The man slid the single sheet of paper across the poorly lacquered desk, a pen placed on top of it. Mako could just make out the characters that read "work, sign here, name, job," but most of the words were too long and too foreign for him to understand.
This was always the worst part of any new job. He lifted the pen, the metal sides slipping against the soft, dulled fabric of his mother's gloves. Leaning forward and resting his arms against the surface of the desk, he tucked his tongue against his upper lip in concentration, holding the pen in a white knuckled grip to keep it steady against his fingers. Painstakingly he wrote out "Mako," just like his mother taught him when he was old enough to hold a pen.
She had taught him initially with a brush and ink, until his father said it was useless for him to learn. Only the wealthy can afford the lessons and the ink anymore, Nuan, just give him a pen like everybody else.
He sat back and observed the shaky lines of his name. It was strange to see it written out now - his handwriting used to be better. Back when he would attend school and scrawl his name across his papers and tests like it was something to be proud of.
"Work starts tomorrow at 6:30," the man said, reaching forward and taking the job contract and pen back. "Your punch card will be with the others. You will get paid at the end of the week."
Mako stayed in his seat, expecting something else to be said. The man had never properly looked him in the eye throughout the interview process, which amounted to, "are you fast? can you work a loom?" so he patiently waited for him to say something.
Instead his new employer had returned to his work for a moment before glancing upwards, recognizing the small child still seated before his desk, and with a glare he jerked his head towards the door.
Embarrassed, Mako stood, thickly wrapped feet thumping on the ground with no sound, and he left the office.
The Leather District was close to Huangse Town, the Fire Nation neighborhood that his father had often taken him to buy food. The Leather District was known for producing leather goods, but spattered in between the tall brick buildings that smelled of animal skin and chemicals were the fabric buildings.
Mako had briefly been introduced to the series of long, high ceiling, rectangular rooms that clacked and snapped loudly out of sync, where fantastic metal looms weaved together long stretches of canvas and cotton. Pale winter light slanted in from the thin slit windows that edged along the top wall, highlighting the specks of rough cotton that twirled through the air like gnats. Children stood at each loom and worked, dipping their fingers into the tightly stretched rows of thread and standing atop the machinery to coax it into moving. Their faces were covered in grime and their clothing revealed their thin frames.
And now Mako was one of them.
It was usually easy to cut through the gridlocked streets. Mako climbed over two fences, finding it difficult due to the slick coating of ice that had collected on every surface, his gloved hands finding little purchase on the warped edges of wooden boards.
He stopped in Huangse to pick through the trash behind Ryouta's Restaurant. The trashcans smelled of sickly sweet sauces, heated spices stinging his nose as he edged closer to the gleaming silver cans. The dry, chill air of winter stood in stark contrast to the heat ebbing off the thick brick walls of the restaurant, making Mako's stomach roll and saliva spread across his dry tongue and start to inch out the crusted corners of his mouth.
There were two pig-chicken wings coated in partially gummed off batter, settled atop a messy pile of glass noodles speckled with green onion rounds that had turned soft and dark. Three porkbuns were mangled with a few teeth marks and rounded holes like bullet wounds, and Mako imagined a young child had been given them to eat by their parents, who fussed and kicked and pushed away the luxury of food until it was warped and sent to the alley cans.
A discarded white box was hidden deep underneath the first layer of food, already moist and covered in grease stains Mako fished it out and used his hands to stuff the food inside.
His mother's gloves, once white, where now a mottled grey and brown, cooly coated in grease and wet specks of green onions. It was worth it. Food was worth everything.
He pulled open his mother's coat and held the food close to his chest, wrapping the flap of his coat over it protectively. He had learned to hide food after a grown woman knocked him down after toting off with the half eaten carcass of a pig-chicken he had found.
After cutting across another street, Mako turned down a main road and meandered slowly to the busy center of Central City Station.
There were always large crowds of people there, even in the winter months when the city frosted over. The Station pulled in working men and women boarding the trains to arrive at their jobs, to the weakened homeless littering among the benches and curbs. Most of the adults clung to the actual building of the station to huddle under the overhanging shelters, smoke cigarettes and pooling together warmth, reading newspapers. The opium addicts lined the walls of the Station as they laid on their sides, too fatigued by their drugs and the dead winter to move much. Their long pipes wavered as shaky hands struggled to hold them to their lips.
The street kids, on the other hand, mingled around far away from the building. They formed clusters in the odd corners of the square, sharing tarps and blankets, hiding beneath them like they were hiding from monsters under the safety of the covers on their own beds.
However, the prized spot at the Station was always Firelord Zuko's burning statue.
The flames that roared in the palm of his hand traveled up from deep beneath the ground, controlled by gas and sparks, the heat billowing up through the metal platform, up the brass figure, to eternally burn. Warmth ebbed out from the metal of the statue and onto the ground below it. The low fencing around the outside of the base provided a good barrier shelter for children to crowd against. Any snow that fell melted and never collected.
Mako spotted the grey canvas tarp sandwiched between a trio of children trying to share a tattered cotton blanket, and the 13 year old girl that was masquerading as a boy with her choppy haircut and newsboy cap. She had herself buried under a thickly knit, woolen Water Tribe blanket, her closed eyelids the only thing visible beneath it.
Mako stepped over the fence and lifted the grey tarp, hurriedly sliding under it and bumping against Bolin.
"Mm-Mako?" Bolin mumbled, barely opening his eyes.
Mako nodded, pulling out the food and cradling it in the cave of his torso and peaked legs. "I got that job, Bo. At the textile mill."
"When?"
Mako pulled out a mangled dumpling and held it out to his brother. "Just now. Didn't you notice I left this morning?"
Bolin shook his head and his bony hands folded around the dumpling. "No. I slept."
"All day?"
"I'm really tired," Bolin whispered, his lips against the greasy dough, tongue licking to taste. His eyes were unfocused on a spot just above his knees. "I threw up."
"Where?"
"Outside."
Mako bit into one of the pig-chicken wings. "What did you throw up?"
"It was kind of yellow. With foam."
"Gross."
"I don't want this," Bolin said, handing the dumpling back.
"It'll make you feel better," Mako lied, crunching down on cartilage and blackened bone. It bounced back against his teeth, unyielding to be chewed.
Bolin dropped the dumpling and it landed on the ground between them. He curled up and turned his head away from his older brother. "I feel like I'm gonna throw up."
"You will if you don't eat. Your tummy just wants food. You know it hurts after going for a long time. It'll feel better with something in it."
He looked over and saw that Bolin's eyes were shut again, his breathing slow and slightly wheezing through his open mouth. It had been that way since he caught a cold at the start of winter, when he would forcefully sniff back anything that threatened to leak from his nose, swallowing it down in a way that made Mako grimace. He knew food would make his brother feel better; it always did. It usually did, when the food wasn't speckled with blue and grey mold.
Plus, if Bolin ate, the food would be gone faster. He wouldn't have to protect it for long against the hungry adults and children they were forcefully pressed against.
"Bo," Mako whispered, jerking his elbow into his brother's side. Bolin moaned. "Bo, you have to eat, we're moving today."
"Why?" Bolin asked, eyes still shut.
Mako tossed the now clean pig-chicken bones to the ground, where it slid under the grey tarp. He picked up the dumpling Bolin had tossed earlier and started to free it of dirt. "Because my job is too far away, and I don't want to leave you here."
"No, it'll be cold."
Mako nudged the dumpling back into Bolin's limp hands. "We'll be ok. There are matches at the place where I'm going to work. We can have as many fires as we want."
Bolin opened his eyes, turning his head onto his left shoulder to look at Mako. His thick eyebrows knit together. "You're lying."
"No I'm not!" Mako hissed. "I saw them, all of the adults smoke, I just need to take them -"
"No," Bolin shook his head, long black curls weighted with sweat and filth. "You never start fires anymore."
Mako held his brother's gaze for a long moment, rough and hard, everything Bolin never was. He tipped his head back to his right shoulder and shut his eyes, dumpling slipping from his fingers to rest on his thin stomach.
Not knowing what else to do, Mako sunk low into the ground and wrapped his father's scarf around his face to hide his shame from the only person able to see it.
He let Bolin sleep for an hour before waking him again, pulling the dumpling from his brother's torso and holding it before his face.
"If you eat the whole thing, we won't move," Mako bargained.
Bolin contemplated this as sleep lifted from his eyes. He gently reached out and took the dumpling, taking a bite so small that it only cut through the outer layer of thick, gummy dough.
Mako watched his younger brother slowly eat every bit of the dumpling with his sharp hawk eyes, knowing he could snap and toss it to the ground or hide the parts he didn't want to eat in the pockets of his coat.
When he finished, he looked up at his older brother with his eyes wide and pleading.
"Can I have another?"
Relieved, Mako handed him the whole box.
As Bolin sucked long glass noodles into his mouth, he started talking about bending again.
"I did it today," Bolin said, the ends of noodles falling from his mouth and back into the box. "I made some pebbles fly."
Mako sighed and reached into the box, finding another dumpling and eating it. "Sure, Bo."
"I did it! You don't believe me."
He shrugged. "You're too sick to bend."
"Am not."
"Whatever."
"I'm an earthbender!" Bolin said, fingers in his mouth as he shoved more noodles in. "Like Mommy."
Mako sighed and stuffed the rest of his dumpling into his mouth to give him a reason to not reply.
His little brother often brought up their parents, slipping them into normal conversation, acting as if they were still alive. Mako only invoked their memory as just that: with memories, stories from before, whispered to Bolin in the dark when he was sick and aching for sleep. To hear his little brother mention them in passing felt like an odd jolt of his heart, the pace picking up for one painful moment, throat clenching, before stilling as the sentence continued.
Mako always woke up before the sun. It was a habit that started in their first week on the streets, when paranoia quickly set in to make rest nearly impossible. After a year had passed, he had gotten better, finding sleep when he could and taking sparse naps with wildly vivid dreams.
He hated slipping out from under the warmth of the grey tarp, untangling himself from his little brother's soft arms. He always halted just before leaving, gloved fingers fisted in the red of his father's scarf draped around his neck, staring at Bolin as he curled up on the ground. It was a daily struggle of, "he might need it," and, "I need it too."
He left with the scarf, stepping out of their open shelter and into the grey frosted morning of the square.
As he stumbled to get over the short fencing around the statue, his thickly wrapped foot collided with the leg of another child that had slipped from under a tattered blanket.
The leg was stiff and did not move.
Mako held his breath and looked up at the trio of children under the blanket.
Two of them were asleep, the smoke of their breath billowing into the air like the dying fumes of a cigarette. The third was white with purple lips raw and chapped, hollow bird bones sticking out from under the blanket and short sleeved shirt. The snow that had fallen at some time during the night collected on the body, the spirits putting their child to rest under the very same cold that had killed them.
This happened often, but that did not make it any easier to handle.
Mako lifted his head and looked at the grey tarp where Bolin was still asleep. His eyes landed on the thirteen year old girl beside their shelter, brown eyes open and staring at him like an animal.
Guilt flooded his gut as he turned and walked away, knowing full well that this girl saw him abandon the body of a child to allow the innocents beside it discover death for another countless time.
He was done burying people. That was not going to be his job anymore.
He walked silently to work, the same path he had taken the day before for his interview. He wore multiple socks on his feet and managed to stuff them into a pair of soft women's slippers, his feet sweating and chilled at the same time. A few stringy ends of his long coat dragged on the ground from all the rips and tears, the sleeves rolled up to his wrists to keep his hands free.
Other children were slowly making their way across the frozen streets to march into the factories in the Leather District. A parade of miniature adults with hard faces, outfits blackened but some with ties and loose suspenders on their bony shoulders, hands calloused with years of work. A cluster of young boys who had been on the night shift clung to the short steps into the textile mill, each smoking an expertly rolled cigarette, puffing the smoke into the air.
The line to clock in was long. A few kids whispered to each other, holding small conversation that Mako listened in on.
"My sister had her baby last night," a girl two people ahead of him said, her dark brown hair pulled into intricate braids.
The girl she had been speaking to was busy pulling at the loose threads on her sleeve. "How many has she had?"
"Three. I'm just glad because she can go back to work now. I hate having to do mornings here and night shifts at the hat factory," the girl yawned.
"Your sister has had three babies?" another child, a short boy chimed in. "How old is she?"
"Seventeen."
"You Water Tribe girls start young, huh?"
The girl glared. "She's been bleeding for years, she's plenty old."
"Bleeding?" The boy repeated.
The girl blinked, eyes wide. "You don't know what bleeding is?"
"Yeah I do!" The boy shouted back. "But people don't do it for years!"
The two girls looked at each other and burst into a fit of giggles. Even as the boy continued to pester them, they never answered his questions. They said, he would understand when he got older.
Mako had no idea what they were talking about. It sounded frightening. He shook the thought of people slowly bleeding for years, drop after drop slipping from their skin like the beads of a melting icicle, and clocked in with his small, fresh punch card.
He trailed after a sparse line of other children to one of many loom rooms, where children were already at work. He walked past one black metal structure, watching a child climb up the sides like a spider, careful to avoid falling slats and turning gears as they quickly repaired a broken line of cotton string. It took all of twenty seconds for the child to complete the work and climb back down.
He had been assigned to loom number 26. A boy younger than him already stood at the machine, prepping it.
"'Morning," the boy said without looking up from the immaculate rows of strings he lined.
Mako repeated the greeting and leaned over the side to survey the boy's work, paying careful attention in case he had to repeat it. "Are we both working at this one?"
"Yup. The name's Nichi."
"Mako."
Nichi's eyes darted over the fully prepped loom, and he pulled his hands away to straighten up. He was small, his head almost too big for his thin body. His skin was pale with cat-like grey eyes, black hair shorn down to just fuzz lining his scalp. He twitched rather than moved, like every movement from him was a mistake, but a mistake of habit Mako soon learned. Everything he did was of a meticulous, tight nature.
His eyes flicked down to Mako's hands and back up to his face. "You know I'm the runner, right?"
Mako frowned and nodded. "You climb the loom."
"Yeah," Nichi said, head bobbing sharply. "You're taking those off when you work, right?"
Mako looked down at his hands. The gloves were so stretched by now that they slid down to reveal his wrists, so pale in comparison to the skin on his face. What lay beneath them still haunted his dreams and he shook his head.
"No. I never take them off."
"Why?"
Mako glared at the floor. "Let's just get to work."
Nichi didn't instantly reply. Mako looked up at him with his glare in place.
Nichi raised his eyebrows and shrugged, moving to the back of the loom. "Fine. Don't say I didn't warn you."
Mako properly understood Nichi's warnings when he started the loom. The machinery moved quickly, heavy bars slipping and sliding over each other, carrying the strings to twist and weave. Just as often as they made yards and yards of rough cotton fabric, they made mistakes and dropped full lines, or bobbles needed to be refilled.
It was hard work. He dipped his hands in to rewire threads, each time his fingers brushing away just in time from being broken.
"You doing ok, Mako?" Nichi shouted from the top of the loom where the threads were stretched twelve feet high.
Mako tried to regulate his breathing, pinching the tips of his fingers beneath the loose fingers of the gloves. "Yeah. Fine. How are you?"
Nichi snorted with a laugh. "Yeah, I'm fine, don't you worry about me."
"I wasn't."
The gloves made the work difficult. He dropped a spool of thread once, rolling across the floor and trailing thread behind it, just as an overseer walked past.
The overseer was a short, but blocky man. The wide line of his shoulders ran down his torso perfectly straight, bowing out slightly at his bulging legs. While a switch was in his left hand, he didn't move to raise it as Mako rushed off to pick up the dropped thread.
Instead the man waited for Mako to crouch down, his heart beating wildly in his chest as his fingers fumbled to latch around it, and the man's flat palm struck the back of his head.
Mako fell face forward to the ground.
"Get back to work," the man shouted over the sounds of the machinery.
The rounded spool pressed against his chest, gasping in air as white stars bloomed before his eyes. Every pain he had started aching acutely all at once: the pounding in his skull, the hollow of his stomach, the moist and saturated skin of his hidden palms, the tips of his frozen toes.
Mako stood in a daze.
He picked up the spool and went back to work. The ache in his head never disappeared; it thumped dully all day long, ebbing out down the back of his neck, skipping the rest of his spine to rest at the base.
Earthbending is located where, Mako?
The base of the spine, Mom. Why do I need to learn about earthbending?
Because I'm an earthbender, and you're my son.
His mind felt as if it had been stuffed with cotton. The air was thick with cotton fibers, swirling in the pools of grey wash light that illuminated the otherwise dark room. It made breathing difficult, and every so often Mako could hear a chorus of hacking coughs from the children that had worked in the factory for a long time. Nichi was one of them. Every so often he would make a clawing sound at the back of his throat, rousing up saliva and mucus and the miniscule threads that clung there, to drop the mixture onto the floor with a loud splat. There was sound and the dull aches of his body and Nichi's spit for thirteen hours.
His vision started to get hazy again when he dipped his hand into the loom at the wrong moment. One of the sliding boards pulled forward, a single spike gouging into the back of his left hand.
"Dammit," Mako yelled, pulling back his hand and staring at the back of the glove. It gushed black blood.
"You ok?" Nichi shouted from above.
"I'm fine," Mako snapped, right hand squeezing the left.
"Woah, is that blood?"
Nichi jumped down from the top of the loom and walked to Mako's side. He inspected the injury for a second before jerkily lifting his head and staring at the sheets of fabric being produced by their loom.
"Aw, hell, you got blood on it," Nichi said.
"Whatever, it'll wash out," Mako said, knowing full well it was a lie.
"What are you doing?"
Nichi froze for half a second before darting away, and Mako watched him return to his post at the top of the loom.
The overseer returned, switch lifted in the air as he marched down the line to reach Mako. His face was red with anger and sweat, eyes bulging from the sockets as he stared at Mako's hand, and off to the cotton sheets.
"Out!" he screamed, switch lashing down on Mako's neck, nearly knocking him to his feet. "Get out, now!"
"But what about my -" The switch came down again, but it was nothing Mako hadn't felt before by now. "What about my pay?"
"Docked to make up for damaged property," the overseer spat, knocking the switch one last time against Mako's ribcage. He felt his shriveled stomach and lungs rattle around and bound off of his bones. "Now get out before I call the police!"
It was a hollow threat. The police would take one look inside this establishment and shut it down in a heartbeat if they were called.
Mako turned and fled the mill.
When he returned to the safety of the Firelord's statue, the body of the child he had found that morning was gone, as were the two children that had been sleeping next to it. In their place were a boy and a girl, separated under different blankets, taking great care to not lean against each other as they struggled for the comforts of sleep.
Mako paid them no mind, and he avoided the gaze of the thirteen year old girl to his left. He ducked under the grey tarp and found his baby brother curled on his side, eyes barely open, lifting a finger over and over and watching the ground.
"I threw up again," Bolin said.
Mako leaned back against the warmth of the statue base, shutting his eyes and tipping his head up. He focused on his breathing the way his father had taught him.
Firebending comes from the breath. Breathing exercises and meditation will help you control your inner fire.
"It was clear," Bolin said, cutting through the flashing colors still bursting behind Mako's eyelids. "Did you have fun at work?"
Mako nodded. "Yeah. Loads."
"Are you tired?"
"Yeah," Mako said, sagging his shoulders. "I think I'm gonna sleep."
"Ok. Me too."
The pounding in his head seemed to melt away as he drifted off. Sleep never came easy but today, after the hit to the head and the beatings of the switch, it fell upon him naturally as it had when his mother and father tucked him in.
The cold woke him.
It was the worst freeze he had felt yet, and the winter solstice had only just started three weeks prior. Bolin was curled up with his back against his side, shivering in the dark under their tarp. The tarp, with its stiff, heavy fabric, was usually good at forming a large pocket of shelter with which to trap heat. Now, Mako could just see his cloudy breath in the dark.
"M-Mako?"
"Yeah, Bo?"
"I'm cold."
Mako sighed and shifted to lie down, wrapping his arms tightly around his little brother's sharp frame. "Me too."
"Please," Bolin said, rolling over and burying his face into the scarf. "Please start a fire."
Mako sighed, his heart dropping into his stomach. "I can't anymore. I told you. I can't bend."
"Daddy could firebend. You can too."
"We're not benders, Bolin."
"I'm an earthbender," Bolin said, sniffling, high voice catching as his shivering turned to shaking sobs. "And you're a firebender. Like Mom and Dad."
Mako shut his eyes and held his brother tighter, as if squeezing his weak, ropy muscles could fight off the imposing cold. He wished he could be like his father, fearless in the face of heat and light and smoke. Expelling a deep, even breath to kill flames, inhaling to give them life as he returned it to his lungs. Warmth and light in the dark.
"Let's get moving," Mako said with one final squeeze before removing his arms. "It'll warm us up, and we can look for a fire."
Bolin whined once before giving up and nodding
They ducked out of their shelter, finding the square nearly deserted as night had fallen. A few dull embers of light sparked here and there in the bushes, signs of smokers of cigarettes or something more sinister burning there. A grouping of tall, leering men stood near the edge of the square, dressed in flashy red clothing with tattoos lining their calloused knuckles. Smoke billowed above the center of their circle. One pulled apart from the group to glance back at Mako and Bolin as they made their way across the square, revealing that the men were all trying to light thick cigars around a single flame burning in the palm of one man. They breathed their first drag as one.
Mako bundled the tarp in his arms, knowing full well that the late hour did not guarantee that another child might take their chosen spot at the statue. Bolin trailed behind him slowly, breathing labored and sniffling.
"Where are we going?" Bolin asked, voice too loud and cutting across the silence of night enough to make Mako jump.
He shivered. "The alleyway next to the dress shop. There's usually fires there."
On that night, there was none. There was a grouping of two teenagers, three adults, and two children just a few years younger than Bolin. They clung to the mouth of the alley as a few crowded around a bent trashcan, dead eyes staring down as if it were going to light any moment under their unwavering gaze. The rest fumbled their shaking, purple fingers around the garbage lining the walls, desperately searching for matches and more kindling.
Mako just about turned and left to search for a better spot when Bolin's hand clasped around the bare exposure of his wrist.
His hand was cold. Fingers sharp like pointed icicles, no longer pudgy with their mother's love and sticky with candies their father wasn't supposed to feed him.
Mako hadn't felt his brother's grasp on his skin in a year. All contact had been through the safety of his gloves, binding his ugly fingers and claws to never mar another human being with their touch. No chance of friction to start a spark and let wildfire spread.
"Mako, please," Bolin begged, weak tears only reaching the corners of his eyes because clean water was impossible to find, and they were dehydrated, skin ashen and piss brown and now crying had been taken from them too.
"Bo, I can't," Mako said.
He hated himself. He hated himself and the way he made Bolin's weak fingers dig into his skin, the way snot dripped down his red nose because he was sick. And because fire started to smoke up his throat.
"I know you can." Bolin said, fingers softly edging down into the gaping hole of the glove, pressing against the moist tissue of Mako's palm. "I don't want to be cold anymore. Be like Daddy."
"I...I'll ruin it. I can't, not with you, and all these people -"
"I want to die warm," Bolin said.
Mako choked on the smoke pooling around his tonsils, a dry sob wracking his tense body, twisting his wrist to hold onto Bolin's hand. A few people in the alley stared at the strange crying boys in the street, but as always, no one ever extended kindness to them. They had to do everything on their own.
"Ok," Mako said. "I'll try."
He didn't announce what he was about to do to the others in the alleyway. He walked to the trashcan and laced his fingers together, standing on the tips of his toes to see the piles of ruffled newspaper inside.
He hadn't taken off the gloves in a year. He hadn't seen his hands in that long.
Bolin stood by his side, shivering, holding the tarp in his arms.
Firebending is located where, Mako?
The stomach.
And it's controlled with?
The breath.
So what do you have to do?
Light a fire in my belly and keep breathing through the smoke.
That's my boy.
His breaths were deep and shallow as he twisted and tugged his locked fingers, gloves pulling off in unison. The sharp air hit his moist palms and seeped into the moisture born there, freezing it down to the bone. He tucked the gloves into a tight bundle in his left hand, shoving them into his deep coat pocket.
He looked down.
He'd seen a corpse's hands many times before. The slip of his mother's from under her white sheet as her body was carried into the incinerator fell into his mind often. Her glowing skin had turned translucent, every blue vein and stitch of muscle and line of sinew accounted for. The dirt was missing from under her fingernails as the bodies had been cleaned for burial. Until then he had never seen the nailbeds of her hands look like pearls before.
His palms were lined like the squiggling ink of the rivers he had seen on a map of the Earth Kingdom back in school, all stretching out from a single point - a swamp in the middle of nowhere. The dead flesh where his fingers sprouted had turned mottled green and purple, puss eeking out from under the soft skin. Most of his fingernails were warped as they had grown to curve back into his fingertips, four of them blackened and one of them bent at an odd angle, stinging and wiggling as if it wished to be freed.
On the back of his left hand was the open, breathing wound where blood trickled out as if it planned to bleed slowly for years, until all that was left was the husk of his damaged body.
Fire clawed in his belly, begging for release. It would be wild and he wouldn't be able to contain it, he knew.
He reached up and placed his flat palms down into the lip of the trashcan.
"What is he doing?"
"Kid, there's no fire in there yet."
He shut his eyes and felt Bolin bump against his side.
The fire ripped a scorching trail up his stomach, through his lungs until they expanded to burst against his needled ribs, searing the joints in his shoulders and elbows and wrists together until they melted into fluid, bursting forth from his palms with a staggering amount of heat and light that Mako choked on the pain.
"Are you trying to kill us - shit, get his hands out!" one of the adult yelled.
"Kid, stop, you're setting yourself on fire!"
"Mako, stop!"
The adults pulled his hands out and Bolin clung to his waist, the pair of them crashing to the ground before the roaring trashcan fire.
Mako gasped for air on his back, eyes wide and staring up at the illuminated fire escapes washed in orange and amber - his color - up into the purple night sky where stars cooly burned above him. His hands pulsed with fire and burns and the smell of ignited rotting flesh.
It was not the stench of death in the street. He had nothing to vomit up even if he wanted to.
"Here, kid, I'm a healer," the oldest man in the ground said, kneeling by his side. Mako kept his eyes locked in place, never once seeing the face of the man beyond the blur of brown skin and white hair. "This'll be cold. Hey, pipsqueak, move it."
Bolin whined. "He's my -"
"He stays," Mako said, voice new.
A sigh and a moment later, Mako's hands were covered by soft palms and frozen water. A fresh pair of gloves to sew up his wounds and hide them from the world.
The fingernail on his right middle finger was torn off and cast into the fire by the waterbender. Bolin placed his head in the hollow dip of Mako's stomach as his hands were healed, perfectly cradled in the bends of his sharp rib cage and hip bones. Heat pooled out of his stomach like he had been dipped in a warm bath.
"This is the best I can do," the man said, drawing the water away. With it went the last of Mako's cold and he stretched his fingers as heat flowed through them. "You'll have some scars. Thanks for starting the fire, kid."
Mako said nothing, and he lifted his hands into his line of sight.
They were rough and dry. Perfect kindling. He dragged his thumb over the fresh, bare skin where his fingernail had decorated his middle finger. A deep, raw scar bore into the back of his left hand. A few bumps of gravel were still embedded in the heels of his palms from a year ago, when he scraped his hands against the ground as he ran home to his brother. He liked the earth embedded into his skin.
Bolin sat up, wobbling, eyes trained on his other brother. "Thank you, Mako."
Mako forced a smile, tearing his eyes away from his hands to look at his little brother. "No problem, Bo."
"How well can you firebend?"
Mako's eyebrows drew together. "What do you mean?"
The large man before him, wearing a grease stained apron, rubbed his rounded fingers into his eyes. A sheen of sweat glinted off of his bald head, bright red like the skin of his face and arms.
"You got any training?" the man asked with a heavy sigh.
Mako shrugged. "I taught myself. But I'm good, I promise."
"Fine. You're hired. You've got the morning shift from five to eight, everyday except Saturdays. Understood?"
"Everyday except Saturdays, five to eight," Mako repeated.
"Good. Now get out of my hair."
Mako snorted and walked out of the small office, into the harsh light of the back kitchen behind Ryouta's Restaurant. Men and women, a mix of firebenders and waterbenders, were stoking fires and twisting noodles above their heads to fulfill the orders of hungry customers at the front. The warmth of the kitchen was thick and tangible, sucked down into Mako's throat like a tea.
He stood at the back door that lead to the alleyway that he had stolen countless meals from, surveying his new place of work. Bursts of flame and the smells of food and splashes of spiced oils hitting blackened woks chimed in a helter skelter time like jazz.
Two young girls kneeled before the special open grill where the full carcass of a pig roasted on a spit, palms extended where flames burst forth to crisp caramel skin and drip fat to sizzle in the flames.
One of them lifted their head, amber eyes meeting Mako's.
He felt his face heat up and his hands clenched by his sides.
She smiled.
He was going to mention her to Bolin, but when he returned to the shelter they had found once more under their tarp, under the warmth of Firelord Zuko's statue, he was still asleep. Bolin slept a lot.
Her name was Rin. She worked the morning shift with Mako to burn the blackened ovens clean before the restaurant opened at noon to a flood of workers on their lunch break.
She had dark brown skin, the darkest Mako had ever seen, her palms a fresh pink like the soft carnations his mother would buy during the spring solstice. Her hair was nearly the same shade as her skin, long and delicately braided with ornate clay beads painted dark blue. It was always pulled up behind her head to make sure the heat of their flames never singed it.
"But my arms and eyebrows," she laughed, rubbing her fingertips over the sparse hairs above her eyes. "They burn right off. You'll probably get that way too. Here, feel."
She suddenly grabbed his arm in the middle of his work, the flames extinguishing, to run his palm over the bare skin on her forearm.
"Smooth, right?" she asked with a laugh.
Smooth, and burning, and he jerked his hand away as if he had dipped it into a flame with his heart beating madly against his chest.
"Your face is really red," she said with a bright smile. She had all of her teeth.
Mako pouted and looked away - the last time he had stared at her, this strange girl with Water Tribe hair and amber eyes, she laughed at him - and he returned to work. "It's hot. Of course I'm red."
She giggled. Mako decided he hated it when girls giggled. It meant nothing but trouble for him.
They had themselves shoved into the mouth of the oven, burning away caked on food that had dripped and collected into black, charred messes. Their elbows and shoulders bumped together as they reached between the grills to the corners, flames the hottest they could make them, smoke masking their vision and filling their lungs.
Mako was afraid to say he loved it. So he didn't. He held back and told himself that just because this was the first job he had where he used his firebending, didn't make it the best. The girl burning by his side made things worse, not better.
"So," Rin said, shoulder digging into his as she twisted to reach the top of the oven. "How old are you?"
"Nine."
"I'm ten."
Mako hummed in response and focused on his work.
"I'm half Water Tribe, you know."
The flames at his fingers stopped. He shifted until he faced her, noses only five inches apart. She looked back at him with her amber eyes slightly wide, as if holding her breath as she waited for his response.
That explained the hair.
"I'm half Earth Kingdom," Mako said.
"Really?"
"Yeah."
"You look it."
"What do you mean I -"
"- You've got dirt on you and everything."
Mako glared. "Not everybody from the Earth Kingdom is dirty."
Rin shrugged and went back to work. Mako bit down on his tongue and did the same.
It didn't take long for her to speak again.
"Some people in my family really hate me," she said. Her voice echoed across the metal. "One of my cousins tried to break my hands to keep me from bending."
"What'd you do?"
"I taught myself the breath of fire and burned 'em."
Mako laughed, and it felt strange, but good. "I didn't have anybody in my family to hate me."
He thought back to the police station, with the man with his father's eyes, and the woman on the phone with his mother's last name. He shook his head and they disappeared.
"Are they all gone?"
"Yes," Mako said. "Except for my little brother."
Bolin was sleeping more and more, barely speaking, fingers too weak to wrap around food anymore. As far as Mako knew, he hadn't eaten in a full day, and he hadn't gone to the bathroom either.
Rin hummed and snapped his attention away from his brother. "My family is really big. The Water Tribe side, anyway. There's - there's a lot of people that don't like me."
"I like you."
She giggled and Mako felt embarrassment lick up the back of his neck and burn across his face.
"No," he struggled, edging back and focusing on the grime lining the grates above him. "No, that's not - I didn't mean - not likeyoulikeyou."
Her giggles were louder and he shut his eyes, blocking out her bright face, and all that existed was her laughter, the heat of her flames, and the smell of smoke.
Her chapped, dry lips pressed against his forcefully, and his eyes popped open in shock.
He had never been kissed before.
It was over quickly and she pulled away, grinning like she had stolen something from him and held it teasingly just out of reach.
"You're cute," she said, and returned to her work as if nothing had happened.
Mako stared at her. Something in his gut told him that she was familiar in some way, like he had met her before, or was going to meet her. She had returned to him, like his firebending, but just like that first time it had been slightly wrong. He had made a mistake with his fire and burned his hands.
He liked Rin. She was pretty and made his stomach twist into knots but a small voice in the back of his mind said that something was wrong.
She gave him a stiff hug in the back of the alley when their shift was over before running off to the Eastern Water Tribe neighborhood, feet kicking up the snow that had gathered and was still falling across the city.
Mako could flood his body with warmth as he walked to the Station, no longer needing to bind his feet with socks and newspaper to keep out the cold. The heat seeped through his slippers and cut through the piles of snow building up on the sidewalks. Each exhale of cloudy breath allowed him to watch as the snow falling before his face melted with his hot air, dropping to the ground as flecks of water.
He moved with relaxed ease until a series of blocky police cruisers drove past him, all headed towards Central City Station.
He froze and watched them. They moved at a slow pace, no sirens, but they were loaded with officers.
Breaking into a run, he finished the block he had been walking down and cut through an alleyway, hoping his shortcut could outrun the brigade of cruisers. Each breath of frozen air traveled down his throat and ripped back up as a dense cloud, cutting through the white of breath and snow, eyes stinging as he struggled to keep his footing on the slick ground.
He burst across the street and cars honked and squealed on their poorly structured breaks, but he saw the statue of Firelord Zuko proudly holding fire, protecting his little brother who laid at the base under their grey tarp.
The cruisers were just pulling into the Station when he ripped the tarp off of Bolin, shaking him awake. Even as other children saw the police's arrival, scrambling to run and shouting with one another, the commotion only stirred Bolin to whimper.
"Bo, Bolin, wake up," Mako begged, hand clasped all the way around Bolin's thin upper arm. "We've gotta run."
Bolin let out a pained whine, and then Mako noticed his brother's purple fingers and nose, the yellow crust gathered at the corners of his eyes and dappled in his black lashes, how his stringy, greased hair fell over his sweating forehead.
One child let out a mangled scream as an officer gathered her in their arms, trying to gently place her into a cruiser, to bring to an orphanage.
Mako dropped the tarp and lifted Bolin, tossing limp, sharp arms over his shoulders, coaxing his little brother onto his back.
"C'mon, Bolin, I'm going to give you a piggyback ride," Mako said. More kids were yelling as they were rounded up, tossing out curses far too ugly to come from a child's mouth. "Hold onto the scarf, ok? Put your hands in Dad's scarf and they'll get warm, I promise."
"M'kay," Bolin mumbled, obeying, his legs wrapped around Mako's waist.
It was enough to get them both moving, so Mako stood with one last look at the tarp, which had served them well for months now. An officer shouting a vague, hey, you! prompted him to start running and abandon it.
Bolin was light. In all the times he had to carry his brother in the past, when Bolin's feet would start to dry and crack and the pain would make every step hell, his little brother was heavy. His rounded form would mold against his back and give off heat, chin digging into Mako's collarbone, and fat cheek pressed against Mako's. Bolin was never light, never weak, always having some surprising amount of strength despite being the younger, nonbender brother.
His brother was sick. Maybe dying. And all Mako could do was run away from the police and spit fire to carve paths through the snow on the sidewalks, his brother's boney knees slicing through Mako's sides and sparking against his own protruding ribs.
He realized, as he ran down into the Packing District, where the buildings all turned blocky and uniform, that he would need to find another job.
He thought of gold eyes and blue beads for a moment, embarrassment burning his face, and how charring food inside of a stove was probably the best job he had ever had. Then he sucked in frozen air to chill his lungs and willed it away.
Mako had lit a fire behind a dumpster in a thin alleyway, sandwiched between two factory buildings; one clanked with the sounds of machinery being made while the other hummed with the sound of conveyor belts transporting goods down an assembly line. Bolin laid before the fire with his green eyes dull and glassy behind his knotted lashes, staring into the flickering light and heat. The purple of his nose and fingers slowly gave way to bright, shining red.
Mako gathered up newspapers and the least soggy cardboard, piling it into something akin to a mattress. He attempted to tuck the corners of the newspaper like his mother had taught him with real sheets, but finding it unwilling, he gave up and patted the makeshift bed.
"Here, come sleep on this."
Bolin's eyes lifted. It was the only movement he seemed capable of on his own, so Mako lifted him and placed him on the cardboard, crumpling and stuffing newspapers all around his small frame.
"I think we're going to have to live here for a while," Mako said, rubbing his palms together and feeling heat spread to his fingertips from his stomach. He placed his warm palms on Bolin's ears. "So you'll have to hide from anybody that might take you away when I'm gone, alright?"
Bolin didn't respond. He looked in Mako's general direction, but he could have been staring at anything.
"I bet you're hungry. I'm hungry. I'm going to go for a walk and find something to eat, alright? And I bet I can find a bowl and melt some snow, and then we can drink some water. Does that sound good?"
Bolin blinked. It was good enough.
Mako stoked the fire once more, piling on more trash, before leaving.
The Packing District, Mako soon found, was not the best place to live. It became even more obvious how this part of the city laid on a grid, everything uniform and even in a way that was unsettling. He was the only person walking the streets, save for a few sets of footprints marring the snow on the sidewalks. The tire tracks in the street indicated that at least five cars had driven through since the snow had fallen.
It was oddly quiet. It was perfectly grey and white save for the reddish brown of brick siding. It didn't feel like the city.
Until Mako turned a corner and saw the stoney waters of Yue Bay, harbor docks jutting out, iron ships and cranes piled up to the land. A handful of men were directing large shipments of goods onto the boats, but they worked in relative silence. It was more like the city he knew.
Behind the meager docks were buildings Mako was more accustomed to: those with flashier facades, ocher lights glowing above the front steps, people hanging about.
However, the people hanging about were actually a pair of men with thick builds and blocky hands, arms crossed before their chests and leaning in front of a set of red double doors, a golden dragon's face carved in the center.
Mako stuck to the side of a building across the street and watched them for a moment.
A child darted across the street, pockets bulging. His legs were nearly bare from the tattered state of his pants, one hand clutching onto a squashed cap to keep it from flying off of his head.
He rushed up the steps and the two men stopped him before he could run inside.
They exchanged a few words.
The boy dipped his hand into his pocket and pulled out a stack of purple yuans so thick, his fingers struggled to wrap around the sides. He waved it, the single bills flapping against each other, and Mako kept his eyes locked on them.
The two men seemed to agree to something, and one pushed the door open, letting the little boy walk inside. Mako wondered what laid there beyond the doors.
He stood and waited to see if his question would be answered, but the boy didn't return after a long minute. Sighing, Mako pushed off from his hiding spot and kept walking, going behind the building where the boy had disappeared to find something to eat.
The pickings were small, but Mako grabbed what he could. He managed to find some fruit that had not yet been completely eaten and rotted, a rack of ribs that still had some meat, and an odd assortment of vegetables. Though mostly he just found empty liquor bottles, which were always loud and difficult to maneuver around without making too much noise.
He returned back to the alley where he had set up camp. By now he was accustomed to returning to Bolin only to find that his little brother had not moved once since he left. It worried him, but there was nothing he could do.
He sat down next to his brother's body, pulling the hidden food from his pockets and hands, setting it on the ground.
"I couldn't find a bowl," Mako said, picking at a fuzzy blue spot on the skin of a kumquat. "You can drink from my hands again. Or maybe I can find some more dry newspaper and try to make a bowl with it. I did get some vegetables, and I know you don't like celery, but -"
"Mako."
"Hm?"
He lifted his head and watched as Bolin stared at the ground, his palm flat and raised upwards. Bolin lifted his hand and along with it came a rock, hovering weakly a few inches off the ground before it shook, and fell with a dull clatter.
Bolin shifted his head to look up at Mako. Mako's wide eyes were still stuck on the rock, mouth open.
"Told you," Bolin rasped.
Mako tore his eyes away to look at his brother. "What?"
"Told you," Bolin repeated with a shaky smile, before curling his hand back against his chest for warmth.
He did. He told him countless times, Mako, I'm an earthbender, but he never believed it. Bolin was too weak, too small, too old to be a bender now.
Just like Mom.
Mako laughed. He laughed so hard and for so long that he didn't even notice how his fingers sunk into the wet flesh of the fruit in his hand, pulling through the pain in his hollow stomach as it jerked with each tremor. Bolin had his eyes shut but he was smiling too, shoulders shaking for once with laughter, and not from the cold.
He made his brother eat most of the food in celebration, and forced him to drink water held in folded newspapers, even as the ink lifted from the pages and made it taste strange. Because Bolin wasn't able to laugh and talk like he usually did, Mako struggled to fill the silence, saying anything that popped into his mind in an attempt to watch his little brother's face grow taut with smiles and pull out his dimples.
He watched Bolin slowly fall asleep, stomach rounded, cheeks rosy with warmth. Mako ran his fingers through the stringy black curls that had now grown long enough to fall over green eyes, thinking of his mother and wondering if she would be proud.
As sleep was a struggle to find, Mako watched the mouth of the alley for any trouble.
He found none. Instead, he saw at least three children rush past, pockets stuffed with rectangular wads of money.
He wanted that. Even when his stomach was nearly empty, each time he caught sight of the promise of purple wealth, it filled him up with fire and smoke.
His fingers tangled in Bolin's black hair, and he told himself he would get it.