A/N: It took me the lifetime of the show's airing to work out exactly how I felt about Mako. This piece was as much an attempt to untangle those feelings as it was an exercise in character study.

A grunt escaped Mako as his shoulder banged against unyielding platinum — he'd misjudged the distance between him and the cylindrical chamber's wall. Quickly he drew his legs behind him, avoiding a flurry of blades the size of his thumb.

They'd had the element of surprise, and he'd squandered it.

Fuck.

He couldn't see Bolin, but he could hear the sounds of bending combat: the whistle of metal blades cutting the air and the wet, whirling hiss of his brother's lava. Beyond these, he had no way to know how that duel was progressing. He wouldn't know who'd won until the victor came around the great ball of entangled vines to finish off their remaining opponent.

If he and Bo could have fought together, like they'd always done…

Mako ducked as strips of metal whistled past him. One clipped his hip, sharp enough to part both fabric and skin with ease. He crouched further behind the pillar, which suddenly seemed way too thin.

Hoping to distract his opponent, he flicked a pair of small fireballs at the Metalbender. The flames crashed uselessly against the soldier's cover, the sound of their impact muted against the snapping hum of the reactor.

Come on, Mako. Korra's counting on you to take this thing out. The longer you take, the more the city suffers.

Another metal strip skipped off Mako's boot, clattering to the floor and leaving a score in the leather. If it had stuck, the Metalbender could have used it to drag him out into the open or fling him across the chamber into Bolin. Or into the formidable snapping energy of the vines.

Mako, FOCUS.

His foe was one of Kuvira's elite. Mako had studied them, his duty as Wu's primary bodyguard. They were accomplished fighters, aggressive, precise. As fanatically loyal to Kuvira as Amon's Equalists had been to him, but exponentially more disciplined, confident in their talents and technology. If this guy was the battle-hardened soldier Mako imagined him to be, he would never willingly move away from the lever.

Alright then.

Filling his lungs, Mako leaped out from cover.

First a defensive blast, a concussion to thrust his opponent's reactive blades aside. Two more, one each to the Metalbender's left and right to gauge his reflexes. The man didn't even flinch as he coolly fired a flurry of blades directly at Mako's head. Mako threw himself into a diving roll, his arm trailing as flames gathered in his fist —

Something slapped his wrist, and Mako released his fire early with a startled cry. The flames crashed into the tangled vines and exploded into thick smoke laced with purple sparks. He hid one, half a beat behind the ones I just dodged. He's learning.

And my fire didn't do a thing to those damn vines.

He stopped suddenly and lunged to his right, putting the vines behind him. No such luck — his foe hurled another half dozen strips, forcing Mako to leap back. So the metal won't affect them either. It's just me and him.

If the environment was irrelevant and the Metalbender couldn't be intimidated —

I can't believe I'm doing this.

Abandoning strategy, Mako propelled himself forward, rapidly closing to within arm's length of the surprised Metalbender. Few benders trained for close quarter combat, but he'd fought Equalists, the Dai Li, the best of the Red Lotus. He'd sparred with Korra.

His opponent hadn't.

The sound the man made as he hit the floor was wonderfully satisfying.

Kicking the fallen Metalbender aside, he darted over to the lever and grasped it. We've got this. "I'm ready!" Come on Bo —

"Be with you in one second! Kind of busy!"

A metallic snap echoed over the crackling vines, followed by a heavy thud. Mako waited, his nerves afire, recognizing the sound of a limp form hitting the floor. "Bolin!"

Then Bolin's voice. Mako's heart rose, only to sink like a stone when he registered his brother's words.

"Uh, I think we're in trouble!"

Breath ragged, Mako sprinted over to Bolin, skidding to a stop by the lever. Or rather, its twisted, curled remains. The dark grey core of the lever had been pulled out and was now entwined in the mangled steel armor of Bolin's unconscious foe.

From a single glance Mako knew that there was no way they could fix the lever in the time they had. Even Asami would need a workshop, assistants, time, no Metalbenders coming to kill her. He doubted that just he and Bolin could fix a mechanism like this ever.

This can't be happening…

Bolin ran his hands over the lever, eyeing the metal that had been wrenched out of the cylinder. "Yup. Platinum shell, iron inside. Either too expensive to make it all platinum or just too difficult to manage without bending. Can't imagine Bataar was dealing with budget cuts…" His shoulders slumped. "I must've clipped it with my lava and exposed the iron, and then this guy…even if I could Metalbend I couldn't fix this. And they didn't tell us another way to take this thing out."

"Quick, let's move," Mako said tersely, pointing toward a nearby console blinking with lights and buttons. "There's got to be some other way to shut down power from here. We're not out of this yet."

Bolin peered closely at the console. "Ummm…"

Mako stared at him, waiting for something, anything. When nothing more came, he growled, "Come on, you spent all that time working with Varrick and Baatar Jr., didn't any of their genius rub off on you? Wasn't this the thing they were working on?"

"Look, Varrick was impossible to follow," Bolin said, grabbing at his hair in frustration. "You know this isn't my thing, I wasn't around this stuff much. The only thing I know about these vines is that if you mess around with them too much, they explode."

Explode? But how did you make something that looked to be pure energy explode? His fireballs had just exploded on the outside. The whole United Forces expedition could throw themselves at it and probably just bounce off —

Unless.

A shiver ran through Mako. My fire did nothing to the outside. What about from inside?

"Get those guards out of here," he whispered. "I have an idea." A stupid, dangerous idea.

"Want to fill me in?"

No.

There they were, at the top. Energy flowed upward through the regulators…the platinum regulators. Immune to Metalbending and just about anything else a single bender could conjure up, but also incredibly conductive. They could take a lot of energy, but they would take it, and when they finally overloaded…

"I'm gonna zap these vines with some electricity."

Mako refused to look away from the vines' sharp light, as if avoiding Bolin's expression could stamp out the sudden guilt he felt at dropping this on him. It didn't work. "Whoa, whoa, Mako, let's back it up, okay? I'm pretty sure that's the definition of 'messing too much' with them. I said that will make the vines explode."

"Exactly." Mako pointed at the regulators. He turned back to his brother. "My fire didn't even scratch the vines, and those things are obviously used to handling more energy than I can throw at them."

"My lava didn't touch them either." Bolin grabbed his elbow. "Your lightning's just going to crash on the outside too. Maybe you take a few of the surface vines out along with you, but if this thing still works it won't stop Kuvira. We should join Korra and try to shut it down from the control room!"

Mako took a deep breath. Composure. For him. "I can do better than just hit it. I can feed it power until it the chamber can't contain it anymore. If it has more energy than it can deal with, the whole thing should explode, right?" Bolin's jaw dropped, and a wave of anger rushed through Mako. Get out of here! "Look, I don't have time to argue! This is our only way of shutting this thing down."

"No! You can't!" Bolin's eyes were wide. "This isn't the time to prove how awesome you are. I already know how awesome you are." He looked down.

The vines hummed through their silence.

Mako's breath caught in his throat. "Bolin, I…I can handle it. And I will. I'm doing this. You…need to get out of here."

Bolin was staring at the floor, stricken. Look at me, bro. Mako was hit by the sudden realization that this might well be the last time they spoke.

"Okay."

He looked back up, his green eyes full of everything Mako didn't know how to say. How do you sum up two decades of being a big brother to the best man in the world?

"For the record —" Bolin sighed. "I do not approve. Just, get out as soon as you can. Promise?"

"Promise," Mako lied.

"I love you."

"I love you too," Mako said, his eyes already going to the vines. He had one shot to take these things out. "Now go!"

He began to weave his hands through the air, deepening his breathing as he picked the electrons from the air, gathered them between his fingers. Without knowing how much energy the vines could take, he'd need to start with the deepest breaths he could for a strong initial stream.

And Bo was right: he couldn't just generate lightning and release it into the vines. If they'd deflected his fire, they'd just absorb a single shot like that like.

He would have to maintain the flow.

Bolin had vanished from his view, Kuvira's unconscious elites gone as well. He'd be safe. Strong guy. Always was.

His fingers trembled as the energy potential he'd gathered suddenly snapped, igniting into a jagged white bar that seared purple spots into his vision. Immediately Mako reached out to the wall behind him, conducting a crackling rhythm into the platinum walls.

As he bent his knees, anchoring his weight at the eye of a rapidly growing storm, the fear rose within him.

He'd never told Bolin; it wasn't really something Firebenders shared with people who didn't bend lightning. He wasn't sure even Korra knew. Lightning was impossible to use in the way people wielded normal fire, the way other benders seemed to use their elements. Wild, uncontrollable, it could only be unleashed, never manipulated; contained, never held. Once generated, the destructive energy either leaped to a target or simply exploded.

Lightning's secret was that it blasted its own path.

Most people who could generate lightning did so in brief bursts and at short distances, driving the energy out of their body and into a container. A truly skilled Firebender could sketch a more complex path, give it the imprint of predetermination or, as Mako did now, create a circuit. Offer the lightning several points, and it devoured the space between until one of the points gave out or was disintegrated by the raw power of the lightning itself.

Right now, he was one of those points. If he broke the circuit, the chamber would explode, and he'd be ripped apart.

But the vines wouldn't. Yet.

Taking a deep, choppy breath, Mako pulled power back from the floors and wall, channeling it into the vines' dazzling purple-pink heart.

The chamber buzzed into a tightening lattice of jagged white knives, the deadly bars ripping the air around him. Mako's muscles seized and jerked, drawn against his will into the lightning's growing strength. He struggled to remain in place, to anchor his body in the conduit he'd made. The heat stung his eyes, pulling out hot tears that disappeared in brief puffs whenever the lightning winked close enough to his face. Mako's heart hammered wildly, as if trying to get in as many beats as possible before it burned.

Before him, the vines glowed, the pink deepening angrily.

Pure energy, either his own lightning or excess from the vines, condensed around his outstretched arm before exploding into fire. Mako stumbled as it hungrily consumed fabric and flesh. Bright, sharp pain lanced up through his shoulder, but he held firm with gritted teeth.

Smoke, thin and black, rose from his arm. Red flesh sizzled in his vision, but he couldn't feel it anymore. A blessing.

A stray bolt punched through his thigh with a loud crack. Mako couldn't gather enough air to scream as his leg gave out, but he didn't fall. His heart hammered in his ears as new panic struck him — the only thing keeping him on his feet now was the crackling flow of his own electric circuit.

This is my duty. I have to do this.

A terrified warble bubbled up from his lungs and escaped, quickly lost in the raging storm. It was air that didn't go to his lightning, but he didn't give the wasted quarter-breath a second thought. He couldn't direct energy of this magnitude. He couldn't muster the courage to even try. This was beyond him. The vines flashed a ghostly lavender, their slippery and unfamiliar energy flooding his circuit, taunting him as it hardened his muscles to iron. He couldn't take his eyes off them.

The smell of burning hair. Charred flesh. His, all his. He was going to die here.

Not yet.

The vines' angry hum reached a fever pitch, blaring and spitting in his ears like a pack of enraged buzzard-wasps. He tasted fire on his tongue, felt the flames coat his throat every time he inhaled. He could no longer fill his lungs.

Not yet. Almost. There.

His vision spiraled, blurring color and lines. The purple-pink glow pounded his brain as the spirit vines pulsed with the energy. How much could this thing hold?

NOT YET -

Violet light glared from deep within the glowing vines. A deafening bang shattered Mako's eardrums, and for a moment he thought that was it, he'd stayed too long, handled too much energy -

- but no, it was the energy regulators above the vines, and now they were ablaze, otherworldly fire rippling along their length.

Now!

The world spun sickeningly, but he didn't fall. His legs were rigid, wouldn't respond, held in place by his own bending. He couldn't move. Couldn't escape.

Another crackling boom, this time deep within the tangled vines, and the electricity holding him loosened.

He'd done it. He'd overloaded the vines.

Now the machine was seconds from exploding with the force of…Mako didn't know what, and he didn't want to learn. He needed to get out.

Bolts of lightning rocketed out of the vines, scoring vicious pits in the chamber wall. Even that reinforced platinum couldn't be capable of withstanding this kind of energy for long. Every shuffling step Mako took could be his last. He wasn't sure where he was going, if he'd make it. Move.

The hatch caught his eye. Bolin hadn't closed it, even though that would allow any explosion a funnel out of the chamber, something even he would've known. Even though it meant that Bolin, weighed down by their unconscious enemies, might not be able to outrun it. Because having to open it again would've delayed his big brother a few seconds.

If Mako could drop down at the same time he released the lightning, he could break free without becoming a target.

He could see the ladder's top rungs, just a couple more steps — thanks bro, I owe —

An iron drill blazing into his side, blades churning his organs to hot liquid, lava blooming in his chest, the air ripped violently from his broken lungs.

His vision flashed wildly as he fell, lightning blasting out of his circuit as it shattered around him.

White fire scorched Mako's world away.

His muscles rattled as a train rode over them.

An explosion, a concussive slap to his brain.

Wind, rushing to battle with a roar as it charged past him.

Silence. Floating, supported by his brother's muscular arms, then the ground, firm against his back.

His eyelids fluttered. Shadows, but something else too. A pillar, the color of forests and flowers and healing, rising high into the sky. A gently glowing salve that bathed his charred flesh and nerves in cool light.

Quiet chimes ushered him into darkness.