She was restless, and Mako knew this. He'd been watching her for two days now. He knew.
But still it unnerved him when he watched Korra walk alone toward the forest, rubbing the muscles in her neck, trying to take her pain away. He watched as the fingers of her other hand ran across the bark of a tree, and he watched as she looked around and watched as she disappeared into the shadows. She, however, had not seen him watching her.
So he followed.
He'd been keeping an eye on her ever since that night, since they'd found her cold and broken and alone save Naga. They took her home so she could recover before they planned their next move. Mako had carried her to her room and laid her down on her bed, and she'd exploded with angry protestations about how she had no time for sleeping and she needed to figure out what to do and why wouldn't they let her get up? Mako himself had volunteered to wait until she fell asleep, to make sure she wasn't going to bolt up and hurt herself.
That first night he would go past her room every hour and peek in, just to make sure she wasn't having any nightmares. In the morning, he walked with Pema as she brought down a bowl of hot broth, so he could see how she was improving. He sat in the room when she finally had recovered enough energy to heal her cuts with waterbending; he didn't know where else to go.
He didn't know why he felt like he had to watch her now. But he did.
So he searched for her in the forest now, following her easy tracks. He stumbled and tripped over tree roots but he kept going because he had to keep an eye on her now. His heart dropped when he came to a clearing in the forest, when he stepped into the warm green light that fell from the sky. His stomach churned.
He found her lying motionless on the ground.
"Korra!" he yelled as he rushed forward.
She turned her head, perfectly (or maybe not so perfectly) fine. "Mako?"
"I thought—" He stopped, his hand rising up to press on his chest, rising up to still his heart. He exhaled slowly and shook his head at Korra's carelessness and his foolishness, shook out the bad thoughts, the disturbing images that haunted him now. "Never mind."
Korra turned her head back up. "Look," she said softly, pointing upward. He glanced up, following the line of her finger, and saw the canopy of leaves overhead, casting the green over her, over him. He felt his heart beginning to calm, and his eyes drifted back down to Korra. He sat next to her and watched her as she watched the green above. His eyes stayed fixed on her face, on her eyes bright and wide, on her mouth, slightly open, on her fading scars that marked her pain. He had to keep an eye on her.
"There aren't any trees like these back home," she blurted out, folding her hands over her stomach. "Back in the South Pole." Mako nodded, but she wasn't looking at him. "I really like them. At first it was too much, too green. Like it hurt my eyes or something." A leaf tumbled down, and she caught it easily. She held it over her face and blew out with her mouth, her only form of airbending. "But I really started to love them, green and all."
He didn't know what to say. His idle fingers found a stick on the ground, and he started absently scratching shapes into the dirt. Korra continued unprompted.
"At first I'd been worried that I wasn't ever gonna see them again. That I would be stuck in that metal box forever." Her voice was distant, and he knew that she was back there. Back in that basement, back inside the cold prison, her memories lurching forward into her mind yet again. He saw her eyes shifting, catching the green light that snuck through the canopy.
Mako scribbled. He'd been in jail before, and this time around, he knew he'd get out. But that first time had made an imprint on his memory. He was fourteen and terrified he'd never get back to Bolin, that something awful would happen to him if Mako wasn't keeping an eye out for him. He often got into trouble when Mako wasn't around. Bolin had needed him.
But this time, he'd kept his cool. Bolin was in the cell with him; Asami was somewhere down the hall. They were safe, so Mako didn't have to worry. Bolin was fine. Asami was fine. He was fine.
He was that is, until he discovered that Korra wasn't fine.
Then he wasn't fine either.
Korra's fingers were tracing over the scabs on her arms and shoulders and face, checking their status. Mako had to look away, away from her and her pain. So he looked up as the leaves rustled. Flickers of light fell through onto him. It was very green. He glanced back. Korra looked lost now, because while her body was here, her mind was not.
"I'm sorry, Korra," he said, tossing the stick to the side and resting his hands in his lap.
She turned. "For what?"
"For this!" He gestured to her, to her scratches that he could see and the nightmares that he could not, waving his hand wildly.
"There's nothing you could have done," she said simply, laying her arms at her sides.
He gritted his teeth and turned back away, crossing his arms. He shouldn't have let her out of his sight. He shouldn't have convinced her to not attack Tarrlok even though he knew he'd been right to but no. If she had come with them then he could have kept an eye on her. She should have come with them, with him. She wouldn't have gotten hurt. She would have been safe, but no, no, no. He'd let her go.
He'd thought she was invincible. He'd thought she was strong and fierce and the Avatar. And she was. But he'd thought she could always handle herself—and she'd made it seem like she could. He'd never imagined having to worry about her too but he did. He did.
And he hadn't but he should have, and he didn't but he needed to, always, but he hadn't seen it, not until he'd been afraid, not until now. Because when his eyes flicked back at her now, and he looked at her (really looked at her), he saw what he had been missing this whole time. He saw her there with her scratches and her scars, with knees bent up awkwardly and her hair in the dirt, he saw her tense muscles and her blue eyes poised up, empty and sad because even though she insisted she was fine, there was something she had lost. Something unnamable and untraceable and gone forever. And he saw her, saw Korra.
She was just a girl.
She was just Korra.
"I'm healing," she said. "There's nothing you can do." And he heard it then in her voice, saw it in her eyes, felt the pain, sensed that breathless desire for him to just leave because she couldn't take it anymore. He knew that feeling, he knew it.
He'd seen it in Asami's green eyes too, the morning after it, after everything. She'd confronted him about the kiss that he'd kept secret, the secret he'd never meant to keep. She came to him, tired and beaten, knowing and ready. Determined. She told him that she was better than this, that she couldn't deal, that she wished she could get over it, that she couldn't possibly. She'd said it was better for everyone this way. Because of everything that had happened, because of everything that was going on, because of everything that was waiting for them in the shadows of their fate.
"It's better for everyone. For you, for me…" she'd said, her voice trailing off. "For Korra."
Asami's green eyes had held pain and envy then. They were still beautiful.
And Korra's had that pain, yes, but they also had hope. Expectation.
Mako didn't know what was going to happen. He just didn't. Not anymore. He didn't have a plan. He didn't know anything. "There's nothing you can do," she'd said. But she was wrong (so wrong), and he knew that it would be slow and hesitant and terrifying and she might have already moved on and this was the worst time to feel this way but he had to show her that he wanted to help, needed to help.
He wanted to keep an eye on her.
So he scooted closer, and lay down quietly next to her, slowly next to her. The ground was cold. And he reached out, reached for her. Their fingers met clumsily, bumping into each other, running over the creases in the other's hand until they were laced together. Until they were together.
All was quiet. All was still but the leaves and his heart.
Korra tightened her grip. He looked at her, just once, and saw her smiling, eyes softly closed.
Mako looked back up.
It was very green. Fresh and new and growing and beautiful and poisoned and perfect and green.