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jade-of-mourning · 11 months ago

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Tenzin stares down at the scowling, scrawny kid. He's dressed in a patched grey shirt bound hastily at the forearms, equally-patched trousers hanging off his frame despite the long length of his skinny legs, and his feet are currently bare aside from some more dirty wrappings around the arch and heel. A shockingly red scarf loops around his neck, several times too-big and frayed at the ends. He's maybe fourteen or fifteen despite the heavy grey lines underscoring his features, because there's a familiar despair written in the recurring story — prominent cheekbones sticking out of his thin, pointy face, lips chapped and pale from the freezing winter nights of Republic City, gold-flecked brown eyes glaring back at him defiantly.

And he's in a pair of handcuffs.

"So this is the one, you say," he addresses to the woman standing next to him. Her arms are crossed against her chest, a glare plastered across her face — precisely mirroring that of the scrappy boy handcuffed to the table in front of them. They're having an intense stare-down.

If he didn't know any better, he'd almost think this was her kid.

(But he knows all too well that he's not.)

Lin Beifong scowls. "Fucker tried to hit Jian with lightning after spotting her during a stakeout on a Triple Threats warehouse. He then managed to single-handedly fight off three officers while the rest of the gang bailed, looking like a feral, lightning-happy pyromaniac while at it —" The feral, lightning-happy pyromaniac looks pleased for a moment, before promptly dropping back into a glower "— and when I sent a cable at him from the back, he shot a pillar out of the concrete ground to block it."

"How do you know it was him?" Tenzin asks.

"I know the motions. I am an earthbender, in case you forgot."

"Perhaps there was another man waiting behind to assist his escape, who earthbent the ground upon seeing his comrade in danger."

Lin grunts. "The team split when the cowards scrammed, and managed to capture a few of the accomplices. None of those fleeing were in the vicinity by the time the incident occurred."

"There could have been more of them involved than just the ones you saw fleeing the scene," Tenzin suggests.

"We were in the middle of a stakeout, Tenzin. If you need a definition, a stakeout is a period of time where the police conduct surveillance on —"

Tenzin cuts her off, conceding before she can keep going on at him. "Understood. But how can you know for certain that there weren't other members coincidentally passing through who elected to lend a hand?"

Lin acknowledges the point; the outside world doesn't come to a standstill when there's a fight inside. "One of the captured men said that the kid is Zolt's protege, which adds up with the frequency of which I see him in the aftermath of incursions. They're shamelessly bitter about him being the boss' favorite, and they clearly don't hold any well-regards towards him, so they don't have reason to offer assistance, aside from attempting to curry favor from a fourteen year old — and no faces were shown to that point, so that's out of question. Besides, they're gangsters. What sense of loyalty to each other do you really think they have?"

"More than you've got to the city." Both Tenzin and Lin whip their heads around in surprise at the low, raspy voice, having forgotten of the boy's presence during their back-and-forth. He looks almost like he wants to curl inwards on himself, but instead raises his chin higher up and manages to glare at them with even more force, if possible. "You police ain't done shit for us. You're all the same purposefully ignorant bastards. That's how we get here, but you knew that." The subject of we goes unsaid; all three of them in the closed metal room know precisely what he's talking about.

"So are you saying that one of your loyal friends stayed behind and bent that earth for you?" Lin demands, ignoring the jab at her dignity. Tenzin knows she's retracted the heel of her uniform, searching for a heartbeat.

The boy leans back in the chair flippantly. "Nah," he says curtly. "They're smart enough. None of 'em would stick 'round for me." It's contrary to the earlier claim of mutual loyalty, but unsurprising.

"So it was you," Tenzin concludes.

"I never said it was."

"Then who else could it have been?" The frustration is bubbling up in him, the way it always has since he was a kid; Dad had always laughed and said that he must've gotten it from his mother, quick to anger and full in force, but Tenzin has never been able to quell the feeling down despite his best efforts to be more like his father.

"Bet it was one of your cop cronies." There's something intense and unhinged and wild in the kid's half-pyrite eyes, almost glowing in the gleeful challenge. "Pro'ly got bored of the metal rod permanently stuck up your ass n' thought it'd be funny if —"

"Young man! You will not speak of —"

"I'm jus' sayin' —"

"Enough." Lin slams her fist down on the table, and the light in the boy's eyes dims in an instant. "I've had enough of your hog-monkey shit. Either you be straight with me and we can settle this quickly, or I'm holding you here as long as I deem necessary."

Which can be a very long time, goes unsaid.

Tenzin inspects the kid carefully, sees the minute way his shoulders slump down, and suddenly, all he can see in front of him is Jinora, hunching in on herself as her parents lecture her about not feeding her dinner to the sky bison. He doesn't know why — after all, this is a lightning-bending gangster, almost certainly raised by the streets in poverty and desperation; he couldn't be further from Tenzin's family.

But.

He's still just a kid.

Beneath all that bravado, those bitter, biting words, the degenerate behaviour that brought him here in the first place, the skin stretched too-thin over bones jutting out of his face — the harsh exterior is made to protect a kid who's seen too much. Tenzin knows that for certain.

And Tenzin is suddenly tired, because the boy is right. There's a reason that kids like him run with gangs, learn to fight dirty and low and vicious, and he's not naive enough to believe that it's not in-part due to their own failure as adults in power. He places a hand on Lin's shoulder — a silent request for her to step back and trust him. She looks over at him, green eyes meeting blue, and he's struck by how beaten down she looks by this conversation despite her infallible presence. Despite their time away from each other, despite the inevitable fallout that halved their world together like a splintering ravine and left no chance of reprieve, she knows him.

She steps back.

Tenzin seats himself at the table as Lin moves to the corner of the room. Takes a deep breath to steady himself, tries to channel the way his father always made people feel like everything would be alright. "Young man," he says in a reasonable tone, "please, let's try again. Would you be willing to tell me your name?"

"It's —"

"Mako," the boy interjects before Lin can finish for him, take his autonomy, eyes dropping to the table. There's an unmistakable air of defeat around him, one at total odds of the snapping, feral boy described and seen from before. "My… My name's Mako. Why's it matter to you?"

Tenzin nods resolutely, ignoring the question. "Well, Mako. I have a proposal for you — one that should keep you out of the police station."

A raised eyebrow.

Once it's out of his mouth, he can't retract it. He knows that there will be consequences for speaking without consulting Pema, Lin, his kids.

But his heart is telling him that this is right. Not just that it's the right thing to do, but also that the kid sitting handcuffed to the table in front of him is the Avatar. He can see it in his eyes, hard and resentful and gold-brown and so different from his father's, yet still the same in some inexplicable way. Reconciling the idea of this lightning-bending gangster of a street kid with the man who co-founded this city is… overwhelming, and Tenzin would almost rather blow this situation off and let himself live in remembering his father for who he is, not for whoever Mako turns out to be. But Tenzin has a duty to the world, and a duty to his father, and so he will ensure that he does the new Avatar right.

"I would like to invite you to stay on Air Temple Island for the time being. We can discuss the objective after I am able to gather the resources necessary to run an evaluating test. Do you accept?"

Mako glances over at Lin; Tenzin resists the urge to do the same. He doesn't need her approval for this — it's his home, and he knows what he's doing. He can't read the thoughts behind the boy's eyes as they flick between the two adults who hold an infinite amount of power over him, can't follow what internal strife might be occurring in his head.

Then Mako shrugs, an abrupt, jerky motion. "Sure."

Lin Beifong throws her hands up in the air, and leaves the interrogation room. She can't be bothered to deal with this; it's five in the morning. She needs some fucking sleep.

my ao3 (but it's not posted there)

sorry this was a crack idea i had while practicing piano and i had to crank it out. i Might write a series of oneshots on this if i get too inspired lol (similar to what empty shores was supposed to be)

yes bolin is alive in this au, yes i have an unfortunate amount of ideas, yes i'm still writing my normal conceivable-to-complete fics.

if tenzin thought korra was hard to work with, he is going to have a blast with mako, who comes pre-packaged with fifty times more trauma that korra had when she pulled up to air temple island. (and is also prone to stealing, and running away, and murder as necessary, probably.) (this is going to be so terrible on all sides until it gets better!)

#lychee's word trash #mako lok #mako tlok #don't ask about the logic i don't want to think too hard about it #just a silly au that i thought up while reading some fic #feel free to ask me questions about it lolll #also!! finally started my lok rewatch!#i genuinely love korra so much she's so cute and sweet and batshit insane aughgdzhzchzcj #snowglobes don't shake on their own

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