Prompt # 18: Statue, from 100makorrathemes on tumblr.
Word Count: 524
Summary: Mako has very strong feelings about the Avatar Korra Statue.
That damned statue in Republic City's park could never compare to the real thing, he thought as he watched her walking toward him for the first time in over three years.
This was an obvious fact, of course. From the first mentions of plans to build a statue in her honor, Mako had been determined to remain detached from the entire process. Let the sculptors and architects deal with the minute details of expression and feature painstakingly chiseled into rock - if Korra had been present to hear any of their conversations, she would have snorted with laughter before shutting down the entire project. "I'm not dead yet," he could practically hear her jesting. "Build a statue for me when I'm good and gone, and I promise I'll appreciate it from somewhere in the Spirit World."
It was just Mako's luck that his daily commute to work had him passing through her park(and for spirit's sake, she'd had run ins with law enforcement there twice, were no other parks available to be renamed after her?), where he got an eyeful of all forty feet of her first thing in the morning, before he'd even properly had his first cup of coffee. Her stern expression seemed to follow him as he made his way to the police department, quickening his steps and causing his coat to flap behind him as he marched agitatedly by morning yoga classes assuming the downward facing yakdog and fellow commuters dressed for work.
It had bothered him at first, it really had. This poor excuse of a - a replacement for Korra that the city had erected with great fanfare in order to "boost morale" and "encourage integration of spirits and humans in accordance with the Avatar's wishes" was nothing like the firecracker of a young woman he had come to love. It was so… still. Calm. Composed. And Korra was none of those things. She was energetic, constantly moving, emotionally driven. The sculptors, for all their expertise and effort, could not captured that in the statue.
But the weeks went by, and then the months began to fall away as the warmth gave way to cold winter, and then returned again in bursts of color the next summer. And it was as he was walking home after work one evening to his recently bought one-bedroom apartment that he glanced up to meet her ever present gaze and realized that he'd spent longer with the statue than with the girl.
Sleep came harder that night.
But her eyes were locked on his now, and he couldn't imagine how he'd forgotten that particular shade of blue they were, or what the crinkles under her mouth looked like when she smiled, or the slight sway of her hips.
And when she walked into his arms and held onto him with that old familiar strength, he breathed her in and closed his eyes and wrapped his arms around her.
It was as if the years had never passed.
"Hey Mr. Hat Trick. How have you been?" she asked with a shaky grin.
"You have a statue in Republic City. And I fucking hate it."
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