder, under the weak sunrays of early spring, chest heavy with nostalgia and knotted with uncertainty.
Ming is nowhere to be found.
Bolin spends a good hour looking under wooden porches and searching every nook and cranny he can find in the compound, to no avail.
Korra would never hide from her lessons, Bolin thinks crossly before he can stop himself, then immediately feels terrible for it.
He finally decides to take a break by the turtleduck pool under the non-existent shade of a bare-branched tree, wondering idly if this was the worst decision he's ever made next to the time he and Korra convinced themselves that they could cook.
Bolin's still snorting at the memory when the first splash reaches his ears.
Then, in a frenzy, the turtleducks begins to converge upon some out-of-sight location behind a rock waterfall.
Curious, Bolin follows.
Around the corner and hidden behind the ostentatious rock fountain, Ming is crouched low against the edged of the pond, a chunk of bread in hand as he tosses pieces into the water, humming a tune under his breath –
(it's her favourite song)
Bolin stumbles, and Ming jumps, dropping the entire loaf into the water, wide eyes turning up to meet his.
"Oh –"
Bolin fumbles for words, trying frantically to remember the greeting he's practiced all night and all morning, words like an anchor to hold on to even after all these years.
Think happy, think charisma, think Korra –
But when he finally delivers the line, it comes out in a sigh of relief and bittersweet beginnings.
"There you are; I've been looking everywhere for you."
That night, he dreams of Korra, same as he always has for the last ten years.
She's sitting across him at Narooks, her favourite bowl of noodles in front of her and dimples framing her smile, and his heart aches when he realizes they're still on their first date.
You're really one of a kind, Bo.
Don't leave me, he begs.
I haven't.
He wakes with tears in his eyes and a sad smile on his face.
"No, no, you gotta dig in your heels – be steady and confident in your movements – like this!"
The disc breaks through the net and shatters against the wall on the other side, leaving an ugly explosion of broken plaster in its wake.
Ming's face breaks into a rare grin. "Wow, that was amazing!"
Bolin laughs, too, and finds that it comes back to him easily, even after so many years. "I'll teach it to you tomorrow, then."
Ming helps him pack up the disks, which takes much longer than usual since it dissolves into another mini sparring match when Bolin lobs a disc mischievously at the boy's feet.
It's dark outside and the lanterns are lit as they finally start walking back to the main complex. Ming breaks the comfortable silence first.
"So, where did you learn to get so good, Sifu?"
Bolin's been expecting the question, but it hits him square in the heart anyway. He swallows the stutter in his breath before he replies, carefully and evenly. "Avatar Korra taught me, kiddo."
"Woah," Ming shakes his head in awe. "I'm never gonna be that good. I'm a disappointment, y'know?" He sighs discontentedly. "I'm not good at this Avatar stuff."
Bolin frowns, bumping the boy's shoulder gently with a fist. "Hey, that's not true." Ming sends him a skeptical look. Bolin amends quickly. "Look, it took Korra seventeen years before she mastered Airbending and the Avatar State, but she got there in the end, didn't she?"
Around them, the first crickets of the evening take up song, and Bolin thinks he might recognize the tune. Then, almost like an afterthought, he adds, "And someday, you will, too."
There's a hint of a hopeful grin on Ming's face now. "You really think so?"
Bolin ruffles the younger boy's hair, thinking of the way the Earth sings beneath his hands, of the way it sings with Korra's voice.
"I know it."
And he was right.
Ming progresses with steady speed for the next few years, moving through firebending and airbending like second nature. However, Waterbending remains a thing of mystery to the new young Avatar, though he does manage to bend half the turtleduck pond onto Bolin's head on an especially humid summer day.
By Ming's fourteenth birthday, Bolin decides he's ready for metalbending.
Still, beyond the azure eyes, Bolin has yet to find a single shred of Korra in the boy's contemplative silences and quiet laughter. But sometimes, when Ming's fire rages into an inferno, or the wind dances around his feet like wings, Bolin catches glimpses of strong backs and dimpled smiles.
And as the years pass, Bolin finds himself dwelling less and less on such thoughts.
Perhaps he was finally learning to let go.
"So, do you have any children?"
Bolin glances over at the kid – no, no longer a kid, but a young man. "Nope. Why?"
Ming tosses the watermelon peel into the waste and reaches for another slice. They're unwinding after a particularly gruelling session, watching the turtleducks swim circles in their pond under the warm glow of a midsummer sunset.
"Just wondering."
Bolin wipes his mouth with the back of a hand, and thinks for a moment. "Well, we've always wanted kids. Korra and me."
There's silence for a moment. Then, Ming lowers his eyes. "I'm sorry."
The words settle between them, cold and heavy in the warm twilight air. Bolin's been half-expecting this misplaced apology for the last four years, but finds that he doesn't quite know what to do when it finally arrives.
In the end, he only clamps a large, calloused hand over the boy's shoulder – because he's still a little lost himself, and also because he's starting to realize that maybe he was never lost to begin with.
"Don't be. I found you, didn't I?"
(Korra took a piece of him with her when she left, but Bolin thinks that maybe – just maybe – Korra also left a piece of herself behind.)
Ming smiles, and it's nothing like Korra.
Bolin finds that he's just fine with that.
And so, another lifetime passes – forty-three years, to be exact.
Somewhere along the way, Bolin starts referring to Ming as "son" instead of "kiddo", and no one makes any comment on it.
Somewhere along the way, Bolin becomes a sifu at the City's Metalbending Academy and makes quite a name for himself teaching young and aspiring children the ancient wisdoms Korra had bestowed upon him.
Somewhere along the way, Bolin stops listening for her voice in the Earth.
And at the end of forty-three years, closure finally comes - soft and peaceful.
Bolin falls asleep with a smile on his face.
(don't leave me)
Then he's opening his eyes once more, in a world where Korra is waiting for him, fresh-faced and smiling, and they are back to the start, back to the clumsy but surefooted teenagers they were when they first met.
"Well, aren't I the luckiest girl in the world?"
(I haven't)
Bolin lets himself cry.
Then her arms are opening, and he's running, sweeping her off her feet, losing himself in eternity, and he has a reply prepared, just for her, only for her, after all this time –
(there you are! I've been looking everywhere for you!)
– but in the end, Bolin can only say what he's meant to say all along.
"Found you."
End.