He can feel the naivety seeping out of her. Each second with him and his little brother, her eyes catch something they've never seen before, or her ears pick up an unusual, unfamiliar noise, and her whole face beams.
He lets out a sigh as he follows Bolin and Korra, letting them get ahead of him as he keeps the same pace he's had, and they once again scurry to look at some other fascinating piece of the world. She's been sheltered all her life, he can tell, and although he knows that he purposely sheltered Bolin from some of the hardships that they were facing, he never let his brother become as blind as Korra was forced to become.
Just the other night Mako had to come to Korra's rescue when some Equalist thugs were trying to show her "how real men work." She hadn't the slightest idea what they were actually planning to show her, and she would have gone right with them and ended up who knows where had he not jumped in.
Mako feels a nudge in his back and he turns around quickly, almost causing Korra to fall; she had slumped all her weight onto him and had he not aided her, once again, she would have landed flat on her face. She gives him an embarrassed smile, and he can't help but smile back. His hands linger on her upper arms where he caught her, slowly being set ablaze without any fire. He holds on just a second more, then releases.
Her eyes lock on his for just a second, as if trying to get an answer to some unknown question by absorbing it through his molten stare. And that second is all it takes to spark the fire inside his chest. It fills him, his whole being, a burning, yearning for her to be his.
He breaks their exchange and looks away, back to his brother pretending to be concerned for his safety or his whereabouts, and Korra's attention flutters back to Bolin as well. Within an instant she has drifted from Mako's side to Bolin's, unknowingly allowing Mako the space he had wished for in order to think.
A small smirk plays across his face as Pabu sneaks up on Korra and makes her shriek. He wishes he could have her, that she could be his, that the raging flames inside of him could be appeased to warm embers. But he sees the way she looks around her in amazement, without any real perspective. He sees how whenever she's with him and Bolin, actually experiencing the world, a fire grows inside her as well; he can see the fire wick within her cerulean eyes. But she is yet too unknowing, she is yet too naïve, and no matter how much he wishes he could put his logic aside he knows that she would not be able to handle everything at once, not new experiences in the world and new experiences with Mako.
So instead, he will help her find herself, not who the monks and Lotus members have always blinded her to be. He will help her shed the rose colored glasses and see through the eyes of a normal person. He will continue to risk himself so that she can actually learn what it is to live.
And all the while she'll be changing him, and he'll relish it; the fire inside him will grow and smolder and he will become the one in amazement, watching in awe as her life begins. And although she'll disrupt his small family, his tightly controlled world, because she'll want to poke her head into everything, he'll gladly watch as what he used to know fades away because the cold emptiness inside him, that he's known and carried with him for so long, will be filled by her in the end. And until then, he'll keep himself warm with the fire inside him that blazes for her, even if it burns.