oh, home
let me come home
home is wherever I'm with you
I. reminisce
Mako sits on the sofa of his apartment above the pro-bending arena, looking over at his brother and his best friend, both asleep. Korra is laying on the ground, surrounded by papers as she slept, snoring with her face pressed to the wood floor. Bolin was in a chair, upside down, also snoring. They sounded different than usual, their breathing rhythmic and almost melodic in the middle of the night. Korra's eyelids flutter as she turns over on the ground. Mako gets up from his spot and puts her away in her room in the attic, trying not to trip over the inconveniently located cot in the room she had to herself while he held the girl in his arms. She slept alone, he and Bolin sharing a room down the hall.
He begins to think of when they'd met her.
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Korra ran everywhere.
At seven, she was as much of a pistol as her parents could handle, and it felt like they had to apologize to everyone they came in contact with. She screamed with joy at most things, and what she didn't like, she dealt with using a combination of waterbending and her pout.
One day they're in the market, and Senna clutches her hand as they walk through looking for food in the city. They hadn't planned to leave the South Pole so soon, but they did in order to find good bending masters in a place where many people came to teach. A good percentage of the population lived in the city, so Tonraq had thought it would be a good idea. Senna had been reluctant, but he'd convinced her somehow. They are here now, in the market, surrounded by people. It's Saturday and it seems like everybody and their mom came to find fish (which Korra thinks smells gross) and blubbered seal jerky (which Senna had promised to get Korra to come with her that day without a fight). Korra looks up at her mother with wide eyes and a wide smile as they push their way through the crowd.
Suddenly it fills up more, somehow, and everything gets rowdy and dangerous. Senna clutches her daughter's hand tighter, but she slips away, into the crowd. Their fingers are ripped apart and she gasps at the absence.
Afterward, she looks around for hours, but she can't find her baby. She goes home and cries.
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Korra is standing in the alley in a blue shirt and darker blue pants when Bolin sees her for the first time. Her face is dirty, and she's drawing with a stick in the dirt covering the ground, her lips protruding in an impressive pout. Her hair is in a ponytail, but it's short. She's short, too. Bolin notices that she's by herself and playing with the excess water pooled on the street.
He's there alone, of course. Mako was out looking for food and a place to stay for the night, and even a job, if there was one. There usually wasn't for two tiny boys who didn't have a home. He didn't even bother with adults anymore...every time he tried, they'd send him to the orphanage where he'd go with Bolin until they could run away. They'd gotten it down to a science - it only took a day until they opened the doors to get laundry or something, and they'd just run, run as fast as their legs could take them because nobody could ever replace Mom and Dad, and he'd clutch Bolin's tiny hand, making sure that his feet kept touching the ground. The first time they'd tried to help was a disaster, and they didn't feed them enough, didn't talk to them at all, and then beat them with switches. The first time he saw Bolin bleed the man who'd done it had a dark burn on his arm from where Mako had gotten him.
They didn't do orphanages.
So Bolin sits in the street, seven, and day after day looks forward to the place they'll go next. He sees the tiny dark-haired, dark-skinned girl across the way and goes over. He sits next to her, just as dirty, but not nearly as lost. There are tracks in the dirt on her face where she's cried. He looks up at her, both of them small, and unaware. He looks at the dirt she's drawing in, and then through his messy black mop of hair, looks at her.
"Whatcha drawin'?" Bolin says.
"Just some symbols," Korra says, making swirling lines in the dirt.
"Symbols of what?" he says. Korra looks at him funny.
"It's the symbol of the Water Tribe," she says. "That's where I'm from."
"Oh," he says. And it only takes a minute before he talks again. He's got an infectious curiosity of the world that Mako doesn't share. But she doesn't know Mako. Maybe she's different, Bolin thinks.
"What's your name?"
"Korra," she says. "What's yours?"
"Bolin," he says. And they sit in non-awkward silence. He smiles at her, a front tooth missing where it had fallen out last week.
"Hey Korra," he says after a while. "Do you want to meet my brother?"
"Okay," she says. Bolin stands up and Korra follows.
"It's this way," he says, walking over to the other side of the alley. He sits down against the brick wall and it isn't two minutes until Mako arrives and looks warily at the tiny blue-eyed child sitting next to his brother. They're chattering wildly when he gets there.
"Mako!" Bolin says happily upon seeing him. Mako has a single loaf of bread and a bottle of water. "This is Korra."
Mako doesn't talk. His expression, one half of anger and half exasperation, means that he can't believe Bolin has gotten them into another stupid predicament.
"Here," he says. He tears off a chunk of the bread for his brother, who eats it immediately. Korra looks up at him, surprisingly with nothing in her eyes but interest. Not greed, not malice, hunger, yes, but anyone would be hungry after two days without seeing your parents. Mako knows he was, but he's yet to hear her story.
"I don't have anything else," he says honestly. "I wasn't expecting -"
"It's okay," she says. "What's your name?"
"Mako," he says.
Korra smiles.
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II. deal
Korra sits in the alleyway with the brothers for a while after the sun goes down and the moon rises in the sky, shining on the street where they sit. Mako lights a fire in a trashcan for them, even though it's only fall and it isn't very cold at night. Korra uses waterbending to purify their drinking water, and then Mako tries to cook a spider-rat he finds running around. Korra doesn't much care for it, but it's her first meal since the stewed sea prunes her mother had made for dinner the other night, and she just sucks it up and pretends it's arctic hen. Though when she bites it it, holding it on a stick, it tastes absolutely nothing like arctic hen.
She doesn't throw up.
"So how did you get here?" Mako asks. They've passed awkward introduction phase and are now just asking questions of each other. Bolin is nodding off, his head drooping every few minutes as he tries not to fall asleep. He looks at the fire to avoid it. It's not working.
"I was in the market," Korra says. "I was with my mom and there were so many people. I got lost. I didn't find her."
"I'm sorry," Mako says.
"It'll be fine," Korra says. "I just need to find them."
"Your parents?"
"Mmm-hmm." Korra's starting to nod off now. She scoots over on the wall so she can lean her body against it to sleep.
For some reason, Mako's memories of losing his own parents plague him throughout the night. He eventually falls asleep, letting the fire go out.
The next morning, Korra wakes up, rubbing the tiredness from her eyes with both hands.
"Hey," Mako says. "If you want, we can help you find your parents. But you have to do something for us."
"What?"
"Help us find food and water for every night, and we'll help you get home." It sort of hurts to say the words, because at age nine, he hasn't been home in nearly a year.
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Mako sees the news as he's walking past the vendor on a Tuesday morning when he sees it. Korra's been with them for a week in a half, and she's kept up her bargain, especially when she uses her waterbending to purify the water and, when times get really bad, finds it in hidden places for them to drink.
He waits until the man is looking away before he snatches a copy of the paper and tucks it into his shirt before continuing to walk away. He arrives in the alley they've been staying in since she came, and he looks at her. She's laughing with Bolin, so little, trying to find her parents. They've been asking around for days, and then this happens.
He asks again, though he knows already what her answer will be.
"Korra, what are your parents' names, again?"
"Senna and Tonraq," she says.
Mako opens the paper up and look at the obituary section again. There they are, Senna and Tonraq, a young couple who died of cholera suddenly in the middle of the night.
"You need to look at this," he says. He hands it to her, and she begins to read it, but she hasn't been reading but for a year now, and the characters are somewhat difficult for her to discern.
She scans the page. She looks closer, and her face falls.
"Died?" she says. "Mako, what's an obituary?"
"It's the place where they write about people who have passed on," he says, using the words his father had used when he'd explained it.
"So they're gone," Korra says.
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Korra left, going out of the alley and down the street. They decided to give her some space while she mourned, but when the rain and thunder starts up, they need to get her back so they can find somewhere to sleep for the night.
They find her in the rain, screaming and crying, and bending the water ferociously around herself. He's never seen her do this before...it's terrifying. Then suddenly pieces of rock start to shift in the earth and dislodge with the movement of her arms.
"Korra?" Bolin says as he reaches her. He looks at her. She's so angry and sad. She stops bending when she sees him.
"You an earthbender," Bolin says. "You're an earthbender like me!"
"I guess," Korra says, too angry and upset to be happy about this development.
Mako realizes what this means.
Korra's the Avatar.
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III. past
After she's tired herself out with bending water and rocks, trying to rid herself of frustration by exhausting it out, Mako steers her back to the alley. It's stopped raining, and they get their few possessions (a pot, a large spoon, one set of spare clothes) to go to the park. It's better to sleep there when it's not bad weather out, and there's a bridge to sleep under.
They're under it, Mako cooking fish that Korra had captured with waterbending, when he starts talking.
"I...we...know exactly how you're feeling," he says. "We lost ours, too."
Korra looks up from her fish. Bolin scoots closer to them, to the fire, and looks at Mako with sad eyes. This is really the only time he ever shows sadness, and Korra, though her tears have only just stopped, stares shocked as Mako takes a breath and begins to explain.
"I was out with Mom and Dad a few months ago...Bolin was at home, with a babysitter...I don't know why they brought me along. We went to see a play. We were coming back home...Dad kept telling jokes, and all of a sudden this guy comes out of nowhere and firebent at them. Dad didn't see it at all, and they died."
Korra can't talk.
"I had to tell Bolin the next day...and they tried to put us in a foster home, but we ran away."
"Wow," Korra says. "I didn't know."
"It's okay," Bolin says. "It's kind of...hard."
"So," Korra says. "I should go out on my own, shouldn't I?" Korra is thinking too much about this. She thinks she's burdening them.
"What? No," Mako says. "You can stay with us. You just lost your only family."
Korra looks down, trying not to be reminded.
"It's going to get better," Bolin says. He puts his hands on their arms and looks at the two of them. "We'll make it."
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IV. job
Mako is breathless when he runs back with the news. He's fourteen and Bolin is twelve, and they're too young for it, and Korra is too, but it's something. They have work.
Admittedly, he hates bending triads because it was their kind of people that had put them in this situation. But it isn't work that requires killing or hurting people. They just have to run around. They'll have a place to sleep, sometimes. They'll at least be making enough money to have food every night. Bolin's earthbending has gotten better little by little as he spends his days practicing with Korra, and soon they're able to make their own shelter.
"Guys, I got us something," he says. "I found us jobs."
"Where?" Korra asks.
"This one isn't for you," Mako says. You should stay here...or sell flowers or something. I don't know. But you can't do this."
"I'll do whatever I want," Korra says, a bit insulted. "What is the job?"
"It's running numbers for the Triple Threat Triad."
"What's it pay?"
"It's not great, but it's steady," Mako says, pulling the figures out of his head quickly. "It's something like two yuans an hour, and you work almost all night, so we'll be able to have money," he says.
"How did you find out about this?" Bolin asks.
"I passed the headquarters and saw a flyer," he says.
"Okay, fine," Korra says. "We'll go over after dark."
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Running numbers is not as easy as Korra thought. Mako tells her that as a girl, it's really not safe, and she should hide her hair under a cap to prevent anyone from figuring it out. She does him one better and cuts it much shorter so that it stops right above her shoulders. She puts on city clothes that they find in a dumpster and Mako patches them up...a skill he'd learned when Korra couldn't do it two years before.
They start out small, just actually running figures back and forth between members of the Triad who stake out at various locations throughout the city, and after a month, the leader wants Mako to start stealing information from the other triads. Korra, disguised as a boy, confronts him, telling him that he can't do it. Mako realizes that this extra responsibility will result in a doubling of his pay and tries to get her to let it go.
"I'll do it too," Korra says.
"What?"
"If you're going to put yourself in danger, then so will I."
Mako tries to argue the point, but Korra mentions her Avatar status, which they've been hiding from the Triads to prevent her exploitation. She also mentions Bolin, who felt as strongly about it as Korra, but didn't have enough will to argue the point with his brother.
Mako gives in after two days of arguing. It's not worth it, and Korra asks Zolt if she can help. He allows it.
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Their first recon mission involves stealing a good amount of money and information from the Agni Kai triad. Korra's firebending had made its debut on a night when they'd gotten so angry that she punched at his face. He didn't expect the flames, but the argument dissipated after that. She didn't actually want to kill him, she said.
It's not easy to disguise themselves as firebenders - at least for Korra, because of her dark skin and blue eyes. She's totally Water Tribe. She puts on a cap and tucks her hair into it carefully before they go. She says she'll stay outside. Mako enters, staying quiet in the shadows because his disguise of black hair and golden eyes is one he was born with, and there are so many members there that it doesn't matter.
He delivers the information of their planned attack to gain possession of the west side to Zolt, and receives a pay raise. It's only fifteen more yuans a week, but it's enough to get them an apartment once he, Korra, and Bolin pool their resources.
They move into a tiny two-bedroom in Dragon Flats.
It isn't much, but it's theirs...their first home in four years.
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V. dangerous
When the boss assigns Korra a mission to steal from the metalbending cops...to steal the files on Zolt, notorious files, Mako demands to go with her. He doesn't even demand this of her...he asks the boss directly.
She's fourteen at the time.
They stand outside the office late at night - it's a new moon, and the Chief has yet to leave. Korra drops her guard for a second, falling asleep for a minute, and looks up. She tells Mako that the woman's gone, but she doesn't really know. She just wants to get it over with and go home.
"Let's go," she says. Mako opens the grate on the side of the building and she crawls in first. She shimmies easily through the air vent as they make their way into the office.
They drop down through the ceiling and Korra lands clumsily on the ground. Mako hears her "oof" and winces. At least there wasn't anything there. He falls down, making sure not to crush her as he bends his knees, rolling on the ground.
All of the lights are out...it's quiet, and they are in the Chief's office, presumably.
Korra shuffles around through the files, looking for one that says "Lightning Bolt Zolt" and it takes her several minutes to even locate it. Everything isn't sorted alphabetically, and when she gets to "Triad Members", he isn't there.
"Korra," Mako says, and lifts a thick package from the desk. "I think I found it," he says with a smirk.
"Ugh," she says, and goes over to look at it. As she's moving across the room, the door opens and Mako drops to the floor. Korra is frozen where she stands, her short hair falling partially out of the cap and her clothes oversized and messy. An older woman opens the door, her eyes opening wide at the girl standing at her desk, holding one of her files.
Immediately Korra punches fire in the woman's direction and Mako jumps up, his stance defensive. The woman's hand comes forward, and with it, cables come out and wrap around the two of them.
"You're under arrest," Lin Beifong says.
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In prison, they're separated. Korra's hat is taken away, and she's thankful...she never really liked it. It was a necessity.
She gets a phone call, but she doesn't use it right away. Who is she going to call?
Mako is let go because he technically didn't do anything, and Lin doesn't press charges against him.
Korra's bail is set at 50,000 yuans. Mako can't get her right away, but he promises soon when he goes for visitation. He claims he's her brother, but Lin sees right through that. She allows it anyway, because she doesn't need her Avatar to be upset when she approaches her with an offer.
She sits the girl down one day to talk. She's so young, Lin thinks, looking at her short brown hair and fierce blue eyes.
"I noticed your bending abilities," she says, referencing the punch she'd managed to avoid on the night of their meeting.
"What about them?"
"Well," Lin says. "You have blue eyes, which is genetically a trait of waterbenders. But you firebent at me. You tried to earthbend your cell. The only thing I haven't seen you do is airbend."
"I just haven't figured it out ye-" Korra stops, sighing and covering her face with her hand.
"So, Avatar," Lin says, circling around the table and looking at the almost-teenage child, "Would you like to be trained?"
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"You are going," Mako says. They're sitting in the police station because Korra has been detained and the whole group of them doesn't have more than 400 yuans to their names. Bolin sits there excitedly...not because of prison, but at the prospect that Korra could actually get out.
"I don't want to," Korra says, but her voice betrays her. She does want to learn. She just doesn't want them to be left.
"This is perfect!" Bolin says.
"Again," Mako says. "You have to go. You can be free. You can do whatever you want."
"They're just going to make me train all the time," Korra says.
Mako looks at her seriously across the table, and she stops speaking.
"This could be your only opportunity. Take it."
Her eyes shift to Bolin and back to Mako.
"Fine," she says.
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VI. crush
Korra has a really hard time getting used to it.
She lives on Air Temple Island with the only Airbending master in the world, his wife, and two daughters. At fourteen, Korra is dangerous because of where she grew up...she doesn't really trust anyone, excepting Mako and Bolin, who she hasn't seen in a while. She eventually takes Lin aside during an earthbending lesson and tells her that she needs to see them again, and Lin offers them a place to stay with a foster family. Korra stops her right there and asks for something better than that.
So Lin gives them an apartment in a safer part of the city, and Korra gets to visit them all the time. They keep a cot for her in their spare bedroom - Bolin nearly cries when he sees the bed for the first time, and falls down on it, collapsing happily on the mattress.
Korra had been the same way at Air Temple Island, where she's attempting airbending with little success for a month and a half. Earthbending and firebending come much more easily to her, and once they look into her waterbending ability, they discover that only a step or two away from mastery.
Once the bending lessons begin, Korra throws herself into them, trying to ignore what will come as the other parts of the Avatar's job. Diplomacy, Tenzin called it over dinner the other night.
And also: Korra misses meat. It isn't really important, though, when she considers that she hasn't eaten this consistently since she lost her parents.
Because there isn't anyone for her to learn waterbending from in Republic City, at least according to Tenzin, he invites his old mother up from the Southern Water Tribe to teach her. Korra learns, in a short time, healing and other master techniques.
Her final exam in waterbending results in her being declared a master.
Bolin and Mako both give her hugs when she tells them.
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One day they all were walking along in the city, and Bolin was asking for ice cream for his thirteenth birthday...Mako's new job at the power plant, despite his young age, along with the money from working for the Triple Threats for so long, gave them something to keep for rainy days, and Korra thinks that Bolin's birthday should be allowed, even if it isn't rainy at all.
They're walking along and Bolin notices the way Korra's eyes follow his brother as they walk around the market, and she looks down to see her ice cream melted over her hand...the ice cream Bolin had requested as a birthday treat. He'd finished his a few minutes ago and finally he figures out what it is.
"Korra, do you have a crush on my brother?"
"Uh, what?" she says, brushing it off. "I do not." Her face reddens and she turns away. Mako comes back calmly and wonders at the looks on their faces, Korra irritated and embarrassed and Bolin smug with the knowledge of his new secret.
"I want to look at the Fire Ferrets," he says.
With a little bit of guilt-tripping and blackmail, along with some big Bo eyes, they come back to their respective abodes, Bolin with a new friend, Pabu.
Before Korra leaves to get on the ferry back to Air Temple Island, Bolin whispers in her ear.
"You should tell him."
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VII. opportunity
Korra comes to visit often - so often that it's like she really does live with them again. They're her best friends, her family, and she hasn't understood the necessity of living with your bending masters.
A year after she moves in, Mako and Bolin move out. All of their things are gone from the tiny apartment and she leaves, going through the lobby of the building, where she finds Mako, a joyous smile lighting his face. Korra's breath is knocked out of her.
"Korra!" he says, and walks up to her. He gives her a hug.
"Where's your stuff?" she says, her voice tight after he'd squeezed the air out of her lungs with his embrace.
"At the Pro-bending arena," he says. "I was practicing outside with Bolin and this old man - Toza, he said - found us and offered us a place at the pro-bending arena! We can start a team! We just need a waterbender and we're all set," he says.
"Do you know who you're going to ask?" Korra says, hands on her hips and smiling suggestively.
"Well, you, of course," Mako says.
"I accept!" Korra says. "So you're at the arena now?"
"Yeah...I thought it was closer and also we won't have to run numbers anymore at all," Mako says.
"No more stealing?" she asks.
"No more stealing," he confirms.
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VIII. development
After a year, Korra gets restless and misses her boys more than anything...she wants to go back.
She's sitting in Mako's living room, legs crossed on the couch while he cooks and Bolin looks through a book about better earthbending techniques. Korra mastered earthbending this past year, and firebending isn't far away. Airbending hasn't come easily at all, and Korra's block has frustrated her more than she'd like to admit.
She misses them so much, because they are literally her best friends in the world, and if Mako didn't raise her, she helped raise them. She found them a place to live...all because she'd managed to steal from the wrong person.
The triads didn't try to come after her when they realized she was the Avatar - which, incidentally, occurred when she was shopping for food with Bolin one day when she was fifteen. She'd had to put three of them into the front of a shop to get them to leave. Mako had been worried when he'd found out, but also proud.
They start pro-bending soon, and training for it. They need start-up money, and the event causes Korra to be around more and more and more.
Mako starts to notice her.
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She's just going through waterbending exercises one day, just trying to get the hang of using it for pro-bending, and Mako's working on his firebending for the first match. Bolin is in the bathroom because practice officially ended earlier in the day.
Mako notices she's changed her hair, which has grown out past her back and she's tied up in a ponytail. It doesn't fall over her eyes like before, and he sees them, turquoise and intent on her bending. His eyes run over her hips, which are beginning to flare where they didn't before. He even looks at her chest a bit, even though it's covered up by the uniform.
He doesn't realize it, but he's checking her out.
But that's fine, because she's checking him out too. Rather shamelessly, Korra's eyes dart over to look at the firebender, to whom puberty was more than kind. He's nearly 5'11" and still growing, his muscles swollen from constant practice. His face, which was always handsome, has become a man's face, and his shoulders are wide. He's not looking at her as her eyes dart over, but after awhile, they both stop what they're doing to look at each other.
When did that happen? they both think, but their thoughts are interrupted when Bolin bursts through the door, requesting a noodle break.
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Another year passes and they're actually in the running for the championship. They won enough matches to go to the tournament, and they are in now...Tenzin offers to sponsor their team because he knows how much this means to Korra and to her friends, who train all the time now.
They'd been busy before, when Korra and Mako were starting to grow up, with work and training and bending. They have to train hard now because the championship pot is 480,000 yuans from the bending trios alone, more money than Bolin's ever seen at one time. Korra and Mako had stolen more than that before they came clean due to Lin's intervention, but now they are trying.
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When they make it into the championship, Korra laughs louder than she ever has and hugs Bolin so tightly that he turns red. She hugs Mako too, but it's awkwardly one-armed because she hasn't faced up to it yet.
They train for the final match for a week before they take on the White Falls Wolfbats, who end up being disqualified for cheating as the match progresses...Lin and Tenzin noticed and said something to the referee.
Afterward, in Mako's apartment, Korra falls asleep on the ground and Bolin falls asleep upside down in a chair. She wakes up on her cot the next morning and walks in to see Mako making eggs.
She remembers a conversation she had with Tenzin two years ago, when she'd thrown a crying, screaming fit because they wouldn't let her move back in with the boys after she'd mastered waterbending. She'd stomped away to her room angrily and Pema had visited and explained it to her.
"Korra, sweetie, you're not supposed to live with boys at your age," she said.
"Why not?" Korra had asked, her eyes red from bawling.
"Because girls and boys don't live together until they get married."
Korra's stomach drops. "Oh."
She hadn't wanted to get married then...she was fifteen and had to worry about protecting the world, not the weird feeling she got in her stomach when her best friend and partner in crime looked at her.
But she sees him standing there, looking so joyful, making eggs and frowning as one of the yolks breaks (because he'd turned to look at her in her rumpled gown and messy bedhead).
"Hey," he says.
"Hey," she says back. She sits down at the dining table (they don't have a room) and looks up at him.
He brings the eggs over, which she devours instantly, and looks at him happily. He reaches out and takes her hand across the table. She stops chewing.
"What are you doing?"
"You remember when you asked me if we could move back in together?"
"Yeah?"
"I think you should move back in," he says.
"But Tenzin...he won't like it," she says. It's not a refusal. "He thinks girls and boys should be married first."
"Well, he'll just have to deal with it," Mako says, grinning stupidly and her fingers tighten around his.
"You know," Korra says, eating the last of her eggs and putting her fork down, "it's not really home without you."
"I know," he says.
"What about you?"
"I would marry you if you'd let me," Mako says, his face reddening as he tries to tell her his feelings, finally.
"Okay," Korra says. She smiles and stands up to kiss his forehead before walking over to the stove in her socked feet.
"Let's make some more eggs."