Disclaimer: The Legend of Korra is owned by Mike Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko. This story was written only for entertainment purposes and I have no intention of infringing upon any copyright.
A/N: This is my very first fic (of any kind), and critiques are very, very welcome. I also understand that this topic is probably very common in the LOK community, and any similarities between my story and other stories are entirely coincidental. (I actually haven't read any other stories…so there's that)
Chapter 1: How We Learned
I don't think messengers are given enough credit for the work they do. No matter the amount of good news they send out, there is always the overbearing weight of bad news. Might get it tomorrow, might get it in a year, but they will get it and it's their job to tell its intended audience. And a lot of times…audiences are cruel.
„"„"„"„"„"„"„"„"„"
"Mako! Bolin! Dinner's ready!"
Aunty Em's voice reverberated through the floor beneath us, as shrill and loud as if she were standing in the room. Her voice had a tendency to defy the laws of physics.
We rushed downstairs to meet her in the kitchen, a large tub of hot noodle soup over the stove. Mako and I lined up with me in the front, as usual. Mako was nice like that—he always let me get dinner first. Aunty Em smiled at me as she poured my bowl, and I brought it to the table. Mako came to the table shortly after me, and Aunty Em came last.
For a while the only sound in the kitchen was my slurping. I finished my bowl and got myself another, and then another. Aunty Em wasn't surprised—this was generally what happened at dinner. Still, I felt she was looking at me strangely tonight.
"What?" I asked her, a mouth full of noodles. "Am I being too loud?"
"No, no, it's not that." She smiled a little. "You just look so much like your father."
"And Mako looks like Mom," I teased, waiting for Mako to get mad.
"Hey," he said, "that's not a bad thing." In a quiet voice, he said, "Mom's pretty."
"And so are you!" I grinned, soup dripping down my chin. "Pretty, pretty Mako. You and Mom should go out and get makeovers some time."
Mako growled, but thought it better to avoid pummeling me in front of Aunty Em. Then a devilish grin slid across his face. "Well at least I don't have Dad's big nose."
"MY NOSE IS NOT BIG!" I yelled, feeling my nose to make sure it hadn't grown extra large over night.
"Calm down, you two," sighed Aunty Em. She wasn't one for yelling matches and food fights, or anything fun, for that matter. "Your parents will be home to pick you up in the morning and I don't want to tell them that I had to tie their children to opposite ends of the house."
I harrumphed, but settled on finishing my soup. I thanked Aunty Em for dinner and placed my bowl in the sink, running upstairs to Aunty Em's guest bedroom. That was where Mako and I slept whenever we stayed the night at Aunty Em's.
The guest bedroom was simple—a very large bed, a small closet, and a single window on the side. At the foot of the bed sat a chest. Normally Aunty Em would have kept it empty for her guests, but since we were the only guests she ever had, we just kept some spare toys in it, just in case. I pulled out my most prized possession: my fire ferret stuffed animal. Fire ferrets were my favorite animals in the whole wide world, and they were really talkative.
This fire ferret's name was Pabu. I lifted him up and made him dance, because Pabu liked to dance with me. I told him what I said to Mako and about how pretty he was, and Pabu laughed. He always laughed at my jokes—he was my best friend aside from Mako. But, then again, Mako's my brother, so I guess that kind of puts him in another category.
Mako entered the room right after I told Pabu that Aunty Em smelled like pickled fish.
"Hi Mako," I said, smiling from ear to ear. "Wanna play with me and Pabu?"
"Do I want to play with your stuffed animal? No thanks, Bo. I already planned to do nothing tonight, and I can't change my plans so suddenly."
"You only had to say 'no,'" I mumbled, making Pabu dance extra fast now that Mako was around. "Isn't that right, Pabu?" He nodded in agreement. I looked over at Mako, who was sitting on the bed, looking out the window at the moon. He looked sad all of a sudden. "Do you think Mom and Dad are done working for the day?" I asked him, hoping to get him out of his stupor.
Mako stopped to think a little. "Probably not. Dad usually works until the moon is highest in the sky, and that's not for at least another hour." And of course after he got off he would have to find Mom before heading to the trams for an hour-long trip back home. They had jobs so far away from the city because there wasn't much construction work to be done in such a jam-packed place like Republic City.
Mom was a welder and Dad was a support…guy. I couldn't think of the word, but he made big pillars of stone and Mom melted things together with her hands. Earth and fire—like a volcano.
It was nights like these that I missed them most. They worked so hard—I knew it because they came home almost too tired to eat dinner, let alone play with us. I knew they were doing what was best for our family, but that didn't change the fact that we didn't get to see them much.
The only times we would ever spend more than ten minutes with them in the morning or at night was during the summer, when Mom and Dad got breaks from work. For a couple weeks each year, Dad actually read us bedtime stories and Mom made us hot chocolate and cookies and tucked us in at night with Dad. They would kiss me on both of my cheeks at the same time—they knew it tickled a lot. Mako was happier during those weeks, too, going off with Mom to an empty courtyard for firebending lessons. He even got Dad to show him stuff about construction. Meanwhile, I would convince them to take me and Mako to the zoo, and I would get Dad to buy me candy. Those weeks were the best of my life.
I put Pabu back in the chest, telling him goodnight. Soon I was dressed in my 'jamies and in bed. Since Mom and Dad weren't around, Mako tucked me in, telling me a bedtime story about a fire ferret that could do circus tricks. When he got to the part about the ring of fire, I felt my eye lids drooping, and he took that as a cue to go to bed as well. I felt the usual moving about in the bed as he got comfortable for the night, and I closed my eyes. I heard the familiar shuffling of fabric, and I could tell Mako was rearranging Dad's scarf around his neck. I smiled. Mako liked that scarf way too much.
"Wake up, Bo."
My eyes fluttered open, looking for the dastardly villain who dared wake me up. Oh, it was just Mako. "What is it, Big Bro?" I yawned.
He looked at me seriously, no trace of humor. "Aunty Em says it's important. Let's go."
"But—"
"Let's go, Bolin!"
I shrank into myself. I didn't like this Mako. And where were Mom and Dad?
Mako grabbed my arm before I could think more about that subject and propelled me down the stairs to the kitchen, where Aunty Em sat. Normally displeasing to the eye, Aunty Em looked even more of a mess today. Her hair was lank and unwashed, her eyes drooping and wet, her frame visibly shaking. She was holding a mug of coffee, which was only utilized when things got rough, like the time someone stole Dad's Satomobile.
"Boys, you know I love you so much," she started out.
"What's wrong, Aunty Em?" Mako asked, his voice absent of the false braveness it usually held. "Where's Mom, and Dad?"
Aunty Em sniffed, dabbing at a tear oozing out of her eye. "Mako…"
"Where's Mom?" "Where's Dad?" we asked together, angry with Aunty Em. She was holding back something important.
"There's no easy way to tell you this—"
"Just tell us already!" yelled Mako, setting a potted plant on fire with sheer rage.
"Mako!" Aunty Em gave him a hard look, suddenly returning to her regular self. "What did your mother tell you about firebending?" She ran to fill a bucket with water and doused the plant. "You know you have to control your fire! I swear, if your mother were alive today she'd—"
Time came to a halt. I stopped breathing, stopped everything about myself. Mom was…dead? Mom, whose life was filled to the brim with energy and excitement? How could this be? How could this have happened? A million more questions were popping up in my head, driving me insane. I only ceased this when I looked at Mako. His mouth was trembling, his eyes glazing over. I could see tears in his eyes through my own, tears that were never supposed to form.
Mako never cried. Ever.
"I didn't mean to tell you like that." It was Aunty Em, momentarily forgotten. "I just…" And she was crying too, great blobs of salt water falling from her face onto the floor.
"How?" I yelled at her. "How did she die? Where's Dad? Why isn't he here now, too?"
Something in Aunty Em's eyes wasn't right, the flame that was normally there was gone. She withered when I asked her about Dad, sinking in her chair.
"He's dead too?" Mako squeaked. His voice was broken by tears, his body racked with sobs. "NO!" he shouted, a blast of fire escaping his mouth. He ran out of the kitchen and into the street, and I wasn't more than two steps behind him.
Mako ran like a madman, pushing through carts and past people, giving them burns because his skin was so hot. He was fast, and I lost him a few times in the forest of legs of all the people in the street, so many giants exactly where I least needed them to be.
Aunty Em was right on my heels, huffing and puffing the whole time. We rounded a corner, in pursuit of Mako, but he was nowhere to be found. For a split second, my heart was punctured. Mom, Dad, and Mako, too? Why was my family so suddenly falling apart? No, I thought, don't give up that easily. I slit my eyes and kept running, searching. I was going to find my brother—he was the only family I had left.
The only way we managed to follow Mako was by searching for his footprints, which were seared into the hard dirt beneath us. His tracks led me through alleys and streets I'd never been to before, cold places where the sun never shined. In these alleys, the world was simple and narrow, a straight path to any one destination. So I continued on, fatigue setting in my limbs.
We found him eventually, sitting behind a dumpster, half of which was melted into a mass of lumpy steel. He was crying, his tears sizzling when they hit the ground. I ran to him and hugged him. I had missed him, though he'd only been gone for minutes. He hugged me back, controlling his firebending enough to avoid cooking me in his embrace. He was warm, and I sank my face into the puff around his neck that was Dad's scarf. "It smells like Dad," I said, my voice muffled by the fabric. I hoped it would hide my tears.
"I know, Bo. I know."
"Mako." Aunty Em had finally caught up to us. "Mako, come back to the house. It's nearly noon and we have things to talk about."
"I don't want to talk about anything," he said.
"Don't be silly. With your parents…gone, we need to talk about how we're going to go about things in the future."
Mako moved his arms away from me and stood up, glaring at Aunty Em. "Don't you dare talk about our parents like that! Like they don't exist anymore!"
"I didn't mean th—"
"It doesn't matter!" A ring of fire surrounded us, scorching Aunty Em's leg. She yelped and fell back, her pain worn like a mask over her face. She hurt for us, I could understand that much. Mako continued: "Don't you ever bring them up again!"
"Mako," Aunty Em said, breathing heavily, "you have to come back to the house. You're not safe on your own, not out here. There are lots of people who will hurt you."
"I don't care!" The flames got higher, so high I couldn't even see Aunty Em through them. "We can survive. We will survive, without you or anyone else's help. Now leave us alone!"
"I am not disgracing your parents by letting you out into the streets by yourselves!" Aunty Em's face was flushed, emphasized even more so by Mako's fire. She was screaming at that point. "I was put in charge of your safety and I will not allow you two out of my sight! Not after what just happened!"
"Don't you get it?" Mako's face was the same shade of red as hers. "We don't need you anymore. You smell and you're mean and you're not Mom or Dad!"
"I know you're only talking out of anger—"
"LEAVE!" Mako smashed his hands together and the flames around us merged to form a single fireball in front of him, ready to disintegrate her.
Aunty Em seemed to stop fighting the inevitable and set her jaw. She nodded curtly to us both. When she spoke, her voice was deep and gruff. "Then be careful. Stay away from Triad territory, and keep each other within reach. If you need help for any reason, you know where to find me." Then she turned around and disappeared behind a corner, another part of our lives vanishing right before us.
The realization of what had just happened finally sank into my eight-year-old brain. We had just lost our parents and driven away the one person who would willingly care for us. We were on our own.
That was when I started to cry. We were alone! Two kids! What were we going to do? What was Mako going to do? I couldn't do anything by myself.
I looked at Mako, and I could tell he was exhausted. He let the fireball dissipate and sat down, panting. I sat down next to him. "What now, Big Bro?" I said, trying my best not to sound like a sniveling kid. Mako was always the man with the plan, the one who got me out of all sorts of trouble without having to think. He had to know what to do. He had to.
"I say we take a rest for a bit." He sighed. "I'm tired." On the last word, his voice broke. I could see tears rolling down his cheeks, cutting a path through the grime that had accumulated on his face while he had been running through the alleys. Seeing Mako like this—hurting so much—cut me deep. He didn't deserve this, and neither did I.
I put my arms around my brother, hoping to at least make him feel a little better. I knew it was usually his job to do that for me, but everything was so out of order I couldn't figure out what I was supposed to be doing. He looked at me and smiled a tiny smile. It was enough to make me feel safe.
He scooted us over to the wall, next to the now-destroyed dumpster. He wrapped Dad's scarf around us both, and for a little bit, it seemed like we were with Dad, snuggled up next to him in his comfy chair, ready to hear a story. By now Mom would have come into Dad's study to give us some hot chocolate, because she was always thinking of things like that, things that we didn't know we needed. And now, out here with only Mako, we snuggled up together, brothers against the world.
The world was so cold.
As I thought about what story Dad would have read us, I leaned against Mako's too-tall shoulder, warming my ear against his skin; it reminded me that we still had some hope—we still had each other. Despite what had just happened, I was dozing off. I closed my eyes, dry for the first time in a long time. "Can you take the first watch?" I asked him, trying to bring back the times we used to play soldiers.
"Sure thing, Bo. Sleep for as long as you want." He looked at the afternoon sky, his eyes still wet with unshed tears. "I won't be able to sleep for a while, anyway. Dream about Mom for me, will ya?"
"Count on it," I mumbled. "Soldier Bolin, out."
A/N:Hoped you liked the first chapter. Keep in mind that Bolin is 8 and Mako is probably 10. I wasn't sure about their ages when their parents died, and I felt this was a suitable age. I know a lot of Bolin's thought process is overly sophisticated (for an 8-year-old, at least), but I felt if I made the sentences shorter and more direct, the story wouldn't quite flow like I wanted it to.
Anyways, thanks for reading my first fic! Reviews are accepted with open arms, as I'm still learning and I usually write with music in the background (leads to funny sentence structures).
Edit (1/20): I did a very big revision of this piece, and I hope it'll be my last.