when the sins of my father
weigh down in my soul,
and the pain of my mother
will not let me go...
so let the claps fill with thunderous applause!
... and let thy death be the veins.
and fill the sky,
with all that they can drop:
i know there can come fire from the sky,
i know this fire brings me pain.
"make it rain" – ed sheeran.
.
.
.
It was funny, really, how everything turned out: when he was a kid, when he was alone with his brother, when he had nowhere to go, when he was absolutely certain there would never be a bigger pain than losing his parents, when he was so sure that if he could find a way – any way! – to survive that, nothing would ever bring him down... Yeah, he was wrong – again.
Just like when he always thought a child should be raised by his parents, but that was taken away from him; when he thought his brother deserved better than being raised by an angry kid that had no idea what he was doing, but he didn't have anything else to offer; when he thought he knew pain, but then he didn't – not all kinds of pain, anyway.
His heart has been broken for quite a while now, for so many things he stopped counting a long time ago. And somehow he had always found a way to keep going.
You lose some, you win some, and in the end of the day the winning he got out of life had been enough to keep him breathing, to keep the ghosts chained to his past and not his present – and that was one of the few things he always felt proud of, of being able to scare his regrets and mistakes away with the hope he could still feel about doing the right thing another day.
Before he knew, his feet had dragged him back to the city and, more specifically, to the west side of it. He was now in front of a huge building, that was tall and – and the details didn't really matter. The only thing he could see between blurred windows and the need to throw up was an old house. His old home, actually.
No matter how many times he tried to shake that bad feeling out of him, whenever he'd lay his eyes at that place, something would pierce him so furiously that Mako could not help but let his face be ragged with disgust and that one feeling he could not properly distinguish, or that he did not want to.
Sometimes it felt like he didn't need anything, or anyone, but other times he felt like he needed closure.
The way he was inside, his heart's doors that were unkindly open, ragged and wrecked: if anything any good came by (or someone) even if it went wrong, there wouldn't be much left to be destroyed anyway – nothing he couldn't handle. Or nothing that couldn't go away if he had enough alcohol in his blood, in and out of his beaten heart, making him feel nothing too bad or too strong for too long if he didn't want to.
But what would happen if he closed the doors? If he took his time to stop and try to put everything back in place? If he let himself be healed? If he was made whole?
Well, he would probably just end up being the same way he has always been, or worse, and he didn't feel like taking chances and ending up with "the worse" part. Not again.
.
.
.
There were not enough words to describe what he was feeling at the moment: there were screams coming from deep within his home, and for some odd reason he was yet to be old enough to understand, he felt happy that he left Bolin playing with Reiki, their friend and helpful soldier in times of foolishness and fantasy, while he came home to let their parents know that Lahra, Reiki's mother, had invited them to lunch.
Not that he was going to ask for permission to do that, of course not! He was eight years old already: almost nine – that was also almost ten and – and as such he did not need to ask for anything if he didn't want to.
But he remembered his mother telling him that respect and consideration had to be present in our days and relationships, dispite your age or the person you were talking to. So he decided it would be at least polite that if he was to come back late, to let them know why.
He did not want to let his parents worrying over nothing, because that was what children did. And Mako didn't see himself as a child anymore: he was becoming a man.
Mako felt his feet running faster, yet not really sure that dispite becoming a man, he wanted to know what was happening.
A voice deeep and low much like his father's when he was screaming over him for the – ever so rare, mind you – moments when he did something wrong warned him to go back to play with Bolin and Reiki and that things would be just fine eventually, and he didn't understand why.
He kept going. Mako was never what could be said as an obedient child: he was only lucky enough most of the times to fix the wrong things before actually getting into trouble... And he was sure that his lucky wouldn't let him down this time too.
When he got inside the house, there was an strange voice coming from the living room and that same voice that tried to stop him said that he should try to make no noises.
For some reason, this time Mako felt like obeying.
He was not so sure as to why that voice was speaking so much, but his mother always told him that even from afar, there would be always good spirits send by her and his father looking over Bolin and him, and he supposed that today those spirits just didn't have much else to do.
So he tried to repesct them by actually doing what they told him and coming quietly to the room. Just that once.
He did not expect what he saw.
His mother was on her knees and his father was screaming something to a man standing in from of them: the sofa was half-burned, different from the rest of the room that was completly eaten by what seemed to be a fire explosion, or a fight.
He quickly looked around the house behind him for the first time since he got in and he noticed that it was all broken and out of place too.
He felt stupid for not noticing it right away, but he was so worried to get back to Reiki's house before Bolin could eat all the food that while running, the only thing he could think about was that delicious berry cake Lahra used to do and how he was dying to taste it again. Such childish things for someone becoming a man...
He took a deep breathe and quietly started to walk into the living room to try and do something, anything that could take that hopeless look out of his mother's eyes.
When he finally stood near the entrance, his mother's eyes locked with his and, before he could do anything, things happened too fast.
He briefly remebered how young his mother's face looked when she cried, and how high was her voice when she screamed for him to run.
He briefly remembered how fast his father moved, when that stranger turned to Mako's direction right after his mother screamed his name, using his earth-bending to lock the guy's feet to the ground and stop him from going after him.
He briefly remembered seeing his mother trying to fire a blast to the direction of the man, but it looked like her arm was broken, and she missed him.
But he vividly remembered the hollow laugh that filled the air right after his mother mistake's, that seemed to burn away any hope he had that this was all a nightmare.
Than he saw it – the spark, the light, the cruel smirk – for the first time: he didn't know, he had never seen it before, but he was preparing himself to bent lightnting at him. Suddenly, there was something in his posture that made Mako close his eyes, and brace himself for whatever was going to happen next.
He felt the lightnting passing so close to his arm that it ripped his shirt: the man missed him. Mako than quickly opened his eyes to see that his father had thrown himself at the attacker, while he was distracted, trying to hold him for long enough so Mako could get out. He seemed to be punched in the face by rage, and the next thing he saw was his father also being thrown away from him, hitting a wall. Hard.
Mako screamed, for the first time.
His father was down, unconscious, and pool of blood was beginning to appear on the floor around his head. His mother screamed too, as if the pain that stabbed him had stabbed her too.
Than there was that awful, haunted little sound that made them both look back to the stranger, and he was finally free from the hold his father kept him. Mako cringed, suddenly thinking he was too big, too tall. "Watch and learn, kid", he said as he turned to face Mako, eyes gleaming with mad desire, and his mother still lying on the floor, unable to move. "What happens when you're not strong enough to survive". He was making that same strange stance he did before while he started to generate lightning again, "... How easily I can break them, and how easily I'm gonna break you too".
There was a sobb, deep and sad, afraid. "RUN, MAKO!", his mother said one more time, tears rolling down her face, "... PLEASE!" and than, even if erratically, she shout fire at him so he could move.
And when he finally did, his feet obeyed her, even if he wanted to stay.
And as he run out of the house, screaming for help – for anyone that could save him from the things he saw, anyone that could take that all back – he heard his mother's scream once more: but this time, as the sound of her scream was getting lower and lower, even from afar, Mako could almost feel her life slipping away through her voice.
.
.
.
Pain.
Hurting endlessly each and every time he breathed, and pain – but, oh, not painful enough. Not enough for him to die, anyway. Although sometimes he wished he could.
Suddenly, he came back from his memories and he was not Mako, the detective, the adult: he was eight years old, with dead parents and no where to go, trying to stop his shaking hand before Bolin – so young – could find out that in reality he was just as scared as he was about the things he didn't know, about the things they would never have again – just as weak, hurt, and lost.
And for some unknown reason he also felt like Mako, the one left in the dark by the only other person he had ever loved after their death, for the last three years, while left to wonder all kinds of things, still alone; and Mako, the one who couldn't move on when everyone seemed to be so damn happy and whole – all too real and too painful, all at once.
Tears started to roll down his face while feeling like he was being punched – again and again – by all his memories and mistakes. His failures.
He was so heavy – everything he has lived felt so utterly tiring that his legs couldn't take the pain anymore, just like all of him, and he crumbled right there, on the streets, crying.
Crying for the love that he felt but was so abruptly turned to pain; for love he wanted – that he should have had – but was taken away; for the love he longed to give, but ended up screwing it up; and for the love he has always been feeling, but was never enough: enough to keep them alive, enough to protect him, enough to be the person that was needed, enough to take good care of her, enough to be loved like he wanted to.
"I'm sorry–", he tried to speak between a sob and another, "I'm sorry... I'm so–so sorry", but his voice was so small he couldn't even believe himself.
He looked up to the sky hoping to find smiles and faces he hasn't seen in too many years – long gone, but never forgotten – and there's nothing but the shine of things he didn't really care about (like silly stars and the moon)... As the empty inside of him screamed for somebody to save his soul from the hollow he himself carved.
So he did the next thing someone that was looking for something to hold on did: he looked to his side, both of them, trying to find someone – anyone – to make the pain go away.
There was no one. He was alone. Just like always.
.
.
.
a/n:
oh my gosh, that was a reaaaaally difficult one to write! i'm sorry for the delay, but just believe me when i say i never took so long to write anything in my life. i know i took a risk trying to make this, telling ya what i think happened, but it was like i needed to. the idea came to me and i just couldn't get it out of my head.
i always wondered why mako had that "i'll do anything i have to, to survive" in the beginning and i felt like maybe that had something to do to what happened to his parents.
i always thought that it was like somebody broke into their home when Mako was not there, and his parents tried to fight the guy, but he was too strong so the least they could do was save Mako before it was too late. or something like that.
i'm super nervous as to what you'll think about this, but it's done so... you know, tell me what you think.
again, sorry for the mistakes... not my mother language and my microsoft word is stiiiiiiill not working :(
feel free to tell me what you think about this in a review, PM, anything.
and thank you for reading this. i can't tell you how much this means to me. :)
disclaimer:
i don't own anything related to LOK or A:TLA, sadly.