Breaking Point

Mako is terrified.

It's a foreign emotion; he has been worried, furious, scared, and experienced about a thousand other convoluted emotions over the course of the last few weeks.

But this - this is a different kind of fear.

It's a terror that he can taste, bitter and acrid on his tongue, a terror that seizes him around the chest and wrings him dry. It's feeling control slip through his fingers like water. It's the knowledge of helplessness.

It's watching his parents fall, again and again.

Watching Korra fall.

Mako hears his blood pounding in his ears, the tips of his fingers, numbing his lips and blurring his vision. His feels his muscles shift and twist beneath his skin as Amon bears down on him, hears the creaking of bones.

Fight it, he's screaming, but the room is only filled with his own sounds of agony and the soft footsteps of a monster.

The world is fading, he's running out of air, and in a moment of suspension between consciousness and delirium, Mako think that this is just like learning lightning bending all over again - this struggling for control over his own body as the pain rips through him like a blade - and Mako inexplicably also thinks of Bolin, laughing at his older brother's strict self-discipline and stoic attitude, even throughout their life on the streets, even as it saved their lives so many times before.

Bolin, whom Mako will never see again. Bolin, Asami, Korra –

Korra.

This time, the wave of emotions that washes over him fills him with the heat of controlled rage and cold authority.

(It's just like learning lightning bending all over again.)

Fight it, fight him, you're better than this, move Mako MOVE –

There's a spark.

He feels his fingertips again.

Korra is terrified.

She knows this kind of fear. The fear of seeing Tenzin and the Airbending children tied and gagged to posts. The fear of never seeing the other half of Team Avatar again.

The fear for others.

And she can see it mirrored in Mako's amber eyes as Amon raises his hand for the final blow.

Something inside her clicks into place.

NO!

The funnel of wind that bursts from her fist drives Amon back with a yell of surprise, and stuns her into stillness.

Impossible, Amon hisses, and Korra thinks the same. Her hand looks no different, and she was certain she felt the other elements evaporating from her body, as fleeting as memories from the past lives she cannot recall.

Nothing has changed.

Except, something very obviously has; everything feels different. There is a sudden lightness of her body, a bizarre calmness and level-headed control Korra has never before experienced in the face of fear.

Enlightenment.

I can Airbend!

And then she's volleying gale after gale at the monstrous, masked entity that has haunted her dreams for so long, but is now finally reduced to the human that he is.

And when Amon seizes her blood once more, the fear stabs her gut once more, although this time it's different too; sharp but momentary, and it may have been the adrenaline, or the patience she has cultivated so carefully for the last few months, or even this newfound self-control, but Korra realizes, and Korra understands.

She is no longer afraid.

Oh. No. You. DON'T.

With that, the last traces of pressure in her muscles lifts suddenly as the Bloodbending fails, and so she throws her entire being into the last attack, blowing away the whole wall and taking Amon with it.

As light floods the corridor, Korra thinks she hears a voice, familiar and nostalgic, though it may have been the wind.

That's my girl.

End.

A/N: I personally saw the scenes of Mako and Korra breaking Amon's bloodbending to reflect more on their characters and development rather than just another deus-ex machine plot device.

But I also happen to read way too much into, like, everything. So.