A/N: Those of you who stuck with this thing for Makorra UST/break-up angst have been so patient, so here's a whole fucking chapter of almost nothing but that. Merry Makorristmas.


Chapter 7

The first person they saw as they approached the temple was Jinora, looking older than she had the last time they'd seen her. It wasn't just the fact that she was easily an inch taller and her face was losing its childish roundness. Her grey eyes looked deeper, wiser, like someone who had looked into the beating heart of the universe and lived to talk about it.

She was visibly surprised when she saw them, worried as her eyes fell on Mako. "Are you here to see Korra?"

His heart sunk a little lower in his chest, and he wondered what Korra had been saying. "We need to talk to your dad. Korra's here?"

The girl nodded and pointed in the direction of the training platform. They followed her until they saw the figures of the Avatar and her tutor come into view, moving synchronically through airbending forms against the backdrop of the sunset, their gestures meditative and purposeful. Mako remembered long afternoons in the not so distant past when airbending practice for Korra meant unleashing a hurricane from her fists.

Jinora called to her father, and Mako felt his heart stop for a second as the two of them stopped their practice and turned around. They both looked confused. Korra crossed her arms over her body as she walked forward, Tenzin following after her.

"The boys say they need to talk to you?" It was half a question and half a statement.

Feeling awkward, Mako reached out and shook Tenzin's hand. "Sir," he said, nodding in greeting. Then he turned to Korra, and the same gesture felt so unbelievably wrong that he let his arm drop to his side. "Hey Korra."

"Hey," she said, but she sort of looked over his left shoulder. A weak smile formed on her lips as she turned to his brother. "Hey, Bo."

"Hey!" he said, a little too enthusiastically, picking up on the ambient tension. "This isn't a social visit," he said nervously, and it sounded weird coming out of the younger brother's mouth. "Mako has problems."

Mako wanted to punch him. "Oh, you don't even have to tell me…" he felt Korra thinking, remembering his hang-up from the night previous.

"I could use your help with something," he said, trying to recover the moment. "Both of you. It's sort of a police thing."

"We are about to eat dinner," said Tenzin. "Join us, and you can tell us about it."

Korra exhaled loudly and looked down at the ground, prodding at the dirt with her toe.

"We don't want to impose."

"Nonsense," Korra said finally. "If you need our help, we're happy to give it." Her voice was conciliatory, but as she turned to lead the group toward the family's quarters, she met Mako's eyes for this first time with a look that told him she was done fucking around.

Dinner was a predictably awkward affair, and Mako was thankful that Bolin and Tenzin's kids did most of the talking. Korra sat as far away from him as she could and mostly stared at her food, stabbing at her rice with her chopsticks and occasionally bringing a soybean up to her mouth. Pema asked him politely how work was going.

"Well, I've been suspended." He figured it was better to just come out with the truth.

Korra looked up from the food she was pushing around her plate and gave him a look of genuine concern. "When?" she asked, her voice still quiet and guarded.

"Today." And at that point, he was seized by a coughing fit that forced him to get up from the table. Pema gave him some water and then set about brewing a tea that she said would help as the kids cleared the table.

Mako resumed his seat, meeting Korra and Tenzin's expectant looks, and tried to explain the situation as straightforwardly as possible, chagrined by the fact that his story was, well, short on facts and long on insinuation. He was sure by now that something nefarious was going on with Zhang, probably also with Huang, and possibly with the Acting Chief. But in order to prove any of it, he needed to find a way to get two witnesses—who were only in danger because he'd put them there—to safety.

There were things he didn't say or didn't reveal completely. He didn't say in clear terms that he was the one who started the fire. He didn't bring up the already strained relationship between him and Zhang and how badly it had soured in the past two days, and he didn't talk about how any of it made him feel. It was all too raw, too fresh, the pain in his head and heart matching the smoke-stung soreness of his throat. It hurt to even talk at that point. For so many reasons.

Korra's face became thoughtful. He wanted to acknowledge to her that he had no right to ask for her help right now, that if it were just for himself, if there weren't other lives at stake, he wouldn't. He wished he'd been able to get her alone to explain, to apologize in every possible way for being a terrible friend, but it wasn't possible at that moment, and he wasn't sure he'd be able to form the words if given an actual opportunity. The expanse between what he wanted to say and what actually came out of his mouth—if anything did—was almost always cavernous.

"So what are we supposed to do, just take this girl from the home?" Korra asked. "Then what?"

"I don't really know," he admitted. "I'd be willing to pull her out of there if it means saving her life, but if possible, we should find a way to do it, you now, legally."

Korra looked thoughtful for a moment before piping up again. "Tenzin, can I use the phone in your office?"

"Of course," replied her mentor. And she was up and jogging down the hallway, her wolftail the last thing Mako saw bobbing around a corner.

There was a long, thoughtful silence and a shuffling of tea cups before Tenzin turned back to Mako. "We're going to have to tell Lin."

"She's on leave. There's no proof yet. I don't know if we should…"

"Can you imagine what Lin would do if she knew that I knew about this and hadn't kept her informed?"

"I see your point."

"Unfortunately, corruption in the police force is something Republic City has had to deal with from time to time. And it's a thing best dealt with swiftly."

Mako nodded and took a long draught of his tea. He was aware that events were being set in motion that might have grave implications for the police force, and perhaps even for his future place within it. But, he reflected, this was a ball that had started rolling as soon as he decided not to follow Zhang's lead and pursue this murder case on his own, and it was too late to stop it now.

"I think perhaps we should talk to the President as well and ask him about opening up an independent investigation."

"He can do that?"

"He can appoint a special prosecutor, yes. But it may take some convincing."

"Maybe with a push from the Avatar…" This was Bolin's contribution, but he was cut off by Korra's voice coming back toward them. "Nope. Bolin, you should go with Tenzin."

Everyone looked at her in surprise as she entered the room, smiling as she re-claimed her seat. "I don't have a…great history with the President," she continued. "Bolin saved his life just a few months ago. I think he'll do a better job." She winked in the direction of Bolin, who was beaming, before turning to look at Mako with a serious face.

"I just talked to Asami, and we have an idea," she began. Mako gulped nervously. He'd been ignoring the heiress since the South Pole as well because he could only succumb to the temptation to let her help him forget his feelings for Korra so many times before she stopped forgiving him.

"The Sato family has set up a scholarship fund to send orphan girls to a private school in the Earth Kingdom." Mako remembered seeing something about this in the newspaper. "It's the same one Asami went to. She asked me the night I came home if I would help pick the candidates."

Mako had a hunch about where this was going. "This girl, Korra. I have no idea what kind of education…"

"It's ok." She smiled reassuringly. "Most of them don't. We will add Jin's name to the list along with a couple of other girls from that home, just to avoid drawing too much attention to her."

"Thank you." He breathed a sigh of relief, the muscles in his shoulders and neck relaxing ever so slightly.

"Asami will call the matron and issue the invitations tonight. Someone will come by to pick her up tomorrow and take her to the Sato mansion. You can talk to her there, and then she'll be taken to school."

It was a beautiful idea—the promise of a better life than someone like Jin could most likely imagine. But this was the point where Mako felt the need to mention the police guard tied up in the storage closet. "Someone over there is going to find out we're onto them," he said. "I bought myself a little time, but they are going to know that I talked to her eventually, and when they do, they're going to try to get the girl out of play. Her grandmother seemed to think they might even kill her. She might be right."

Korra thought for a second, "What if I stake out the place she's staying tonight, make sure no one tries to remove her before one of our people picks her up."

Tenzin interjected. "Korra, the White Lotus can…"

"No, it's ok. I'd like to do this myself." She looked hard at Mako. "That way you can tell the old woman that her granddaughter has the Avatar's protection." He didn't think it was possible to love her more than he did in that moment.

"What about the old woman?" asked Bolin. "How are you going to get back to her if she's surrounded by cops?"

"We will ask Raiko to have the charges against her dropped immediately. They'll have to let her go once she has recovered."

"And that's where we'll send the White Lotus," Korra added. "We'll disguise them as Air Acolytes coming to visit the sick. Just to be safe."


It was a plan, and for the first time in weeks, Mako felt a tiny bit lighter. Tenzin called the President's secretary and set up an emergency meeting for that night. A message was sent to Lin. Mako felt as if he'd been holding the fraying seams of his world together with two hands, and all of a sudden, people all around him were jumping up to help. He watched as Bolin and Tenzin climbed onto Oogi together. And then as Korra turned from her White Lotus bodyguards in full saffron garb to go get Naga, he realized to his simultaneous relief and panic that everything was taken care of. There was nothing for him to do but wait, and the loss of control was intolerable.

"Korra," he called, running after her. She turned with one hand on the polar bear dog's flank and looked at him quizzically. "I'm coming with you."

She opened her mouth to protest, but he stopped her. "Please," he begged. "I trust you with everything, but I can't just sit around and wait to hear back. If something happens…"

Taking a couple of steps toward him, she looked him full in the face, the lamps from the house casting a pool of light around him, while she stood in shadow. "How long has it been since you slept?" she asked, and he wondered exactly how bad he looked to her.

"It's been a while," he answered. He inhaled a mouthful of cold air that set him coughing again.

"You need to rest," she said, looking worried.

"Not going to happen."

There was a long pause where she seemed to be debating what to do. "Suit yourself," she said finally, leaping up onto Naga and gesturing for him to join her. He settled onto the back end of Naga's saddle, and his mind wandered back for a second to the first time they'd searched the city together. He'd been terrified at the thought of touching her then. He still was. Just as he had a year ago, he clung to the back of the saddle for dear life, his eyes focusing on the hood of her coat as they started off into the night.


Speaking purely in terms of physical conditions, Mako had certainly been on less comfortable stake-outs, but none of those had involved a woman he'd been calling in the middle of the night. Across the street from the children's home was an all-night diner with big picture windows that offered a good view of the entrance.

They settled into a booth, ordered tea and mochi, and mostly avoided eye contact. At one point, Korra went outside to find a pay phone to call Asami and confirm that the girls were ready to be picked up the next morning. When she came back, he had ordered another pot of tea. She poured herself a cup and scooted closer to the window, pulling her feet up onto the bench so that her knees rested against the edge of the table. For a while he just watched her fidget and sigh. She really was not cut out for this sort of thing, which made him all the more grateful that she had volunteered.

"I imagine you had better things planned for tonight," he offered, trying to break the tedium.

She leaned her head against the window, her breath creating a small patch of condensation on the glass. She put a finger in the middle of it and turned it to ice, spirals of frost radiating outward from the center. "Not really," she said. "Just using Tenzin's library, learning whatever I can about spirits."

"Being the Avatar requires as much paperwork as being a cop, huh?"

She smiled a little. "Yup. Interrupted by outbreaks of violence."

He laughed, and the laugh set off a cough.

"That doesn't sound very good," she said.

"It's getting better."

She thunked her head against the window one more time before readjusting in her seat so that she was facing him again. "Can I ask you a question?"

"Of course."

"Why did you wait this long to ask for my help?"

He sighed wearily. His brain felt like it was wrapped in cotton. His eyelashes itched. He wanted to curl up right there in the booth and fall asleep, and he wasn't quite ready for where this conversation was heading. "I thought I was handling things. I didn't know how badly in over my head I was until today."

"Then why did you call me last night?"

He tried to look like he had no idea what she was talking about, but it was too late for subterfuge. "Bolin wasn't home. I'd just seen two men burned alive and it was my fault. I didn't know what was going to happen next with my career. I don't know. I just felt like talking to someone." He felt his voice getting edgier.

"So why did you hang up?"

He pinched the bridge of his nose and massaged the corners of his eyes, trying to ward off the stabbing pain that was forming there. "I don't know, Korra. I still want to be able to talk to you about this stuff, but this-" He gestured between the two of them. "Just isn't as easy for me as it is for you."

"What on earth makes you think that this is easy for me?"

He opened his eyes and saw hard lines of pain and anger forming in her face. "I don't even know how to be around you right now," she said, frustration evident in her tone. "It's all come here-go away with you lately. I'm afraid to do anything because I don't know what's going to piss you off. One night, you're trying to kiss me, and then the next you're telling me to stay away from you. And then the next night…"

"I know. I know, ok? I get it. I'm impossible right now." He could say more. He could tell her that he didn't quite know how to feel. Because as much as he missed her, in a way, the break up had been a relief. It meant that he could quit trying to walk on eggshells around her, that he no longer had to choose between his instincts and her needs, that they could figure out who they were and what they wanted without having to sacrifice personal integrity to protect the other person's ego. He could say that he knew all of this to be right, but it didn't stop him from wanting her in his very bones. He could remember only one way to love her and that was with everything he had. He was reeling in the throes of withdrawal, and he wouldn't be ok again until he could look at her and stop needing her.

But he didn't say any of that. Instead, he let the silence build until she excused herself for the bathroom, and he went back to staring silently out the window. It was closing in on midnight, and Mako knew that they still had hours to go. He fixed his eyes on the kid's home, all the windows dark, every one tucked in safe for the night. He remembered one terrible night holding a thin pillow over his head trying to drown out the whimpers and sobs coming from the corners of the room, his heart overflowing with grief, his eyes dry.

The minutes ticked by, and Mako realized that Korra had been gone for almost half an hour. He looked around the restaurant, and a waitress behind the counter pointed at the door. He put a fistful of yuans on the table and went outside, pulling his jacket a little closer against the chill. The streets were deserted, everyone gone home for the night, and just outside the entrance, Korra was sitting on the pavement, leaning against Naga, her eyes fixed on the doorway across the street.

"You should come back inside," he said.

"I like it better out here."

"Loitering in doorways is illegal."

"So arrest me." She turned her head in his direction, and there was a challenge in her eyes.

He accepted it by sitting next to her, settling into Naga's soft warmth and letting the silence wrap around them. An apology seemed warranted here, but he couldn't find the words. He thought about reaching for her hand to give it a squeeze, but he couldn't be sure whether this was a friendly impulse or something else, so he stopped himself.

"What did you mean when you said it was your fault?" she asked out of nowhere.

"Huh?"

"Inside, you said two men died and it was your fault."

As a token of good faith, he confided the rest of the story in her. Her face grew even more serious as she listened.

"That doesn't sound like your fault, Mako. I don't know whether you were set up or not, but it sounds like it really could have been an accident." He felt her strong, warm hand settle on his sleeve. Even through the fabric, it burned him like fire, but he couldn't pull away.

"I don't like that word." He tried not to look at her.

"What? Accident?"

"Yeah."

"Why?"

"It's a word people use when they're avoiding responsibility."

They were quiet for a while, her hand still resting on him.

"Being responsible doesn't mean you can keep bad things from happening to people, Mako. You can't control everything." This was one of the things he liked and hated about her, the way she could connect the dots in his brain based on what little information his words offered up. Her hand lifted off of him, and there was a numb spot where it had been. He wanted to grab for her, carry her off somewhere where they could kiss and hold and fuck and he could just lose himself in her. But he didn't know what would happen once they had to return to the world and he was forced to once again be a person who made choices. And that had always been the problem.

"Mako, you can always come to me for help, but I'm starting to think that maybe you're right," she said, and her voice sounded a little strangled.

"About what?"

"This is too hard. Maybe we should stay away from each other after this. At least until…"

"Until I stop wanting to kiss you." He offered it as a self-deprecating joke, and she laughed a small, sad laugh.

"I don't think I'm ever going to stop wanting to kiss you," she said, still looking away from him. The words washed over him like a cleansing tide. He hadn't realized until that point how much he needed to know that she felt precisely as he did and how little he had let himself believe it before.

What happened next could be called an "accident" because Mako couldn't say for certain who was in control. Without perceptible volition from either of them, they were leaning into each other, his arm draping around her shoulders and her mouth pressing against his, warm and wet and soft. He tasted her slowly as her lips fell open and her fingers found their way into his hair, pulling him against her as he brought his other arm to her waist, practically drawing her into his lap. It was the wrong thing to be doing for so, so many reasons. But for a second, he felt less alone in his loneliness, less contemptible in his want. It wasn't a beginning or a promise. It was more like she had taken a sadness he had carried for weeks and offered to share it with him.

When she pulled away, his body still ached for her, but his mind was calm. He let his head fall against Naga's flank and settle into the warm fur. Korra was still near him but had retreated into her own space, the distance between them once again unbridgeable, her eyes once again on the door.

The next thing he knew it was light out. He had that oily feeling of having slept outside, but his head felt clearer, his senses more acute. It was the best sleep he'd had in over a week. She was still there, her eyes open and her knees drawn up to her chest.

"Good morning," she said, a tiny smile forming on her lips. "You didn't miss much."

"Shit. I'm sorry. Why didn't you wake me up?"

"You needed it." She stood and reached out a hand to help him up off the cold ground. He patted Naga's giant head as he followed her inside where they took their old booth and ordered coffee and hunks of fried dough with sugar and cinnamon, the kind of food you wanted after a night spent outdoors. He excused himself to splash water on his face and run wet hands through his hair while she ordered seconds and continued their watch.

They didn't talk much, but their company was less agonizing than it had been the night before, her posture more open, her tone less exasperated when she did speak.

At 9:00 am, they saw a luxury car pull onto the street, and Asami got out and mounted the stairs of the home.

"I guess she decided to come herself," said Korra. They both breathed easier and let themselves concentrate on something other than the building for a little while.

At 10:00, the bell on the door rang, and Mako turned around to see Asami walking inside, her face worried and pale. There were two little girls with her, and Jin was not one of them.


I love the reviews. I've been trying to respond to them, though I wish had a way for authors to respond publicly without having to resort to annoying Author's Notes like this one.