A/N: Greetings, readers. This is the first part in a multi-chapter fic meant to take place a few months after the end of Book 2 and to satisfy my need for more Detective Mako. There is a lot of set-up required here, but the entire fic is outlined, so rest assured that there is a plan. In future chapters, I promise plenty of noir vibes, Makorra, family angst, and Mako being all sad face.

Reviews are much appreciated.

Chapter One

For roughly the fortieth time that night, Mako came back to reality, vaguely aware that the woman across the restaurant table had said something that he managed to completely miss. "Huh?" was all he could manage, snapping his attention back to her green, heavily made-up eyes.

"I said, I used to follow your team on the pro-bending circuit. Is…is something wrong?"

"Oh, it's…nothing. Pressure at work and all that. Big case."

"Something exciting? Oooooh, is it a murder?"

Aware that he was failing to be an entertaining date, he just said "yeah" and hoped it sounded at least a little convincing. It wasn't in him to admit to her that his promotion had turned out to be a mixed blessing, that the cases were more depressing than exciting, that the expectations were higher, that his new partner was an asshole.

"But I can't talk about it. Top secret and all that."

Her carefully sculpted eyebrows relaxed, and she went back to work on her plate of vegetables, poking daintily with her chopsticks before selecting one piece to bring up to her rouged lips. She was pretty, that was for sure, stylish like Asami but without the refinement that comes with a lifetime of practice. "She's gonna be big," Bolin had told him, referring to her nascent career in the mover industry that had burst into life, seemingly overnight, even though Varrick was still missing. "And she's been asking questions about you."

This was only the latest in a litany of setups that his brother had arranged for him, and even though he psyched himself up for each date with mantras like "it will be good practice" and "you need a distraction anyway," his interest had yet to be captured.

"Your last girlfriend turned into a giant blue spirit and saved the world from 10,000 years of darkness, bro. You are going to have to adjust your standards," his brother had advised, along with, "Show interest in them. That's all they care about."

Maybe that was the problem.

"So, movers," he started. "That must be interesting."

She perked up, sweeping her dyed yellow hair away from her face, but as she started describing her latest role—a heroine who falls hopelessly in love with a man she can't have—his brain did that thing again where his vision went out of focus and her words, along with the sounds of the restaurant around him became a faint buzz. He tried to focus, and when that failed, he feigned attentiveness by nodding when it seemed appropriate and saying something like "That's incredible" whenever she stopped talking.

It was a relief when the check came, and he walked around the table to hold out his hand. He had been a terrible date, and he was sure she was ready to be done with him. But he could at least walk her home.

She continued to talk while they walked, and he continued to nod, and tried to find something in all of her chatter to bring him back to the present, to tether him to reality. It wasn't her fault exactly. He was finding it difficult to feel an interest in anything lately. Not even the look of the streets at night after a good rain—a sight that used to fill him with a sense of calm and connectedness to the world around him—could penetrate this sense of dullness, the feeling that he was watching the world through frosted glass and could only vaguely see the shapes.

"You're a good listener," she said, smiling brightly as they reached her door. And without warning, he was being kissed. And for reasons he couldn't enumerate, he was kissing back. It was…different, he thought. Nice, but different—a little too wet, perhaps, her lips somehow still slick from her lipstick. Her finely manicured hands latched onto his coat to pull him closer, and he found himself relaxing into the embrace, letting his hands rest against her lower back and sweeping his tongue into her mouth until she made a sound deep in her throat.

"And you're an even better kisser," she purred. "Wanna come up for a drink?"

It wasn't the first time someone had offered, and it wouldn't have been the first time he accepted, but he knew better than to get into this sort of thing again. Last time, he'd wound up necking with one girl on her sofa before she abruptly unbuttoned his pants and lowered her head with a messy grin only to find that he was still soft. And no amount of effort could get him hard even when she put her mouth on him, and he'd had to make some excuses about having too much to drink before leaving and hoping he never, ever ran into that woman again.

So he mumbled something about needing to be at work early, and said, "I'll call you," before kicking himself inside because no, he really wouldn't and why did he keep saying stuff like that? His date was nonplussed, shrugging before she bounded up the stairs, and he turned to go home, where, if he was honest with himself, he would most likely lie awake thinking about dark skin and a brilliant smile and strong hands that pulled his hair until it hurt just right until he gave in and jerked off before falling asleep in the wee hours of the morning, hating himself and his stupid inability to just move on.

The electric light in his apartment seemed harsh, almost judgmental, bathing his spare, tidy living space in its yellow glow. Even after dinner, he was still hungry. So he rooted around in the icebox for leftover dumplings that still smelled ok and ate them at the table, cold. He stared into space until his eye fell on the newspaper, lying unopened where he had thrown it down that morning. TRIUMPHANT AVATAR RETURNS TO REPUBLIC CITY, it read, and there was a picture of her looking radiant with Tenzin at her side. She'd spent two months down South helping to set things right and spending much-needed time with her family. Now she was back. And theoretically, the two of them were on good terms. So at some point—again, theoretically—he would see her.

Mako stuffed the remaining dumplings back in the icebox, no longer hungry. And on his way to bed, he chucked the newspaper in the waste bin.

"Soooooo, how was the date?"

Even though Bolin had kept his new apartment (he'd signed a lease after all), he still showed up early three or four times a week so that Mako could cook him breakfast, saying that Mako would waste away without someone to feed and care for, so he, Bolin, might as well do his brotherly duty. (He actually wasn't that far off base).

The older brother made the short walk from his bedroom door to the kitchen in silence, slapping at the feet Bolin had propped up on his nice, clean table.

Reading all he needed to know from his brother's sulking, he shrugged and said, "Gonna have to work on that charm there, bro."

"I got two girls to date me, didn't I?" He sulkily retrieved the soup Bo liked that he always kept on hand, and banged a pot on the gas stove.

"Yeah, and that worked out just splendidly for you. Speaking of which, we're having a Team Avatar get together tonight to welcome Korra home. Narook's at 8:00. Don't be late."

Mako turned on the gas and sparked fire between his fingers to light the burner, momentarily mesmerized by the way the jets came alive with flames that went from blue to yellow as they fanned outward.

"Okay?" Bo asked after getting no answer for a few seconds.

"I can't go," his brother said without looking at him. "I've gotta work late."

The younger brother was unimpressed. "But you're going in early," he said, gesturing at Mako's uniform.

"Double shift."

"Kay."

A few minutes passed as Mako brought the soup to a simmer and ladled up a helping for each of them.

"You guys agreed to stay friends down at the South Pole, didn't you?"

"Bo," he said, setting the bowls down on the table just a little too hard. "I really do have to work."

"Ok," he said. "Whatever. I believe you."

"Go ahead and have fun. I'll meet you there when I can."

"Sure."

"I will."

"Uh huh."

Mako liked to keep a tidy desk, always attending to case files as soon as possible to keep the paperwork from piling up. He wished he could say the same for his partner, whose adjacent workspace—a vortex of chaos—was always threatening to overflow onto Mako's. He picked through the disorder looking for the file he needed, finding what looked like a stale, half-eaten Varricake stuck to the bottom of a witness report, the testimony of a young woman who had watched as triad thugs beat her boyfriend to a bloody pulp when he failed to pay the money he owed. The young man was still in the hospital.

Having lived for nearly a decade on the street, Mako had thought he was intimately acquainted with the full breadth and scope of human suffering, but seeing it from this perspective and in such horrifying volume—case after case after case—was something else. And if anything, it seemed like things had only gotten worse. The trafficking of contraband had always been an issue in Republic City, but the opening of the spirit portals had made widely available an exotic drug that was now poised to replace the old stand-by, opium. It was made from processing an herb that took on "special" properties when it grew near areas of spiritual activity. People were literally dying to get their hands on it.

"Hey, kid. Quit messing up my desk!" Zhang lumbered in, his craggy, smoke-ruined voice ringing off the metal walls of the bullpen.

Mako held up the jelly-smeared witness report. "I was looking for this. We were supposed to close this file a week ago."

Zhang wiped a dirty hand on his uniform pants and took the paper from him. "Oh yeah. Fucking tar-head. Right. Good on you. Close the file."

Mako knew that police work could desensitize you, but he was unprepared for his partner's degree of nonchalance in the face of the misery they witnessed on a regular basis. While Republic City's seedy underground regularly disgusted him, Mako's partner treated addicts—"tar-heads," after the street name of their new poison of choice—with an indifference bred of contempt.

Mako slid the report into its proper spot and did a poor job of masking his annoyance as he did so.

"You got a problem?" Zhang growled.

"No." But he couldn't resist. "We just… we can't be losing this sort of stuff."

"Hey, kid, if you have some sort of problem with the way I've do my job, which I've been doing, by the way, since before you were a dirty thought, by all means…speak up." He gestured sarcastically, as if giving Mako the floor.

"And it took you almost my entire lifetime to get promoted," Mako thought but did no say as he sat down to his neat stacks, nudging at Zhang's mess until everything was on the correct side of the line that separated their workspaces. It was petty, but passive aggression was pretty much the only tool in his box at the moment.

He stared at the file in front of him until the characters on the page turned to nonsense before his eyes. "Concentrate," he thought, but it wasn't any use. Every attempt to focus was derailed by the foggy numbness that kept taking over his brain and the persistent agitation that made his skin prickle and his toes curl inside his boots until they cracked, over and over. Not even his partner's lax and disgusting habits could completely explain it. It was an ache that seemed to be without source, without name, that disturbed his sleep and made every waking minute exhausting.

The sound of the telephone was a welcome interruption from this daydream about absolutely nothing. Mako grabbed for it, but Zhang got there first.

"Uh huh. Uh huh. Got it," the older officer said before slamming down the receiver hard enough to make both desks shake. "We're off, kid. Double homicide."

It was the first really cold day after an unusually mild autumn. The ground was wet with the drizzle that kept threatening to turn to sleet. Everything—the city, the buildings, the streets—was monochrome, an undifferentiated grey mass. Mako pulled his overcoat a little tighter around his body and used his inner fire to try to keep ahead of the chill as he stepped out of the police cruiser into one of the bleakest back alleys he had ever seen. The walls of the surrounding buildings seemed to lean toward one another until the sky became nothing more than a grey slit. Rank-smelling passages ran off in each direction, and perilous looking fire escapes darted precipitously upward toward windows that probably hadn't been opened in years.

Just ahead, he could see first responders milling around two bodies. The first time he'd been to this kind of scene was both thrilling and disturbing, but now…

"Two victims," said the first officer on the scene, as if he was reciting from a script. "One male, one female. Non-benders. They were found this morning by someone who says they were cleaning up garbage."

Mako looked in either direction and decided that this was unlikely. He approached the two bodies and knelt down to where the woman lay curled next to the man, eyes open in a ghastly look of pain and terror. Her hair was singed, and Mako swallowed the rising bile as the smell of burnt flesh filled his nostrils. There was blood all over the man's jacket. It looked like they had been both burnt and stabbed.

"Any witnesses?" Zhang asked.

"Not that we've been able to track down. We knocked on doors all around here, but no one saw or heard nothin. You know how people around here are about talking to cops."

Mako knew. He noticed that the corpses in front of him were dressed cheaply but not without thought. The man's beard—what was left of it anyway—looked well-kempt, and the woman was wearing stockings and what was probably the only pair of earrings she owned. Carefully, he reached a gloved hand into the pocket of his overcoat and pulled out a wallet and a paper bag. The wallet contained a few yuans and an ID card, but nothing else. "Liu Jie," he said. "Registered in the Dragon Flats district. Non-bender."

He knew what he would likely find in the little paper bag. He'd seen too many of these lately, but he looked anyway and found the expected black powder. "Tar," he said, looking over to where his partner was rifling through the woman's pockets.

"Well, looks like she had a taste too," Zhang said. "Triad hit or drug deal gone bad, I guess."

"But why are the drugs still on the bodies?" Mako asked.

Zhang shrugged. "Maybe whoever killed them got scared off."

Mako took another look at this completely deserted alleyway and decided that didn't add up.

Other than the state of the bodies, evidence was pretty scarce. Mako noticed a trail of muddy footprints that looked like a child's heading off in one direction, but there was no way to tell it they were connected. He logged it anyway before Zhang dragged him out of the way so that the coroner could come and do his work.

"It doesn't make sense," Mako said.

"Never does," said Zhang. "Tar makes people do crazy things."

This was true. Most people thought that the name came from the deep obsidian color of the drug once it was processed, but those close to the problem knew that it was short for "Avatar" because the high you got from it supposedly made you feel like you were in the Avatar State, like you could do anything. Some people tried.

"We're missing something. Tar sells for four hundred yuans per gram. Each of them had at least five grams on them. Why would you leave that kind of stash on the bodies?"

"I don't know, kid. Maybe they weren't after the drugs. Maybe it was just some lunatic who attacked them out of nowhere. Maybe it was an argument."

Zhang could tell Mako wasn't buying it.

"Look, kid. I've been doing this a long time. Lots of shit don't make sense. Let's go back to headquarters and see if either of these poor shits had a record. That'll tell us something."

The sound of the slamming cruiser door rang in Mako's ears, and as Zhang slowly pulled away, he watched the bodies being draped onto stretchers and covered with sheets before being loaded into the waiting ambulance. Mako knew all too well where bodies found in this way ended up.

"Liu Jie and Xia. Married. Arrested three times for opium possession in the past ten years. Convicted once. He did two years. She got probation. Typical. Known triad ties." Zhang read off the victim's files in a monotone while Mako leaned back in his desk chair, arms crossed.

"Family?" he asked.

"As of three years ago, it looks like they had a kid. The broad's mother took it last time they got arrested."

"Someone should go talk to them."

"So alert social services. Looks like the kid will be better without them anyway. Coupla low life addict thugs."

Mako shifted uncomfortably in his seat. "No, I mean we should go interview them—find out if anyone had it out for the parents."

Zhang looked at him skeptically. "And what good would that do exactly?"

"I don't know," Mako said incredulously. "Isn't it our job to find whoever killed them?"

"I'm telling you, kid. This was a drug deal gone south. I've seen it a hundred times. Maybe there's more to it. Maybe there ain't. But right now we got ten open cases here, some of them on people who were not out to destroy their own lives, and we need to concentrate on those."

"But…"

"Look, you wanna make sure this shit don't happen again? Then let's focus on the big stuff. Okay?"

"Okay," Mako said, standing up. "I'm going to get coffee."

"That shit'll kill ya, you know," called Zhang, lighting another cigarette.

Coffee was a new habit for Mako, who usually preferred tea. But between his restless sleep and desperate need to try and focus, he'd had to turn to something stronger. The brew available in the break room was dreck, but it did the job. Mako stared into the cup of hot, black liquid, tilted it back, and felt the caffeine bathe his brain and quiet the headache he hadn't even noticed until this minute.

"Zhang is a lazy shit," was all he could think. If a case couldn't be solved in five seconds, he hardly ever wanted to pursue it further. Anything that was hard, anything that demanded extra time or extra effort could be successfully buried in the morass at his desk and conveniently forgotten, especially if it involved people whom Zhang considered less than worthy of his best work. Mako had tried his best to go along and get along, but this was unacceptable. This wasn't working.

He swallowed the last of his coffee and headed back to the bullpen, noticing that Zhang had deserted his desk. "Figures." Mako gathered the file for Liu Jie and Xia's case off the mess and decided that enough was enough. He had to go talk to Bei Fong.

He knocked on the heavy metal door and heard a gruff affirmative before walking in. The Chief's office seemed designed to intimidate, all hard surfaces and sharp lines.

"Make it fast, Mako," Bei Fong said without even looking up from her work. They'd enjoyed a brief honeymoon period after Mako's exoneration and promotion, but the Chief didn't have favorites, and she was sparing with her approval and affection. She also respected seniority, which was why her officers were loyal to her.

"Look, I know I'm supposed to learn from Zhang, but there's no other way to say it. He's letting things slide."

He handed the case file across the desk, and she took it.

"He thinks it was a drug deal gone wrong, but nothing adds up."

"Looks like there isn't an awful lot else to go on here," she said.

"There's not, but if we dig a little further…"

"Look, Mako, I'm not telling you not to follow up on this case, but this job is about prioritizing, and if Zhang thinks your energies are better devoted elsewhere, then…"

"But how fair is that? If we decide that a murder isn't worth investigating just because the victims have a record or are addicts or poor…"

"It's not fair, Mako. Nothing ever is."

"I know, but…"

"Look, Mako. I know you have almost a dozen cases on your plate, some of them solveable, some of them probably not. Why is this one getting to you."

The young man crossed his arms again, looked at the floor, and shook his head. "I don't know. Something about…the way they looked…the way they died. They were in pain, I could tell."

"Anything else?"

"They have a kid."

She nodded.

"Listen, follow this one up if you get a lead. Send an officer to talk to the family…or go yourself if you want to. But make sure you do it for the right reasons. And try not to piss these guys off." She gestured in the direction of the bullpen. "Some people think you have a habit of getting other cops in trouble after what happened with Varrick."

"Those guys were…"

"Idiots. I know. But don't get a reputation for going over everyone's heads. It's probably bad enough that you came in here to talk about this now. Whatever's between you and Zhang, you need to fix it."

He nodded and turned to the door.

"And Mako, I'm not going to be around to back you up for a little while."

"I'm sorry?"

"I'm taking some time off. Family stuff. Akihiro's in charge," she said, referring to her second in command.

Mako nodded.

"My advice? Keep a low profile for a while. Between you and the Avatar and you just being…yourself, you've been getting enough attention lately. This career lasts a lifetime. That's a long time to make good, but it's also a long time to be miserable."

"Got it."

In the bullpen, Mako's exit did not go unnoticed.

"Talking to the Chief without me?" said Zhang, back from whatever it was he was doing.

"Just keeping her up to date. You weren't around."

"Just doing your little show for her, huh? Since you're her favorite little turtle duck," he scoffed.

"You are aware, aren't you, that just a few months ago, Bei Fong knocked down my door and helped arrest me and throw me in jail."

Zhang grunted and turned back to his mess, leaving Mako to try, once again, to concentrate.

Narook's was nearly empty when he arrived, the tables cleared of the usual diners, leaving room for a line of regulars at the bar, including a familiar broad back in a green shirt. Mako settled in on the stool next to his brother, who passed him a bottle of something, anything without even meeting his eye.

"You missed her," he said. "Both of them, actually. It got too late."

"Sorry." His tone was clipped. "We got this murder case today, and I had to run it down."

"Did you solve it, Detective?"

Bolin's glibness was getting under his skin.

"No. I spent all day knocking on doors, and I got nowhere."

"You know how poor people are about the police."

"Yeah, but two people got killed, and they had a family, you know. You'd think someone would give a damn."

Bolin paused over his drink. "No one did when it happened to us."

Mako drained his drink and gestured to the bartender for another, which he drained in quick succession.

"You doing ok, bro?"

"Why do you ask?" said Mako, reaching for his third.

"You're, uh, hitting it pretty hard, there. And it seems like all you ever do is work."

"I do other things."

"Like what?"

He couldn't think of anything.

"She asked about you , you know."

Mako didn't even have to ask who he was talking about.

"I think that she thinks that you're mad at her."

"I'm not mad at her." He wasn't. Really.

Bolin pushed a piece of paper down the bar with a phone number on it. "Then call her, and tell her that. She moved into her new place yesterday."

Mako pocketed the slip of paper, but didn't say anything. He motioned for another drink.

"Being friends means doing friend stuff. Like going out and welcoming people home. And not turning your brother into a go-between."

"I had to work."

"Yeah, you said that."

When Bolin left, Mako promised he was right behind him, but he had a couple or five more drinks before he decided he decided he was just drunk enough to face his empty apartment. But not before making a quick stop.

Pausing at the first payphone he found, Mako fished drunkenly in his pocket for a handful of coins and had to think hard to find the right denomination.

The coin clinked in the slot, and he lit a fire to help him read the numbers on the scrap of paper, nearly setting it on fire in the process.

Only when the line on the other end started ringing did he stop to wonder what time it was. Cursing himself, he pulled the phone from his hear a sleepy-sounding, "Hello?"

He froze. As he was struggling to rub two alcohol-impaired neurons together, the voice on the other end said, "Ok, whoever this is, I can hear you breathing, and…"

"Hey," he stammered out. "It's me."