Notes: If you're squeamish, especially about bugs, watch out for the ending. Other than that, enjoy!
Find Bolin.
Find Bolin.
"Find Bolin," Mom said in a low, hushed tone she only used when people glared at Mako in the Earth Kingdom neighborhoods, her fingers curling around his shoulder tight, so tight it hurt. He wanted to twist away but his eyes were locked on his father before them both, talking to a man in the street.
He didn't remember the run up the hill that fed down into Dragon Flats. He remembered the feeling of running, of his lungs aching, his scraped palms stinging, the wind freezing the tear tracks running down his cheeks and drying his eyes. The sound of his thinly soled shoes slapping against the hard pavement, the repetitive record scratching of his throat sucking in air. The keys in his pocket clinking like coins. It filled the empty street with hectic noise.
Ripping open the door to the apartment complex, Mako stepped into the dying burnt light of the lobby and was met with silence.
There was the metal rows of mailboxes on the wall, the piss yellow, wiry carpet, the cracks in the plaster walls. All familiar but now shown to him through a set of eyes that now took in every detail with hyperawareness, every flake of paint and every dying filament in the lightbulb above accounted for.
His fingers and palm slid along the wooden railing of the staircase, the echoes of his breathing filling the stairwell with hollow sounds. The years of blackened patina salted his palm and dragged against his cuts.
At the fifth floor landing he stopped, edging closer to the door at the stair's immediate right, looking across at apartment number 49.
Find Bolin.
His fingers clenched and he fisted them into the scarf around his neck, dragging the fabric over his face and digging his clothed fingers into the corners of his eyes. The clawing scent of smoke and the peculiar stench of burning hair and flesh filled his nostrils, but he inhaled sharply to regulate his breathing, finding the smell of cologne under it all.
Eyes dry and chest still heaving, Mako stepped forward and knocked on their neighbor's door.
A few scrambling sounds - scraping chairs and hushed sounds and some voices yelling Shh, shh, hide that! - seeped from the cracks in the door. A child dared to laugh. Someone was smacked with an open palm against the back of the head, and then the door pulled open to reveal tanned skin and blue eyes.
Miss Una had been their neighbors since Mako could remember moving into this apartment, when he was four. She was young, pretty with her elaborate chestnut hair twisted into blue, clay beads and braids, belly swollen with the promise of another child on the way.
"Hi, Miss Una," Mako said in between breaths. "I'm here to pick up my brother."
Her lips - a deep pinkish brown - spread into a wide smile. She had all of her teeth and every last one of them was white, just like his mother's. "Oh, right! Did you have fun at the movies?"
He nodded.
She turned around and pulled the door open wider, calling for Bolin. Mako looked around her legs to see her family, a grouping of people so large that Mako wondered how anyone could keep track of one another. He had been inside the apartment many times, knew that babies slept in kitchen drawers lined with blankets and pulled from their sockets, knew that the men sat around the kitchen table to speak in hushed voices with their hair long like a girl's.
A pair of children ran past the door, chasing each other, shrieking with laughter.
Bolin waddled out from behind Miss Una's legs, round face bright with a smile and the remnants of a greasy Water Tribe dinner caked across his face. Mako held out his hand and Bolin instantly took it, pressing his greased palm into the cuts inside his older brother's.
"Goodbye, boys," Miss Una waved. "Say hello to your parents for me."
"Goodnight, Miss Una," both boys chimed, turning around to walk to the apartment number 50.
Mako looked over his shoulder as he watched Miss Una shut the door behind them, straining to listen over the sounds of his ragged breathing to hear each of her five locks click into place. Bolin started babbling about how fun it was to stay with their neighbors, even if it smelled weird, even if some of the men were scary with their whalebone knives and cigars.
"Whadder you doing?" Bolin asked once Mako started to try out various keys on their father's key ring in the door.
Mako didn't glance away from the lock. One of them fit but it didn't budge. "I'm opening the door."
"Daddy can open the door."
"Mom asked me to open the door," Mako replied. He grit his teeth and tried to twist the key from side to side, feeling it jiggle.
"Aren't Mommy and Daddy inside?"
Mako shook his head, his fingers slipping on the key, his grasp on his brother's hand tightening. "No."
"Where are they?"
"They told me to come get you," Mako said. He gripped onto the doorknob and jerked the key to the right, where it finally budged and he was able to open the door.
He pushed it open, revealing their dark apartment, and he looked down at Bolin expecting him to toddle inside. Instead, Bolin just looked up at him with his eyes wide with confusion.
"Where's Mommy and Daddy?"
Mako's face puckered. "They told me to come get you. C'mon, we have to go to bed."
"But -"
"Come on, Bolin," Mako said, shoving his palm against his brother's back.
Bolin stumbled forward, tripped on the threshold, and he fell to the floor.
His sobs were loud and instantaneous, and Mako looked over his shoulder at their neighbor's door nervously before moving to help him. Hooking his hands under his brother's armpits, he managed to tug Bolin inside, shutting the door with his foot.
With the door shut, they were stuck in the darkness of their home, crowded on the linoleum floor of their kitchen. The small rectangular window above the kitchen sink did little to illuminate anything beyond the countertops, casting everything in a faint, moon glow grey.
Mako propped Bolin to sit on the floor and Mako sat down across from him, unsure of what to do. Usually when he made Bolin cry, an adult, whether it be a neighbor babysitting or his parents, would be nearby to scold him while comforting Bolin. They would hold him and softly pat his thick, messy hair, or bounce him up and down while saying all kinds of encouraging words to put a stop to the wailing.
Mako inched forward, and when he tried to wrap his arms around Bolin, his baby brother shoved him away.
"Hey!" Mako shouted.
Bolin shrieked, "Where's Momma?"
Mako sighed, his anger dissipating, and he rubbed his eyes. They were raw and puffy, eyelashes still a bit wet. He wanted to go to bed. He wanted to sleep and never wake up.
When he tried a second time to hug his brother, Bolin caved. His cries were weaker then, fat cheek pressed against the scarf wrapped around his brother's neck, sniffling and whimpering.
"Sorry I pushed you," Mako said, and he started patting his brother's back.
Bolin winced and pressed closer. "Too hard."
Mako paused for a moment, then with a sigh, started patting Bolin's back with gentler movements.
A moment passed as Bolin collected himself, digging his face into the scarf to wipe off his face and nose. Mako grimaced but didn't say anything about being covered in snot.
"It's ok," Bolin said. "You didn't mean it, right?"
"No, I didn't."
Bolin started another high pitched whine. "Where's Mommy and Daddy?"
Mako's throat tensed and he gripped his fingers into Bolin's shirt, his ring finger on his left hand slipping into a tattered hole, and for once, Mako didn't know who was going to mend it.
"Let's go to bed," Mako said, moving to stand and drag Bolin along with him.
Bolin kept his dead weight on the floor, peering up at his brother. "But what about -"
"I'll tell you when we go to bed."
He looked ready to challenge this, but finally, he pushed Mako's hands away with a weak, "Icandoit," to stand on his own.
Mako stayed still for a moment, looking down at him. If he shifted to the left, Bolin's face was bathed in the weak moonlight, shining with tears and snot and grease. Crumbs from harsh Water Tribe breads were stuck to the skin around his mouth along with the grease from tigerseal meat. Mako tried to tug down his sleeves to his fingers, reaching up to brush it away while Bolin squirmed.
"Mako, stop!"
"You're a mess! You're not getting meat juice and crumbs on my pillows!"
"They're my pillows too!"
"Stop!"
Bolin pushed Mako away and the older boy stumbled back, shocked, as always, by the strength his little brother could display. He always forgot how strong he could be, despite being six and still a nonbender, the only thing he didn't take after their mother.
Before Mako could snap at him for shoving him away, Bolin's eyes widened and he tilted his head to the side to squint in the dark.
"Why do you have Daddy's scarf?"
Mako looked down, chin and mouth dipping beneath the thick fabric. He never forgot its presence there around his neck, but he was surprised at how easily he accepted it now. Usually he declined the scarf when his father wrapped it around him to ward off the cold, or to tie him to his brother to keep them from running off.
"Let's go to bed, Bo," he said, stepping forward.
Bolin watched him with his big, round eyes. Mako tugged one end of the scarf loose, the end that had trailed behind him like a cape during the run home. As the hem slipped past his fingers, he felt grit and dirt from the street. He brushed it away before wrapping it around Bolin's neck, finding the other end, and tying them together into a loose knot.
"You tied it wrong," Bolin said instantly.
Mako frowned and looked down at the small knot. "No I didn't."
"Daddy's knots are bigger," Bolin said, fingers curling around the knot and tugging. "An', an' he showed me, if you pull at one end, it'll -"
"Dad taught me how to tie it," Mako lied. "This is just like how he did it."
Mako held his breath as he watched Bolin's grip on the knot slack. As he waited for his father to walk through the door and call him out on his lie, reprimand him for making it up. He waited and waited until his lungs ached for air and Bolin pouted at him.
Breathing meant living and living meant his father was never going to walk through that door, so Mako tried to use all of his willpower to just stop.
His lungs burned and he was weak, so the breath he gasped for filled up his chest and he hated himself for it.
Tears started to sting behind his eyes when he looked down at Bolin, who had stayed surprisingly quiet throughout the whole ordeal. He found his brother's hand and clasped it, the pair of them walking through the kitchen and into the dark of the living room.
Their bedroom door was open, giving way to the pitch black of their shared room. There were no windows, no electric lights; Mako stepped over the threshold and dragged Bolin with him, hoping to disappear into the dark.
"Hold some fire," Bolin whispered, greasy fingers slipping against Mako's.
"No," Mako said back, free hand extended, pawing at the air.
Bolin whimpered. "Mako, I'm scared."
Just the word scared was usually enough to spark the warmth and light of flames in his hand, and as the drifting embers lifted from the dying fire in his gut, Mako's throat spasmed and he jerked forward to retch.
His stomach was empty. It had been since he emptied it earlier in the street. All that came out was a dying, aching sound and stomach acid burned the back of his throat.
"Mako?" Bolin said.
He breathed in a deep breath and clamped it down, sucking in the cool air and hoping it was enough to put out the fire in his stomach.
His aching palm slapped against the cold metal of the bedframe and Mako exhaled, gripping onto it so as to not lose it in the dark. He pulled Bolin closer.
"It's ok, Bo," Mako said. "Here's the bed."
He heard, rather than felt or saw, Bolin scrambled up the side of the mattress to settle onto the bed. The scarf around his neck tugged, threatening to choke him, but Mako felt the uneasiness of standing on his weakened knees, of his exposed ankles free for evil spirits that lived under the bed to latch onto. He quickly followed after his brother.
Bolin's soft breathing was audible, mixing with his own, still heavy, breaths. Mako enjoyed the way his eyes could flicker over the room and only be met with darkness, going so far as to shutting his eyes to compare the black behind his lids to the black of the bedroom. Despite the feel of the blankets and mattress beneath his bent legs, despite the scarf looped around his neck and the tug of his little brother's presence at the other end, it felt as if he no longer had a body. Everything floated to him now, be it sound or touch, like a cool breeze cutting through hot air.
"Where's Mommy and Daddy?" Bolin whispered.
The tears started falling even though Mako didn't feel as if he were crying. They slipped against his smooth cheeks, tracing down their previous paths, dripping off his chin and landing somewhere in the dark.
Mako's hands found Bolin. He guided his brother to lay down with him, heads falling against the cool surface of the mattress. He kicked the thin blankets down and over their legs, dragging them all the way up to their shoulders and tucking the hem to Bolin's neck, just like their mother did every night.
"Mom and Dad are -" he started, but the words were dammed in his throat, blocked by his tongue and his teeth and his lips. If he opened them his body would return.
There would never be Mom and Dad no matter what he did.
His hands started to heat and he couldn't allow that to happen. He clawed desperately towards his brother, who whimpered when his fingernails caught his shirt, but Mako found Bolin's sticky child's hands and clasped them.
You're not allowed to firebend around Bolin when your father and myself aren't home. Am I understood?
Mako nodded and tightly shut his eyes. Sweat collected in his hands, sliding the marred skin of his palms over the dirt and salt of Bolin's, stinging with pain.
Air ripped down his throat jaggedly as he breathed in.
"Mom and Dad are gone."
"Where'd they go?" Bolin asked.
When Mako opened his mouth to respond, all that came out was a mangled sob. To still it he pressed his open mouth against the mattress, feeling the sheets against his teeth and lips absorbing his hot tears to turn them cold.
"Mako?" Bolin said, voice small.
Mako inhaled sharply like Dad taught him, expanding his diaphragm and filling his stomach, trying to stave off the rolling aches that plagued him there. Nausea ebbed out from the center of his body just behind his navel to turn his bones to jelly and make his head pound with his pulse thumping against his temples.
"Mom and Dad are dead," Mako cried.
"Wh-what?"
"Mom and Dad are dead," Mako yelled, digging his head into the mattress, trying to find an escape.
"No," Bolin said, fighting back. He dragged his hands from his brother's, pulling up his skin as Mako's fingernails clawed at it. "No, Mako, where's Mommy and Daddy?"
"They're gone!"
"That's not funny!" Bolin shrieked.
Mako opened his eyes and glared at the darkness where Bolin would be, feeling the mattress dip as his little brother sat up, dragging the scarf painfully against his neck.
"I'm not being funny!" Mako shouted back.
"Stop!"
Bolin's fists first collided with the mattress, bouncing back and he adjusted until they made contact with Mako's side. Mako let out a shout at the sudden pain, harder than any punch his brother had even thrown at him. He sat up and through his tears grappled for Bolin in the dark. His little brother was wild, shrieking at the top of his lungs and thrashing his hands and feet, striking Mako in the head multiple times. Each hit a reminder that he still had a body, he still had to exist when all he wanted was to fizzle into the dark.
"Bolin, stop!"
"Stop! Stop! Stop!" Bolin said, voice leaving his throat as if it didn't belong to him anymore. Nothing so painful could come from a six year old.
Mako felt a hand come down for his arm and he grabbed it, Bolin wailing at the pain of Mako's fingers tight around his wrist, and he pushed forward to topple his little brother over.
Bolin's hysterics calmed into shaking, deep sobs, still peddling his legs and free arm to fight back. Mako moved to wrap his arms around Bolin, pressing down on top of him to keep him still.
"I want Mommy," Bolin begged, voice hoarse. "I want Daddy."
"Me too," Mako said, voice cracking. The crying started again.
Bolin's arms were weak from their fighting, but he still managed to wrap them around Mako's body, pressing his older brother closer to bury his face into his chest. Another reminder of living, but this one, gentle and frightened, made him hug back. Mako bent his head down to feel Bolin's black, thick hair tickle his skin, absorbing the heat and tears from his sobs. In the pitch black of their room, as always, it was just him and Bolin.
The next morning, Mako had to make sure.
The bedroom door was slightly ajar. He peered inside, eyes traveling over the large, immaculately made bed. Pale yellow morning light cut into the room from the single window opposite the door, aged lace curtains lifting with the cold fall breeze. The air was crisp and sharp.
The door hinges squealed when he pushed the door open, stepping into the room.
The mattress groaned under his weight as he climbed atop it, settling into the dip where his father used to sleep. He didn't dare touch the pillows that had been fluffed and smoothed under his mother's hand. Mako folded his legs and leaned forward.
Last night the world was fed to him with all of his senses overworked, but now they were dulled. He knew he was staring at the floral pattern of the quilt beneath him, eyes tracing over stems and curled-edge leaves, but his mind ran blank.
He uncurled one hot, sweaty fist, extending his pale index finger to trace the edges of petals his eyes sought. He didn't remember how long he did this, finger bumping along loose threads, traveling over stains - one from when he was sick with the flu, one from when Dad dropped food during a family picnic, one from when Bolin was scared and wet the bed during a storm - but slowly, he noticed a change.
Pausing, he lifted his hands, watching his fingers uncurl and reveal the glistening, sweat lined creases, the brown and red blood running along the threadbare heels of his palms. Tiny rocks were embedded in some of the cuts and he wanted more than anything for them to sink into his skin, like his mother.
You're a part of the earth, Mako. You're my son, not just a son of the Fire Nation. You are not what your element says you are.
Just as curious as he had been the first time, Mako thought of the dark and of his father and watched sparks sputter in his hand.
The memory and feeling was marred by a man with untamable fire that scorched his mother and father's skin, and Mako lurched forward violently, feeling the kick of acid at the back of his throat. He fingers clenched into the quilt and he gagged, eyes frozen wide at the pain and clawing smoke that traveled up from his stomach and into his throat.
A mixture of bile and saliva coated his tongue and threatened to run down the length of it until he snapped his mouth shut, swallowing the nastiness back down inside his gut where it belonged.
He looked up, straight across from the bed to find his mother's rickety vanity and dresser. He could just see his reflection in the oval mirror that was coated with small specks of the rice powder his mother adorned on her face, edge cutting off just over the bridge of his nose.
Popping out from the right drawer was the tip of a white cloth glove.
Mako stood and went to the vanity, tugging open the drawer and pulling out the set of white, immaculate gloves. His mother never wore this pair. She had taken them out once, folded them across her lap to show the boys.
I wore these when I was married to your father.
He tugged them on. The tips of the fingers were crumpled and they bunched around his wrists, but they hid his skin.
He crawled back onto the bed.
The gloves helped, but Mako still gripped his sides as he curled back up on the bed. The fibers caught against his scrapes. Unease bubbled in his stomach.
Hate is a strong word. You do not hate, Mako.
He was sure he hated himself. Any past use of the word, directed at his mother, or father, or brother in a fit of petulant anger was nothing compared to what he felt now. Hate was a strong, ugly word for an equally strong and ugly emotion.
As the anger started to build, first towards himself, then towards the man who had started it all, the tears started to flow. His face pinched together with pain as his eyebrows knit and his nose snarled.
He hated the man that had killed his parents. He hated him for taking them away, for ruining fire, for ruining life and lives and everything Mako thought he had known.
Fire is life, Mako. You hold life in your hands.
He hated his father for lying about fire, about life, for never telling him that he was going to die. He hated his mother for fighting so hard and failing, for giving birth to a firebending son when she could bend the earth. He hated them both for leaving him alone.
His hatred for himself and the man burned bright like the white flickering tips of the flames his father could produce after serious concentration. But as much as he wanted to hate his parents, it was weakened with want.
Mako shut his eyes and bit his bottom lip to the point of pain. He wanted his eyes to stay shut. He never wanted to wake up again and he didn't know why.
"Mako?"
Mako choked out a sob at the sound of Bolin's voice, but it was dry. He dug his face into the mattress.
"Mako?"
He grit his teeth and tightened his eyelids. Odd shapes and colors started to form behind them, shifting like sand into one another before his eyes.
"Mako! Mommy, Daddy, Mako! Mako's gone!"
Bolin quickly turned his voice high and loud, hysteric and cracking into desperate shrieks. Just before Mako clamped his hands over his ears he heard Bolin start to sob. If he could block out the world by shutting his eyes, if he could dam his ears to keep from hearing, if he stopped eating, all that would be left would be feeling. He convinced himself then that if he stayed completely still, he would stop existing.
But he felt Bolin's heavy footsteps vibrate through the thin floors, hurrying around the apartment as he searched for Mako. His name reached him muffled through his hands over his ears. His brother had called for their parents once and then never again.
When the shouts stopped and the thumping footsteps ended, Mako knew Bolin was at the threshold of the bedroom door.
"Mako?"
He pushed his face into the quilt, away from Bolin at the door, digging his fingers into his ears harder. The sound of his breathing was magnified, louder than Bolin's soft, timid voice, a constant reminder that he was still alive.
The mattress dipped with Bolin's weight as he struggled to climb onto the bed. He slowly wrapped his arms around Mako's body and rested his chin on his older brother's shoulder, all warm and soft and tender. Pudgy arms and round cheeks, all topped with a set of black curls, just like Mom.
Mako relaxed his fingers. They drifted down from his ears to cup around his neck. He opened his eyes. He saw the curves of Bolin's face out of the corner of his eye, his world bathed in partial shadow. Eyes tracing the curved edge of a flower petal on the quilt. He breathed in and out. Life pulled in and he pushed it out.
"How did Mommy and Daddy die?"
He wanted to shut his eyes. He wanted to curl back up into a ball and stop. But Bolin was right above him, holding him because Bolin needed to be held, and Dad wasn't around anymore to calm them both. His eyes widened and his emotions drained from his body until there was nothing for him to do but answer.
"A firebender attacked us."
Bolin nodded his head, burrowing it deeper into the cave he and Mako formed.
"Why?"
Mako swallowed thickly, still feeling the dull sting of stomach acid at the back of his throat. "I don't know."
"What happened?"
"The man got out of a car. He started yelling. Then he tried to set Daddy on fire. Mommy told me to run away."
"Daddy didn't win the fight?"
Mako shook his head. "No. Or Mom."
"Mommy fought?"
"Mommy fought. Really hard."
Bolin considered this for a quiet moment. Mako had been just as surprised when he actually saw his mother sink low to the ground, prepared to strike. She never used her bending like their father, in fact, she hardly had reason to use it at all.
"What are we going to do?" Bolin asked.
Mako shrugged. "I don't know."
"Should we tell Miss Una?"
"No," Mako shook his head. "I don't think that's a good idea."
"Why?"
"I don't want to leave our house."
"Oh."
Bolin squeezed tighter.
"Mako?"
"Yeah?"
"I'm hungry."
Mako nodded. "Ok. Let's get up."
He lead the way out of their parents' bedroom, Bolin walking behind with one end of the scarf trailing on the ground, his small hands fisted into it.
When the police officers arrived, they gazed over the apartment with their sharp eyes.
At first, it had just been a man and a woman, officers Hye and Soon Yi. They asked to enter and Mako let them in; trust police officers and don't talk to strangers, Mako.
It took two false starts for Officer Soon Yi to inform them that their parents had been killed.
Mako glared. "I know. I saw."
After that, all hell broke loose. More officers arrived.
The woman in the black uniform with gold piping was the most frightening. Taped to the right side of her face was a white patch of gauze. Her eyes instantly latched onto the bubbling, rattling pot on the stove Mako had placed there, boiling rice for their breakfast. Brownish foam spilled out from the seams of the lid, making the tall purple flames hiss and flare.
She shut it off.
"Are these the victim's children?" the injured woman asked.
"Yes, Chief," Officer Soon Yi said. "This one is a witness."
At this, the woman's face softened for a single moment. It was masked quickly with her previous air of command.
"Then we'll question him down at the station while we search the apartment," the Chief replied, eyes now doing a quick sweep of the room.
"I already started the interrogation, Chief."
At this, the woman snapped her head sharply to gaze at Officer Soon Yi.
"All questioning for minors occurs at the station under the watch of a Social Worker," she spat. "You know this. Where's Hye?"
"...Questioning the second boy, Chief."
The Chief took it upon herself and a second officer to collect the brothers and bring them down to the station. She held Bolin's wrist and looked at Mako expectantly from his seat at the kitchen table.
"No," he said.
"No?" The Chief repeated.
Mako nodded and held out his hand towards Bolin. Bolin instantly latched onto it, even as his other wrist was held awkwardly by the Chief.
"This is our house," he said.
The Chief jutted out her chin. "We need to watch over you boys. Once we contact your relatives, you will be allowed to return to your home."
Mako frowned and tilted his head. "Who?"
"Your relatives. Aunts, uncles, grandparents."
"We don't have any."
The Chief shut her eyes tightly and held her breath before slowly exhaling.
Mako and Bolin's first ride in a car was in the cruiser that took them to the police station.
Mako didn't like the police station. He could tell Bolin didn't either, because usually his little brother made a point to always run around some new place, running up to people and making friends. He had latched himself onto Mako's side for the duration of their visit.
It was too big. They had stepped into the lobby with its high cathedral ceilings, skinny windows shooting slants of harsh sunlight into the building, casting a harsh gleam against all the metal. Every sound was echoed and magnified by the cold grey walls until everything morphed into a rambling cacophony of whispers and steel footsteps and the whining protest of metalbent doors.
The room the boys were taken to was small, but not any more comfortable. A kind man in civilian clothing sat on their side of a freezing, highly polished table while Mako had to answer questions.
"Did you see the man?"
He saw a silhouette outlined by the harsh headlights of a Satomobile.
"Did he speak to your parents?"
Mako remembered words and sounds but nothing specific.
"How did the fight start? Did your father -"
"My dad doesn't start fights."
After the questions had ended - the man in civilian clothing patted them both on the back and said you're both such strong boys - they had been brought back to the lobby.
Mako leaned against the railing of the wooden bench he was seated on, Bolin pressed against his side. He kept his eyes trained on the black hair of the Chief who sat before them at the front desk in the lobby; files and papers had to be moved from behind the desk to make room for the boys. She kept shuffling things around on the desk and barking out orders.
Bolin buried his face into Mako's shoulder, having tugged their father's hat down over his eyes and ears to block out the world. They had grabbed it along with their coats when the police collected them from their house.
The Chief looked down at the gloves on Mako's hands.
"Do you have a better pair?" she asked.
Mako shook his head and she didn't look at his hands again.
An old man came up to the desk. He wasn't terribly old, but his hair was grey, lighter at the temples and fading up darker like ashes. His work shirt was partially untucked and his suspenders did little to make his oversized trousers look good.
"Any word on my son?" he asked.
The Chief sharply lifted her head and slammed a file down onto the desk, gesturing out her arm to Mako and Bolin.
The man's eyes lifted and widened. Mako noticed that they were the same color as his father's. Bolin shifted and lifted his head to look at the man, and the man's eyes met Bolin's green.
"We were not informed that your son and his wife had children," the Chief spat.
"No. They're not -"
"-You do not take legal guardianship of your grandsons?"
The man tore his eyes away from Bolin's to glare at the Chief. "No."
"Then get out," the Chief spat. "I will send officers to your home with any updates."
The Chief leaned over her desk tensed, inching forward as she watched the man walk away. Once he had disappeared through the front doors, she sighed and fell back into her chair, body slack for the first time.
Mere minutes later, and she was screaming over the telephone at a woman that shared a last name with Mako and Bolin's mother.
"Mrs. Wen, these are your grandchildren -" the Chief cut off with a mangled noise, listening for one moment before slamming her fist against her desk, denting it. "You watch your mouth - if you do not stop your verbal harassment of me and my love of sulfur smelling, amber eyed, Fire Nation scum I'll - hello? Hello?"
With a grunt of frustration, she slammed the telephone onto the desk and sunk back into her chair. A moment passed where she stayed completely still before she sat up and turned around.
Mako held Bolin tighter.
"I'm so sorry, boys," the Chief said with a sigh before picking up the phone again.
The orphanage was on another side of the city neither of the boys had seen before, deep downtown near the harbor in the biggest Water Tribe burrow, nicknamed the Eastern Water Tribe. It looked similar to their home in Dragon Flats, though the brick tenement homes and short storefronts were lined on the gridded, planned streets of the city. The biggest difference was the astounding amount of blue that pervaded the area, dripping from tattered banners that seemed to be hung all year round due to their wear.
The building itself was one of the rare remaining wooden structures in the city, outside shingles greyed by the sea air that rolled in from the east. Paint chipped and flaked to the ground.
Due to the threat of being a fire hazard, there was no electricity in the building save for a single telephone in the main office. Everything else was lit with lanterns either sparked by fingers or matches. The rooms were heated with fire places that were haphazardly spaced in various rooms at random.
The room Mako and Bolin had been sent to claim beds in did not have a fireplace.
There were rows and rows of beds, and Mako was surprised to find that not all of them were in use. There were very few beds with anything on them, sheets rumbled by bodies that were too young to bother to fix them each morning. Even without every bed in use, the orphanage was still overcrowded and underfunded.
Their first dinner was spooned to them on what looked like warped pie tins. The food itself was a slightly yellowed heaping of jook, thicker than what the boys were used to eating when made by their mother. There were no add-ins or condiments: just mushy rice cooked in weak chicken broth.
They sat across from each other at a wooden bench with the other children.
Bolin shoveled the food into his mouth, the first food they had seen that day, and after chewing his face suddenly fell.
"What?" Mako asked, letting his full spoon drop back into his pan.
His little brother's mouth twitched, cheeks puffing, eyebrows tipping upwards. Bolin's mouth dropped open with an aching sob, spilling jook down his chin and onto his shirt.
"Bolin!" Mako hissed, looking up at the children surrounding them, who now stared.
Bolin continued wailing, fat tears sliding down his cheeks.
Mako leaned closer and noticed something wiggling in the jook that spilled from his brother's mouth. He stood up, going to Bolin's side and pulling a moving speck from Bolin's shirt.
A yellowed maggot with a shining black head squirmed in the white gloved palm of Mako's hand. Looking closer, Mako saw maggots were everywhere in the food.
His stomach twisted and Mako patted his brother's back.
"Just spit it out, Bo," he said quietly.
Bolin shuddered with tears. "W-where?"
"On the floor, go ahead. No one will care."
He ducked his head under the table and the food spat from his mouth with a wet smack on the stone floor. When he lifted his head, he smeared the remaining jook off of his face with the back of his hand.
"I don't want to eat anymore," Bolin whispered.
Mako frowned and looked at Bolin's pan. He scooped up a handful and it instantly seeped through his gloves, but he diligently picked out all of the maggots he could see.
"If I take them out, will you eat it?"
"Only if you do."
Mako hand fed himself and his brother, scraping the pan and flicking maggots away to the floor.
After two days of living like this, the hunger got to Bolin. He climbed into Mako's cot like he had every night since they had arrived, curling into his side and hugging him close, burying his face in the scarf Mako had knotted around their necks.
"My tummy hurts," Bolin whimpered, stifling his tears.
Mako rubbed Bolin's back. "I know, Bo."
"I miss Mommy and Daddy."
"Me too."
Bolin's shaking slowed, and he lifted his head. His eyes were bright even in the dark, standing out against his dust and dirt covered skin.
"Can I put on the necklace?"
Mako sighed and dug his head into the thin pillow. "Again?"
"It helps me sleep."
Bolin's gaze was unrelenting. Unable to say no, Mako untangled himself from his brother, lifting the scarf from his neck. He crawled to the end of his cot to the small trunk he had been given to store his personal belongings. Flipping it open, he dug inside, under his father's coat and his mother's wedding dress until something caught against the fabric of his mother's gloves. Scratching until he could feel it against his fingers, he gripped and lifted his hand to reveal the shining gold chain dangling from his fist. At the end was a simple rounded pendant with a square middle, just like the Earth Kingdom symbol.
Before Mako turned back, he leaned forward and shut the chest. He looked up and found a pair of muddy brown eyes staring at him from another bed.
Mako glanced down at the necklace and cradled it close to his chest, bringing to to Bolin, who tugged it over his neck. After settling back down into bed, Bolin's crying stopped.
"Feel better?" Mako whispered.
Bolin nodded, burying his face into his older brother's chest.
"Tuck it into your shirt," Mako said. "So it doesn't fall from your neck when you sleep, ok?"
"Ok, Mako."
The rings and necklace had been lifted from their parents' remains at the morgue. They were slightly burnt and tarnished, sections of the necklace chain melted together. At the crematorium, where the start of the funeral ceremonies had started, his mother's pale hand slipped from under the white sheet draped over her body as she was carried forward.
Her hand was laced with a still-wet wound, torn skin and muscle a deep red-purple and scorched at the edges with black. The absence of the ring on her finger was noticed by the indent the ring had left there as the stiffening of rigor mortis set in. Her fingernails were crusted with dirt, as always, but without the decoration and with the scarring, it might as well have been a stranger's hand.
A few strangers stood at the outskirts of the small funeral service at the cemetery. Their urns were simple and unadorned, the best their father's nearly empty bank account could afford. A social worker attended the funeral with them, holding their hands before walking back to their apartment to collect their things, their new inherited items.
On the third night at the orphanage, Bolin requested the necklace again. When Mako bumped his gloved hand to the bottom of his trunk, his fingers never latched around a warped metal chain.
He looked up, searching for muddy brown eyes. He stared at an empty bed.
The next morning, Bolin's eyes were ringed with sleep lines and puffy red from his tears, and Mako learned that children fled the orphanage often.
"Where do they go?" he asked.
The boy he had been speaking to gestured to the windows. "Outside."
For two more days Mako looked out the window. He saw children walking past, unaccompanied by adults, wearing clothing three sizes too big or too small. Their cheeks weren't stained with tears. While they never looked happy, they didn't look sad either. Their faces were emotionless and hardened, reminding him of the grim expressions of the officers at the police station.
On occasion, their pockets were fat and bunching. Mako watched one bony hand dip inside and lift out a purpled stack of yuans banded with an orange tie. The child leaned against the building and licked her fingers, reveling in the feel of paper notes flicking past the pad of her thumb.
He turned back and saw Bolin curled on the bed, whimpering for food and sleep and Mom and Dad.
That night when Bolin never shut his eyes, Mako pulled them both out of bed.
"What are you doing?" Bolin whispered as Mako opened his trunk.
He sifted through the items, trying to grab as much as he could. "We're running away."
"What?" Bolin asked, fearful.
Mako fingered the silk of his mother's wedding dress. It was in a traditional Earth Kingdom style, all long sleeves and train rippling like grass in the breeze when she walked. He let it slip from his hands to the bottom of the trunk.
"We can't stay here, Bo, we'll starve."
"Where are we going to go?"
Mako shrugged. "Wherever we want. Come help me."
Bolin landed on the floor with a thump, padding over to his brother. Together, they tore through the trunk, trying to convince themselves that everything was necessary to take with them.
In the end, they were left with hats and their parents' winter coats. There wasn't much left for them to take.
Bolin's hand gripped onto the loose glove on Mako's as his older brother led the way through the dark.