A/N: Friendly reminder that the M rating is there for a reason.

Chapter 10

Sleep. He wanted to sleep, but…

"Mako, stay with me, ok?" She was holding one of his eyes open and looking into it by the light of a flame that burned in her hand, throwing dark shadows across her face and deepening the lines that creased her forehead.

It hurt to be awake. It hurt to breathe. Fire burned in his right arm. His head felt like it had been split open. His entire body felt like a bruise. His groin ached where someone—he couldn't remember which—had kicked him, and a knife of agony raked through his side every time he tried to draw a breath. Cracked ribs, he guessed. The wetness of the pavement was leaching into his clothes, and his only relief was the numbness that was starting to seep into his extremities.

"What's my name?" she asked, testing his lucidity.

"Korra…" He practically choked it out. His tongue felt swollen in his mouth.

"Who's your brother?"

"Bolin."

"What day is it?"

It all felt stupid. "I have no idea."

"Right. I'm getting you to a hospital."

"Korra, I'm kidding."

"You're hilarious. You should see your hilarious face right now. Can you get up?"

"I'm not going to the hospital."

"Mako…"

"Korra, I won't, ok? I'm not going back there. Not…today." He could hear his voice rise to a shrill, alien pitch. He felt her recoil a bit, taking in this moment of uncharacteristic panic. She couldn't have known it, but he was still haunted by the image of an old woman expiring in an unfamiliar bed for reasons that felt suspicious, even if he couldn't prove anything.

She wiped at her nose and sniffed, and he wondered if she was crying.

"I'm going to be fine. I've been beat up worse than this." He was lying about the last part. "Just get me home, ok?"

"Ok," she said finally, after a long silence in which she looked around the alley as if the walls surrounding them might offer assistance. "That was probably a stupid thing I did just now, right?"

He remembered the last thing he'd said to her before he left Asami's house and winced internally. "You were great," was the only apology he could summon under the conditions.

She raised his torso to a sitting position, and he bit back a scream, water filling his eyes as he adjusted.

"Can you stand?" she asked, looking skeptical. He thought so. Using the shoulder she offered as support, he pushed off with his good arm and got on his feet. The blood instantly rushed away from his head and he felt himself blacking out again, the skin on his face turning cold and clammy and his stomach preparing to do a repeat performance. Korra caught him unsteadily—her strength barely making up for their difference in size—and he collapsed against her, realizing too late that the blood from his face was all over his hands and sleeves and the front of his coat and was transferring—along with grime from the pavement—onto her clothes.

Korra whistled for Naga, who jogged over and laid down on the pavement on command, flattening herself out as best she could to give Mako a shorter climb. Korra mounted first without ever letting go of him before helping him ease a leg over the saddle. The contact awakened the soreness in his crotch, and he felt ill at the thought of the jarring usually produced by Naga's loping strides.

"Let's go slow, ok?" he asked.

"I'll do my best, but I need to get to work on you soon, though, or you're going to take forever to heal."

He nodded, realizing with a touch of chagrin that by refusing to go to the hospital he had basically dragooned her into taking care of him. Pondering the problematic intimacy of that request and whether it outweighed his dread of a public ward where possible enemies could wander in at will, he tried to find a way to secure himself on Naga's saddle. The need for a respectful distance between them felt urgent, but there was no way he could hold onto the back.

"What are you doing? Hang onto me," she said, seeing him fumble for a grip. He knew he looked ridiculous, barely able to hold himself upright and still trying to look casual and unruffled by her attention.

"I'm a mess."

"You think I can't see that?"

He still couldn't move his right arm, but he looped the other around her waist, leaning on her reluctantly at first before letting the weight of his torso fall against her back, her strength like mercy. The hair at the back of her neck was wet with sleet and sweat, the skin left bare above her collar warm where he let his chin sink, his body craving the physical support his mind wanted to deny him.

"You got kicked in the head, Mako," she said. "So stay awake, ok?"

He'd always wondered about that rule—the one that said you couldn't go to sleep after a head injury—especially now, when sleep felt so right. The chemicals that had flooded his brain in the heat of battle had begun to desert him, leaving only exhaustion and a pain that made him crave oblivion. But he did his best to obey, fixing his gaze on a point at the back of Naga's head.

The ride seemed endless, and it was getting colder. At one point, he thought he felt her shiver—not a usual thing for her—and wondered where her parka was. He remembered riding with her across the tundra, just a few months ago, and marveling that human beings lived under conditions like those, amazed when she would touch him and her hands still felt warm on his bare skin.

"Get under the covers," he says, exasperated, and she laughs at him before crawling between the furs, legs braiding together, lips hot, pushing away the chill on his face, core burning against his thigh like a live ember. His foot brushes against her calf and it's freezing and she shrieks in surprise. "Warm yourself up, firebender guy."

"Mako." He felt a hard pinch to the flesh around his ribs and came to in pieces. Korra was twisted awkwardly in the saddle, trying to wake him up and keep him from falling off at the same time. "Stick with me, bruiser. We've got a ways to go."

She'd unbuttoned his jacket to find a place to pinch him and was supporting him as best she could. Mako wondered how long he'd been out. He felt like a bag of sand collapsing under its own weight.

"I'm trying."

She turned back around, satisfied once she heard his voice, and nudged Naga on. "Go over our pro-bending plays."

"Huh?"

"Tell me all the plays we used to practice when we were on the Fire Ferrets. Don't try to pretend for a second that you don't still have them memorized."

"Korra…"

"Do it, or I'll tell Naga to run the rest of the way."

"Turtle-duck formation. Waterbender сenter, defending," he began. And as if it was coming from somewhere outside of himself, he listened to his own voice drone out nearly the entire playbook, words beginning to slur together as if he were drunk. It took an hour to get where they were going, and when Naga finally came to a stop, he realized…

"This is…"

"…my place. It's closer. Also, no stairs."

And for that he was thankful, thinking of what three flights would be like when he could barely manage three steps without fainting. But it felt strange, as if he were once again an invader in this space she had carved out for herself in his absence from her life.

Mako practically fell off of Naga into Korra's arms, taking a second while he found his feet and she eased his left arm around her shoulders so that he could lean on her as she fumbled for her keys and got them inside. They entered the small main room, and Naga followed them right in, curling up in a corner and looking at him balefully.

Korra practically carried him into the bathroom and made him sit on the toilet seat.

"What hurts?" she said, turning the knobs on the bathtub until water started to flow in. The room was too small for two people, and their legs were almost touching while she stood over him. The intimacy of it was excruciating.

"Everything?"

"More specific."

She started trying to help him get his jacket off, and when she moved his right arm, he yelled involuntarily.

"Ok," she said, taking her hands off him for a second before returning to palpate his shoulder. "Did this happen during the fight?" she asked, feeling the grotesque lump there.

"I crashed the motorcycle."

"So you fought with your shoulder like this?" Her eyebrows quirked up, and he felt a little of his pride return. Months ago, he'd have used this to impress her.

"Kind of."

"This is going to be hard to do without another person," she said. "But I want you to grab that pipe there and resist me as much as you possibly can. Ok?"

"Have you done this before?"

"I've had it done to me before. You're the one who won't go to the hospital, tough guy."

He couldn't argue with her, reminded once again that he was asking too much of her. With his good arm, he grabbed the bare pipe that stuck out of the wall, priming himself for what was about to happen.

"Do you want something to bite down on?" She removed her pelt and looped the soft leather around his right elbow, placing a boot on his hip for extra leverage. He just looked at her, wary but not about to show weakness.

"Suit yourself. One, two…" and before she got to three, she pulled away from his body, and a blinding white flash of pain coursed through him. He felt a scream rip its way out of his throat and heard a click as the joint snapped back into place. In a second, it was over and the pain in his shoulder subsided, making room for the throbbing agony that pulsed throughout the rest of his body.

"Let's try the jacket again," she said after giving him a moment to recover.

He nodded, unable to refuse anything anymore. The jacket came off, but it was torture. He didn't yell this time, but he felt the bile rising, his innards protesting every movement and contortion of his battered form. When the last arm was free, he slumped forward, nearly passing out again but thankful that he could now catch himself with both elbows on both badly bruised knees. No doubt reading his distress in the sickly paleness of his skin, she pulled a wastebasket in front of him. He heaved a couple of times, but there was nothing left in his body. Dousing a washcloth in cold water, she pressed it against his clammy forehead and the back of his neck, a trail of grime appearing on the fabric as she wiped with one hand and shut the stream of water off with the other.

"I'll be right back," she said, stepping out of the room and leaving him alone to draw in breath after anguished breath, head pounding, lungs ragged. From his seated position, he tried to turn around, and out of his peripheral vision got a look at his face. It's didn't really look like his face. Everything was the wrong shape and the wrong color. One eye was nearly swollen shut. His chin was puffed out to twice its normal size, and his nose was at a weird angle. He'd seen himself after a pounding before, but this was shocking. He felt his throat get tight and his hands start to shake, but he was determined not to cry.

"Yeah, you're not at your prettiest right now," he heard Korra's voice say as her figure appeared in the mirror. He watched her hand venture near the swollen mass that was his face and gently turn it back so that he was facing her. "But it's going to be ok. Trust me."

There was a pair of shears in her hand.

He did trust her. He did, but it was hard to fully give in to what was needed, to sit there while his ex-girlfriend cut his shirt and then his undershirt off his body. Her lips formed a line as more of his skin came into view, and he wondered how bad it looked. From his vantage point, he could see an enormous, angry bruise covering most of his left side, several smaller ones forming on his forearms, which he'd used to try to protect himself.

"Um, I need you to stand." Her voice was quiet, tight. She reached for him as he rose, but he waved her off.

"I can do it," he said. And he kicked off his boots and undid his belt. His pants slid to the floor, but his underwear stayed on. He didn't ask permission, and she didn't object. Her eyes said she felt as uncomfortable as he did.

Korra helped him into the water, which was uncomfortably cool. "Sorry," she said. "It's for the swelling."

He stretched out as best he could, too tall for such a small tub, too stiff to fully extend his limbs, and tried to stare at the ceiling as she started to work.

At first, she just moved the water back and forth, reading his energy and balancing it. "No internal bleeding," she said, relief making her voice a bit louder.

Once he adjusted to the temperature, the water became soothing, easing the most pronounced of his pains as it flowed over him and around him. Finally, she gathered a bubble of water into her hands and began at his head. Gradually, the pain of the concussion subsided, then the puffy feeling in his face. He realized that he was able to open his left eye a little bit more and close it again with less discomfort than before.

Then she set the cartilage in his nose—not the first time someone had had to do that for him—and pain briefly roared back. "Sorry," she said, before passing her hands over it quickly, the water bubble briefly cutting off his air supply.

As she moved down his torso, he felt himself slipping away again. She nudged him a few times to keep him conscious. "You can sleep soon. I promise," she kept saying. And he realized with shame that of the two of them, she was the one who had been awake for two days straight.

Korra worked on his cracked ribs for a while and continued moving downward. "Um," she said. "Did they…" He realized she was looking at his groin, which still flared with pain, the muscles of his right upper thigh trembling spasmodically. He almost burst into tears of mortification, turning his head to the wall and refusing to meet her eyes as she healed that too.

When she'd finished, he looked down and saw that he'd turned the water a translucent brown. She drained the tub and filled it again, warm this time. He watched her perplexedly as she added something to the water that smelled like eucalyptus and sandalwood and soaked a washcloth. It took him a second to realize that she was bathing him. As he watched her hands move toward him again, he was again overtaken by the awareness of this childish, ridiculous vulnerability and the profundity of the service she was performing for him. It was too much. This, at least, was something he could do for himself. "Don't," he said. "I can do it." He grabbed the washcloth from her hand, and she jumped back as if he'd burned her.

"Sure," she said, standing and rushing out of the room, clearly self-conscious, and he hated himself.

He scrubbed himself down, aware for the first time just what a relief it was to feel clean again. It was difficult without full range of motion, and his skin was tender under partially healed bruises that were yellowing at the edges. Korra came back with a bundle that she dropped on the floor, a towel, an undershirt, and a pair of shorts he recognized as his own.

"I, uh, still had these…um…" she turned again as if to give him privacy.

"Korra," he said, arresting her departure and trying to make up for embarrassing her. "I'm going to need some help here."

"Oh right." She helped him out of the tub, keeping him at arm's length, handing him the towel as if she was suddenly shy about touching him too much. As she tried not to meet his gaze, he got a good look at her for the first time in awhile and saw to his chagrin that she was smeared front and back with dirt and his blood, her clothes likely ruined, her hair a disastrous tangle. She was still beautiful.

"Thanks," he managed, and almost fell as he tried to take a step forward. The pain was less acute, but his body simply wouldn't do what he wanted it to do. Every muscle and bone in his body had abandoned its task. She supported him with her arm as he dressed, looking away as he changed his shorts.

Korra helped him into her bed, where fragments of her scent clung to the sheets and pillows and enveloped him. How much simpler this would be, he thought, if this was where he always slept.

"I'm going to have to get you up in a few hours for another session," she said. "Or you're going to be in a lot more pain."

"You need some sleep," he said, looking into her blue eyes, glassy and purple-rimmed with exhaustion.

"I'll get some. This is more important right now."

Her fingers brushed idly at the sheets near his hip, and he tentatively caught the tips of them with his own.

"Why does everything have to be so hard right now?" he asked. It wasn't a very specific question, but she looked into his eyes sadly, like she knew exactly what he was talking about.

"I wish I knew."

Mako drifted off a couple of times, but he was too uncomfortable to really get into a deep sleep. He woke up to bursts of activity from Korra. First, she was on the phone. Then he heard her in the bathroom, most likely cleaning herself up. Soon there were other people around the bed—Pema with another acolyte in tow. And they were helping Korra mix up some medicine and arrange some other supplies. They wrapped his torso with bandages and gave him a cup of something that smelled strange.

"It'll help with the pain," Pema said, and he drank it gratefully.

He heard Pema packing up and asking Korra if she was going to be ok taking care of him, and then oblivion kicked in. At a couple of points, he remembered Korra's hands moving over him again, the glow of healing water breaking up the dimness of her room. He remembered trying to say something, but it was all so indistinct, hazy at the edges, moments melting together like different colors of candle wax. She was standing next to him and then she was on the bed at his left looking like she hadn't meant to fall asleep. Her boots were still on, right arm bent underneath her head, forehead creased a little like she was thinking very hard as she slept. He thought he reached for her at one point, touching the hand that was splayed out on the blanket between them. And he thought her face relaxed when he did. But he couldn't be sure.

And then she was gone again and coming back into the room, her hair damp this time, a cup of tea and a bowl of conjee in her hands. He ate slowly and then went back to sleep. She came back to heal him again an hour later.

The dreams that came with the medicine were vivid and usually terrifying: men burning alive as the floor of a building broke underneath him, falling falling falling, people calling out to him from a darkness his eyes couldn't penetrate—Jin and then his brother, Asami, his parents, Korra. Then he would wake up sweating. He lost track of time. Day and night bled together, and the flat felt like some kind of liminal place between worlds, where nothing was quite real, and he wondered how much the world outside was changing as he remained here in stasis.

A lot, as it turned out.

"I talked to Bei Fong an hour ago," she said when she brought him dinner, sitting down in a chair next to him and resting one foot on the other knee. "Your sparring buddies are in lock up pending trial."

He tried to raise his eyebrows, but the skin on his face still felt tight with bruising. "What's the charge?"

"Attempted murder of a police officer." She was grinning wickedly at him, and he smiled back.

"Any witnesses?"

"There was one at the scene, as it turns out. She talked."

"Credible?"

"Questionable."

He laughed.

"I gave her the diary. She's promised to investigate all the claims. Things aren't looking good for your ex-partner or his little goon."

"What about Akihiro?"

Her face became serious. "There's nothing that implicates him directly. Zhang and Huang aren't really talking yet."

"There's gotta be."

"Bei Fong isn't…pleased, shall we say, with the way things went in her absence. She said something about early retirement."

Mako scoffed. "He'll probably even get his pension."

"This investigation looks like it will be thorough. If he's dirty, I suspect something will turn up."

"No guarantees though."

"There never are."

"Things would be so much easier if I could handle bad guys the same way you handled Unalaq."

She took the empty bowl of noodles from his hand, a little more roughly than necessary, and made to leave the room. "You're an idiot if you think that's easy."

After two days, he was able to get up and walk all the way across the room on his own. On the third day, Korra let him have visitors. His visitor was Bolin, who brought him fresh clothes and performed lines from his latest "project," as he called it.

On the fourth day, Asami called to say that Jin had made it school safely and seemed to be doing well.

On the fifth, he was down to three healing sessions a day. Korra insisted he stay so that she could avoid running across town to take care of him.

"You don't have to take care of me like this," he said. "If it's, you know, weird to have me here."

She looked at him seriously, her hands holding the water in midair. "You need something. And I can provide it. That's all this is," she said. "I don't feel weird."

But he didn't believe her. Because even though he was grateful, it was still weird for him. The touch of a lover and the touch of a healer are different, but his body and his heart could scarcely tell. Her hands would knead his muscles to remove tension and leave trails of longing in their wake. Sometimes her fingers would linger a little longer on his skin than they needed to, and he knew this new rhythm, these new habits were stranger for her than she let on. He didn't dare assume that she still wanted him, and he didn't dare make any declarations or promises that would fall apart as soon he stepped back into the real world.

But something had to give.

On the last day of the week, she declared him well enough to go home and heal on his own. They stood in the bathroom next to the sink as she worked over his ribs, still slightly tender but strong thanks to her relentless attentions.

"I don't think I've really thanked you," he said.

She smiled but kept her eyes on his middle. "You don't need to."

"I owe you."

"Ok, I can go along with that."

They were quiet as he brooded over how little he had to offer her.

"Just don't…" she said haltingly. "Just don't ignore me from here on out, ok? I know the friends thing is hard, but I need you around. And I think you need me too."

"Yeah," he said, and his chest felt like it was being squeezed, as if the bandages she had removed were back on and being pulled tight until his lungs threatened to burst.

What happened next was inevitable. She said something he only half heard about meaning it when she said she still loved him, but something something something…and his mouth covered hers as if it was desperate to consume her words, hands gripping her biceps and feeling them flex against his touch.

And for a second—a long second—she kissed him back. Her healing water fell to the floor, splashing around their bare feet, her hands gripping his sides painfully until she pushed back.

"That's not what I meant," she said breathlessly. "This isn't…"

"I know," he responded. And he kissed her again. Because he still only knew one way to love her. Because this was unfinished business and because he just couldn't anymore.

He felt her body come into contact with his as her arms looped around his waist and his hands moved along her shoulders, one continuing down her back and the other roughly pulling her hair free and weaving his fingers through it. It was all so…pathetic, he thought, this loss of control, this inability to keep his composure, to keep his want in check. But he needed to let it go or be burnt up by it, and he could only pray that she was burning too.

He had reason to hope. The sounds that reverberated from Korra's mouth were deep and desperate, and he caught the vibrations against his tongue. He felt her probing the dips of his spine and running a hand into his pants to clutch at his ass, and the hardness that had been slowly forming at his front sprang suddenly to life.

As Mako let one hand slide carelessly just under the hem of her shirt, he turned them so that she was pressed against the counter. She was still recklessly exploring his body, but he was scared for a second that it was all pantomime on her end, that he was alone in this desperate hunt for relief.

"Don't do this because you feel sorry for me," he whispered into her mouth.

"I don't feel sorry for you," she responded, looking him dead in the eyes. And after pulling her bottom lip between his, he messily kissed his way down her throat and torso, taking a second to drag his teeth over a nipple that budded beneath her shirt. She gasped and threaded her fingers through his hair as he knelt down, pulling her pants to the floor as he went before running his hands upward from her ankles to her hips, feeling the fine hairs rise as goose bumps formed against his fingers. He pressed his face to her underwear and felt wetness and warmth through the fabric. And then those were gone too.

"Do you want this?" he asked, panting against the soft curve where her lower belly met her sex.

The hand in his hair gripped tighter, pushing him down slowly and squeezing harshly until his jaw fell open.

"I want this," she said, her voice strangled as he gently nudged her thighs apart and pressed his mouth onto her, fingers opening her up to him, tongue finding its way to where she was swollen and needed him most.

"I want this." Her tone was high and distant. "I want this so much."

A/N: One chapter to go, and I think you have some idea of what kind of chapter it's going to be.