Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Spring of 161 AG

Their room on the steamer that will take them from the docks of Republic City to the port in Fire Fountain City is small and white. Mako doesn’t pay much attention to anything else besides the blinding whiteness of the little room’s walls and sheets. Bolin demands to be lifted on Zula’s shoulders (much to Mako’s mortification) so that he can look through the round port window, and let out sounds of awe in reaction to the waves only feet away from them. 

Zula, for her part, sets their combined bags at the foot of the bunk bed and unfolds a browned map from her purse. She lays it flat on the tightly tucked sheets, and smooths the creases with steady fingers. Then, she crooks those same fingers at them, and tells them to, “Look.”

Together, Bolin and Mako look.  One of her white nailed fingers is touching the edge of the Earth Kingdom, a bay that Mako recognizes as Republic City. “We are here…” she says, and as if to emphasize her point, Bolin scrambles onto the bed, peering at the spot like it will reveal the secrets of the city to him. 

Smiling, Zula continues. “From here, we are going to take this route…” She traces a straight line from Republic City to a larger island near the coast of the Fire Nation Capital, “...to the dock in Fire Fountain. From the dock in Fire Fountain, we will make our way to an aeroship…” Bolin’s squeal of delight elicits a laugh from her, “...which will drop us into the Black Cliff region. From there, it’s a matter of walking to Hai’bi.” 

Mako’s eyebrows furrow. “Is that where you live? Hai’bi?” He hasn’t heard of any town with that name, so it must not be very big or important. 

Zula nods. “You wouldn’t have learned of it in your geography classes. It’s not on most maps.” 

Mako has never taken a geography class in his life, and furthermore he has more questions, so he climbs onto the bed next to Bolin. “Why can’t we take an aeroship all the way there? Why do we have to be…” he gestures to the cabin, “here?”

His Grandmother’s smile is slightly pleased. Mako doesn’t know why. “The Earth Kingdom and the Fire Nation are quite picky about aeroship travel directly from one territory to the next. Besides, it’s not everyday you’ll travel such a large distance.” 

Mako wants to retort that they shouldn't be traveling at all--that Republic City is perfectly good for him and Bolin to stay within, with or without her. He doesn’t want to make his home in some backwards fishing village. 

(Despite his newfound relationship with Zula, he still does not fully trust the woman. Her eyes are too hawkish for that to change anytime soon.)

Mako doesn’t say all that. He’s cognizant of the fact that he and Bo must live with this stranger, so in the terse parting words of Ms. Chan, he really ought to “keep his tongue still.” 

He declines his head in a nod of understanding. 

Bo has no such qualms. He flops onto the bed, spreading his arms across the sheets and nearly ripping the old map in the process. “It’s like an adventure!” He exclaims, pumping his fist in the air. He repeats the word several times, like he can’t get enough of the way it sounds. Once he’s done with that, he speaks to the room at large; “There’s a fountain in the fire fountain city, did you know that? And I heard that the Black Cliffs are haunted! By ghosts!” 

Mako exchanges a look with Zula. “Who told you all that?”

“People,” Bo replies, like that explains anything. Mako, still aware of Zula’s eyes on him as she folds up the map and begins to unpack clothing, flops down next to his brother, capturing him in a headlock. “Bo, you little nerd…” He laughs at Bolin’s offended look. “The ghosts are going to get you, and once they do, they’re gonna throw you off the side of the cliffs. That’s what happens to nerds.” 

Bolin’s face crumples. “You’re mean...” he whines, just before his head buts into the older boy’s nose. Mako falls to the cabin floor with a groan, and the delighted giggling above him makes him wonder if the trip won’t be overtly horrible. As long as he has Bolin, maybe everything can be okay. 

(Maybe he can make this work.)

Mako buries his head further into The Adventures of Detective Dosu: Volume 3 gritting his teeth at his brother’s improvisational song from the bunk below him. 

“Shut up” he groans, snapping his book closed. “Please shut up” is what he politely amends, dangling his head to the bunk below. Bolin blinks up at him from where his hands fidget with a stuffed koala-bear. Zula is somewhere above deck, talking to the other passengers perhaps, and that has left them in this tiny, tiny room. 

“You don't like my song?” Bolin asks, like it isn’t startlingly obvious. Mako’s unimpressed stare is his only answer.

Bolin nods seriously, though the smile stretching across his cheeks gives him away. “Nananana Lalalala Sahsahsahsah…” he begins again, shaking the stuffed toy to this imagined rhythm. Mako stretches his hands out, prepared to strangle his brother like a particularly vicious spider-bat. Bolin shrieks and pushes his hands away, laughter loud and shrill in the emptiness of the cabin. 

It brings a smile to Mako's face, one which he doesn't bother to try and hide. 

Zula is holding Bolin’s little hand in her own as Mako trails after them. On the deck of the ship, the wind ruffles his hair, and he leans over the railing, watching the white foamed sea pass below. He’s almost hypnotized by the rolling and tossing of the waves, unconsciously pressing his body downwards in an attempt to study them more.

He’s reeled back in by the collar of his shirt, and raises his eyes to meet the amused yellow of his grandmother. “Never seen the sea before?” She asks, and Mako shakes his head. Save for his few glimpses of Republic City bay, he’s never properly observed the ocean; as vast and blue as it is.

Bolin is visible to him on the other side of her body, watching the other passengers on the deck with wide eyes. Zula shifts, and Bolin vanishes from his sight.

Zula lays a hand on the railing. She glimpses at the boys on either side of her, and she clears her throat. “When I was young…” she starts, looking everywhere on Mako’s face but his eyes, “I sailed quite often.”

Mako, intrigued, peers up at her. “Really?” He asks, trying to picture the stern old woman as anything but a stern old woman. 

She nods. “I set sail from the Capital City, and the ship I was on took me across the nations. I was a soldier, of sorts, so I fought many battles.”

A smile creeps up Mako’s cheeks from the lively look in the woman’s eyes, so unlike her stern demeanor. “Did you ever lose?” 

With a gleaming eye and newly straightened shoulders, Zula replies, “None that mattered.”

Mako laughs, and the old woman besides him tampers down her own smile.

"Why didn't you help us, Mako?" Mom and Dad cry, skin melting from bone as they tower above him. "We love you! Why don't you love us?"  And Mako grips his hair with slick fingers, pulls, can't make himself close his eyes as they melt like wax figures in front of him. As they melt, Mom and Dad become Mrs. Chan and the social workers and the metalbenders and the other children and even Bo, who laugh at him and say, "Why can't you love us, Mako? Why don't you?" 

"Don't you love? Why didn't you help them?"  The pearls are rolling around him, expanding, like beautiful, familiar boulders about to flatten him. Her necklace string burns on the ground below him.

I don't know, he wants to scream. I don't know. Please, I don't -

He awakens with a start, fire burning the inside of his eyelids. In the dim of the cabin, the only sounds are his harsh breaths and Bolin's soft snores. Mako reorients himself by staring at the underside of the bed above him, counting the spaces where the mattress hangs out from the bars. 

When he turns himself onto his side, he notices that Zula's futon, laid carefully below the cabin window, is bare. The old woman is nowhere to be seen. 

For a moment he considers seeking her out. But for what? To tell her of his disturbing dreams? To be placated by saccharine words that lacked any substance? Or worse, to be rebuked by the old woman? No, no. Zula didn't seem the type to do such a thing, but Mako wouldn't take the chance. He couldn't.

It was better for Mako to lay and stare at the bed above him, until blue morning light slanted through the cabin window, and he had wandered his way back into a fitful sleep. 

Chapter Text

Spring of 161 AG

Fire Fountain dock is teeming with life, even in the early hour their boat enters the harbor. Everywhere Mako looks, his groggy eyes are greeted with some fantastic new sight. Bolin, at his side, is similarly taking in the scenery, albeit with excited sound effects to accompany his observations. 

Merchants peddle wares of all kinds alongside fishermen hauling away rope nets full of silver morning catches. Weaved between burly workers with shoulders stacked with boxes and cargo, passersby of all nations and colors flow through and around each other, creating the illusion that the entire crowd is one animal, breathing with hundreds of voices and moving widely with the slightest shift. Fabrics so bright they glimmer in the light are strewn atop handmade pottery engraved with characters so tiny that to Mako’s eyes, they look akin to shadows. From crate to hand goods are passed, disappearing into robes or onto carefully laid blankets, from where Mako can practically hear the jingle of coins. He spots at least two Satomobiles in the belly of the rippling beast, and is unable to see the wood of the dock itself, no matter how much he squints - even though it must exist, and be strong, for so many people to exist on it at once. 

The sound is another thing altogether - like a roar, so reminiscent of Republic City it makes the boy’s throat dry. 

Zula, her luggage secured to her back by the deft work of several hair-scarves, snaps him from his stupor just as their steamer lets down the walkway. 

“Do you have everything?” She asks, carefully inspecting the boys on either side of her. Bolin’s head bobbles furiously, his pack slung over his shoulders. Mako pulls at the strap of his suspenders, nodding quietly. Below them, the noise of the crowd (impossibly) manages to become even louder. 

The old woman runs her eyes over them one final time, before holding out both wrinkled hands expectantly. Bolin grasps onto the limb immediately, beginning to swing her arm in a move that makes Zula’s lips quirk. Mako, after a moment of deliberation, wraps his smooth fingers around her wiry digits in a loose grip. He averts his gaze from her face. 

They walk down the gangplank and are swallowed into the mouth of the multicolored animal below. 

The crowd is suffocating. Mako is jostled between countless other bodies and against his own will, he feels his hand tighten around Zula’s. His eyes vaguely make out the colors of the masses other occupants - those spun fabrics that had looked so festive from the boat are now nothing more than smears of color, and he swears he hasn’t yet seen above a neck, surrounded only by torsos dripping in jewelry and fur and talismans of all shapes and sizes. 

His breathing begins to quicken as he feels a particularly warm body brush past him. Somewhere, a Satomobile’s horn sounds loudly, and he feels the crowd ripple in response - he shudders as a hundred different people breath above him. Zula’s veiny hand is the only tether he has to keep himself from floating away into a never ending sea of people - so now, of his own accord, he grips her wrist with all his might. 

Mako squeezes his eyes shut. From behind his eyelids, the world is only made up of a massive, indescribable sound. He feels like he’s been walking forever.

With a jolt, he slams into Zula’s back and pries his eyes open. He sighs with relief - they’re outside of the crowd now, even though he can still hear the mass of bodies wriggling near the front of the discolored dock. The square they stand in is still flooded with people, but they walk in streams past each other, most not coming close enough to touch the other. 

The merchants are abundant. Cross legged in front of colorful blankets, they wave wares and shout so loudly Mako can see the spittle flying from their mouths. Scrunching his nose, he turns his face up to Zula, confused as to why they have stopped here.

That’s when he notices that Bolin is not on the other side of the woman. Red hot panic pushes up through his stomach and into his throat. He rips his hand away from her, and makes a full turn, eyes searching for Bo. 

He finds him in seconds, and feels the panic cool to a simmer. Bo is standing in front of a merchant’s blanket, little face scrunched up and red. He’s breathing heavily. He opens his mouth again, and Mako feels his spirit wither as Bo begins to yell.

“You can’t treat babies like that!” Bo shouts, and stomps a foot. “It’s not right! You’re gonna hurt ‘em!” Mako watches as something fuzzy and white is thrown into the air, and lands in the calloused palm of the irritated looking merchant as the man rises to his full height. Which is very, very tall. 

Bo doesn’t seem to care - if anything, he gets louder. “Did you hear me? You can’t treat babies like that! It’s not right!”

The man glowers. “Are you buying it, kid?” 

Bo’s eyebrows slant furiously. “You’re treating them bad! Does it matter if I buy it?” 

The merchant and Bo are now in a standoff and Mako moves . Lurching forwards, he grabs Bo by the shoulders when the younger boy is in reach, and glowers at the merchant in his place. “Stop,” Mako says, and the man lets out a gruff laugh.

Now that Mako is close, he can see that the fuzzy white ball in the merchant’s gigantic palm isn’t some trinket - it’s a Fire Ferret, so young it isn’t even striped yet. He suddenly understands Bo’s panic. The animal’s little eyes are still shut, and their pink nose wiggles pitifully. They’re laid up in an awkward position from being tossed. The animal is too young to stand on its own, let alone perform any of the tricks Fire Ferrets are known for. 

“Are you an idiot?” Mako asks, and watches the color rise to the man’s face. “What did you just say?” The man growls out, and Mako tries to not reel away from the unpleasant smell of the adult’s open mouth. 

“Are you an idiot?” He repeats again, refusing to be cowed by a man who doesn’t know basic animal etiquette. 

The man opens up his mouth again, and Mako sets his shoulders. That’s when he feels a slight breeze from behind him and - there Zula is, her hands placed upon both his and Bo’s lower arms.

He cranes his neck upwards, and watches the older woman’s mouth stretch into a wooden smile - the same kind she’d given Mrs. Chan in the hall. Her hawk eyes glint - like a bird that’s found a mouse to wrap its talons around. 

“Is there a problem?” Her tone is placid. 

The man’s eyes narrow. “Are these your brats?” Is what he asks back, and Zula lets out a laugh so thin it breaks in half upon exiting her mouth.

The man looks a little startled, but he evidently takes it as confirmation. “This one…” he jabs a thick finger at Bo and quickly retracts it when the little boy snaps his teeth at the digit. “..has a problem with how I run my business, and he felt the need to let everyone know. And the older one has no respect for his elders.” Mako glowers harder, and makes a move forward, being stopped only by the hand squeezing his forearm.

Zula’s gaze follows Bo’s furious eyes, locking onto the Fire Ferret in the merchant’s palm. Her eyes gain a new understanding, but the hawkish gleam doesn’t leave. 

“How much?” She asks amid the man’s reawakened sputters. 

“What?” He demands, face a furious shade of red.

“How much for the ferret?” She repeats with a drawl that drips of condescension. The man looks angry, but his eyes soften as he spies the jingling bag of coins Zula pointedly draws from the sleeves of her dress.

The merchant makes a few considering noises and bounces the ferret in his palm again. Mako fights the urge to reach out and grab the tiny animal from him, just so the idiot will stop risking the poor thing’s skull. 

“50 yuans” he finally decides, and Mako’s glare deepens. 50 yuans? For a fire ferret? The man must be out of his mind if he thinks Zula, as cunning as she is, will fall for his outrageous prices - 

“Deal.” Mako watches, speechless, as his grandmother deposits the bag of coins into the merchant’s waiting palm, snatching away the ferret with a deft sharpness. Despite the burly man’s derisive laugh, she seems satisfied. The newly rescued ferret is deposited in Bolin’s waiting arms within only seconds of the purchase. 

“Have a good day!” The merchant calls after them as they walk away. The only thing keeping Mako from turning around and shouting right back is Zula’s bony hand on his shoulder, and the gentle coos of Bolin as he tends to the ferret.

“Why did you do that?” Mako asks, and Zula’s eyes flit to his. She doesn’t seem surprised by his question. “Do what?” She responds, with an air that she has an answer ready.

“Pay him all that money for the ferret! He’s a scammer!” Mako’s voice rises despite himself, and he fights down a flinch as Zula levels him with a knowing look. 

“I’m aware” she murmurs and pauses before speaking again. Her next words sound not quite her own, “Some things aren’t worth fighting over. Especially not with such lowlifes.” 

Mako thinks about the golden gleam of the yuans, and the way the man had been a hair away from cracking the ferret’s skull like an egg. He sneaks a peek at Bo, who is now running his pinky finger down the tiny animal’s skull, making soothing nonsense sounds. 

Mako’s mouth feels dry. “Yeah, maybe.”

A few hours later finds them sitting beneath the decrepit statue of Firelord Ozai, cheeks still smeared with the crumbs of the kebabs Zula had purchased for lunch. Mako peers up into the statue’s dull features from his place sitting beneath it, and notes the trickle of moss and general untidiness of the whole affair. The statue is hidden behind a number of trees and the elaborate upturned tiles surrounding the base tell him it was once an important monument - the fact that it is no longer such seems obvious. 

The statue has a tense air around it that makes Mako keep his eyes pinned on the thing - like any minute it may get up and begin lecturing them about the disrespect of it’s resting place. 

Bo was throwing a stick against a tree, fetching it, and throwing it again, letting out cries of delight as he did. Zula cradled the ferret in her hands while Bo played, seemingly content with her place criss-crossed on the dirty tiles. The uniform quiet of the alcove was a welcome reprieve from the noise of Fire Fountain, even though the hum of the city was still present.

A quack has him turning his neck from the statue to the brush, where a baffled looking turtleduck waddles out. It must have strayed from the main fountain of the park, and ended up with them. It’s quacks are pitifully confused. 

Mako laughs. Bo’s attention is caught by the turtleduck, and he lets out a cry of joy so loud the ferret stirs in Zula’s hands. “It’s a turtleduck!” Bo hisses, and kneels, doing a strange imitation of a waddle in an attempt to get closer to the animal. 

Mako scoots closer to Zula. “Do you think he’s gonna be able to pet it? I don’t.” He says, and Zula snorts. “Your brother might surprise you.” she says loudly enough for Bolin to hear, but after he flashes a delighted smile her way, her voice lowers conspiratorially - “I think the duck is more frightened than anything else. He’s quite scary.” 

Mako cackles . The turtleduck turns tail and runs back into the underbrush. 

“I’m sorry” he says to a pouty looking Bolin, but he can’t stop his smile.

The statue of Ozai is spared a few more glances, but ultimately forgotten by the end of their break. 

Their aeroship departs just as the sun sinks behind the horizon for the night. The day in Fire Fountain blurs together - not in a bad way, but in a way that feels strange. Ever since the night in the alley, Mako feels as though he has been living each day in sickening detail. It was almost nice to be able to forget so many small things. His mind feels soft. 

He and Bo press themselves against the glass as the ship lifts into the air. Below them, fire fountain is dotted with hundreds of lanterns. The sky around them is the color of a fresh bruise, but the mood is peaceful. The aeroship is quiet, the rest of the passengers already filing into their rooms for the night. 

The silence is broken with a question. 

“Where’d you learn to take such good care of animals?” Zula asks, flushing when both boys turn their eyes on her. The ferret sleeps in the side of her handbag, white tail like a flag.

Bo grins. “Mama worked with animals! She was their friend.”

“Mom was a zoologist, Bo. Not their friend.” Mako recalls. His mother’s workplace comes to mind - the few times he’d been there, the animals had chittered softly from their pens, surrounding his mother like beeflies to honey. They prodded her pockets until she’d repent with feed mix, and waited patiently as she stroked their heads with impossibly gentle hands. 

Mako liked animals well enough, even though most didn’t like him. They knew, immediately, about Mako’s too hard eyes and rough hands and cold demeanor. Even the softest of them had steered around him. That hadn’t stopped Mom from trying to win him their favor, filling his hands with feed and coaxing him into approaching them, laughing as his nose scrunched when they snuffled against his hands. 

His throat feels a bit too tight.

Zula looks - not stunned, but surprised. “Naoki. A zoologist.” Her laugh is static. “I should’ve seen that one.”

Bo’s eyes alight. “Did mom have any pets as a kid?”

Their grandmother nods, though her mouth tightens a little around the edges. “The most insufferable chicken pig to ever grace the planet - Naoki insisted on letting the thing sleep in her bedroom.” Her nose scrunches, “The beast smelled horrible. Naoki never bathed him, agni forbid.”

Bo smiles. Mako watches their Grandmother’s eyes. Zula and he - too alike. He can tell by the stance of her shoulders animals must not like her either. Can they tell? Do they see her hawk eyes and sharp hands and fire and just - know? 

Not everyone can be like Bo and Mom, he thinks. 

Maybe it's the softness from their daytrip, but Mako doesn't bother to stifle his automatic response to Zula's words.

“Just like you, Bo.” slips out from his mouth, and Bolin whirls on him, outraged.

“What?” the younger boy squawks. 

“A dirty chickenpig Mom never bathed - sounds correct.” 

Bo’s face flushes, sputtering for a retort. Mako beats down his smile. And Zula laughs. 

The sky outside is dark and endless, and Fire Fountain is already a distant memory. 

Chapter Text

Mako’s feet still ache as his bag clatters to the stone floor. The door drifts shut behind him.

Stepping further into his new bedroom, he examines it carefully. There is a single large window that pours late-afternoon light through the glass, and the two beds below are pushed into opposite corners of the room. Both have the same plain gray sheets and thin white pillows. A low shelf is at the foot of each bed. Other than these items, the rooms are completely barren. He may as well be the only living creature in the world for as long as he stays in this space. His heart thumps loudly as he patters to sit down on the closest bed. 

Mako licks his dry lips. Even the air seems stale. He keeps expecting to hear - something. The thrum of a crowd, the roar of a Satomobile, maybe even the unpleasant yelling of a street vendor. 

Instead, nothing. Completely unlike Fire Fountain or even their apartment in Republic City. He can’t tell whether he enjoys the silence or not - all he knows is that he’d rather be anywhere but here, even back in the neverending sound of the docks at Fire Fountain. 

He sprawls across the bed, rolling to face the wall. The walk up the slopes of the Cliffs from the aeroship had been long - nearly two hours, if his hazy memory recalled correctly - and the sun had been hot, even with Zula forcing hair scarves on both of them to shield their eyes and heads from the blistering face of Agni. 

His eyes still dance with sunspots from glancing up at its position as they had walked. Even the gray stone of the wall feels too bright now. He squeezes his eyes shut, groaning in frustration as the bright yellow blotches follow him behind his eyelids. Pressing his fists into his eyes, he tries to calm his beating heart. 

It doesn’t work. He must be there for an hour, between the space of painfully awake and a fitful sleep - hands pressed into his eyes, breathing slowly, hyper-aware of the sweat trickling down the back of his neck until he hears the door he’d oh-so-gently closed creak open. 

“Mako!” Bolin calls, and the suspended air is shattered. Mako quickly sits up, wincing as his eyes open back into the sunswept room. “...Yeah?” Mako asks, trying to look as casual as possible. 

Thankfully, Bo doesn’t seem to pick up on his mood. “You have to come see the tub in the yard! Grandma said we’re gonna - gonna bathe in it!” Bolin bounces towards the bed, landing with an oomph and nearly rolling Mako off of it in the process. 

Mako groans. Then what Bolin just said hits him. “Bathe? Outside?” He asks incredulously, raising an eyebrow at the younger boy.

His brother nods enthusiastically. “Grandma doesn’t have plum - plumping? - plum -”

“Plumbing.” Mako supplies.

“Yeah, plumping! She doesn’t have it, so she’ll heat up water for us from her well so we can have baths!” Bolin, somehow, seems absolutely ecstatic at this news. Mako knows that his brother sees this as nothing more than an exciting new spin on his beloved “bathtime.” 

Though Mako knew, from personal experience, that Bo’s definition of bathtime was very loose: he splashed in clean water for a few minutes, felt no need to use any soap, and often got the floor of the bathroom cleaner than himself. 

Mako, not wanting to rain his brother’s parade (No plumbing means no bathroom, no bathroom means no indoor toilet, no indoor toilet means long nightly trips to the outhouse where Bo will undoubtedly wake him up and make him walk him there and stand outside the door -) changes the subject.

“Where’s your fire ferret?” He asks, pulling himself up fully to sit next to Bo. His brother inhales deeply at the question, his little feet idly kicking at the bedspread. His cheeks are red with the heat - the fact that he hadn’t stopped chattering since their departure from the aeroship didn’t help. 

“Grandma set up a little bed for him on the table! Did you see the table yet? She set up a little bed with all her scarves - she has a lot of them did you notice? Like the ones she gave us? - and now he’s got a bed on the table and a little candle so that he can keep extra warm - and it’s all in a little thingie she told me she made herself - you should learn how to do it too - cuz she made it with her bending like you can -” 

Mako, eyes still hurting and half-dazed from the long walk, absorbs about a quarter-yuan’s worth of what Bolin is saying. He nods idly, eyes drifting towards his bag, the contents sprawled across the floor where he’d dropped it. All four volumes of Detective Dosu he owns are carefully wrapped in wax paper, tied with a frayed cord of rope, sitting peacefully on the stone floor. He figures he’ll unwrap them and keep them beneath his bed - he could put them on the shelf, maybe, but the thought of accidentally knocking the shelf over with his feet while he slept set his heart into a panic.

“...And then Grandma said that we could look at pictures of Mama if we wanted, ‘cause she has photos in her vani-tee from when she was a baby !” Bo draws out the last word like it’s a secret, glancing at Mako with a gleam that only derives from “forbidden knowledge.”

Mako nods again, hoping he didn’t miss anything too important while contemplating how to arrange his Dosu novels. Bo stands from the bed with a skip in his step.

Then, he turns and stares strangely at Mako. “Aren’t you coming?”

“To what?”

“Grandma said she’s making us dinner - and I wanna see what she makes! Do you think it’ll be like Mama’s cooking?” Bo asks hopefully.

Mako has a vivid memory of Mom standing over a pot of blackened rice, smiling sheepishly at Dad as foul-smelling steam rose from the stove. Mom had been a lot of things - a wonderful person, the best mother ever, a friend to animals and people alike - but she hadn’t been a cook, and the litany of burnt, undercooked and sometimes both dishes she had presented whenever she was allowed to cook, which was very rarely thanks to Dad, had testified that. Bo ate anything edible, just like Mom, but Mako remembers one very harrowing dinner that had left him and Dad staring at each other across the table in solidarity.

‘Hopefully not’ is what he thinks.

“Maybe she’ll let you help” is what Mako says instead, and Bo smiles so hard it looks painful.

In his dazed haste to rush into the house and avoid the sun, he’d completely missed any features of Zula’s house. A critical mistake, he reflected, watching Bo bounce around the corner into the living room of the house. 

The hallway was the same as the bedroom: made of gray stone and completely barren. One, two, three boring bedroom doors, all as gray as the last. Nothing interesting. His eyes glazed over as he walked, rounding the corner to see Bo wriggle himself into the space beside Zula, little hands gratefully accepting the shredder she handed him from beneath the counter. Their backs were turned to him, their faces overlooking the little wire fence yard just outside the cracked kitchen window. They - at least Zula - were speaking in hushed voices. A large, flat pan was pressed over the coal burner next to them.

“Take the onion” she intoned, and Bo grabbed it, banging it against the counter in his excitement. “Gently” she amended, reaching one wrinkled hand to grasp Bo’s wrist. He nodded sheepishly, loosening his grip. Still guiding his hands, Zula pressed the shredder against the pre-peeled onion, grating up and down. Flakes of newly cut onion fell to the stone counter.

Bo’s giggle broke the silence. “What’re you doing?”

Mako watches Zula’s back stiffen. “The moisture in my tongue prevents my eyes from tearing up,” she says solemnly, and Bolin laughs. In the next moment he’s mumbling from around what must be his own tongue as he shreds the onion onto the counter, and Mako sees the way Zula’s shoulders hitch in silent amusement. 

Tearing his eyes away, he takes a seat on one of the red cushions of the low table. Sure enough, the baby fire ferret’s delicate white head pokes from beneath a flowered scarf gently wrapped inside a bright saucer. He pointedly presses his hands into his lap after quickly running his eyes over the minuscule white candle beside the saucer. The baby’s eyes are pressed shut, but his nose wriggles erratically - Mako can see that a tiny thimble, full of water, is set in front of the little animal, untouched. 

The living room is stone as well - but the walls are decorated, here, with Sumi-e and long poetry scrolls, each with characters so faded Mako can’t decipher them without squinting. There are photographs, too - only three of them though, one half-hidden in the threshold between a shelf piled with books and the doorway into the kitchen. 

Mako tunes back in as Bolin carefully slides in the cushion next to him. The younger boy’s eyes are watery, but no tears have been shed - his tongue took the brunt of the damage it seems.

“Mako, look!” Bolin says, before sticking his tongue out the side of his mouth. “If I stitch my thung out I von’t cry when I’shoop onons.” Mako laughs at that, pushing Bo away as his tongue waggled away from his closed mouth. 

“Gross,” he chuckles. “But useful.”

From the kitchen, the sound of food splashing into oil comes - along with the loud hiss that accompanies it. The candle beside the baby’s saucer flickers high for a moment, before it settles back into its quiet burning. Mako stares, unabashedly edging himself away from the table.

The sunspots behind his eyes deepen as he closes them, and he moves his hands into the fabric of his scarf, feeling the scratchy material rub comfortingly across his knuckles. It’s a good scarf, he thinks, a great one even: it’s long and warm and red and red and red and red and red and -

It’s red. The scarf is red, like the inner part of the candle and the lights from street signs and the banner for the restaurant before the alleyway and the mugger and the pearls and the screaming, when his concern was whether or not Bo would be able to make it through dinner without spilling his food, or if Dad was going to insist on ordering the strangest food possible on the menu just to “spice it up.” 

His breaths come out shuttered. He’s aware of Bo poking his shoulder, and he feels shame rise over him: he’s done this a few times, panicked, in front of Bolin, and it never gets any easier. If anything, it makes him want to run and hide forever - Bo’s older brother, he thinks sardonically, who can’t make it through a single day without being a downer. Mrs. Chan would’ve told him to snap out of it by now, and his hands stroke the scarf furiously as he tries to count the one, two, three, four, five, six major sunspots that burn his eyes. 

Red like the blood and the baby’s saucer and the cushion and the poetry’s ink and Bo’s sunburn and that skin behind their eyes as his parents had screamed and Mom’s pretty red uniform and - 

A bony hand is stroking his back. Gentle circles, one, two, three, he counts, before the hand moves the other way; this pattern persists, he notices, three in one direction and three in the other, and he is, somehow, relieved for this. After a few more long moments of breathing, he peels his eyes open. 

The baby’s candle is snuffed out. The baby is blinking awake. Food is sitting on the table (how long has Mako been like this? ) but despite how delicious it looks, Mako feels anything but hungry. Bo is hovering fearfully near the doorway, his big eyebrows pushed downwards. And Zula’s hand rubs his back as steadily as before, not even faltering as he croaks.

(Mrs. Chan always - always told Bo to leave the room, whenever Mako was having one of his “panics.” She wouldn’t sit with him - oh no - but she’d throw a sheet over wherever he was breaking down and insist that life went on as usual, with the rest of the boys poking his sheeted shoulders and snickering, and Mako, from behind his white sheet, feeling for all the world like the third corpse the metal benders forgot.)

“I’m sorry” is the first thing he says, and Bo’s little breath hitches into warble territory. He always got upset whenever Mako was - would throw a fit when Mrs. Chan told him to leave the room - and inevitably ended up sobbing in sympathy later in the night. 

Zula doesn’t speak for a moment. Her hand doesn’t falter. The smell of well-cooked vegetables hit his nose. His stomach turns. His mouth tastes like vomit.

(Mrs. Chan insisted he always apologized for his panics. His panics left them panicking, she’d say chuckling, and he’d feel like crawling back under his sheet and rolling into his bed and never coming out. The orphanage’s eyes would follow him, inevitably, until the next, where he would be greeted with the same snickers and disapproval and shame.)

“Don’t look at me!” He snaps, suddenly furious. “Don’t look at me!” He bats Zula’s hand away, standing from the table. “Stop looking at me” he snaps at Bolin, and feels shame and new unfounded anger rise as Bo’s teary eyes fall onto the ground. “Just - stop looking!” He shouts again, feeling the tightness of his throat. He feels so - so sickened by his behavior, for how bare he is and for a single moment, he wishes for the sheet, again. 

Zula doesn’t chuckle or reach for him or do anything Mrs. Chan would’ve. She doesn’t get angry at his behavior either, which doesn’t quite fit into the straight-laced woman Mako knows she is.

“Okay.” She says, and her easy acceptance makes his heart thump in fury. She must be making fun of him. She’s making fun of him. She wishes he was wearing the sheet - hawk-eyed Zula wishes he was wearing the sheet so she wouldn’t have to see him -

She rises from the table, and instead of coming towards him, to hit him or reprimand him or insult him, she pushes out the backdoor. Mako follows after her, compelled by anger and shame, and fear all at once. She pulls a bucket of water from the side of the door, and tips it with no difficulty in the tub. Then, in his full view, she sticks her hand into the shallow water.

Mako watches, speechless, as the water steams with warmth. Zula withdraws her hand slowly. She turns back to him, and brushes past him into the house. She says, conversationally, “Would you like a bath?” 

He nods, dumbfounded. All emotion drains from him as he stares.

Bo hovers nervously behind her in the doorframe. Zula’s yellow eyes gleam. “I’ll bring you clothing and a towel, then.” She disappears, for only a moment. The next thing he knows he is sitting at the edge of the tub, stripping off his shirt and carefully unfolding his towel. Bo and Zula have gently closed the kitchen door, so he is left in the darkening yard with the gentle breeze and the view of the cliff beyond the fence.

The kitchen window is directly above him here - he can hear Bo and Zula’s chewing, feels the warmth of the kitchen light, but he is shadowed by the water and the wall and the tub. He could call out to them if he wished, he thinks with a strange mixture of emotions. 

It’s not the sheet. It’s definitely not the sheet. They can’t see him and - that’s good. That’s very good. The sheet made him - visible, he thinks, like a big body bag walking around the orphanage. The bathtub beneath the window, pleasantly warm and from where he can hear Bolin and not any mean laughter - this is good.

He slips into the hot water. It’s very nice.

By the time Mako’s heart calms completely, the water is cold. Shivering, he steps onto the towel, quickly pulling on the clothing Zula had pulled from his bag for him. The sounds of Bo slapping something against the kitchen table from within the house make the edges of his lips curl.

The dirt is soft beneath his feet as he pads over to the kitchen door, preparing to re-enter the world of the low table and its cushions, before his eyes catch on the glint of a window.

His eyebrows furrow. The window in his and Bo’s bedroom doesn’t face the yard, he knows. Is it Zula’s bedroom? Inexplicably, he makes his way to the thick pane of glass, pressing his nose against it and peering inside. 

The room is completely dark - but it’s not Zula’s, he thinks, because the glass on the inside is coated in a layer of dust that makes it hard to see anything but the impressions of shapes. The old woman’s kitchen was spotless. 

There is maybe a futon beside the window, if he cranes his head to the left, and maybe something like a low writing desk, if he cranes his head to the right. Dark shapes - clothing? - scatter the floor. The door is closed. 

It hits him, with stunning clarity, that this must’ve been Mom’s room. The third bedroom, just before the kitchen - the one that couldn’t be Zula’s or theirs. It makes sense, he thinks - the dust and the closed-door - if he’s right. 

He suddenly recalls Zula’s words in Republic City. “Not talked in many years…” he repeats under his breath, feeling like a regular Detective Dosu as he turns the words over in his mind. What did Zula mean?

The mystery is a welcome reprieve from his late panic. 

“Too forgiving” the boy grumbles, their conversation on the greyened beds coming back easily to him. Forgiving of what? Why would Zula need to be forgiven? What did she do?

He rests his forehead against the cool glass, squinting with all his might into the bedroom, like it might tell him the secrets of his grandmother’s words. It’s obvious they had a fight or something, but over what? Why would his Mom not want to talk to Zula? Why hadn’t they heard about the old woman, their Grandmother, before she came to the orphanage? What happened? 

Mako strains his mind, trying to think of anything that could make him not want to speak to Bo for twelve years. His head hurts just thinking about it. What’s the reason? His inner Detective Dosu calls, What’s the motive? 

Grandmother Zula, with her hawk-eyes and closed doors and warm hands, would have to be watched even more carefully in the light of this new revelation. 

His golden eyes turn back to the darkroom. The night is black around him. The chirps of cricket-spiders are the only sound. And of course, he thinks, the room will have to be investigated further. 

Chapter Text

Predictably, the door to Mom’s room is locked. Mako creeps from his and Bolin’s shared room that night and stands with unsteady feet on the cold stone floors only to jiggle the knob fruitlessly. But there is no keyhole - at least on the outside of the door. This gives him two options: either the door is being blocked, and it swings inwards, or his mother had managed to lock her door from the inside out, both of which pose the question of how. He slithers back into their bedroom, closes the door behind him, and lays on top of the bed, which feels as cold as ice against his shivering body. 

He listens to Bo’s gentle snoring in the bed next to him, and he tries to think like Detective Dosu. Beneath his bed, the books still sit, wrapped in their delicate wax paperings. In Volume 2 of Detective Dosu, when Dosu needs to unlock a hidden trap door, he waits for the right time to strike - a detective carries patience as his foremost value, Mako recalls, because patience is the difference between a successfully solved case and a whole heap of trouble. So, he resolves, he will wait until the right time strikes to enter the room - he thinks, grimly, that the window must be broken in order to enter, and in order to break the window, he will have to wait until just the right time. Inside Mom’s room is the secret as to why she left Zula, he’s certain. The secret as to why Zula would have to be forgiven at all lies just within his fingertips, so long as he could keep it together for only a few days more. 

He closes his eyes. He doesn’t crawl underneath the covers, despite the chill of the room. Mako drifts into an uneasy sleep, the fire beneath his eyelids replaced with a newer image that does nothing to calm his mind; one of the closed-door down the hall, and his horrible musings of what might lie within. 

He is awakened by the soft call of his name. Peeling open his eyelids, he prepares to bid Bo to give him a few more minutes to rest before he’s undoubtedly called to come play with him. Instead, Mako is greeted with a familiar wrinkled hand. Sitting up in his bed, he blinks placidly at the old woman, who stands, half-shadowed, in the dim yellow of morning light. 

It must be very early, for the sun to be so weak. So early the chill of the night hasn’t dispelled yet - he’s shivering as he takes in the form of his grandmother, who stands, on bare feet against the stone floor, as stern as ever. Her hair, pure white, is loose on her shoulders - it doesn’t serve to make her look any softer, even in conjunction with the well-worn quality of her nightgown. “What?” He asks, mind still groggy, and winces at the displeasure within his tone. After his performance last night, he thinks, he’ll have to tamp down on just about everything else, no matter how understanding Zula appears. 

She turns her face to the window. “It’s time to wake up,” she says plainly, and Mako, barely holding back a groan, plants his feet on the cold floor, shivering. Despite the temperature, Zula seems as stiff-backed as ever, he notes with resentment, and gently pads over to where Bolin is wrapped in his blankets, preparing to shake his brother awake, to start the day together. Zula’s hand intercepts his own before he’s given the chance. 

“Don’t wake him,” she commands, and Mako, sleep-addled, just a little sour from a fitful night of rest, responds, “Why not?” Zula gives him a look of amusement. “It’s dawn, too early for him. He needs his rest.” Mako can’t tamper down his scowl. Withdrawing his hand, he crosses his arms. This is the start to a horrible day, he thinks, and retorts, “Why did you wake me up then?” as respectfully as he can, which it turns out, is not very respectful at all. 

Zula, old hawk-eyed woman, smiles in the face of his disgruntlement. “Firebenders rise with the sun, Mako. I always perform exercise in the morning - I thought you might like to do the same” he stares at her in utter disbelief. His hair is stuck to the back of his head, and he knows his eyes are bloodshot. He’s spent all night thinking about ways to break the window to his Mom’s room as quietly as possible, and now, he’s being dragged out at dawn to do firebending exercises. Like he firebends at all - like he wants anything to do with the element of destruction any time in the near future. 

Zula’s tone lets him know that her suggestion is not a suggestion - it’s an order. He tries not to show his growing frustration. “Sure” he says, aiming for levity and falling comically short, and Zula smiles, again, that smile where she folds up the corners of her mouth but her eyes don’t move in the slightest - false, his mind screams, and definitely hiding something. 

They make their way down the hallway, through the neatly straightened kitchen, and into the yard. Mako’s shivers multiply as he steps out onto the dew-dropped grass, his bare feet flexing tensely in the blue of the earliest morning. Wind sweeps through the cliffs, and it beats at his arms and face, slamming the door behind him. He stands, Zula in front of him, and watches, shifting nervously, as the woman begins to inhale and exhale, deeply. He falls into a sitting position, and watches. 

Despite her age, she moves expertly after her weird enhanced-breathing, he guesses, not that he’s borne witness to much coordinated athleticism in his life, outside of school-mandated gym class and kickball in the back-alleys of Republic City. There’s not a single shiver or goosebump he can see along her frame, despite the low temperature of their surrondings. She gets through a few minutes of this seemingly memorized stretching routine before she glances back at him, and frowns, coming to a halt. “Why are you not stretching?” She asks sternly, and Mako, cold and tired and washed out, crosses his arms, not bothering to smooth out the slant of his eyebrows. 

“I don’t know what you’re doing.” He admits, and almost feels bad for how much pleasure he takes as the woman’s back erects with something like embarrassment. She turns to fully face him. “Were you not taught this at your school?” She sounds like she can hardly believe it, and Mako internally scoffs - geography and stretching, the two things fundamental in every Republic City education. Not. He shakes his head.

He expects her to get angry - to dismiss him, or to scold him, or to do something that proves she dragged him out of bed so early in the morning just to upset him, but she doesn’t. She shakes her head and seems to bite back something, but ultimately raps her fingers in the air, beckoning for him to, “Stand up.”

He stands. She circles him, and he yelps, feeling her hands forcibly straighten his back out. She does this several times, increasingly firmly, until he gets the memo, and stands straight, feeling uncomfortably tall but listening, almost interested, as she begins to instruct. “Firebending is all in the breath. You cannot breathe if you are not standing straight - do not slouch. Slouching shows a lack of discipline. Now, do as I do.”

Together, they exhale and inhale deeply, several times. He feels silly, but he’s thankful, at least, that no actual fire has been involved thus far. It’s a struggle to keep his back straight and his breath even to Zula’s liking, but he manages. Once they are done breathing, Zula intones, “Typically, that exercise is performed with the help of a few small flames, to demonstrate a thorough understanding of controlled breathing in conjunction with firebending - ” he stares at his feet, and wants to shrink into the blue grass below, until she says, a little quieter, “ - however, we don’t have to do that just yet.” He chooses to be grateful that today is not the day he will have to look at a flame for longer than possible, instead of allowing his mind to linger to the yet tacked to the end of her sentence. 

Now, they begin to stretch. Mako can tell she’s watering down her previous plans for him. The stretching routine she teaches him is nowhere near as intense or tight as the one she performed only minutes earlier, but it’s still taxing. All the joints of his body must be loosened, Zula explains, so he works his way up from his bare toes to his rapidly clearing head, rotating and stretching and moving in ways that make certain parts of his body burn. He has to perform several movements a few times, to his Grandmother’s liking, even as she follows along, performing perfectly, he thinks bitterly, sixty-something years older and somehow ten times more athletic than her own grandson. 

She occasionally offers strict words of reprimand, or more sparingly, a pleased remark. She’s a good teacher, he would think, if the resentment of having woken up at 5 AM to be instructed on something he didn’t care for wasn’t at the forefront of his mind. She’s definitely going easy on him, he realizes, and for that he’s grateful - the old woman is freakishly controlled, and he shivers to think of what kind of crazy routine she might’ve had him perform before he demonstrated his obvious inadequacy. Yay, he sullenly cheers. 

By the end of the affair, he knows it’s been a painfully long hour. He’s sweating and panting hard, and the sun has fully climbed into the early morning sky, slanting yellow across the thawing yard. He can’t tell if it’s the sun or the exercise or both, but he’s running red-hot. To his displeasure, Zula is not sweating in the slightest, despite performing all of the same exercises as he. She really is an evil woman, he thinks idly, only half-kidding. 

“You did well” she says, and smiles, this time, her eyes squinting. Genuine, as far as he can tell. Somehow, this is more uncomfortable for Mako than her wooden facade of before - he averts his eyes to Mom’s window in the yard, and hears the door open as Zula brushes past him. “Would you like to help me prepare breakfast?” She actually asks this time, and Mako, despite his better judgment screaming at him to spend the least amount of time in contact with the dangerous older woman, nods his assent. 

He’s gathering intel, he soothes himself.

Breakfast has already been plated, pan-fried sweet bread and a bowl of congee that tastes distinctly of chicken-pig stock when Bolin finally awakens. Mako knows this because his brother stumbles into the room, rubbing at his sleep-crusted eyes with chubby fists, and blinking at the scene before him: Zula, delicately eating away at her own bowl, Mako ripping bread chunks apart to dip, and the baby ferret in the middle, still curled in his saucer, demurely lapping away at his thimble of water. 

“Good morning” he says, so loud it makes Mako’s head ring, but he greets him in turn. Bolin takes his own seat at the low table, sloppily folding his legs beneath him before digging into the food with a viciousness that makes Mako wince. Just like the bath - more food spills onto the table than into Bolin’s mouth. “Wipe your mouth, Bo” he idly commands, and the younger boy obliges with a pout, swiping at his lips with the handy towel Zula pulls from seemingly no-where.  

“The table, too” Zula mentions, and Bo’s pout deepens, but he picks the discarded food into the towel all the same, balling it up and handing it back to Zula, where it is neatly deposited into the water basin as she walks away, plate cleared. Bolin finishes only a few moments after, despite his lateness, so the two begin to talk, as Mako pecks away at his food and tries to keep his eyes focused on the twitching pink nose of the baby fire ferret instead of the unlit candle on the table. His muscles still ache, but at least he’s got a new memory overshadowing the embarrassment of the previous night. 

He listens in on Zula and Bolin’s conversation, shoving bread into his numb mouth. “We’ll be going down to town today” Zula confides in his little brother, and he can hear the smile in her voice at Bo’s excited face, no doubt, which makes him frown. “You need clothing, as well as other items - things for your fire ferret. It’s also good to familiarize you two with Hai’bi - not that it’s particularly large, by any measure.” The reminder of their new location’s small size does nothing to alleviate Mako’s frown, and he doesn’t have to listen hard for Bolin’s characteristically loud response.

His little brother, of course, goes off on a tangent about ghosts and other kids and could we please get decorations for our room? And all of the little kid stuff Mako has come to expect from him, and the older boy finally finishes his food, wiping clean his own bowl and startling as he realizes that Zula has already done Bo’s own - a task usually regulated to Mako, at least at the orphanage. He wonders if there’s a way to weasel out of going shopping - this could be an invaluable time to try and figure out how to open the window, he reflects, if not outright breaking it entirely, but from the turn of phrase used in the two’s conversation about their impending shopping trip, it seems no man is to be left behind - even the fire ferret, who at Bo’s insistence, will again be loosely housed in the silk confines of Zula’s purse. 

He can’t hold back his sigh. He supposes he’ll have to bring his investigation down from the house on the hill and into town.

Hai’bi is what Mako expects. A sleepy old town, not worth being marked on any map - the town below Azula’s cliffside house possesses one main street, a couple of stores, a few houses, a marketplace, and a fishery, deep down in the rocky beaches of the black cliffs. It’s a fishing town that’s about fifty years behind the rest of the world - and it’s nothing like Republic City, which Mako decides critically, means that it’s no good at all. 

People don’t even bother to disguise their gawking as the group enters town. Mako wants to crawl out of his skin as Bolin waves cheerfully at a dirty-faced little girl bouncing a hacky-sack against her knee, playing at the side of a storefront. Zula is unbothered by the attention, some sort of emotionless warrior, as she walks, Bolin and Mako on either side of her form, hands clasped in her own. Mako is the only person who seems to feel the heat of the townsfolk's gazes, and it’s enough to remind him of the neverending sound of Fire Fountain, a memory he’s quickly coming to despise.

They enter a clothing store with a sign so faded that Mako can’t read it unless he squints - something Tailor, he figures, and gives up entirely when they enter the shop. Zula begins looking around immediately, flipping through shirts in shades ranging from salmon to crimson, archetypical fire nation attire suited for the simmering days and freezing nights of the peninsula. In his suspenders and cuffed pants, Mako feels glaringly out of place - and he doesn’t understand how Bolin is so happy, stroking a hand on the fire ferret’s head, clad in his own high-collared shirt. The shopkeeper is eyeing them curiously, leaning on her palm, eyebrow slightly raised - she’s an older woman, not as old as Zula, but old, nonetheless.

She might know something, his inner Detective Dosu hazards, so he slides towards her, discarding flippancy entirely. “How are you today?” He awkwardly ventures, and she replies boredly, her eyes taking in his face - when he meets her eyes, her grayened eyebrows touch her hairline. “You’re Naoki’s kids, aren’t ya?” She says conversationally, below her breath, and Mako, glancing quickly to make sure Zula isn’t paying attention, nods. The woman smiles, pleased at her own deduction, and says, even lower, “You look just like her and her daddy - strong genes, those.” Mako can’t stop his noise of interest, and leans forward. 

To his pleasure, he doesn’t have to speak much to get the woman going - a few interesting noises here and there glean him remarkably interesting results about the state of the town, and one eye is kept focused on Zula at all times. Bless Bolin, he’s doing a great job of keeping Zula from completing her shopping, fully enthralled in whatever conversation they might be having. His good luck.

While a lot of what the woman says is totally meaningless, he does glean a few nuggets of wisdom for his investigation and for his general vague interest in his “family” history. Naoki was such a nice girl - she was loud and fit in well with the locals and was a lively, bright child turned teenager who was just a pleasure to see about town, and it was such a shame when she left, and Zula, polite but just the hardest bit difficult to get along with, retreated entirely to her house - and what a tragedy, what had happened, Agni bless your mother, Zula was never the same after Cāo died - 

“Cāo?” Mako interrupts lowly, and the woman cuts herself off, raising an eyebrow at him, like this is information he should know. “Your grandfather. He died about - what, fifteen, maybe twenty years ago? Can’t quite remember, but I do remember that even before that man passed, Zula was just a little -” she swirls a finger around her head, laughing lowly, and Mako stares at her unabashedly. The woman hurries past this point as he fails to react, her fingers lowering onto the counter as she rambles onwards.

“After he died, Zula got even worse. Not that she was nice to that girl before, but afterward, they couldn’t go a damn place in town - ”

Zula’s sharp white nails rap against the grain of the counter. She’s smiling with no light in her eyes at the shopkeeper. Mako notes, dimly, that some her hair is almost - floating, like she's been struck by lightning. Bo’s hand is wrapped in her own. They’ve got a bundle of clothing tucked beneath both their arms. Mako would be horrified at having his clothing picked out for him by his younger brother if he wasn’t feeling vaguely nauseous. He can’t tell whether or not his nauseousness stems from the idea that Zula could’ve been standing at the counter for however long without him noticing, listening in on their conversation, or at the sickening and increasingly real possibility that the reason why his mother had never mentioned his grandmother was that Zula was cruel to her - so cruel that everyone had noticed. 

He’s silent for the rest of the trip in town, drawing away from his brother's attempts to talk, and Zula doesn’t attempt to hold his hand. 

Mako examines the photographs in the house that night, hyperconscious of Bolin and Zula in the yard, the former being bathed and the latter undoubtedly doing her best to dodge his younger brother’s splashing. 

The first photograph he notices is the most obviously placed, atop a low corner table, sheltered by poetry scrolls, which, when he squints, are some old verses about the importance of the family unit and the significance of honoring one’s parents. His brow furrows. He inspects the photo. It’s a traditionally styled family portrait, so archaic looking that his mother’s childish face staring out at the frame appears alien to him. 

It must have been taken only twenty-five or so years ago, but it looks ancient. With its stark black ink and solemn expressions, it’s a noted contrast from the joyful family portrait he keeps tucked beneath his shirt, to his heart, his only remnant of the old apartment. There are three people in the photograph: a younger Zula, a man who must be his grandfather - Cao, and his mother. The man is sitting in a highbacked parlor chair, a cane laid across his lap - he does look like Mako, the boy thinks quietly. Zula is standing next to the chair, one hand on the man’s shoulder and the other laid on Naoki’s. Her hair, reaching her chin, is held back by a flowery clip, and she wears a long dress with a high collar. She has the same default expression she always does; a sort of sternness in her demeanor. They make for a critical-looking couple. 

Mom is what takes the breath out of him. She’s a little girl, about Bo’s age, with big eyes peering up at him from her apathetic face. She doesn’t look like she’s being treated cruelly. She looks bored. A boring family portrait, he deducts finally, and moves on to the next photograph. 

This piece of the past is an evolution of the last photograph, in that the members are older, and the atmosphere is much more jumbled. It’s hung against the wall in the alcove near the entrance. To begin, the man who must be his grandfather is gone. The second photograph feels narrow, like the photographer tried to compensate for the missing participant and failed miserably, swinging in the opposite direction and making Zula and Mom look cramped and uncomfortable together. Fitting, based on what he’s learning. 

Zula is older, her hair longer, pinned at the base of her neck. She’s sat, laden in heavy robes, and holding Naoki’s hand in her lap. She’s wearing her hawk smile. Mom is the solemn one now, staring off to the side. She looks miserable, Mako thinks. She’s a teenager, with freckled cheeks and overlong hair fruitlessly decorated with hairpins, and she looks like she’d rather be anywhere in the world than with Zula. He wonders why Zula has the portrait hung up at all. He wonders if this counts as evidence towards his cruelty theory that is slowly gaining more horrible prominence in his mind. 

The third portrait is the hidden one, squeezed between a bookcase and the kitchen doorway. This is not so much a portrait as it is a headshot of a younger Zula, younger than the first photograph. She’s glamorous and beautiful. Certainly not the soldier he had pictured and that she had mentioned. She’s still got that same mean look in her light eyes. He can’t tell whether he’s comforted or perturbed by the fact.

Mako doesn’t understand why this has been kept up alongside the family portraits, but it’s a clue nonetheless. He quietly files all of the photograph’s general impressions into his mind, and ventures out into the yard, where his name is being called as Zula draws him a bath.

Chapter Text

Mako’s first week in Hai’bi is spent learning the new routine of his life. Zula insists on waking him up before dawn after their initial day of morning stretching, and he finds that each day it gets just a little easier, even if he remains cold and miserable and aching with each movement his Grandmother forces him to execute. After they stretch, breakfast is served and eaten, and Bolin usually wakes up a little after the food is done. When the three of them are done eating, morning activities commence. Mako spends his time in their room, pouring over Detective Dosu books and a scroll of paper coupled with an ink pen he’d managed to scavenge from the living room, writing down what he needs to learn about his current situation, which seems to pile up more and more with each hour that passes. 

His little brother and Zula do whatever they do together - which most often seems to be sitting on the side of the house, shaping pots and vases together out of the clay earth that is kept forever moist from the cliffside’s wet winds. There is a kiln on the side of the house where the two sit, though Mako has yet to see it lit. Oftentimes, the baby fire ferret is brought outside with them, and so that’s how they pass their mornings. 

He catches snippets of their conversations together, whenever he creeps about the house, looking for possible evidence against his Grandmother’s character. Bo is loud - that’s why Mako isn’t too concerned about leaving him with the old woman they hardly know, because if anything was occurring, Bo would make sure his older brother could hear it. He’s Mako’s unknowing accomplice in his investigation. What he learns of their talks are mostly harmless, about all manner of mundane things - and Mako is mature enough to admit that most of the time, it’s Bo doing the talking, as excitable as any six-year-old earthbender might be in his position. 

The afternoon brings them all together again, with the addition of a simple lunch. Afterwards, he and Bo can kick a ball around in the backyard, or care for the baby ferret together - Zula retires to her room for an afternoon nap. Dinner is simple, again, and bedtime is early, at least for Mako - waking up at dawn each day means he’s almost completely tired out by the time night falls. As he predicted, nights oscillate between brief periods of sleep and hyperconsciousness, laying down, or shivering outside of the out house as Bo uses it for the third time in a single night, standing up. 

By the end of the first week, he feels bored to death of routine. If he has to spend another agonizingly quiet night with his mind flickering back and forth from the peeling of charred skin to the mental imagery of the locked door just down the hall, he swears that he’s going to go completely mad. On the seventh night of staying in Hai’bi, Mako snaps his eyes open, carefully standing up from the bed. He has to use the outhouse - something he tries to avoid at night. He risks a glance at Bo, and is relieved to see that his brother is sleeping deeply - snoring and all. He feels himself smile a little, and creeps out of their bedroom.

The stone floors are ice cold against his feet. There’s dim light by way of the candle-holders on either side of the hallway, but otherwise, it is pitch black. When he rounds the corner to the wider living area, he freezes - there’s warm light pouring from the kitchen. He can hear the sound of boiling water. 

He thinks about turning back, but steels himself. Walking forward with more confidence than he feels, Mako stands before Zula. She’s turned to face him. In the shadows of the night, her face looks more severe than usual. Her eyes really are very yellow. Almost like the center of a candle. She speaks slowly. “Mako. Why are you up so late?” 

He avoids her eyes. Scuffing his foot against his calf he says, plainly, “I have to pee.” The following silence is awkward enough that he shuffles over to the door, opening it and bringing himself to the yard. It’s cold. He shivers the entire time in the outhouse, and shivers right up until he’s standing back in the kitchen again, door drifting shut behind him. Zula has taken her teapot and a cup to the living room, dimly lit by the tall candle atop the table. As she pours herself a cup, the room fills with a sweet, hot smell. Mako knows he should go back to his room - but really, this is the first time besides their excruciating morning exercise sessions that he’s been alone with Zula.

He sits on the cushion across from her, hands folded in his lap. Zula glances at him briefly, in the middle of filling her cup to the brim. “Tea?” She asks, and he shakes his head no. She makes a humming sound that he can’t decipher, bringing her own cup to her lips. For a few moments, they sit there, not speaking. 

Then, Zula sets the tea cup down. Her question is so abrupt that it takes him a while to register that she’s asked it. “How did San and Naoki die?” She asks, and Mako feels himself stiffen. Zula takes another long sip of tea. He stares down at the knuckles of his hands. The light of the candle is too much - he stares at the inside of his eyelids. He remembers how Mom and Dad - how their eyes had rolled up in pain, how their eyelids had melted - and he opens his eyes again, focusing back on his knuckles. The light of the candle still feels too close.

“We went out to eat. We walked out from the restaurant into an alley. There was a mugger.” His blinks feel too slow. The room smells sweet. The air is hot - not burnt. Never burnt. “He burned them up.” The four words are too simple for what happened - he can feel himself shrink. He had knocked Bo over, behind a dumpster, when Mom had screamed for them to run - he’d clasped both of his hands over his brother’s eyes and frantically whispered for him to not look, even as Mako himself watched Mom and Dad scream in pain, flesh peeling away. As he’d let the man kill them. As the pearls on Mom’s necklace had rolled over, knocking against his shoes. As Dad had gurgled and died. 

He covers his nose to block out the scent of burning flesh, and looks at Zula. She has set down her teacup. Her face is unreadable. The candle on the table is so low that it’s almost impossible to see in the blackness of the room. “Ah.” She says, and places her hand on the table - it clenches, and he hears her nails grate against the table. “I was told that Naoki and San had an accident. I wasn’t told - how.” The old woman sounds - pained. Despite how he wishes Zula was easier to read, this is not what he wanted her to reveal her true feelings over. He’d had the inkling that she was more sad about Mom’s death than she let on - the orphanage had clued him into that - but now, she has to know that Mom burned to death. Mako wonders if he should have told her. If this makes things better or worse.

The silence is suffocating. He lays his head on the table, trying to take deep breaths as he feels the faint chill of the wood. He can hear Zula shift, faintly. The old woman’s voice sounds distant - distant like static, or like the way the wind beats against the side of the house. It’s hoarse. She asks, “Would you like to hear about when I was a soldier?” Mako, grateful for the distraction, nods yes.

“I was fourteen, setting sail from Capital City. I had a particular mission, alongside my crew.” Mako raises his eyebrows, and carefully, slowly, lifts his head from the table to rest against his arms. He feels like he needs to focus on something - anything - other than Mom and Dad and the alley. “Fourteen? They let you be a soldier?” 

Zula nods. She seems unfazed by his skeptical question. “Yes. It was a different time, and I was a different soldier, from most. The ship set sail from the Capitol City, to the Earth Kingdom. At the time, at the tail end of the 100 year war, expansion was on the mind of the fire nation. We were part of a fleet that journeyed to Omashu, and crushed the resistance there. The city was renamed New Ozai, for a short period of time.” She’s not a very good storyteller - she’s too factual for that, too severe in her delivery. 

Mako blinks, his face pressed onto his arm. He didn’t like history much in school, but he vaguely remembers the teacher droning on and on about such an event - the short overtaking of Omashu into New Ozai by the corrupt fire nation government, and the way it had been achieved through a copious amount of violence. His stomach turns. He hadn’t quite registered what Zula being a soldier had encompassed - before now. He feels a little sick. Did you ever lose any of the battles? He thinks, and her answer floats to mind: None that mattered. He feels his eyebrows slant. He reminds himself that he's on a mission - that he's collecting information.

“Did you - I mean, did you ever -” He can’t find a good way to word it. He doesn’t even know if he wants to ask, already battling nausea and drowsiness. 

Zula seems to know what he’s thinking. “Did I ever kill anyone?” She asks for him, and he nods. Her answer is swift - there’s nothing behind it, not for her. “Yes.”

He exhales, pressing his cheek further to his arm, and Zula is silent for a while. But maybe - maybe it’s the simple way she said it, like a fact, or the way she asks for no forgiveness, offers no explanation, no platitudes, no extravagant wartime glories - he begrudgingly wants to hear more. Even if she’s a bad storyteller, and a strange old woman, and a war-killer sixty years after the fact. Even if the story is as far away and as close to the alley as he feels like he could be in this moment. 

He asks, mind hooked on an earlier sentence, “What was your particular mission? And why did they let you be a soldier?” 

Zula dips her head in acquiesce, pouring herself another cup of tea. Smoke obscures her face as she speaks. “The particular mission was assigned by the Firelord himself - Ozai, if you remember that old statue in Fire Fountain. We were primarily a battle group - like the spearhead of the war, being plunged forward to penetrate enemy walls, enemy territory. I was a prodigy. My firebending was excellent. That’s why I was allowed to join a fleet and fight for national glory.” She waves the smoke away with one swift hand, letting out a morose sounding chuckle as she raises the cup to her lips, “For honor.” 

Mako blinks. Zula hasn’t really answered his first question, at least not in a way he fully understands - was being a battle group their particular mission? Infiltrating enemy lines? - but he at least gets a better sense of what they were doing. But Zula - being a prodigy? He guesses that makes some sense. He’s got a limited knowledge of fire-bending, and even he can see that the old woman is some type of master; she’s as disciplined as it gets, and if Bo’s stories are true, has absolutely no problem quick-drying pottery in a matter of seconds. But still - it’s hard to imagine her so young. Fourteen. He tries for a second, carefully examining her face, and gives up quickly. He can’t ever imagine his grandmother being so young. Even the small picture of her in the living-room, with gray beginning to streak her hair, seemed to push his perception to the limits. 

“For honor.” He repeats, skeptical again, and Zula’s eyes shoot to him. This time, her eyes crinkle slightly, her paper-thin smile seeming amused. She finishes her long gulp of tea, and almost despite himself, he sits up and leans forward, resting his chin on his palm. “Did you like being a soldier? Didn’t you wish you were…” Mako tries to think of normal things that fourteen year olds in his neighborhood did, and scrunches his nose - Zula doesn’t seem like she’d enjoy kickball, or playing hooky, or sitting by the vendors stall and gossiping - “...doing something else? Being normal?”

Zula’s shoulders bounce once, and she carefully places her cup down. She puts her hands in her lap. “No. I liked the life of a soldier - I liked the fighting and the thrill. It made me feel good to be acknowledged for my skill. I felt like I was doing something important.” She pauses for a few moments, continuing, “I wasn’t nice to people, and the only way I knew how to connect was through violence. The fighting, the battles, the winning.” She shakes her head, and stands up, glancing at Mako, asking again, “Tea?”

This time, he nods. She comes back with another cup, pouring him a generous amount. He takes it in his hands, watching lazy steam drift from the cooling liquid. “I’m not nice, either.” He says, recalling their conversation at the orphanage, “-and I don’t understand why you’d like the fighting, but I sort of get what you mean about not connecting. Mom used to always tell me and Bo that you catch more flies with honey than vinegar, but -” he pauses, taking a deep gulp of the liquid. It burns his throat, which lets him get his next words out, “- she always got upset when I told her that I just don’t think I’m normal. And that other people can see that.” 

Zula looks - well, she looks at him, intently. “How so?” She asks, and Mako stares into the cup, watching the liquid swirl, trickling over the side of the rim. He tries to think of a way to say it, to make him sound less - himself, and comes up blank. He decides to be honest. 

“When I was little, I hurt the bugs in our apartment. And Mom and Dad had to tell me to stop, because it was hurting them. I didn’t realize it. I’m - not good with the other kids. They always say things they don’t mean. They get mad when you tell them the truth - they get confused when I’m confused. They think I’m too serious. Or that I’m mean. And when Mom and Dad…” he feels his breath hitch, and sets the cup down too loudly, watching liquid splash onto the table. “When Mom and Dad were being burned up, I couldn’t look away. And when the metalbenders found me, I wasn’t crying, but Bo was. And when they told Ms. Chan that, everyone knew I wasn’t normal. Because I don’t cry about it. Mom and Dad dying. So they all think I’m not sad, or that I liked it, and that’s why I think about it so much. But I am sad. I just don’t know why I should cry.” He wipes at the puddle of liquid with his sleeve, watching it soak into the fabric.

Zula hums. Her reply is free of any judgment - and it startles him so badly that he can only stare at her, feeling his eyebrows raise. “When I was a child, my family had a turtleduck pond. There were many baby turtle ducks that swam in it. I used to pick them up and turn them over, and watch them struggle to right themselves. I thought it was funny. My mother caught me, and she looked so afraid that I kept doing it - it kept her coming back. And never once did I think that it might’ve hurt them. I had no concept of it; that they could feel pain, or that I should, somehow, understand that.” Intrigued despite himself, Mako takes another sip of tea. This time, it doesn’t burn - he realizes, belatedly, that it tastes good. 

“But you stopped, right? Because your Mom told you to - because it was hurting them?” He asks, and Zula shakes her head the instant he asks. “I didn’t. I kept doing it. My mother was mortified. Of course, I was an unkind child in other ways. I liked fighting, and war, and hurting people - my brother, my playmates, my tutors - because it connected them to me. I couldn’t understand why they would be afraid. Like the turtle ducks, I didn’t grasp that they could feel pain. The only emotion I was good at recognizing was fear.” His grandmother takes a demure sip of her drink, and Mako watches as she checks the teapot for more tea - she lets out a disappointed sound at its emptiness, setting it back on the table in front of them.

Outside, somewhere, a cricket-spider chirps. Mako takes another long drink of his tea, watching the last remaining drops stick stubbornly to the bottom of the cup. He feels drowsy, almost relaxed, with the tea and the low lighting and his grandmother sitting across from him; despite the horrible things she’s confessed to, despite how uncomfortably understanding he feels of the older woman. He turns her words over in his head, focusing on one particular line, something that’s news to him.

“You had a brother?” He asks, and Zula’s half-lidded eyes flicker to him. She nods, now lazily twisting her hair above her head into a knot, tying it with a piece of previously hidden string. “I did. An older brother.” Her voice is impassive - she stands from the table, collecting both of their empty cups and the teapot. He watches her wash all of the dishes in the basin, drying her hands on the little folded piece of linen there.

"Were you two like me and Bo?" He asks, slurring his words from the heat and the time, and she pauses for a split second in her motions. She doesn't reply. 

Mako makes no more moves to speak - his eyelids droop. Feeling more exhausted than usual, he watches his grandmother come back to the table. She eyes him, and says, at last, “You should go to bed.” It’s not a suggestion. He stands, and makes his way back down the hallway. He crawls into bed, pulling the thick sheets over him, and for once, the blackness behind his eyelids stays that color.

If he dreams at all, he can’t remember it.