Title: Tough Luck
Word Count: 571
Summary: [In the aftermath of the championship tournament, Mako has a broken arm. Korra is there, but doesn't seem to put things right. | Mako. Korra. Ep. 6 AU]

AU set after Episode 6 | Amon never attacked the arena and the championship match goes take a different twist.

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be-the-peaf · Prompt 023 – Luck Be The Lady Tonight / Lady Luck

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It's tough work; healing a broken bone. It's something that takes time, patience and a lot of energy and Korra does not want to mess this up. She's careful, moving the water slowly over his arm as the room shines with bright blue light. It's quiet and Mako's doing his best to hold in the pain as she works. His gaze is hard, his jawline tight as he stares at his broken arm and holds it as steady as possible. Not moving a muscle.

"You're lucky I'm a healer," she says, trying to get his mind on something other than the pain. "This would have set you back weeks or months without proper care."

"I would have found one eventually," he says with a straight voice, his arm shaking as she goes over it once more. The water is cool and it does well to bring down the black and yellow bruising puckering up around the skin underneath his forearm. Right where the earthdisc hit in their last match. It was a hard hit.

"Besides," he says, squeezing his lips together. "This isn't exactly the first time I've had to deal with a broken bone."

She draws her eyebrows together and doesn't say anything. It was probably a mistake, trying to get him to talk while they were still on uneven terms and she does her best to heal him up as quickly as possible. But there's something lingering in her, a question on the tip of her tongue that she has to ask.

"Why did you take that hit back there?" she asks, looking right in the eyes. "Why get in the way when you obviously had a chance to push them back?"

Mako scratches his neck with his good arm, suddenly nervous and disgruntled. He's not sure what to say and his brow tightens to a point, even if it not much of a change to his previous expression.

"I don't know." He finally says, his gaze dropping as he thinks about how the Wolfbats had gone at her with all three elements and her, just getting up from their previous assaults, utterly defenseless with no way to fight back. It just didn't seem right. He had gotten in the way; paid for it with a broken bone and a lost championship match. He sighs, rubbing at his forehead.

"I guess it was just instinct; to protect you." He adds. Korra almost freezes the water attached to his arm. Stares at him.

"You didn't have to do that." She says. "You could have pushed them back, gotten us into the next round-"

"-and then we'd be in for another wave of cheap shots and dirty tricks." He finishes, his expression turning into one of anger. "We would have come out with worse injuries that this and the refs wouldn't have done a damn thing to stop it."

"You don't know that."

"Yes, I do. I've seen those bastards play before and I thought that maybe, with us, it could have been different." He says, pulling his arm from her. He flexes it a few times and she can tell by the way he's moving it that the bone is not fully healed. But Mako doesn't sit back down.

"This is good enough. Thanks."

Mako walks away, his arm still broken and Korra doesn't do a thing to stop him. She just sits and hopes he'll come back.

He doesn't.

:Fin:

Okay that didn't really have anything to do with the prompt at all but I'm going to go with it because I've been writing all day and couldn't think of any other ideas for this one that would come out right and this just flew out of my fingers like water.