The nightmares weren't as bad as the timing.

On the Island in her stone locked room, Korra could thrash and scream and cry without anyone ever finding out which is how Korra preferred it when she woke up thrashing, screaming and crying. But here, in the attic loft apartment of the bending brothers the thrashing and the screaming have not gone unnoticed. The crying however has yet to take place since she vehemently refuses to cry anywhere near Mako simply because it would feel an awful lot like failure.

And she hates failure.

So instead she hugs her knees to her chest, the blanket they gave her pooling around her on the orange futon, staring out the window and pretending she doesn't feel his presence in the room. He sighs when she refuses to acknowledge him and despite looking out over the bay at Air Temple Island she gets a clear vision of him rubbing a hand over his tired eyes in exasperation. Ever the tactician, Mako tries another approach. The I'm-going-to-comfort-you-and-you're-going-to-deal-with-it approach. More commonly known as the Korra approach. He plunks himself down next to her, letting his arms rest along the back of the couch, making it incredibly difficult to ignore him. He follows her gaze out over the dark water.

"Do you have a good reason for waking me up Avatar or…?"

"It was just a dream," she whispers, but it sounds as if she's trying to convince herself more than him.

"Sounded like a nightmare."

She looks up at him in the dim light of a dead night full of stars and a quarter of the moon. Her eyes are dry but there is something vulnerable in her face that he has never seen before. It startles him and his eyebrows gravitate upward.

"You wanna talk about it?" he offers without thinking.

She slumps into him, tucking neatly under his arm. It reminds him too much of the morning in the park and turns his insides to jelly and sends a blush crawling up his neck. He's thankful for the darkness.

"It was weird," she breathes, no longer facing the window but still hugging her knees, "Scary but weird."

Mako waits, knowing the difference between the Korra that is collecting her thoughts and the Korra that is waiting for him to speak.

"It's always someone. Tenzin, Katara, the kids, my parents or Bolin," she takes a breath to stall, "I'm there and I'm watching but I can't move or talk or anything and Amon just presses his thumb to their foreheads and sucks all the life right out of them. And I can't do anything."

"That must be especially hard for you since you're never not doing something."

"Ignoring that," she grumbles dryly. Before continuing, she curls into herself and looks suddenly very fragile.

"This time it was you."

Mako feels the weight of this fact heavy on his chest. He moves his arm from the back of the couch to her shoulder.

"And?"

"Well, he killed you obviously!," she exclaims throwing out her hand in a wild gesture of impatience, "Then he took off his stupid mask and he was you. Which was weird. Then you or Amon, I guess, gave me the usual spiel about how he's going to destroy me, yadda yadda and he went to take away my bending and I woke up."

Mako let this sink into the crevices of his grey matter before interrupting the accumulated silence.

"Well, I'm here. Alive and not Amon," he said softly.

"Your attempts at comfort are pathetic," she replies, slipping an arm over his stomach. He scoffs.

"As if you could do much better."

"Irrelevant," she whispers mushing her cheek into his chest, digging for a heartbeat. He chuckles and she relishes the safe gravelly sound. His fingers brush down her arm, unsure what to do with so much of her all at once. As she's drifting off, Mako thinks he hears a soft, sleep tainted "Thank you."

But he dismisses it almost immediately because this is Korra, who thanks people about as often as she apologizes—which is to say—never. He let his fingers trail through her hair because she is out like a light and her unconsciousness makes him brave.

Mako is a caretaker. He knows sacrifice, he knows how to do without, he knows how his priorities will inevitably fall. He knows he will always do whatever it takes to take care of those he loves. He's always been the one to fall back on; never has he looked to anyone but himself for salvation, for help.

But this crazy girl burns holes in everything the world has made him.

He finds himself looking to her in times of need and, more often than not, he finds her looking back. Mako just doesn't know when he became so important to the Avatar that her subconscious finds it relevant to use him as a bargaining piece. Nor does he know when he started loving this precious thing that wakes him up in the middle of the night to the sound of his name caught in her throat.