Kai and Jinora for “If you want, we could go together?” Or "Can I open my eyes yet?"
It had been months since Jinora had seen Kai. He’d been sent out with a large troop from the United Forces, led by General Iroh, that was tasked with liberating all of the camps Kuvira had established in the former Earth Empire. Uncle Bumi and Opal had gone as well, taking Bolin with them. Her father got regular dispatches detailing their progress, but it wasn’t like she had time to worry about it anyhow. The airbenders left on Air Temple Island had their own work cut out for them, helping the earthbenders who were slowly bringing down the buildings too damaged to repair, passing out basic supplies to the residents left homeless, that sort of thing. Jinora herself was helping Korra work through what her father liked to call “the little spirit issue,” which wasn’t so little and was more of a problem than an issue, that’s for sure. The spirits were pretty worked up about the new spirit portal; some of them wanted it shut down immediately while others were having a grand old time inundating Republic City, causing a lot of headaches, quite frankly. Headaches that she was supposed to be resolving, in fact.
So it wasn’t that she didn’t miss Kai. It’s just that she barely had any time to spend thinking about him. They’d exchanged a few letters, but his were infrequent and she couldn’t think of an interesting or amusing way to detail the hours of negotiation that would come to nothing when a spirit took offense at something Korra said and flew off in a huff. She loved Korra, she did, but Korra was about as diplomatic as a komodo rhino. Which was to say, not at all.
She was trying to write up one of the endlessly boring reports that President Raiko demanded on a regular basis when Ikki popped her head into her room. “Hey. You have a minute?”
“Not really, no.” Jinora sighed. She was trying not to be resentful of Ikki. Just yesterday she’d dealt with the very irritable and very large celery-looking spirit that Jinora had spent two weeks negotiating with by challenging it to a race and winning, sending it back to the spirit world for good as the penalty for losing. It was just so…Ikki…of her. Jinora loved her sister, but there were times when she’d like nothing more than to kick her in the seat of her pants.
“Oh, I think you’ll want to take a minute.”
Jinora sighed again. When Ikki got like this there was no point in trying to get around her; she’d just persist until she wore you down. “Fine. A minute. But only a minute, okay? I really have to get this finished.”
Ikki grinned her victory. “Okay, close your eyes.”
“Just humor me, okay? Come on, do it.”
“Fine,” Jinora tried not to clench her teeth. She closed her eyes. And waited. And waited some more. “Ikki? Are you there? This isn’t funny, I’m busy. Can I open my eyes yet?”
“Go ahead,” said a familiar voice, and her eyes flew open to see Kai in front of her, grinning. With a gasp of joy she flew into his arms.