A/N: I'm really loving all your feedback. Thank you so much to Auren02, Sharpe, AsahixMe, Tertius711, IrishDreamer4, BrightWatcher, and CrazyPhenom for reviewing! Keep 'em coming, please :D It's really amazing to know you all are enjoying Mako's journey. I'm glad you all enjoyed Huan's appearance - keep an eye out for more characters in future chapters.

Thanks also to ajiespino519 for adding this to favourites.

10. I'm only a crack in this castle of glass; hardly anything else I need to be

It's the heat that draws him in.

He'd been walking around the easternmost sector of Zaofu with Suyin (he suspects Lin specifically asked her sister to keep an eye on him) when he felt the sudden warm breeze. The heat is incongruous with the coolness of the day, and he traces it to a flat-roofed building nestled between a fountain and a sand quarry.

"What's in there?"

"That's Hyung's workshop," Suyin answers. "He does glasswork."

He thinks about mirrors and skylights, and the glass trinkets he sometimes sees on display in the markets of Republic City. He thinks further back — when he was young and innocent and marvelling at the way the window panes in their home let the sunlight through, when his mother smiled and told him that glass was born of earth, but refined in fire.

"This glass," she'd said to him, pointing at the window, "is of two different elements, but they come together to make something beautiful. Just like you and your brother. You bend fire and Bolin bends earth, but together, you are my beautiful boys." And she'd dropped a kiss on his head that left his seven-year-old brain whirring.

He thinks about the gift the brothers had given to their mother on her next birthday — her last birthday. He'd found a big pile of sand at a construction site, and persuaded Bolin to help him collect enough of it for his project (Bolin couldn't sandbend, but was more than willing to grab handfuls with his big brother). They'd dumped the sand into a rock pit that Bolin made, and he'd used the hottest fire he'd ever produced up to that point to melt it into a misshapen lump of glass. It wasn't anywhere near as smooth or pretty as their window — it was opaque, with mottled colours and rough crystalline bits — but when they presented it to Mom she declared it the best gift she'd ever received.

The question slips out before he can think about it. "Can we go look?"

Su looks a little surprised, but she smiles warmly. "Of course."

They enter the workshop. There's more heat here, from the large furnace on the back wall. A man with iron grey hair tied into a low ponytail is withdrawing a fireproof rod from its depths; a blob of molten glass glows cherry red on the tip. He spins the rod as Su calls to him.

"Hyung, this is Mako. He wanted to see your workshop."

Hyung looks him up and down with piercing grey-green eyes. The rod does not stop spinning. "What for?" he asks bluntly.

Honestly, he isn't too sure. But the heat of the workshop is welcome, and the fire within the molten glass calls to him, and he thinks of windows and his mother's smile and light shining through.

"I was kind of hoping…I could watch how you make the glass?"

Hyung blinks in bewilderment and trades a glance with Su, who nods reassuringly.

"I suppose," the glassmaker acquiesces. He jerks his head towards a bench. "Sit over there and keep out of the way."

"Thank you."

He sits and watches Hyung roll the rod back and forth on two standing stone slabs, using a very thick wad of paper to shape the soft glass. The glowing spinning is mesmerising; it reminds him of flickering campfire flames.

After a while, the glassmaker begins explaining what he's doing. The shapeless molten glass is called a gob, and it must be constantly rotated to ensure a smooth and symmetrical shape. When the glass cools too much, it needs to be returned to the furnace to melt back to malleability. The rod is hollow, so air can be blown into the gob to shape it further; Hyung demonstrates this after the second heating in the furnace, expanding the vase taking shape at the end of his rod.

He listens to it all with rapt attention, remembering.

Somewhere during the process, Su leaves, quietly slipping out the door and smiling gently to herself.

When Hyung gets up for the third trip to the furnace, he speaks.

"Please, let me."

Under Hyung's critical eye, he lifts his right hand towards the vase, channelling bright, hot, focused fire. He looks up to see Hyung shake his head: not enough.

He sets his jaw and brings his left hand next to his right. He thinks of sand in the rock pit, Bolin's eagerness to help with a special present, Mom's radiant happiness for his amateur glassmaking effort. He thinks of the clarity of their old window, golden rays through the skylight of the pro-bending arena, and sunrise reflecting off Zaofu's domes.

"It's a new dawn, Mako. Make the day what you want it to be."

Chi pulses through the scars of his arm, burning with pain…and with purpose.

His fire flares with heat and life from both hands, and Hyung lowers the glass into his flames.

It is enough.

He is enough.

A/N: Lyric from 'Castle of Glass' by Linkin Park. Sweet heavens, this is one of THE BEST fitting songs for a chapter in this entire story. There are SO MANY other lines in that song that would fit this chapter beautifully if I didn't specifically want 'glass' - special mention goes to 'Wash the sorrow from off my skin' and 'Show me how to be whole again'. And that's before we get into the underlying message about someone who's damaged or broken trying to figure out how to heal and fit back into society, or how 'castle of glass' is a metaphor for the group/society, and they see themselves as the crack in it. Seriously, the symbolism and the themes...I cannot express enough how deep it is for this chapter.

If you've never watched a glassmaker work, go have a look at some videos. It is fascinating.

Next chapter will be up around Wednesday. I seem to have fallen into a twice-weekly pattern, so we'll stick with that. It gives me time to stay several chapters ahead of the posting schedule, so that I don't run out of material and leave y'all hanging.