Title: Don't Listen to A Word I Say
Prompt: Condescension
Pairings: faint Makorra
Disclaimer: I don't own this franchise, nor am I affiliated with Nick or LoK's creators.
"Wow! You're really good!"
The note of abrupt praise and naked surprise that color Korra's voice stir an old bitterness in Mako.
It's the same sort the triad thugs used—back when they'd hired he and Bo for low-level work. Good for a street rat, they'd said. Unexpectedly disciplined for a no-name orphan. Who was teaching him? Surely he had a master.
But he hadn't. Everything he'd learned, Mako had gleaned from back alley fights and keen intuition. And improvised or not, his style has served him well. It had set them on the path to pro-bending. It's what earned he and Bo their first honest pay.
These are the thoughts that swirl in his head as he eyes Korra with detached annoyance. She, who'd been handed everything, admired his bending? Good, he thinks. It's a confirmation he didn't need, but can enjoy.
Yet when his eyes find hers, there is nothing he expected there. Nothing patronizing. No condescension. Genuine admiration and a sort of camaraderie are there, instead.
As always, she's oblivious to his conflict. And in the meantime, while he's thinking, she's settled into a perfect example of traditional firebending. As she runs through the stances, she takes care in exaggerating her movements as she encourages him to imitate her.
Mako is, in that moment, stunned.
She's teaching him freely. No questions asked, no exchange demanded. Something stirs beneath his ribs at the thought. He's never had a teacher before.
So as he arranges himself into a painstaking recreation of her stance, Mako decides it is very difficult to dislike Korra. She's all headlong honesty and endearing guilelessness. There's something in her unpolished demeanor that speaks to him—the boy who's never, before this day, been able to call his bending refined. Although this traditional style will be the first thing they share, it is not what characterizes them.
It is the roughness in each of them that calls out to the other.