Chapter 5: To Be

Iroh realized it had been a while since he had, by common terms, had... 'fun.'

During the majority of his life at the palace, he had been consumed by books, studies, training and tutors. Endless hours upon hours were devoted to his studying. His mother had no sense of leniency when it came to his studies.

When he had finally finished the royal curriculum for consorts, generals and monarchs, he had two years of free time before being expected to take on an apprenticeship. Most would have taken on an apprenticeship immediately, but Iroh had no interest in continuing his plight to be a royal dog.

He had had lost a fair share of odd memories from those two years, wasted away in drink and prostitutes. He had been 19 years old and desperate to catch up on a life he had never had the option to see. Most would have grown into it in moderation, but Iroh had had not had that lucky option. So he had been utterly and totally consumed by it.

Surrounded by vague court acquaintances who were the only ones he could call his 'friends', he was introduced to the wonders of the Fire Nation commoner culture. With rich nobles' sons, he found himself toxically spending nights bent over barstools in caverns and bars, drunk and without cares.

Eventually, he sobered and realized there was more to life than just experiencing. There was duty, and responsibility, and purpose.

Between the years of 18 and 19, he had been rash. And the only reason he did not regret that certain phase of his life to this day was because of a few words his lieutenant once imparted to him. It was on a dreary, late night in his cabin shortly after he had made Admiral. Between a few drinks, he confessed the state of his life before he had begun his tumultuous and rapid journey up the naval ranks.

"It's called being 'burned out'," the man had said to him in response. To this day, the Lieutenant was the only long lasting 'friend' he considered. "Given your restrictive and demanding upbringing," he had said calmly to Iroh, "One could not do anything but expect rash and rebellious behavior at your adolescence. You did well in your studies, didn't you? Or else you wouldn't be where you are today. You were burned out," the white-clad man had stated to his captain emotionlessly.

Iroh had nodded, feeling his eyes droop, but the words stayed with him long after. It had been expected.

Why did those four words bring comfort to him? The idea of expectation. Somehow, it swathed a warm feeling in his chest. Somehow, it made his eyes burn—made him think of his mother, so serious and consumed by her work that she had neglected him for much of his life. It was mostly his grandfather and uncles that had raised him.

The idea that something was expected made everything feel better. It would be expected that he would have acted in such a way after finally finishing up his education.

It would be expected that his mother would act in such a way—she was Fire Lady.

It was expected that he would be so consumed in his studies that he would lack intra-personal relationships; expected because he was a special person. It was all... just... expected.

It comforted him.

He had confessed to his Lieutenant about the lowest point in his life. And the man had made him feel better about it; the experience and dearth of memories that had been plaguing him ever since he started working under General Bumi stopped plaguing him.

Redemption, he considered, was partially what had inspired him to work so hard and climb high up the ranks so quickly.

So in the end, the truth was, Iroh, in a long time, had not had any—in a common way—'fun'.

Korra had brought that to an end yesterday. First, she had sparred with him yesterday. And then, she had taken Naga out and ran her through the city, giving him a heart-stopping tour of Republic City. It had been, in the purest sense, fun. She brought him to a local water-tribe cuisine restaurant and then to an astonishingly authentic Fire Nation dessert bar.

Now, she was sitting his cabin room in the Air Temple's buildings.

The Republic was still rebuilding and Amon was still on the loose, but the battle was over and the situation was momentarily stable. He had sent out agents to scour out the surrounding cities and provinces, keeping an eye out for any sightings or potentials for uprisings. His army men were diligently working on finding his trail and while Iroh knew that he could be doing more useful things with his time right now, despite the forces he'd already dispatched to the outer provinces, he just didn't want to.

He wanted to let Korra stay in his room rather than kick her out and chart out maps like he meant to.

The girl had brought him, for one of the first times in life, to the experience of 'fun' yesterday. As such, a semblance of appreciation was due. He could stand to wait a bit before kicking her out.

And also, he was enamored.

A loud, brash laugh left Korra uninhibitedly. Although Amon was still on the loose, Korra had relaxed significantly, the success of the battle assuaging her immediate fears.

In the back of his mind, Iroh knew that this was a bad tactic—winning a battle does not mean winning the war—but he couldn't bring himself to correct her sentiments or feelings. She was 17 years old and had already beared a heavy burden for her age. He had been terrified when she had fallen to the Avatar State.

He knew it wasn't wise for her personal growth to shelter her and allow her to relax in a false sense of security. But right now, he wanted to. She was seventeen.

Her laugh was loud and uninhibited, as if the battle had never happened. He liked it this way.

Unfortunately... It was also so uninhibited that he could hear the bark of unadulterated criticism in it. His mouth turned down and his brows furrowed worriedly. What was she looking at? Her back was turned to him, so he craned his neck to see what she had picked up and was looking at in her hands.

Oh no. Oh no.

"You write poetry?" Korra squealed in giddy and uncontrolled laughter. Iroh, face turning very red, rapidly ran over to the other end of the room to attempt to pull the book out of her hands.

Yes. He wrote poetry. What was the problem with that? He was a gentlemen. Gentlemen wrote poetry. He had been trained to write poetry.

He grabbed the book from her hands fiercely, shutting it closed in one hand with a loud thump. With the book in his hand, he stood towering over her, cornering her close against the bookshelves she had been previously been perusing.

"Yes," he curtly replied, glaring down at her, so close to his chest. His face, if possible, was turning even redder, but his solid, confident voice did not betray it at all. "What of it?" he demanded, willing his face not to belie his true embarrassment. He pushed her closer to the wall.

He noticed Korra getting more and more awkward as he leaned in closer to her. His chest pushed closer against her smaller form, his arms raised up around the sides of her heads threateningly and held up on the bookshelf by either side of her head.

Usually sure and confident, Korra now stuttered. She looked away, pushing herself backwards into the shelves and away from him.

"I... I... Uh..." Korra raised her chin in a show of false confidence, though her eyes looked down and off to the side self-consciously. "I, just, uh... Didn't expect that."

Iroh grinned privately, staring down at her visibly uncomfortably and squished form between the bookshelf and close to his chest. Her awkward, nervous, stuttering, form amused him. But this had been enough punishment for her, he decided. He leaned back away from her.

Turning around with the book in his hand and his back to her, he finally let his grin escape and claim his face, nostalgically recalling Korra's awkwardly stuttering form against his chest.

As he reached his desk, he trained his face to return to a blank slate once again and turned around.

"So, did you have fun?" he asked the Avatar patronizingly. Are you done?

It was a cue, a not-so-subtle signal for her to leave. After all, he did really have actual work to do. And just because he enjoyed having her presence here didn't mean it was conducive to his work.

Having regained her bearings, Korra seemed to have returned to her sense of self with newfound fervor. Fervor directed at whom, he wasn't quite sure, but nonetheless, it was there. It was exciting, he decided, and almost made him want to egg her on more.

After seeing her get so flustered by being in close proximity to him, seeing her now frown angrily with arms crossed over her chest, made him nearly smile.

She was strong. He liked to see her vulnerable. But he also liked to see she was strong.

"No," she said forcefully, "I'm not."

She walked over to him, slammed her hands on his table, and leaned in close to his face over his desk.

Ah. So now she was trying to show that she wasn't scared of the close body contact. Iroh smirked and looked up at her face, millimeters from his, purposefully looking particularly bored and unaffected. An amusing game to play, he would admit. Women his age probably wouldn't bother with this; too busy with what their wants—a bed headboard—or money.

Korra was... refreshing. Innocent.

She narrowed his eyes at him. "So..." she started, "General Iroh," she spat out unkindly.

He smirked. "Yes?" he replied, equally as insolently. He saw irritation cloud her face quickly at the sarcastic response. His eyesight traveled over face. They fell onto her plump, lush lips and he gently caressed the lips with his pupils.

She seemed to visibly notice his eyes dropping down her face, for suddenly, she tensed. The voice in her head chastised her for freezing up again.

She struggled to grasp her proud self and show that she was not so affected by his presence. She was seventeen years old for La's sake. She wasn't 13 and a flustering, blustering, untrained little girl anymore.

But why was it so hard?

She noticed his eyes were still focused to the bottom of her face and took the opportunity of his lack of eye contact to speak. Poetry was what he was embarrassed about. Concentrate, Korra. Get back at him and make him pay.

"What exactly... do you write about?" she narrowing down at him. Stop staring at my lips!

Realizing that close proximity with him was not her strong suit, she pulled back from his face to stand stolidly on the other side of his desk. She faced the man with a simultaneously aloof and challenging look.

Leaning back as well, Iroh released his gaze from her nose and lips and dragged his pupils up to her eyes. He looked at her fully for a long moment, assessing, before finally speaking.

"Recently?" he asked mildly, blinking boredly.

"Yes," Korra replied, glaring at him. She was still mad that he had made her get nervous and flustered against the wall.

"You," he said simply, shrugging up his shoulders.

Again, Korra's jaw dropped inside her mouth. She forced herself to wait a few moments before speaking in order to keep from stuttering. She eyed the innocuous notebook that he had stolen from her wandering hands and placed stolidly on his desk.

"W-What do you write?"

Iroh stared at her speculatively a moment more, as if measuring her carefully, before finally answering.

"Would you like me to recite it for you?" he asked politely. Korra blinked, not sure what she to expect; what she had been expecting.

"Uhh...m Sure."

Iroh swallowed deeply before he placed both hands on his armrests and pushed himself up off the seat. He walked around the desk to face Korra, staring down at her, before placing his hand over the thick black bound poetry book.

He closed his eyes, hand spread over the front cover. "They had been friends in youth," he whispered.

His eyes opened and locked on hers. Moving closer, he positioned his mouth beside her ear. His breath tickled her check and blew stray strands of hair above her face. "...but whispering tongues can poison truth."

"Constancy lives in realms above," he placed his forehead on her clavicle. Closing his eyes, he spoken again. "Life is thorny," he said jarringly. "And youth is vain." He pressed his nose into her collarbone.

He paused for a long moment, not moving. "And to be wroth with one we love," he stopped. "Doth work like madness in the brain," he finished finally, inhaling sharply against her skin.

His head remained burrowed in her collarbones and a long moment passed between the two of them. He waited for her to speak, his eyes staring apocalyptically down at the blue of her top.

He felt her heartbeat accelerate, the tenseness she usually adopted when he came. After a long pause, she finally spoke.

"To be wroth we one we love..." she repeated, "Doth work like madness in the brain..." she whispered quietly.

She paused for another moment. "You... you love me?" Korra asked with surprise.

Iroh smiled a small, rueful grin before lifting his face up from the front of her neck. He looked down at her.

"Perhaps. Maybe. The feelings, when I look at you, delude me."

Korra stared up at him at him critically. She quietly measured his face for a long time, an eyebrow cocked suspiciously.

"You..." she hesitated and then paused abruptly. "I don't believe you," she declared, sticking her chin out and looking away. "You're just trying to mess with me."

Iroh resisted the urge to let out a full-blown chuckle. "Alright then. If you say say so." He grinned and a twinkle in his eyes sparkled as he lifted himself up from her and turned around.

He walked away to the armoire sitting in his room and opened it up. From inside, he procured a beautiful blue sky opal necklace, emboldened with red twine chain for tying behind the neck.

After a two-second pause of staring at it with his back turned to face her, he finally turned around with it in his hand. "This is for you."

Korra blinked, surprised, looking down at the object in his hands being transferred to hers.

"Did you... did you buy this for..." she paused. "Because..."

Because you like me?

"I bought it for my sister," he denied, frowning down at the necklace. "I always thought you were something of a sister to me, so I bought it for a sister on my journeys. You were someone for whom I've always felt feelings of endearment," he went on, "so I thought my affection for you was akin to that of a sibling's. And then I came to Republic City and saw..." he hesitated, as if extremely disturbed by his thoughts, "... that you had probably never been my sister..."

Iroh felt his face heating. And for some unbeknownst reason, Korra found the same happening to hers.

Undoubtedly it was because she'd changed since the last time he'd seen her, he thought. The opal dangled in her hands.

"Oh."

Iroh noted the hesitance in her voice.

"Do you..." he suddenly paused. Iroh, for the first time since he could last remember, blinked self-consciously. He, of course, had also considered the other possibility. "I don't know if you feel the same way. Its okay if you don't."

If possible, Korra blushed even deeper. She was used to shouting her feelings out. But for some reason, Iroh had always made her feel vulnerable in a way that no one else ever had.

"I... I don't honestly know. But I think the answers' pretty obvious," Korra muttered, looking away. It was glaringly obvious. And embarrassing.

He had always made butterflies flutter in her stomach. Since she was 13. But he was always unreachable, for her. It was only this time around, his visit to Republic City, that she finally began to notice tension between the two of them. A different sort of tension. Something that suggested that he felt the same way.

She had never thought that he would consider reciprocating her childish and immature affections. Honestly, she hadn't thought of him in the longest while, at least not in that way. Moving to Republic City had distracted her and scattered her brain with an onslaught of so many new people. Momentarily, she had been distracted of his existence. Distracted by Mako, Bolin, Tenzin, Pema, Toza, Asami, Meelo... everyone else she'd met.

The awkward butterflies he used to inspire within her when she was young was a thing of her past, in her distant memories. She hadn't expected them to return upon Iroh's subsequent return. She felt that she had aged incredibly since coming to the city; that everything from back in the South Pole was a part of a distant childhood. Iroh would be a part of it.

Yet, when he came here, it all came flooding back. And no matter how hard she tried, she couldn't let it go.

Iroh grinned down at her mischievously. "Don't worry. I won't pressure you into anything," he said, his voice suggestive. "...I'm sure precious Mako would teach me a lesson if I do."

Korra laughed. Thinking of Mako still made her stomach ache and her mood darken but somehow, somehow Iroh made her forget about her conflict with him.

"Mako—Ugh. Please don't talk about him."

"Yeah, I figured," he grinned at her.

Another long moment passed between them. The comfortable silence broke as Iroh walked forward to her. His arms slipped around her waist and the two embraced. They stood like that for a while before he finally let go and spoke. "It doesn't have to mean anything... yet. Just—Its for you to know that I'll be thinking of you."

He understood that she was still seventeen. Seventeen and the Avatar. Seventeen and unready.

He was twenty-three and a Fire Lord in training. Twenty-three and unsure. Twenty-three and ready.

They both had duties, responsibilities, their possessions, and limited time. Korra nodded over his shoulder. He smiled, relieved, before he spoke,

"Guess we should go down for dinner now, huh?"

Korra's stomach growled loudly, to his amusement.

"Heheh... Let's," she responded, grinning awkwardly and looking off to the direction of the door.

Iroh placed his hand around the back of her waist and walked them forward.

"If you want..." he suddenly said, "I don't have to..." he paused, gesturing at his arm set around the back of her waist. It was the polite thing to do with a girl with whom one had confessed. But he wasn't sure how comfortable she would be with it. "do... this."

"We'll... We'll see," she responded uncomfortably. She wasn't sure about this. It was too new territory.

With an indiscernible frown, Iroh turned and locked his door before walking forward in the hall. As they walked down the corridors, he whispered into her ear.

It was a realization he had come to just the other fortnight, once he had realized the magnitude of the feelings he felt for her. The affection, the lust, the inexplicable desire to protect her.

"I realized the other day," he said softly into her ear, "that we were probably destined to meet." His eyes closed and his lips touched her right ear gently. "To be, somehow." he finished.

Korra shivered, feeling his breath traveling into her ear tunnel. She could feel his wet lips close to her face, and the feeling of his mouth against her earlobe traveled all the way to her midsection. She sighed breathily as he spoke. Iroh's eyes darkened upon hearing her exhale.

She was so malleable. So sensual and pliable and strong and unmovable, without even knowing so. When had she turned into this? This contradiction?

Was it before his eyes? All he knew know was that his fingers resisted the urge to tighten into her hips, and that there was a growing discomfort in his loins upon hearing her sigh. He knew that in some of their lifetimes, all of their lifetimes, they had been destined to meet. Somehow.

The Avatar and the crowned Prince to the Fire Lord had always had intertwined fates.

It was expected, he thought.

A/N: This chapter was kind of long... But if you liked it, please review! Even if you have any criticisms, I'd like to hear your thoughts! I update fast if you guys review, yo! :) :) :)

I read EVERY single one and they all count!