A/N: Yaaaaay for completely free weekends. I didn't want to make you guys wait too long.

Chapter 11

The first time she came was with white knuckles clinging to the counter and soft groans that echoed off the tile walls. Then, there was a frantic search for prophylactics among the stuff that she had yet to organize, and when she found it, he almost cried with relief. There was always a danger that they might come tumbling down from the precarious ledge they'd just climbed onto, and he was desperate for her. She seemed equally frantic, clutching at his hand and dragging him toward her bed, where he was pushing inside of her the second after she pulled him down onto the mattress.

Sex hadn't always gone perfectly for them, a breeding ground as it was for further miscommunications and the opening of fresh wounds. But they had always been hungry for each other, willing to struggle to iron out the wrinkles in search of the ecstasy they somehow managed to find amidst the mess. Their progress at slowly learning each other's bodies had been arrested by their precipitous break up.

And so this time, there was old and there was new. What he encountered when he merged with her was both familiar and unexpected. With one climax down, he knew she would let him take just a little bit more time, that her insistent hips would wait before forcing him deeper and pushing him toward a too early finish. It was a cruel irony of their chemistry together that what she liked best was precisely what kept him from completing her half the time. But what he didn't expect was for her to stay still for so long after he'd entered her to just let her hands roam all over him, searching, perhaps, for the details she had noticed for the first time when she was healing him over and over again.

And he, too, was re-learning what he thought he knew. He had never noticed, for example, that one ear lobe was a slightly different shape from the other or that the smooth undersides of her breasts were as if not more sensitive than her nipples. When she grabbed his ass to pull him deeper, he thought she wanted him to start thrusting hard, but instead she held him there with her thighs and just rocked, her movements subtle but still far from calm. Her breath came high and pitchy, the pulse in her throat spiking against his tongue.

"I'm close," she whispered, and he pushed her knees up to her shoulders and moved in and out of her forcefully until her mouth fell open in a scream she couldn't contain. He was gone seconds later, collapsing against her, forehead buried into the pillow, lungs straining with effort. He felt like passing out again.

"Remind me again why we don't work," he asked when he finally rolled off of her to stare blankly at the ceiling as she composed herself, one hand running through the tangles in her hair while the other pulled the sheets up over her breasts.

"You broke up with me, remember?"

"Only the first time."

"I airbended your desk across the room."

"And yet suddenly I can't see why that was such a problem." He smiled at her, not caring how foolish he looked or sounded with his face still flushed and his shoulders baring the marks of her nails and teeth. She laughed a little between panting breaths before grabbing his hand with one of hers and pressing her other one flat against it, the tips of her fingers barely reaching the final joints of his, her creamy dark skin glowing against his ghostly pale palm.

Her face turned sober with thought as she absently traced the lines on his hand with her fingertip.

"We're good at this," she said, still staring at some invisible point between them. She gestured toward the bed, but he knew she was talking about the entire situation that led up to it. "We're good when we both want the same thing, when the stakes are clear and we know we're fighting on the same side. It's everything else that we suck at."

He wanted to say something here about how he would try to do better, that he wouldn't fight her so much. But it wasn't a matter of trying harder. There were things between them that couldn't be fixed by just not making each other mad.

"There are going to be more circumstances where we don't see eye to eye, and it's harder to make the right decisions if we're worried about maintaining a relationship. I think we have to learn how to just be people together for a while," she continued, and not for the first time he felt too small and too big in the context of her life. Sometimes, when she looked at him, it was with the apocalyptic part of her he now knew as Raava, the part of her that suffused him with awe. But most of the time, she looked at him with eyes that were all too human, full of questions he couldn't answer and doubts he couldn't begin to assuage, and of the two it was that part of her that he both loved and feared the most. Because it demanded more of him than he was capable of offering and because they were both too young and too broken for what had been required of them in their brief, terrifying lives.

He looked into her eyes and picked up where her thoughts left off. "If we got back together now," he said, talking to himself and her at the same time, "We'll do something that makes us hate each other."

She nodded. "If I lose you again like that, I know I won't ever be able to look at your dumb face any more. Because it will just hurt too much. And besides, you're still healing." She meant it in so many more ways than one. "It's not a good time to be making big decisions."

Until lately, he'd rarely known her to take the long view. There were things he had yet to learn about her that he wouldn't learn in bed.

"Do you regret doing this?" he asked, gesturing at the sheets that covered them.

She moved over to his side of the bed and rested her head on his shoulder, black hair spilling like sea water across his pale skin. With one hand, she turned his face to her and kissed him. Her lips were a little dry, a little swollen from their prior histrionics. He let himself enjoy the feel of her tongue tracing the edges of his teeth, not caring for the time being about labels or their future or how he was going to cope with the denial that faced him once she left. There would be no avoiding it this time around, no saving face. She had seen him in all of his undisguised want, his desperate vulnerability. And for some reason she still loved him, loved him too much to try to save him from this particular hurt.

Their lips parted with an audible pop. "I regret a lot of things," she said. "But I don't regret this."

It didn't matter that they were supposed to be saying good bye. He pressed back into her mouth and swallowed her answer like a tonic. Her body rose, and he steeled himself for the final loss of contact, for the emptiness he was going to endure because he loved her more than he loved them. But she didn't leave. She straddled his naked body and molded every curve of herself into him, their lips never breaking.

"As long as we're doing stupid things that we don't regret…" she whispered into the breathy silence between kisses.

Like always, the second time was slower, less manic in their keenness to join. He no longer worried that the other shoe was about to drop. They knew where they stood with each other, and if it couldn't be an ideal situation, at least it could be a clear one. For now.

She kissed her way down his torso, languid and unhurried, taking her time at the places where healing bruises still marked his skin. He swept a hand through her tousled hair and enjoyed its coarse texture as it fell through his fingers and the way her breasts pressed against his skin. She mouthed over the expanse of his abdomen and lingered over the protrusions of his hip bones before moving to where he was hard for her again and lowering her mouth over the tip.

He felt every nerve in his body flare with pleasure as she took him as far as she could go, hand wrapping around the rest of him as she straddled one of his legs, sex pressing into his thigh so that she could pleasure them both at once.

He surrendered for a few minutes, knowing there would be only so much he'd be able to take, before tugging at her chin and shoulder to make her come back up to him.

"I need to be in you," he said.

"You were never this impatient before," she breathed against his ear, settling her knees on either side of his hips.

"If this is our last time together, I want every inch of you on me."

She smiled back at him with a hand guiding him inside her, her body sliding down slowly until he was buried to the hilt.

"Who said this is the last time," she whispered sultrily as her tongue pushed past his lips one more time and she rolled her hips into a gentle rhythm.

With his weaker right arm, he secured her waist against him while with his left he pushed them off the bed into a seated position, maintaining the cadence of their lower bodies.

Like this, he felt he could hold on forever, stopping time and maintaining the calculated equilibrium of their bodies. If they never finished then maybe she would never leave. It was a ridiculous and tempting thought that he indulged in as he worshiped her body with his lips and palms. He felt her fingers run lazily over the contours of his back and shoulders, nails soothing his frayed nerves rather than leaving welts. The muscles in her thighs contracted and released as they stayed like this, and he admired the mastery she displayed over the power that played just beneath the surface of her skin, flexing gently beneath his touch.

When they finished this time, it was with groans and bodies pressed flush together, his strong hands pushing down against her hips, anchoring her to him and driving himself as deep as possible. When it was over, their lips met softly, chastely even.

"I love you," she whispered before lifting herself off of him. It was like a benediction, a blessing from a higher power.

Mako didn't remember falling asleep, but when he woke up it was with a body in revolt. Fragments of a bad dream still nestled in deep corners of his brain, and his skin felt wet and clammy. His mouth filled with saliva, and the muscles in his stomach clenched violently. He lurched off the bed and barely made it into the bathroom, kneeling on the cold tile and heaving painfully until there was nothing left.

Spent, he sat down on the floor, back against the wall, letting cold ceramic sooth the itchy hotness on his back. When he closed his eyes, images of people burning burst into vivid life on the backs of his eyelids, and when he opened them, he realized he was crying. Hot tears cut tracks down his face, and he surrendered to the convulsive sobs that shook his body. He wept for everything he had lost, a short lifetime's worth of unspent grief.

He stayed like that for a long time before he heard the door open and saw calloused brown feet shuffle across the tile. He didn't even seen her face as she sat beside him dressed in just a shirt and her underwear and pulled his body across hers, strong fingers running through his hair, cool hands soothing the back of his neck. He let the rhythm of his own breathing match the rise and fall of her stomach and felt the sweat turn to salt on his brow. His eyes itched, and all of his insides felt dehydrated.

"Sorry," he said, the taste of vomit and tears still mingling unpleasantly in his mouth.

"It happens to me sometimes too," she said in a voice still raspy with sleep, and he wondered what her dreams were about, what visions wrenched her from sleep with a cold, sick feeling in her gut—locked in tight spaces, hands reaching out to take her bending…

She helped him up off the floor, made him gulp down some water, and pulled him back to bed. They didn't make love again. The window for that had closed for the time being, and the process of mending their lives as two people apart had begun. But she did stay with him until he fell asleep again, curling herself around him and giving him something to hold onto.

And when he woke up, he was alone in her bed, and he dressed in solitude before finding her in the kitchen making tea. He didn't kiss her good morning. There were no declarations—no arguments either. An hour later, she dropped him off at home on her way to things that did not involve him, and before she mounted Naga to leave, she hugged him good bye, telling him not to be a stranger and saying that maybe she would see him at the gym later in the week. Bolin had gotten her a pass.

On his first day back at work, there was no hero's welcome, just solemn nods in the hallway and a few respectful handshakes. Zhang's desk was empty, yet to be reassigned. As soon as he got seated, the Chief peeked out of her office and summoned him in with a wave.

"Since you came on the force, I've lost a half dozen officers," she said after she closed the door, and he couldn't tell whether this her version of a compliment or something he ought to apologize for. "If you keep doing your job this well, we'll be the only two left standing a year from now, that is if one of these crooks doesn't manage to take you out first."

"I'm…uh…"

"It's a joke, kid."

He shifted uncomfortably from foot to foot while she rifled through papers on her desk. The Chief had always had an interesting sense of humor.

"I've taken over this case personally since you've been…indisposed. I hope that doesn't create a problem for you." She looked at him knowingly.

"Not at all."

"I assume you're interested in putting your issues with your former partner and Officer Huang behind you now that you've recovered," she continued.

"That's correct."

"Too bad." Her hands were braced on her hips, and she was clearly taking no shit today. "You're a material witness now and, like it or not, a victim."

He objected to the label, but that clearly wasn't worth bringing up.

"Tomorrow, you're giving a statement about your attack. We already have Avatar Korra's report, so it can wait just a little longer while you attend to other things today."

"Like what?"

"You're going to City Hall."

He was confused.

"No offense," she went on, and he braced himself. "But your little tussle in the alley is only the tip of this particular iceberg. Corruption isn't unprecedented here, but given the temperature of the city after everything that's happened in the past year, this is going to be a sensitive matter. It's in the department's best interests to prosecute all members of this conspiracy, but the case we present has to be ironclad, do you understand?"

"Of course."

"If we go after on one of our people, and he or she walks…or if it looks like this is some sort of sop to the community…if there is any reason to question our credibility…"

"I get it."

"This diary you turned up is an interesting piece of evidence, but I'm sure you understand what its limitations are."

"I do."

"We're going to need the girl to recant her previous testimony, which isn't going to look good. She is going to have to talk to a lot of lawyers, and she will have to testify in court. Do you think she's up to that?"

Mako's stomach clenched a little bit. Jin had been through so much already. It seemed criminal to insist she relive all of this just as she was getting settled into a new life. Her case would need careful handling.

"I think so," he said.

She handed him the file she was looking for. "It's your job to make sure that she is. You're my liaison with the City Attorney on this matter. You're to meet with her this afternoon to brief her, and you're to ensure that this girl's case is handled perfectly." The last statement was punctuated with a finger poking at the papers he held. "Do you understand?"

"Yes, Chief."

"I'm aware that most detectives would find this sort of assignment to be beneath them. I hope you understand…"

"No need," he said, not telling her that this assignment frankly felt like a gift. He was feeling calm and centered for the first time in weeks, like he was finally doing precisely what he was supposed to be doing. He shook Bei Fong's hand. "I won't let you down."

"You haven't yet."

He saw Korra again on the steps of City Hall, standing with a bunch of suits while a photographer scurried around trying to get a good angle and hollering for the Avatar to look in his direction. He laughed to himself at the way she kept turning her head so that all the poor guy could get was the blur of her wolf tails on the fringes of the frame.

As the important-looking people she was evidently meeting with started to lead her away, Mako finally caught her eye, and she waved at him, a big smile painting itself across her face. He hurried off in the direction of the prosecutor's office, taking deep breaths and feeling for a brief instant the calm assurance that while not everything could be mended, not everything was broken either. Because there were a thousand ways to love her, and he was going to learn every one.

A/N: I am not going to lie, even though I cranked it out quickly, this chapter nearly killed me. I've had a lot of fun working on this story for the past two months, but you have to stop before you run out of things to say. This has already turned out twice as long as I expected, and I have reached the ending that I envisioned, so it's time to move on.

I realize the decision to keep them apart at the end probably disappoints some, but I have a lot of reasons for it. And one of them is that I think Bryke has legitimate reasons for splitting them up—character based as well as the simple fact that it's even more interesting to write them this way (not to mention sexy, at least to me…says the person in a stable relationship).

Thank you all so much for supporting this story. The reviews are so encouraging and really do keep me motivated. If you enjoyed it, I would still love to know how you found it and what kept you reading so that I can keep it in mind for future projects.

I have more fics planned, including a chaptered one that's already outlined, so keep an eye out. My next one-shot should go up in the next couple of days.