In the long list of strange and disturbing things that Mako had recently experienced, he couldn't decide which was the worst. Certainly, everything that had happened since he'd returned from Republic City would fit comfortably on the list. Jing and Fa's betrayal had blindsided him. Guan's manipulations had terrified him. There had been his capture. There was the fight that left him all but dead. It might have left him dead, for that matter, but Mako would never know for sure. There was no way he could know, being that he hadn't seen it from the outside. He'd waked and wondered and wasted away, and every time he considered the time between his fight with the firebenders and when he woke up in his cell he remembered the dark.
The dark had been frightening. It had been full of nothing. It had passed in the blink of an eye that Mako knew now had been hours.
In a certain way, the dark had been nice, though. The nothing had given him a reprieve from the pain and the worry and the stress of managing his identities. He supposed he was getting the same benefit now, even without the nothing. Now he had only one identity to manage: His identity as a Republic City detective who'd been kidnapped and brainwashed and used.
Mako the Captain was dead. Mako the Captain had died along with the rest of his quad.
As he sat in his cell, he truly believed that watching Yaozhu die would be the most disturbing thing he would see for the rest of his life. It had certainly been the worst thing he'd seen to date. The way Yaozhu had squirmed had made him seem an animal, and the noises he made had haunted Mako's sleep ever since.
But then Mako had watched Yaozhu decompose, and that process had been infinitely more disturbing than the death itself. It was weird in a scientific kind of way, how the flesh began to discolor and the body filled with gases. Mako thought at first that that would've been the end of it. He'd never had experience with the dead, not so intimately, so he didn't know that the gas-filled spaces would pop gently open or that from the abscesses would leak a thick, dark, and pungent fluid. He'd never known that the decay would set in so quickly, and for the first hours after the first cavity had opened he wanted to vomit from the smell. But then he sat with it. He breathed it in and out, and over time the odor grew less offensive. He got used to it.
As he sat in his cell with Yaozhu's corpse to keep him company, Mako made a decision: He was going to stay alive. He wouldn't just stay alive; he would thrive, even in the terrible conditions in which he'd been left, so that if the time came for him to escape, he'd be prepared. He'd stay as active as he could, and he'd keep himself at the ready.
With nothing in the way of food, Mako's work was necessarily limited. But he tried. He'd made something of himself in the last few weeks, had grown strong and determined, and he wasn't about to let that go if he could help it. If the Democratic Society of Firebenders had given him nothing else, it had given him discipline and an awareness of his body that he'd never had before. He knew when he could train and he knew when he needed to rest. He knew when he felt sick. He knew when he needed to lay down.
It had been during one of these restful periods when screaming had echoed through the darkness. They had been screams of people he'd not recognized, and had come coupled with the sounds of firebending and earthbending. He'd heard frantic footsteps like a stampede of people were rushing away from something.
Mako put it together quickly after Guan's last visit, if it could even be called a visit. He'd walked past the cell all aloof and said, "This will be the last time we see each other," before continuing along the way. Mako knew then that they had culled the captive prisoners. The bending he'd heard had been the fighting.
After Guan had doused the torch and left him alone Mako had been certain he was going to die. He knew that they'd kill him the same way they'd killed the earthbenders, otherwise they'd leave him to die naturally from starvation and exposure. He'd been oddly okay with the idea, almost ambivalent. Both the times he should've died he'd not been afraid until he woke up and realized that he'd been unconscious.
He sat in the dark for a while. He sat in the dark for a long, long time. He knew it even without the benefit of a clock. He stopped hearing noises entirely except for the occasional seeping of air from Yaozhu and skittering of bugs over the floor, and for a while he wondered if perhaps the city had been abandoned.
It wouldn't be the first time the Society had abandoned a stronghold under threat, and it would make sense for them to eliminate any unnecessary baggage. Earthbenders and waterbenders could be found anywhere they went: Firebenders were indispensable.
Except for him.
After the culling, the whole place went silent for hours that Mako couldn't count. Those were his darkest hours, the hours that he was certain he would die there alone and starving and inundated with the smell of rotting flesh. They were the hours that he gave up. He didn't have a choice. He didn't have an escape. He wasn't an earthbender, and there was no way his firebending would cut through the bars.
He spent those hours thinking about Korra and Asami and how he'd never see them again. He thought about how he'd never have the chance to tell them he loved them and that he was sorry that he'd gone away and left them with such a mess.
Then he thought about Bolin, and despair and disappointment washed over him so completely that he cried. He'd always hoped that in the end he'd be able to go pay his respects in Zaofu, that he'd be able to put things to rest and clear his mind. Now it would never happen. Now he'd never go home.
He regretted that he hadn't stayed in Republic City when he'd had the chance. He'd told Lin only half the story believing that he'd be able to clarify things later, but now that chance would never come. If he died here, he'd die with all the information he'd meant to convey to her, information that might've helped her to bring the Society down.
Mako gave up.
He sat there in the dark, curled in his corner and staring at the mound of flesh that had once been his protégé, and waited for death to come.
When he heard a vague yelling, he thought he was imagining things. He thought maybe his mind was starting to go. It faded back out and left him in silence. But then there came footsteps along with it, more yelling. A girl screamed, terrified, and another called something that he couldn't hear over the first one's screaming. Then there was a strange silence, a silence that seemed to hang in the air forever yet passed by in only a few seconds, and then there came the sounds of earthbending and a weird, dull light bounced off the wall.
So, a few of them had survived.
It was strange how things happened after that. The girls' voices screamed out again, this time in horror, and then there was a male voice that sounded so familiar it set a cold shock through Mako's stomach and drew him to stunned attention. It had sounded like Bolin, but Bolin's voice had never sounded so vicious. It had sounded remarkably like Bolin, but Bolin was dead.
There came the barbaric scream, the crash of earth rising from the ground, and a deafening crack. Then, before Mako could even think to rise and rush to the doors to stare, he heard an explosion. It had happened in a second, all the noises and the sounds of bending, and a heartbeat later a body came skidding into view in a flash of green and black and red. It plowed straight into Yaozhu's corpse with a disgusting squish, and didn't move again.
Mako stared, dumbfounded at what he was certain was another dead body. But he couldn't see it. It had landed with its back to him, its forehead against the floor. It had landed in a crumpled, disgusting heap.
He became even more dumbfounded when Asami threw herself to the ground, oblivious and frantic, and started tending to it.
Asami?
What?
Asami?
What?
"What did you do?" The first girl's voice was squeaking. "What did you do?"
Mako couldn't bring himself to say anything at all. He couldn't force anything past the weird, astounded lump in his throat. He could scarcely breathe. He was certain that he was dreaming. He was certain that he'd gone delirious. There was no way she could be there. He was imagining it. The light was too dim for him to see properly. It was someone else.
The body he'd thought was dead started to move, pushed itself up with a distinct tremble as though its arms would give out, and held itself aloft for a few seconds before dropping its face weakly back to the ground. This confused Mako even more. If this was the man who'd yelled in the hall, it was astounding. He'd had sounded like Bolin and now that Mako could see his face, he looked like Bolin, but Bolin was dead. It couldn't have been him. He'd sounded weird. He looked weird. There wasn't enough person there for it to be Bolin.
The weird Asami-esque woman laid her hands on the weird Bolin-esque man and lowered her face down to gain a look at his face, but before she could do a thing it seemed that she suddenly recognized something. Her eyes fell on Yaozhu, and her face screwed up in disgust and horror. Then her eyes traced the wall upward, and as Mako stared at her, her gaze fell on him, and her eyes went wide.
"Bo," she said, and she pointed a trembling finger at the cell. "Opal!"
What? She couldn't have said what he thought she'd said. She couldn't have. It was impossible. It was weird coincidence. No way they were actually who he thought. It was wishful thinking. It was delirium.
But then a girl that looked strangely like Opal rushed into Mako's field of view, and the same way as the girl who looked strangely like Asami, she stopped and stared at Yaozhu, then she stared at Mako. The man on the floor looked up at her and hung there motionless for a few long seconds before moving again. He pushed himself up and the second his eyes fell on Yaozhu he bolted back into Asami's legs, knocking her to the ground. Then he looked up, and Mako's stomach dropped out.
There was no way.
There was absolutely no way.
It was Bolin, but it wasn't Bolin. It had to be him but it couldn't have been. There was too much about him that didn't fit. He wasn't big enough. He wasn't scrawny by any measure, but he wasn't half as powerfully built as Bolin had been. There wasn't enough definition. He was too lean. And the voice hadn't been right. That cry hadn't been right. But the eyes were right, and the look on his face was right, and the fact that he was running around with people who looked and sounded exactly like Opal and Asami was right.
It had to be him.
It couldn't be him.
He was dead.
All at once the figure sprang to its feet and ripped an enormous hole in the wall of his cell, but Mako couldn't move. He couldn't do anything. He could only listen while words fell out of this weird person's mouth in his dead brother's voice in tones entirely too harsh to have been Bolin's. He didn't even recognize what he was saying.
"Do you know how to get out of here?"
Mako stared dumbly. The voice was so familiar, but it couldn't be. It couldn't be Bolin. The way his face shifted between stunned surprise and anger was too weird. It was unnatural. It couldn't be Bolin because the way this person was acting was in no way similar to the way Bolin would've acted.
"Can you navigate the tunnels or not?"
The tone startled Mako into nodding. Sure, he could probably navigate them. He could probably lead them out. He'd watched Guan come and go, and he always came and went from the same direction. Certainly, Mako could follow the trail.
"You get him out of here right now and wait at the bison."
It was so weird. There was so much anger.
"...If things start looking bad, you leave. Do you understand me?"
No one said a word.
"Do you understand me?"
The person that couldn't be Bolin had practically screamed the words, and the girls nodded. Then he said something else in a low, icy voice that Mako couldn't understand, and he bolted off down the corridor.
"Where are you going?"
"Someone's got to help Korra!"
Mako snapped to reality. There could be no coincidence. There was only one Korra. These were the people he knew and loved. The Asami-esque girl was Asami, and the Opal-esque girl was Opal, and the Bolin-esque man was...
...It couldn't be. Bolin was dead. It had been verified. Toru had verified it all. He'd been crushed to death in the collapse of a building weeks ago. And besides, the person who'd been standing in front of him was too small. The resemblance had been there. The height and body shape and eyes and everything Mako remembered about Bolin had been there, but it was like everything had been skewed. Everything was scaled down. He'd sounded so strange. He'd sounded so angry and so commanding.
It was unreal.
Opal made to rush down the corridor but Asami caught her by the shoulders and held her firmly in place while Opal cried, "Bolin! Come back! Come back! Bolin!"
Asami shook Opal roughly by the shoulders to gain her attention. "Listen," Asami commanded crisply, and Opal's eyes went wide and watery. "Yelling at him and crying isn't going to bring him back. He's going to do what he wants whether or not we agree with it. Do you understand? There is nothing you or I can do that'll bring him back. You and I both know that."
Opal sniffled, but nodded all the same.
"Now," Asami continued, softer, "I can only deal with one crisis at a time and I need your help. Will you help me?"
Again, Opal nodded.
"Good."
All at once Asami rushed through the hole in the wall and threw herself down at Mako's side, and he watched her do it with the same disbelieving look he'd had the entire time. Opal followed her, rubbing at her eyes and shaking with the occasional sob. She sniffled a lot.
"I'm so glad you're safe," Asami said, and she threw her arms around Mako's shoulders and squeezed him so hard that it hurt to breathe. "I'm so, so glad we found you." Asami pulled away and turned Mako's face toward her. She looked concerned now, and she scrutinized him entirely too closely for his liking. "You look okay," she said after a few moments too many. "Can you stand up? Can you walk? Are you hurt?"
Mako shook his head then looked out of the door to the cell at the dimly lit hallway. "That... That was Bolin," he said with a disbelieving stammer.
"Yeah, it was," Asami replied. "Opal, give me a hand here."
Together the girls hooked Mako's arms around their shoulders and helped him to stand, but Mako kept staring into the hall, flabbergasted. He didn't resist them.
"Bolin isn't dead?" Mako asked dumbly.
"Not for lack of trying," Asami said dryly, and when Mako looked between the girls Asami looked angry and Opal looked fit to burst into tears all over again.
They led him into the hall, and Mako looked around. He'd imagined that he was going to have trouble keeping his eyes off Yaozhu, but in the end, that wasn't the problem. In the end, his attention was caught by the stone block that had risen in the middle of the hallway, covered in gore.
"What..." Mako stammered. "Who..."
"We can't discuss it now," Asami said. She sounded a little sick beneath the command. "We have to get out of here before someone else finds us. Now, can you lead us out?"
Everything after that happened so quickly that for Mako, it seemed a blur. They followed the corridor the same way he'd seen Guan come and go, and eventually he managed to lead them out of the tunnels. He didn't know exactly how he'd done it, he'd been too stunned by Asami's verification that Bolin was, in fact, alive. He'd been too stunned by the implication of the bloody rock in the hallway. His mind had ground to a standstill with all the information that suddenly clicked into place and all the questions that followed.
Mako didn't ask them. He understood the priorities well enough to know that it wasn't the right time. Still, there was no denying the nervous rumbling at the bottom of his stomach that roiled every time he thought about how weird Bolin had looked and how weird Bolin had sounded and how he was the only person that could've raised that rock in the hall.
When the three exited the tunnels into the predawn light, Mako insisted that the girls let him go, that he could carry his own weight. He'd been working in his cell too hard to be carried now. It took some convincing, but eventually they let his arms drop, and even though he wobbled a little bit, he set off into the streets.
"Where do we need to go?" Mako asked, attempting to match Asami's no-nonsense tone. "Where's the bison?"
"To the southeast," Opal said. It seemed that she had regained her composure now, and when she pointed toward the enormous rising peak in the distance her hand was steady. "There's a clearing."
Mako slowed and nodded. If that was the case, the safest way to get out would be to go the long way, to get them out of the boundaries of the city as quickly and quietly as possible, then skirt around the outside and across the base of the mountain. The only problem was that Mako had never gone that way.
With a quick glance around to gain his bearings, Mako set off to the west, and despite their initial argument, Opal and Asami followed.
They breached the boundary of Fire Fountain City without incident, and Mako wasn't sure if he should consider that lucky. Obviously, the soldiers had been distracted. As they'd walked he'd heard explosions, the sounds of combustion and firebending. Then he heard screaming, and it hadn't been the screams of command or instruction, it had been screams of terror and pain. Then the screams died for a long while, until Mako and the girls had maneuvered to the southern corner of the city, but then it started back up again more intense and terrifying than it had been before.
As they ascended the foothills of the mountain, Mako gazed in wonder back at the city. It looked so different from the outside, so small and dilapidated. It looked exactly as he would've imagined a ghost town to look, except he knew that the place was fully occupied and had been for a while.
Stranger still was the light. Though the sun was rising, the north sky was dark and cloudy, and down below Mako could see flashes of bright red-orange light springing up between buildings and in alleyways. He might've thought it to be firebending, but fire burned out. If it was firebending, there would've been a flash and the darkness again, but this light lingered, and instead of dimming over time it seemed to brighten until the buildings touched by the light began to catch fire and burn.
Still, the light stayed.
Mako found it strange how quiet the girls remained during all of this. He wondered what they were thinking about, how they'd known where to find him, how they'd managed to get into the city. But he dared not ask. Neither of them looked prepared to speak: Asami's jaw was set firm and her eyes had gone narrow with focus, and Opal's face had turned ashen. She looked ready to faint. Mako didn't know if she was tired or if it was the distant screaming that had done it to her.
At last, Asami grabbed Mako's hand and picked up her pace, and within a few more minutes she rushed between two tall rocky hills and into a clearing where Oogi lay sleeping and snoring gently. The three of them scrambled into the basket, and Mako watched back down the mountain.
"Sit down," Asami said to him. "Sit down, let's take care of you."
"We have to go back," Mako said. "If Korra and Bolin are down there we have to go back!"
"No," Asami said. "We're not going back. Now sit down and let me take a look at you."
Mako sat down and Asami sat in front of him. A sick feeling bloomed in his stomach as she started fiddling with his jacket and his sleeves and poking all over him. Very shortly it grew to be too much, and he gently slapped her hand away.
"Why aren't we going to help them?" Mako said.
"Because there's nothing we can do," Asami replied coolly.
"You don't know that," Mako argued. "Going down there would give us numbers. We'd be able to-"
"No," Asami snapped. "We're not going. If we go down there it's entirely possible that your brother will get all of us killed."
"What?"
Asami stopped poking at him and let her hands fall limp in her lap, and she watched her knees and fidgeted like she was about to say something. Her brow furrowed and she opened her mouth once as if to speak, but then she closed it again and sighed.
She never had the chance to speak. The silence was cut through by the sound of scrambling. Asami stood and Mako stood behind her, and before he knew what happened, Korra bolted through the break in the hills. She didn't look good. She looked afraid, dirt stained, and tired beyond reckoning. She looked like she'd been awake for days.
"Help me!" Korra cried, and she jumped up on Oogi's leg at the same time Asami dove down to grasp her arm.
Mako would've helped, too, but his attention was drawn back to movement in the space between the hills. Before he knew what had happened-before he recognized the firebender on Korra's heels-another chilling roar came from beyond the clearing. The firebender stopped, turned, and before Mako could register what had happened, fell face-first to the ground.
Bolin darted at full sprint through the break in the hills and throttled himself into Oogi's basket. He landed hard. He landed really hard, and he fell clumsily to his knees before yelling at them frantically to go.
Suddenly Mako understood that among all the strange and disturbing things he'd seen, Yaozhu included, nothing could ever have prepared him for the sight of his brother, if the person who'd landed in the basket could really be called his brother. The filth had rendered him almost wholly unrecognizable, and the way he sat there panting on all fours was wholly uncharacteristic. Bolin never got winded. He could run for days.
Mako couldn't bring himself to say a word, not even when the chaos seemed to have ended and Korra and Asami spoke in hushed, harsh whispers to each other and Opal started fussing about in the baggage strapped to the basket. He couldn't say anything when Bolin stood and gazed back out at the city. All Mako could do was watch, helpless, and wonder exactly what had happened in the time he'd been gone.
Weirder still was the way Korra stood and walked to Bolin's side, the way she touched him and the way she spoke to him so softly that Mako couldn't hear it. It was an intimate touch. It was a loving touch. It was a touch that Mako had never seen the two of them share before.
Then the quiet broke and Mako watched the expression on Bolin's face shift from confusion to dread to panic. And then he started yelling.
Mako looked between Asami and Opal, who were looking between each other. Even if he wanted to, Mako couldn't have brought himself to stand and intervene. He couldn't look away, yet the spectacle had him so perturbed that he couldn't move, either. All he could do was sit and watch Korra straining against Bolin's panicked strength, working to keep him controlled and saying words to him that Mako knew he wasn't hearing.
The trance broke when Bolin swayed and fell, and the only thing that kept Mako from jumping to his feet was Opal's hand firmly planted against his chest. When he looked at her, she shook her head and said sadly, "There's nothing you can do."
Mako sat and watched, his body awash with fear and disbelief and a weird dreadful numbness. It was the same numbness he'd felt when Toru told him Bolin was dead, except now Bolin was there, and even though he was very much alive, it didn't seem to Mako that he'd last very much longer.
When Korra yelled for Asami, the tone in her voice set a shiver down Mako's spine. It made his hair stand on end. Her voice contained a quality that he'd never heard come out of her before, a quality that he never imagined her capable of producing. Her voice quivered so hard that Mako could barely understand the word, and when Asami cried desperately, "What is that?" and Korra said that she didn't know, everything seemed to stop again.
Bolin had gone eerily calm. He'd stopped yelling, had folded himself double with his face pressed into Korra's legs. Everything about him suggested he was still awake, from the heaving of his back to the trembling of his hands clasped around the back of his head, but he didn't make a sound. He didn't do anything at all.
"What is it?" Asami asked again, and Mako could see her forcing her hands into Bolin's tightly wound ball.
Korra shook her head. "Something's wrong."
"Did he say anything?"
"No! He barely said a word after he found me. He... We fell through the floor and he didn't wake up for a while, and after he came around and we started moving again he fell down a couple of times."
"And you didn't notice anything wrong?" Asami seemed incredulous. She seemed angry.
Korra stared at Asami, her eyes narrowed and her brow furrowed. "Yeah, I noticed a lot that was wrong," she said brusquely.
Asami's eyes narrowed, too. "You know what I mean. You two were together for hours, and he was falling down and you didn't stop to check?"
"Yeah, sorry I didn't do triage. I was kind of busy being chased by a bunch of crazy firebenders and trying not to die!" Korra cried.
The two fell silent and Mako could feel the tension between them. It was a tension that hadn't been there before he'd left, a tension that seemed impossible between the two. The anger was obvious, yes, but there was something deeper there. Was it resentment?
He looked to Opal for some kind of guidance, but she'd busied herself digging through a bag from which she produced a towel and a bottle. She didn't look up at all. It seemed to Mako as though she was pretending the whole thing wasn't happening. It was like she was pretending that everything was okay.
"Opal," Mako said quietly, and she looked at him wide eyed, "what's going on?"
She shook her head and looked back down, set back to work with her towel. Figuring she would be of no help at all, Mako looked back to Asami and Korra, but it seemed they would be no help, either. They'd ceased talking to each other entirely, and while Asami sat there as though waiting for something to react to, Korra had bent low, her forehead on Bolin's shoulder. He could see her mouth moving like she was whispering something to him, but there could be no telling what it was.
Mako jumped when Opal touched him. He jumped so hard that he fell straight over, and when he glared up at her she looked genuinely hurt.
"I was just trying to clean you up," she said timidly. "I was just trying to help."
Mako sat up, glared between Opal and Korra and Asami, and then jumped to his feet. "Hey!" he shouted, and all the girls looked straight at him. Bolin didn't move. "Someone want to take five seconds here and tell me what the fuck is going on? How did you find me? What's wrong with him?" He jammed his finger toward Bolin angrily. "A few hours ago, he was dead! He's supposed to be dead! And now he's here and... I want to know what's wrong with my little brother!"
Asami stood up and patted her hands placatingly in the air. "Calm down."
"No! I want to know what's happening, and I want to know right now!"
"We don't know."
Asami's flat response stole all Mako's bluster away, and he sagged a bit, deflated. "Then what... How? Why is he..."
"Sit down," Asami said. "Korra has him under control, we can talk." Then Asami paused and looked down at Opal. "Opal, I need you to find us a place to put down. A place with fresh water. Can you do that?"
Opal nodded and dropped her things. Mako could hear her sniffling as she walked away.
Mako sat, but he didn't look at Asami. He kept his eyes locked on Korra and Bolin across the way. Korra was still bent low over Bolin's shoulders, her hands on his arms. Her mouth was still moving, her thumbs stroking absently at his shoulders. It was weird. It wasn't like them to sit like that. It wasn't like Korra to sit like that with anyone.
"Lin told us where you were," Asami said as she sat. "We arranged to come here from Zaofu and landed on Baihe Island yesterday."
"From Zaofu?"
Asami nodded, and Mako looked at her, confused. He didn't flinch when Asami took up Opal's towel and started dabbing at his face. "We were in Zaofu. Korra, Opal, and I went to investigate the Boiling Rock per the note we received from you, and when we came back home, Republic City wasn't safe for us. We left for Zaofu to regroup and figure out what came next. Bolin was already there and..."
"Why was he there? Wh..." Mako shook his head and looked at his knees. "Let's start there. What's wrong with him?"
"Right now? Something's wrong in his chest but I don't know what it is. Korra doesn't know what it is. It could be anything, and it wouldn't be the first time he's had problems like that. A couple weeks ago he grabbed his chest and fainted and laid there with a heart rate below forty for like, two or three hours. If this is anything like that, there's nothing we can do but wait for it to go away and hope for the best."
Mako started to stammer, but Asami held up her hand and he quieted again.
"He's been sick," Asami said, and she looked down and sighed. "It's a long story, but the easiest way to put it is that he's been really, really sick. He was in Zaofu to recover. Su took him back to make sure he stayed focused."
"Sick how?"
Asami shook her head. "In every way you could possibly imagine and then some."
Mako didn't know what to say to that, but he knew that if Asami felt comfortable giving a direct answer she would've given it. "How did you find me?"
Again, Asami shook her head. "Dumb luck. There's no better way to explain it. Bo and Opal and I were being chased down by some firebenders and wound up in your tunnel."
"Oh."
"Are you hurt?"
Now it was Mako's turn to shake his head. "Tired," he said, "and hungry. Really, really hungry."
"We'll set down soon and get you something," Asami said, and she offered a weak smile. "I'm just glad you're back with us."
Mako was glad, too, even if everything was falling apart.
By the time Oogi touched down on a small plot of green, the sun had risen high and Korra's legs had fallen asleep. She dared not move once Bolin had calmed enough to simply lay there, and even when Asami declared that it was safe to disembark and that there was a shallow river nearby that they could use for drinking and cleaning, she stayed still.
In all truth, Korra wasn't ready to disembark. She hadn't been ready for most of the events of the last day, and she knew that getting off the bison would mean questions from Mako and Opal and Asami, and there was no way Korra was prepared to address even the simplest inquiry.
How was she supposed to explain everything? How could she possibly convey what kinds of awful things had happened in the time that Mako had been gone and how it had all culminated last night when Bolin had gone on a horrible, bloody rampage that left uncounted people dead and an entire city inundated with lava? How could she explain to Opal and Asami how Bolin had found her and dragged her through the streets of Fire Fountain City lobbing molten rock at anyone unlucky enough to cross his path. How could she explain his accuracy? How could she explain his ruthlessness?
Worse, she would be expected to explain what had happened to him afterward. She didn't even know what had happened. His heart had been beating funny and he'd fainted and fallen and shivered and panicked, and it had taken a long, long, long time for everything to fall back in line.
Korra wasn't sure that everything had fallen back in line. She'd had her hands on Bolin's back the whole time, feeling the weird skips and drums, waiting for his heart to stop or for him to stop breathing or for something otherwise horrible to happen. But over time and with Korra's gentle coaching, Bolin calmed and his breathing slowed and the irregularities she felt came more and more infrequently. In the end, everything felt too slow and Korra wondered if what was happening now was the same thing that had happened the night he'd broken down with Suyin, when he'd fainted and seemed unable to come back around.
Bolin hadn't said a word since before he'd fallen the first time, when all he seemed to be able to say was, "No." But he responded to Korra's voice clearly enough. When she told him to breathe, he breathed, and when she told him to relax, he tried. But he didn't talk and he didn't raise his head even after everyone else had disembarked and Korra reassured him that they were well enough alone.
Korra didn't mind that he didn't look at her. She wasn't sure that she was ready to see his face. Now that the sun had come out, it was more than Korra could handle to see the rest of him all covered in mud and blood and flesh and filth. Only tiny patches of skin showed through where drops of sweat had washed the dirt away, and other than that the only thing that Korra could really see was the disgusting wound that stretched from the end of his metal bracer all the way up to his right shoulder. She'd known it had been there but hadn't realized just how serious it was or how many tiny rocks had lodged in the skin. And now he was on his knees in front of her, she understood that the damage hadn't been limited to his arm. It extended all the way down his leg from knee to ankle, and she imagined it had torn up the top of his bare foot, too.
Odd he hadn't been limping.
"Hey," she called quietly. Bolin didn't move, but she hadn't expected that he would. "We ought to go get you cleaned up. Will you come with me?"
No response.
Korra sighed and rubbed again at the back of Bolin's head. "Are you awake?"
He nodded.
"I promise you'll feel better if we get you cleaned up."
He shook his head.
"I'm not going to play nice like Su plays nice with you," Korra said firmly. "You know by now I'm going to give it to you straight."
He nodded.
"Then listen." Korra sighed. She never stopped stroking the back of his head, but she made certain her voice stayed firm. "You and I both know what happened. There's no getting around it and there's no taking it back. I saw everything you did last night."
"Not everything."
Korra stopped, startled. Bolin had sounded sicker than ever, and she wasn't sure she wanted to know exactly what he meant. "I saw enough," she continued in the same tone. "And here's the deal: I don't care. I mean, I do care, but I want to help you, and the first thing we need to do is get you cleaned up so I can figure out what needs immediate attention and what we can leave alone and how bad off you are. Do you understand? We need to get you out of those filthy torn up clothes and into something clean. We need to take care of your arm before it gets infected, and we can't do that if it's stuck all over with rocks."
"I'm not supposed to be here."
"Doesn't matter. You're here and you're going to deal with it. Now sit up and let me look at you."
Korra steeled herself as Bolin began to shift, and he very slowly lifted his head from her lap. He didn't raise his eyes. Instead, he kept them locked on Korra's knees and folded his hands sheepishly in his lap.
He looked empty. He looked weak. He looked tired. He looked the way he'd looked when he'd threatened to find a roof to dive off of, and Korra knew he must be thinking along those lines all over again. "Come on," Korra sighed. "Let's go."
It surprised Korra how long it took Bolin to stand up and how unsteady he seemed on his feet. Despite his efforts to convince her otherwise, it seemed he could scarcely walk, and the limp she'd missed the night prior had come on with vengeance. She hooked her arm around his elbow and together they walked to the river.
It was more of a stream, if Korra was to judge, barely ten feet across and so shallow that she could see smooth shining rocks poking through the surface, but it would do. Any water was better than none.
For a while Bolin stood there idly staring at the water, even when Korra knelt to draw it to her face. And on one hand she didn't want to push him, but on the other she wanted to evaluate the damage. To her relief, all it took was a narrow-eyed glance from her for Bolin to move again, and he pulled off his bracers and shirt, slumped to the ground beside her, and leaned over the gently rolling surface of the stream with a grimace. He groped absently at his ribs and stared at his reflection in the water for a long time.
At first, everything seemed reasonable. Bolin seemed to follow Korra's lead: He dipped his hands into the water and brought it to his face, then his arms, then his chest, and he repeated each step slowly and meticulously. Korra paused in her own bathing to watch, and Bolin seemed so focused on himself that he didn't notice that she'd stopped or that she'd taken on a look of disgust at the way the grime washed away.
The stuff was stubborn. It didn't clean easily, and when it did, it scraped off in thick, chunky sloughs that dyed the slow-running water a sick shade of brownish red. When he dipped his hands beneath the surface to splash the water back onto his arms, swirls of color twisted around his wrists and washed away, and Bolin seemed just as focused on that as he was on the actual cleaning.
Korra watched intently as the expression on Bolin's face began slowly to shift, as his brow angled and his eyes narrowed and the rubbing at his arms and wrists and hands grew ever more frantic, until it seemed that he was scrubbing with little regard for his injuries or whether his skin had come clean at all. Then the scrubbing turned to scratching and Bolin's look of grim determination changed to a look of carefully suppressed panic.
"What are you doing?" Korra asked gently. She didn't move to stop him. She wanted to understand instead of blindly intervening. Every time they blindly intervened in Bolin's breakdowns it seemed to make things worse. She wanted to understand.
Bolin didn't say anything, though. He shook his head and kept scratching.
"Bolin," Korra said, a little louder this time, "what are you doing? Why are you doing that?"
He shook his head and squinted his eyes closed but didn't stop the scratching. His arms had gone red and raw and the wound on his right had started weeping clear fluid around its edges. The places he'd scratched the most had begun to bleed freely again, but Bolin kept splashing and scratching and splashing and scratching until the motion became so frenzied that Korra grabbed his wrists and stopped him by force.
He didn't look at her. He didn't open his eyes at all, and it scared her. All Bolin did was shake his head and maintain the pained, panicked look he'd worn the whole time, the look he took on every time he recognized that something had gone wrong. Then, in a thick, shuddering voice he said, "It won't come off. I can't get it off."
Delirious. He must have been delirious. Before he'd started the weird, ferocious scratching he'd gotten himself cleaner than Korra had imagined he would considering the degree of grime caking every part of him.
"It's coming off," Korra said. "Look."
Bolin shook his head again, and Korra could feel the panicked, uncontrolled constricting of the muscles in his arms the same way she'd felt it before. He looked ready to cry, but didn't. She could tell he was struggling to keep his composure.
"It won't come off," he said, "it won't come off. It'll never come off. I can't get it off. It won't come off. It's never going to come off."
As Bolin repeated the words his voice grew more frenzied. With each repetition, the confusion and madness seemed to increase until he sounded the same way he had when he'd realized that he'd not been dreaming, when all he could say was, "No, no, no," and double over in uncontrollable horror and panic.
"Do you trust me?" Korra asked. "Bolin, do you trust me?"
He nodded, but he didn't open his eyes.
"Then let me clean you up. Can you do that? Will you trust me to get it off?"
He nodded.
Though he couldn't see it, Korra nodded, too, and she set to work.
Bolin curled up again, his knees drawn to his chest, and every time Korra touched him he jerked reflexively away then relaxed, then jerked away again when she splashed more water on him. He kept his eyes low and his jaw clenched, and the only noise he made was the slightest whimper when Korra touched the wound on his arm and leg and a genuine, sickly cry when her hand brushed the bruise on his side.
The quiet made Korra uncomfortable, and that made her feel guilty. After a night of bending and yelling and listening to people scream and cry, she imagined that the quiet would be welcome, but it wasn't. Maybe it was because it was Bolin who was being quiet, because even in the worst situations he'd never stopped communicating, and now that he'd shut up everything seemed eerie. He'd kept Korra moving with his occasionally less-than-gentle leading. He'd seemed indomitable and confident so that she was certain that she'd never have gotten out of Fire Fountain City if it hadn't been for his pushing.
And that was the worst part. Had it not been for Bolin, Korra knew she wouldn't have gotten out alive. When he'd found her, she'd been tired and afraid and completely lost, barely capable of defending herself, and though Bolin had been just as tired and just as afraid and just as lost, he'd maintained enough focus and determination to ignore it all and move forward no matter what it took. Among all of them, Bolin was the only one bold enough to take the steps that needed to be taken to get everyone out safely. He'd been the only one able to ignore all the chaos and do what needed to be done.
Eventually Korra resigned herself to the idea that she'd never be able to clean Bolin as thoroughly as he or she wanted. Without a shower and soap and a serious scrubbing, the caked-on dirt and blood simply wouldn't rinse away. It had dried in every crease and fold on his arms and hands, on his chest and his neck, and the way he flinched every time she went to touch his face put it off limits. But she managed to slow the bleeding and weeping on his arm, to pry out some of the rocks, and she carefully scraped away as much of the evidence that he'd injured or killed anyone as she could. In the end he just looked dirty, and for Korra, dirty was good enough.
After a time spent sitting in silence, Korra helped Bolin to his feet, and she snatched his clothes away from him when he tried to put them back on. she didn't say anything; she hoped that the glare she shot him would convey her message clearly enough. The silence stayed until after they'd arrived back at the camp where Opal, Asami, and Mako sat around what would eventually be their evening fire, where Mako was ravenously stuffing his face with what looked to be their entire supply of food. Had the situation been any less dire, Korra might have laughed at how absurd he looked.
"What happened?"
Korra and Bolin stopped dead when Opal shouted at them, and Korra recognized her mistake at once. Before she could react, all three of them were staring straight at Bolin's bruised side, and even as Asami started trying to placate them, Opal jumped up and rushed forward. Mako seemed ready to rush toward them as well, but Asami grabbed his arm and held him steady.
"What happened to you?" Opal cried, and she skidded to a halt at Bolin's front. Without a moment's hesitation she touched him, pressed her hands against the bruise, and leaned down to eye it more closely. He watched her for a second and Korra saw him grimace and twitch when Opal ran her hand over his ribs, like he'd been ready to double over but had forced himself to stay upright. A tiny noise came out of him.
"What on earth happened?" Opal cried again, but when she looked up at him and he stared stone-faced back, her expression dropped.
"You happened."
Bolin wrenched himself away from Opal and snatched his clothes from Korra's hands, then turned and made his way carefully back toward Oogi's basket. He disappeared, and left the rest in awkward silence.
Opal looked misty-eyed again, and it struck Korra as a little funny how all she seemed to do any more was cry. All the same, Opal slunk back to the unlit fire pit and sank to her knees, where she folded her hands in her lap and stared at the ground, her shoulders occasionally shuddering. Korra didn't know why she felt so judgmental: Opal had every reason to cry.
Mako swallowed hard. "What was that?"
Korra shook her head. She didn't want to address the issue right now. There would be no way to explain everything in a way that would do it justice. There was nothing she could say that wouldn't generate more questions. There just wasn't enough time to be thorough. Instead, she turned to Asami and changed the subject as quickly as possible.
"Do you have anything that he can eat?"
Asami nodded. "Should be something up in his gear. Su said she packed enough to last the whole trip."
With a sigh, Korra shrugged. "Well, he'll have plenty then. I don't think he's eaten since we left."
"What are you talking about?"
Korra and Asami both looked at Mako, and then Asami looked at Korra, but Korra didn't answer. She just shook her head and turned away. Explanations could wait. There were more pressing matters to tend to.
"Don't wait on me to have dinner," Korra said. "Figure out what we're going to do, whether we're going to Republic City or back to Zaofu, and I'll make sure he's okay." She jerked her head toward the basket. "My only request is that we rest tonight, then head out first thing in the morning and don't stop again unless we absolutely have to. I don't want to set down again unless Oogi is falling out of the sky."
Before anyone could protest or ask more questions, Korra walked away.
Bolin had taken his customary spot at the back of Oogi's basket, had discarded his clothes in the corner nearest the tied-down baggage, and presently reclined weakly with his arm draped over his middle, his hand grasping gently at the bruise. He didn't say anything when Korra approached or when she began rifling through his belongings. He didn't argue when she threw his heavy brown jacket at him or when she pulled three sizeable, opaque bottles from his bags.
Korra dragged her own bag from the pile, dropped down at Bolin's side, and thrust one of the bottles at him.
"Eat."
He took it, but he didn't say anything and he didn't open it. He didn't move at all.
Korra wasn't about to argue with him. She set about bandaging his wounded arm, wrapping it gently and wordlessly before moving on to his leg and his foot. He watched her the whole while with an interest that made her uncomfortable, so that by the time she'd finished the task, Korra felt very warm with what might have been embarrassment.
"What do you want me to do about your ribs?"
Bolin didn't say a word. He shook his head.
"Fine. Put on your shirt and eat, but we're having that looked at first thing when we get home."
Bolin pulled on his jacket with a wince and a breathy grunt. Then he folded his hands on his knees and dropped his eyes low. "I'm sorry," he said at last, and his voice had been soft and weak. He held out the unopened bottle that Korra had given him, and when she didn't take it, he shook it gently at her. "I'm just not hungry."
"When was the last time you ate?" Korra asked firmly.
Bolin shrugged. "Don't know. Don't see how it matters, either. I just want to sleep."
He'd sounded so defeated that Korra couldn't stomach the thought of berating him, so she took the bottle, tucked it into her bag with the others, and zipped it back up.
"Will you stay with me?"
Startled, Korra looked up. "What?"
With a great sigh, Bolin dropped his forehead into his hands. "Will you stay with me? While I sleep?"
Korra didn't know what she could say other than, "Okay." And before she could settle into a more comfortable position, Bolin shifted. He turned and laid down, dropped his head onto her lap, and wrapped his arms around her back as though she was a gigantic, vertically aligned pillow. It was weird to feel his breathing on her stomach, to feel the weakness in his hands and the vague trembling in the rest of him. He'd done such a good job making himself appear whole in front of the others that Korra couldn't be surprised it had tired him out.
"If I freak out, wake me up," Bolin said.
"Yeah," Korra said, "I'll do that."
She didn't have to worry about that, though. Bolin was asleep within minutes, and once he'd gone there came a comforting, calming shift: He stopped shivering and his hands slackened, and his breathing slowed and warmed her middle in gentle swells. Every time she glanced down at him the flutter erupted in her stomach and in her chest, and Korra hated herself a little bit for it.
He'd just gotten done killing people. She'd watched it happen up close and in full relief, and in the moment it had been horrifying. Bolin had been horrifying. Korra had never seen a person look so angry and determined in her life, and in her wildest imagination she'd never have put that kind of look on Bolin.
But now he was different. He'd been different for a long time, since he'd waked from the collapse, and he seemed to change with the wind. The calm now was strange, and Korra couldn't even say that it was because she'd never seen Bolin sleep before. She'd seen him sleep many, many times, but his touch had never hit her in the pit of her stomach the same way it was doing now. He'd never slept on her, and he'd never held her around the back the way he was now and he'd never pressed his forehead into her stomach or curled against her so closely.
She never imagined that they'd be lying together like this, but now they were and now she was thinking about it, Korra came to a sudden understanding. Everyone had asked her at one point or another if there was something happening between her and Bolin, and both Opal and Asami had believed that there was something significant, or at least something significant enough to yell and hit and fight about. Korra had never been able to see it from their perspective, not until now, and she wasn't certain what exactly had clicked or why.
Something had happened at some point that made Korra comfortable and trustworthy for Bolin. She didn't know what it was. She'd been rude to him and she'd screwed up his relationships and generally ruined what was left of his life, but in the end, that seemed not to matter. In the end, something had happened to draw them close, and perhaps it wasn't a romantic closeness, but it was certainly intimate. Something had happened that made them comfortable enough with each other that she could wash the blood and guts off him when he couldn't do it for himself, and he could drag her past certain death when she couldn't do it for herself.
There was something there that hadn't been there before, and Korra recognized now that she'd been too defensive to realize it. Every time Opal or Asami had confronted her on the matter, Korra's mind had jumped to the most extreme. She never considered it possible that she might be the only thing keeping Bolin afloat.
Korra resigned herself to reality. She was stuck with him, and even if his very presence made her uncomfortable in every way it was possible to be uncomfortable, she had to stay. It didn't matter how much her stomach jumped and twisted when he looked at her or how sweaty her palms got when he touched her. She had to be there for him because no one else would. No one else could.
Korra laid her head back and dropped her hands down into her lap, and she lay there for a while listening to the vague sounds of conversation between Mako, Opal, and Asami and rubbing her thumb absently about Bolin's forehead. She could've fallen asleep herself, but every time she considered allowing herself to drift she worried that if she did, she wouldn't be around to wake Bolin if he needed it. She didn't dare let him suffer alone through the nightmares.
She didn't notice when Mako climbed into the basket and sat in front of her. She didn't know how long he was sitting there before he said something, but when he gently cleared his throat and she startled awake to look at him, his brows were raised and his eyes were narrow and he seemed both skeptical and curious at the same time.
"Hi," Korra said dumbly.
"Hi."
Korra didn't know what to say. The look on Mako's face made her feel like he'd caught her doing something awful. She wanted to say something like, "Welcome back," because that would be the appropriate thing to say, but it seemed a little flippant. She'd not seen Mako in such a long time that she didn't know what to say, and the situation was made many times more awkward by the fact that Bolin was sleeping on her lap.
Korra sighed. "You've got questions."
The eyebrow went up again. Mako's skepticism deepened as his eyes traced downward to see Korra's thumb still absently brushing against Bolin's head, to see her other hand idle on his shoulder. It made her very self-conscious.
"Opal and Asami think we should go to Zaofu," Mako said flatly, drawing his eyes back up. "They say we should radio Beifong when we get there to get further instructions."
"Probably a good idea," Korra replied flatly. "I bet we can shave a day off the trip if we cut to the south-"
"What's going on here?"
"What?"
Mako threw his arms out, gesticulating to the area as a whole, and he looked to the left and to the right as if trying to spot something specific to point out. Finding nothing, he eyed Korra again, shot a quick glance at Bolin, and then looked up. "I mean exactly what I said. I've been asking questions since you guys found me and nobody is saying a word. I want some answers. So, let's start easy: What is this?" He turned his palms out, motioning toward Bolin. "What... He… He's supposed to be dead."
Korra shrugged. "Yeah, he probably should be."
"And everyone keeps saying things like that but nobody will give it to me straight!"
"Keep your voice down."
Mako looked ready to burst, but he lowered his voice all the same. "I want to know what's going on here. Why are you up here with him and not Opal? Why is he... What happened? When we set off from the island, what happened?"
Korra shook her head, unsure where to start. "For the sake of time, I can tell you that Bolin was attacked by a combustion bender, a building came down on him, and he was hurt."
The eyebrow again.
Korra waved her hand dismissively, and when Mako's eyebrow lowered again she returned to rubbing Bolin's shoulder. "We thought for sure he was dead, but it turns out he's more stubborn than we thought. But..." she paused and looked down. It was like she'd choked on the words. With a deep, deep breath, she managed to say, "He's not the same."
"...Not the same?"
"Well, look at him."
"Yeah, I see that."
"The change isn't just physical."
"Oh."
Korra shook her head again. She didn't know how to explain it all.
"So, what happened when we set off? He... He was crazy."
"Yeah, that about covers it," Korra agreed. "He panics. He gets angry, then he gets scared, and then he panics. He can't control it. When it hits, all we can do is ride it out and hope."
Mako's expression softened. It looked as though he was about to cry, but he didn't. He held firm and watched Bolin breathing and folded his hands in his lap. "I thought he was dead."
"He thought you were dead."
Mako shook his head. "I thought he was dead, and here I come back and..." He paused as if he'd forgotten what he was going to say, as if he'd thought twice about pressing on. "Why are you here instead of Opal? Why'd he talk to her like that down there?"
Korra couldn't hold Mako's gaze. She dropped her eyes and squeezed Bolin's shoulder as if it would reassure her. "Well," she said slowly, "he and Opal... They're kind of done."
"Kind of done?"
"They're not really a thing anymore."
When Korra glanced sheepishly up, Mako's jaw had slackened and his eyes had gone wide. She could practically hear the gears struggling to turn in his brain.
"They had a falling out," Korra said, more firmly now. "They fought. That bruise you saw on him... That's from Opal. I'm pretty sure she broke something but he didn't tell anyone it was there until after we'd left Zaofu and by then it was too late to do anything. And as far as him talking to her like that-I'm pretty sure that was the first time he's said anything to her since we left."
"Why?" Mako asked. "Why did they... Have a falling out?"
"Because of you."
Korra regretted that she'd said the words at once. The lies they'd told Bolin about Mako had played a part in the breakup, sure, but that wasn't the only reason it had happened. It had happened because of her, because she'd been there the night he'd been attacked, because she'd been in the wrong place at the wrong time and he'd waked and thought she was Opal and set a terrible string of events into motion. It had happened because she'd been unable to articulate herself and admit to hard truths and work through her feelings, and she'd dragged everyone else down with her.
For a few quiet moments, Korra wondered how things might've been different if she'd just come clean about the whole thing to begin with. She wondered how things would be different if she'd told the truth about what had happened when Bolin kissed her and admitted exactly how she'd felt about it instead of sitting on it and avoiding the problem until it got too big to handle. Maybe they could've worked through it. Maybe he and Opal would still be together, and maybe Korra and Asami would still be together. Maybe Team Avatar would be a team again.
"So, why are you up here then?"
Korra shook her head. "I think this is a conversation that would be better had in Zaofu, when we've all had the chance to rest and recuperate and get ourselves figured out."
Mako didn't seem pleased by the statement, but he didn't argue, either. His face fell flat and he watched Bolin sleep. It was interesting, in a way, to see him like this. It went without saying that Mako and Bolin loved each other dearly, but in Korra's experience it was rare for them to really express it. Their relationship had always been one of friendly banter and occasional argument and a lot of things unsaid.
"He missed you," Korra said quietly. "He missed you a lot."
Mako nodded.
"I missed you, too. We all did. But Bo missed you more than anyone. He was so upset when we thought you'd died that he lost his bending."
When Mako swallowed very hard Korra knew it was time to stop talking. He sat for a while longer, occasionally rubbing at his reddening eyes, and when he finally stood up he let go an obvious sniffle.
"I'm going to go see about dinner," Mako said. Korra could tell he was working hard to keep his voice steady, and he'd done a very good job of it. She supposed that was the difference between the two brothers: Mako had always been reserved, but Bolin had never made any fuss about being emotional.
Korra tried to smile and it felt like a poor effort. But Mako tried to return the gesture, and as he turned she could see him rubbing at his eyes again with the back of his wrist. Then he hopped down and out of sight.
Mako spent the whole of the trip back to Zaofu treading a precarious line between maintaining his stoicism and blubbering like a child. He spent the time sitting opposite Korra and Bolin in Oogi's basket, watching their interactions from a distance and wondering when they had become a thing. Korra hadn't said it outright, but the implication had certainly been there. More than that, the fact that he barely lifted his head from her lap and she never lifted her hands off of him spoke volumes.
Very frequently and without warning Bolin gave in to strange movements, as though every muscle in his body flexed against his will all at once, and it took a long time for him to come back out of it. Often, he'd stay that way until Korra bent over him and wrapped her arms around his shoulders and spoke softly at him, but every time he came around, Bolin would spend a few seconds staring up at her before dropping his head back into her lap.
The nights were the worst part. Bolin cried out and yelped and made all sorts of terrified noises, and it seemed that Korra never had the chance to sleep. Bolin ruined all their sleep, and on more than one occasion, Asami curled up beside Mako and the two of them sat in silence, watching Bolin squirm like a child and watching Korra try to get him back under control until eventually the nightmare passed and the quiet set in again.
Over time, Mako came to understand that Korra's explanation of matters had been an oversimplification. Sure, Bolin and Opal may have had some kind of fight and she may even have given him the horrible black and purple bruise on his ribs, but she didn't hate him. The look on her face said that clearly enough. The way she cried quietly when she thought everyone else was asleep said it, too, and the look on her face whenever Korra comforted Bolin was as soul-crushing and desperate as any look Mako had ever seen before.
Every relationship among every one of them seemed to have changed in the time that Mako had been away, and the longer he sat with them and the more he talked with them, the more he understood. None of the changes were particularly subtle. Asami and Korra still seemed to get along well enough, they spoke cordially and worked together when it was needed, but the romantic tension that had once existed between them seemed entirely gone. Korra and Opal spoke rarely, but Mako didn't need to wonder why. It was clear enough that Opal was either jealous or afraid of whatever weird relationship was kindling between Korra and Bolin. Opal and Asami spoke more together than anyone else on the whole trip, and while their conversations usually revolved around planning and dinner and where they might set down if they needed to camp, there was a strange closeness that Mako couldn't pinpoint. They worked together well but seemed still distant, like they were paired for security.
More than anything, Mako wished that Bolin would say something. He wished that Bolin would stay awake and turn around and talk. From Korra's brief explanation, something drastic had happened to him, and the fact that Bolin hadn't eaten a thing or told a stupid joke or laughed or said anything at all went well beyond worrying. Bolin had uttered two sentences to Mako since they'd found him, and neither of them had been remotely Bolin-ish.
A sick feeling came into Mako's stomach whenever he remembered the tone in Bolin's voice and the look on Bolin's face when he'd said those words, and when Mako considered everything else he'd seen, the sick feeling grew. Bolin had been filthy. He'd been beyond filthy. He'd been covered from head to foot in a disgusting mix of dirt and blood and what looked to be tiny pieces of ground up meat, and even when he and Korra had returned from their bath in the stream he'd still been dirty. Then there was the blood-stained rock in the corridor where Mako had been found. There were two people in Fire Fountain City capable of raising that rock, and Korra hadn't been anywhere nearby. That meant that Bolin had drawn that stone from the ground, and the blood on the rock meant that someone-multiple someones if the amount of blood was any indication-had been crushed.
Then there had been the firebender that Korra had been fleeing from. Mako had recognized that firebender as one of Bingwei's friends, a commander who lived three doors down from him and who Mako had eaten dinner with on many occasions. Bolin had done something to him, but Mako couldn't imagine what it was. Bolin had screamed that terrifying, barbaric scream and the firebender had turned around and something had pierced through his neck and lodged in the stone directly behind where he'd been standing, but Mako had no idea what it was. All he knew was that the commander had wobbled for a split second after his throat had been pierced, and then he'd fallen flat on his face and not moved again.
The amount of blood had been staggering, and every time Mako looked at his little brother writhing in horror he couldn't help but wonder what other awful things Bolin was dreaming of. For Bolin to have been so thoroughly covered with blood and dirt, something must have happened beyond the crushing people in the corridor and the slaughtering of the commander. Mako was afraid to imagine what that something might have been.
When Oogi touched down in Zaofu late on the third day a veritable army of people were waiting for them. Su stood at the front of the group, and when Mako disembarked she threw her arms around him and held him in a tight embrace until it came to be a little bit awkward. Then she said, "We're glad you're home," and smiled enormously at him.
Sheepishly, Mako said, "Thanks."
As Asami and Opal jumped down from Oogi's basket, she hugged them in the same way and welcomed them just as warmly. But once she'd let them go, she turned back to Mako, all business.
"I've already had a guest room set up for you, the same one as usual, but I'd appreciate it if you'd go get checked out first to make sure you're okay."
"I'm okay," Mako insisted.
"I won't take no for an answer. Asami, Opal, please see that he gets to the clinic. I'll send someone in a while to get you all for a late dinner. You must be hungry."
"Yeah. I'm hungry," Mako said skeptically, "but I really don't think I need to go anywhere. I think Bolin is the one-"
"Bolin is with you?" Su said, a look of surprise on her face. "He... He came back?"
"Why wouldn't he have come back?"
"Where is he?"
Mako shut up, stunned. The shift in Su's tone from happy, maternal welcome to mildly afraid had him confused. Mako pointed to Oogi's basket and Su gazed up at it, her brow furrowed and her jaw set.
"Why wouldn't he have come back?" Mako asked again, but Su seemed to be ignoring him.
Instead, Su patted Mako on the shoulder and smiled at him disarmingly. "We'll talk over dinner. For now, go get yourself cleaned up."
She didn't say anything else before she set off toward the bison. As Opal and Asami ushered him away from the landing pad, Mako gazed back over his shoulder and contemplated fighting against their pull. The desire strengthened when he saw Su standing in Oogi's basket, her hands cupped over her mouth, and he jerked reflexively away from Asami's grip when Su dropped down, presumably to her knees and most certainly out of sight.
Something was terribly wrong. Su had never acted like that. She had never looked so concerned. And Korra had never looked the way she'd looked around Bolin either. She'd never stayed so quiet for so long. And Bolin? Mako didn't even know where to begin. He'd never seen his brother lay in one spot for more than five minutes, let alone nearly three days. He'd never seen Bolin refuse food.
Though Mako knew he was safe now, everything felt foreign and frightening. Everyone had changed, and Bolin was chief among them. Mako had never seen Bolin in such a pitiful state of being, but now it was different. Now Bolin was broken.