Notes: the first installment of a multi-chapter fic about Mako and Bolin's childhoods! Each chapter will be one year of their lives, but this first part is just memories they mostly share of their life with their parents.

Mako's first memory was of his parents tucking him into bed.

He could remember reaching up towards his father with his small hands, sitting on the kitchen floor for whatever reason. He was laughing and so was his father, while his mother blew out the lights. He could remember a time before electricity came to their neighborhood.

His father bent down - he was impossibly tall, a giant - picked him up from under his arms and settled him over his shoulder.

"Like a sack of potatoes," his father boomed, rocking him back and forth while Mako shrieked with a laugh.

"Honey, stop, you'll scare him."

"Aw, he's fine."

His father started walking down the hall and up the short, steep staircase. This did scare Mako, as it felt like he was falling backwards over his father's shoulder, his arms dangling. It was a strange sense of vertigo to be traveling up while the ground below tipped down. His father moved up with a flame in his free hand, making the downstairs half of their apartment disappear into a black abyss. The stuff of nightmares.

It stopped being terrifying when his mother fell into line behind them, holding a candle and smiling up at him with her round green eyes.

In the hospital when his little brother was born, he was free to wander around as he pleased. His father was busy talking to nurses about taking care of the baby while his mother took a bath.

Mako wasn't jealous yet. He was interested in the glass I.V. drip suspended from a metal pole on wheels, the brand new radio on the bedside table, the flowers his father brought in laying forgotten on top of a tray that housed various surgical knives and utensils. The radio spouted off a drama and Mako grimaced as the romantic leads started kissing.

He crawled onto his mother's hospital bed, careful to not let the soles of his shoes track dirt onto the clean, white sheets. A complimentary bar of soap was resting on her abandoned pillow, wrapped in wax paper and sealed with a sticker.

Mako held it, took the sticker off, and pressed it to the center of his shirt front.

Nurses and doctors walked into the room on occasion, one even shutting off the radio, another wheeling away the tray with surgical tools, but no one paid Mako any mind.

He loved his little brother, but that didn't mean he had to enjoy every second with him.

Their father was at work and their mother was visiting another apartment to make use of a neighbor's loom. Mako was in charge.

He stood and leaned against the side of his brother's playpen. Bolin was wailing up at him, round face red and shining wet with snot and tears, the white pop of his first tooth visible through his gums. Mako watched him with curiosity.

Bolin stood up and lifted his arms to his older brother, still crying, opening and closing his hands to beg to be taken out of the playpen.

Mako, always tall for his age, climbed over the wall of the playpen to get inside.

He stood and looked at Bolin. His little brother's loud sobs stilled, eyes still gleaming with tears and rolling down his fat cheeks.

Then Mako climbed right back out just to show Bolin that he was bigger and taller and better at getting out of playpens than he'd ever be.

Bolin started crying again.

By the time Bolin was a year old, Mako's jealousy started sinking in. It was all, look he's walking, he's saying Mama! and Mako really didn't understand why these things were special. He could do both already.

He had felt Bolin crawl out of their shared bed, thumping his feet to the floor and leaving the room. Mako stayed still and pretended to be asleep.

Moments later he heard the door to his parents' bedroom open, and coos following at the sight of Bolin toddling into the room.

He rolled onto his back and opened his eyes, seeing nothing but pitch black in the small bedroom. There were no windows, no source of light; they had to feel around in the dark. Mako could see why his brother would leave the room. Even he was frightened.

Darkness like that was tangible. Nothing could be so solid and black without existing, of having some mark on the world. But that made it all the more frightening. The dark didn't exist, not really, and usually Mako would turn to his father to ward it off.

But now his father and mother were preoccupied with Bolin.

Mako cupped his hands together and thought of warmth and light, breathing in and out with low breaths like he was still asleep.

The flame appeared to burn above his hands slow and steady. The dark was gone and Mako could see his hands, his arms, his body safely tucked into bed all cast in burnt orange light.

Careful to not disrupt the flames, he followed the path Bolin had made before him. He pushed open his parents bedroom door to find Bolin held in the air by his father, everyone laughing.

The laughter stopped when Mako lifted his hands higher.

"Mom, Dad, look."

"We'll send him to one of those schools on Netsu Ave," his mother said.

Mako sat on the kitchen floor and tossed flames from his left hand into his right. He was trying to teach himself to juggle.

"School? We're not sending him to a school, I'll teach him," his father replied, seated at the kitchen table.

"You don't have the time for it."

"My father taught me."

"I learned from a school, it's perfectly normal."

"Can we talk about this later?"

Mako started juggling two balls of flames from one hand to the next, creating a high reaching arch above his head.

"At this rate," his mother said, pursing her lips in distaste as the flames reached her height. "He might be able to teach himself."

Mako and Bolin sat on their father's lap awkwardly, leaning over the kitchen table and staring down at the newspaper. Bolin pat his hand at the text on the right page, gurgling and pretending to read.

The grey photograph of a pudgy girl, standing before a hut made out of snow, glared back at Mako. Her eyes were so light that the lense of the camera couldn't capture the right shade of blue, instead turning it to a boring, dull grey. She was barefoot and standing in the snow. She challenged the world with her fist extended and bottom lip jutting with a pout.

"That's her," their mother said, leaning behind her three boys, pointing out the image for Bolin's sake. "That's our Avatar."

Mako didn't care about the Avatar or Korra or that weird girl in the photographs, whose name they spouted over the radio all day.

His father had the day off from work and they had dinner with their neighbors, the evening turning into a loud, raucous celebration. The Avatar had been found and Mako got to spend the day with his family because of it.

The first day of the summer solstice was the biggest holiday their family celebrated, right next to the spring solstice. Mako preferred the summer.

People like his father - with amber eyes and red shirts - would pull out blood red flags and hang them from their apartment windows. Emblazoned on the front were yellow saffron flames. Not everybody in their neighborhood put out these flags.

"Why do we have flags but other people don't?" Mako asked.

His mother leaned out their window, tying the tattered corners of their flag to the windowsill. She pulled her head back in and smiled down at him, holding out her free hand while the other held the flag in place.

Mako turned to Bolin at his side. Bolin handed him a piece of ribbon, which Mako handed to their mother.

"Daddy's family was from the Fire Nation. Fire Nation people celebrate the summer solstice."

"Oh," Mako said. "And we celah-celah-braid-"

"Celebrate."

"We celebrate the spring solstice, too."

"Yes," his mother pulled out of the window and stood, smiling down at the flag. Mako could see the wind lift it and billow into his view. "Because my family was from the Earth Kingdom."

"But not everybody celebrates both."

His mother looked down at him with a sad smile. "That's right."

The summer solstice meant fireworks in the streets and his father would take him into Huangse Town, to the butcher shop there to buy a suckling pig. The people in Huangse Town knew how to celebrate the summer solstice.

Everything was dripping with red and gold and orange and yellow. People dressed in grand silk robes and family heirloom jewelry from the old country. Mako clung close to his father's legs when a line of people would come by dressed as a dragon, puppet mouth clapping open and shut, sparkling eyelids flickering as it zeroed in on him.

His mother would roast the pig until it came out of the oven with crispy, caramelized skin. It was the biggest meal they had all year.

The spring solstice was more calm. His mother would take him and Bolin down to Little Wugou neighborhood, where the streets were lined in carts full of flowers and sweet desserts. Perfume filled the air along with stray flower petals. There was light candies and sweets outside every corner shop, where people dressed in jade green with elaborate jeweled ornaments.

It was nice, until a shop owner looked into Mako's amber eyes and tossed him the meanest look he had ever seen.

His mother, in response, shifted her foot across the ground and knocked over an entire display of red bean cakes, grabbed her boys by their wrists, and quickly fled the store.

After that year, his mother didn't take him to Little Wugou anymore.

"We celebrate the spring solstice to honor children," his mother said before every spring solstice meal.

The meals were more simple, seasonal dishes, quick to cook and even quicker to eat. There were stir fried vegetables, wiggling blocks of tofu, fresh salads with purple flowers speckled among the green. Even though he wasn't supposed to be eating while his mother said thanks, Bolin shoveled cold buckwheat noodles into his mouth with his pudgy hands.

"Boys," his mother said, grabbing their attention. They looked to her and she smiled. "Here, at this part in the festivities, the oldest person in the family hands the youngest a garland of flowers."

Their father handed Bolin a long string of yellow marigolds. Before his dirty hands could clasp around them, Mako reached out and brushed the rest of the noodles from his fingers.

The garland was wrapped around Bolin's neck and he wore it for the rest of the day, even as he plucked out bunches of petals and ran around with the neighborhood kids outside.

Everyone had big families. Mako didn't have a big family. It was him, his mother, his father, and his brother.

The neighbors across the hall had the biggest family Mako had ever seen. Each day it felt like new family members were arriving with strange blue bags and white furs strapped to their backs. Their father would remark, another WOP is living next door. Let's hope this one smells better.

Miss Una lived across the hall, the woman of the house. She had five children and often babysat Mako and Bolin when their parents were busy. She was one of the most beautiful women anyone had ever seen: despite her tattered clothing, she always dressed nicely, twisting her hair into intricate braids.

Mako and Bolin were always introduced to the new family members each time they stayed. Everyone was a cousin, everyone slept cramped in twin beds, even squished on the floor. Babies slept in the kitchen drawers pulled out to make makeshift beds. Everyone had blue eyes.

Their father's eyes were amber. Their mother's were green. No one else had both like Mako and Bolin did.

Everyone had big families.

Mako and Bolin didn't have grandparents with green eyes or uncles with amber. There were no aunts or cousins. It was odd.

By the time Bolin was five, and still not bending anything, their father was convinced he was a nonbender.

"We were all early benders in my family," his father said, bouncing Bolin on his knee. Bolin laughed and laughed, not caring about the topic of conversation.

Mako sat on a chair and kept extending his thumb up and down, similar to the way he had seen the Water Tribe men in Miss Una's apartment flick their steel lighters on and off. A flame burned at the end of his thumb, then died away, then came back, then died away.

"I still think he has it in him," his mother said from her seat on the couch. She was stitching up their father's finest shirt. He had a job interview tomorrow.

Their father spun Bolin around, still giggling, and tickled him at his sides. Bolin shrieked with joy.

"Can you bend, Bolin?" he asked.

"D-da-daddy, stop!" he said through his laughter.

Their father laughed and stilled his fingers. Bolin instantly moved forward and latched onto his neck, burying his face into the red scarf wound there, snorting with the last of his giggles. His father relaxed, smoothly patting his back.

"Well, at least he'll grow up in Dragon Flats," their father said. "He was born in the right place."

The kids in the neighborhood played with Bolin more than Mako.

Mako was never one to make friends as quickly as Bolin did; not only was he never very good at it, he also felt little inclination to. He was one of the few kids stuck at an odd age in their neighborhood, too young to roam with the older kids, and too old to consider being friends with anyone Bolin's age. He usually relied on playing with Bolin's new friends whenever a game had been started, slipping in when there was no need for introductions or that terrible, timid question of, "doyouwanttobefriends?"

When Mako did try, he waited. He played by himself and when other kids would edge near, he would extend an invitation to play.

After a while, it was rare that kids would edge near.

"I don't think your friends like me," Mako whispered to Bolin one day, standing close to each other in a line-up to be divided into teams for a game of kickball.

"Yeah they do! E'rybody likes you, Mako," Bolin said back, smile gapped with missing teeth but still bright and never broken.

There was an odd number of kids. Mako felt his palms sweat and itch with heat by his sides as it came down to him and the boy one block down who had suffered from polio, and had limited use of his legs.

They picked the other boy and told Mako that it would be unfair to have him on a team.

"Yeah," one girl said. "It'd be uneven and you already got something we don't."

"What?" Mako asked quietly.

"You're a firebender."

After that, it made sense to Mako why his father trained him in the alley beside their house after the sun went down.

When one of Mako's attempts at throwing fire ran astray, catching on the garbage spilling from an unlidded trashcan, he stumbled back with fear and accidentally controlled the flames to grow higher.

His father was right behind him, placing a calming hand on his shoulder, breathing deeply. The flames died as he exhaled.

Mako felt like a failure. He sunk to the ground and curled his arms around his bent knees, hiding his head even as his father asked him what was wrong.

"I don't wanna do that again," Mako mumbled, sniffling.

"You don't want to firebend again?"

"No, I don't -" Mako paused and wondered what he wanted. Without knowing, he kept silent. It was always easier than answering.

"Mako, look at me."

It took his father's hand at his shoulder to finally bring his head up. He saw flames dancing in his father's palm, warm and comforting as always. Pulsing with movement and heat from the heart of him, sparked in the air and pushing out into the world. It was light in the dark when the electricity died and heat in the winter when the radiator broke.

"Fire is life, Mako. You hold it in your hands every time you bend. Remember that."

Mako held out his cupped hands and allowed his father to give him the flames. They stuttered with a pulse.

He didn't understand what his father meant, but he felt better.

Whenever his parents fought, Mako knew it was about their parents. The grandparents he never knew.

When a fight would spark, his mother would tell the boys to go to bed. No matter what time of day too, but Mako saw the way the dirt on the floor hovered in the air and knew better than to question her.

"I can't believe you asked your mother for money."

"I had to, we have two boys to feed!"

"What did you tell her this time? That I can't hold down a job because of my weak knee? Or is it some new lie?"

"I didn't lie, I told her the truth!"

"And what did she say, about our boys? Does she want to see her grandchildren now? Or wait another seven years?"

Mako and Bolin would tug the blankets from their bed to create a fort, crawl underneath the bed frame, and hide in the dark. Even though he wasn't allowed to firebend around Bolin, he did so anyway, creating enough light to let Bolin make shadow puppets with his fingers against the underside of their bed.

Their mother had a surname. She was always called Ms. Wen, as if everyone knew her already. She would laugh and correct them, asking to be called by her first name alone, but no one ever did. Sometimes people would refer to the boys as Mako Wen and Bolin Wen but his mother would correct them, too.

"Oh, no, no surname for the boys," she said, with a tight lipped smile.

They rarely saw her bend. Their father always remarked that her talents were great, but all they ever saw was her stripping dirt from the floors, closing her hands into tight fists and tugging dust from the rugs.

She was all contrasts. A soft voice and round face, oval, green eyes, thick black hair. She moved with grace and, on occasion, wore fine jewelry for special events, or for no reason at all. She took pride in the cleaning of her home, her own appearance, and the boys' clothing.

But she had rough hands. She walked barefoot wherever she went, tugging on a spare pair of black slippers before stepping into stores. While she painted her face, her fingernails stayed unadorned, dirt visible under them. People stared when they noticed her dirty fingers. Mako didn't like that.

He also didn't like it when people instantly knew Bolin was her son, but stared at Mako as if they had no idea where he came from.

"This is my first son," his mother would always say with pride, running her hand over his short hair. He would lean into her touch and press against her legs like Bolin did.

Once Mako woke from a nap to find a strange old woman sitting at their kitchen table, talking to their mother.

"I can't believe you live here, Nuan," she said, looking around the room with distaste.

His mother continued vigorously cleaning the dishes. "Maybe I wouldn't have to if you got over your hatred."

"Maybe I would not have this hatred if it were not for your stubborn disobedience."

His mother tossed her cleaning rag into the sink, soapy water splashing up and wetting the front of her dress. She spun around and glared at the woman.

"I cannot believe you still think my marriage is based on spite," she shouted.

The woman jerked her head around nervously, eyes darting back to the living room. Mako noticed her eyes were green. Exactly the same shade as his mother's. As his brother's.

"Mind your temper," the old woman hissed. "I don't want to wake the children."

"Get out."

His father always came home from work, no matter what job he had, sweaty and smelling like smoke. He would hug his mother despite her playful yells of protest, don't, don't hug me, you reak! and the boys would laugh until he engulfed them in smelly hugs.

"If I could just perfect my lightningbending, I could get a steady job at the plant," he sighed, leaning back on the couch.

"If you can find the time to practice, it would be a great idea," their mother said softly, wiping his brow with a wet cloth.

His father jerked his head up and kissed her chin. "Nah. I'd rather train Mako."

Sometimes his father would come home with surprise gifts. Mako was always excited but partially guilty whenever receiving them, because his mother seemed torn between acceptance and refusal.

Once his father snuck into the apartment, pressing his finger to his lips to quiet the giddy boys at the kitchen table, creeping up behind their mother at the sink. In between his fingers was a simple, but beautiful, gold necklace.

"I got you something," he said calmly and the boys erupted with laughter when their mother dropped a plate to the floor in shock.

"Don't scare me like that -!" she spun around, eyes wide but trying to move past her shock to scold him.

Their father smiled and held the necklace out to her between his fingers. "Aw, you can't stay mad at me for long, can you?"

Their mother's mouth closed. She blinked and stared at the necklace, wanting to touch it, but holding back and frowning when she met their father's eyes.

"Where did you get that?"

Their father's smile never faltered. "It's just a little gift. Go on, let me put it on you."

"How much did it cost?"

"Honey, I bought it, it's taken care of. Now, please," he said, pressing a kiss to her temple. "A neck as pretty as yours should have something pretty around it."

She sighed and smiled, spinning around and lifting her hair from her neck.

Mako attended to the local school when a man in a fancy suit came to the door to tell his mother that he wasn't getting a proper education under her roof.

His mother tripped the man on the way out the door but two days later, Mako was attending the small school up the street where few kids attended. On his first day, the class attendance was fifteen children. By the end of the week it had whittled down to seven on a good day.

The girl he sat next to with grey blue eyes started wearing longer sleeves and brushing her hair over her eyes. Mako leaned forward to try and get a better look at her, not only because of her new appearance, but also because he thought she was pretty.

"Mako, stop staring a Suha and finish your work," the teacher chided.

Mako blushed and the girl instantly turned her face to look at him, shocked. Her right eye was puffy and mottled black and blue.

At recess he found out that her father got angry sometimes. There were more bruises on her arms and legs.

"What's your Dad like?" she asked, scraping her fingers in the dirt.

Mako did the same, drawing nonsensical patterns there. "He's like me."

She giggled. "Does he have a job? Mine doesn't."

Mako nodded. "Yeah. He got a new job at Ryouta's."

"The restuarant?"

"Uh huh."

"He's a firebender?"

Mako smiled and nodded again, watching his finger bump against small rocks as it dragged in the earth. "Yup. Like me."

Suha stood up and ran across the yard. Mako sat and watched the long sleeves flap in the wind like useless wings at her sides.

Mako and Bolin sat in front of the radio and gazed up at it in silent awe, their parents together on the couch, watching with amusement.

"...and the Owlcat's move into Gorillagoat territory and - oh, there goes the buzzer folks, this round goes to the Owlcat's!"

Bolin stood to cheer, tumbling over Mako's back but he didn't mind. He was just too happy that the team they had been rooting for was winning, and turned around to playfully wrestle with his brother.

"Boys, no fighting!" Their mother called.

"Aw, they're just having fun, relax," their father said.

"No, Bolin might hit his head on the coffee table."

Their father sighed. "Fine. Boys!"

The brothers froze and Mako broke the weak headlock Bolin had tried to put him in. The match continued but their father now held their attention.

"What do you say to going to a pro-bending match?"

The wrestling continued with more fervor and even louder shouts of excitement, causing their mother to roll her eyes and their father to laugh.

"We don't have the money," she hissed.

"I'll save up."

Mako and Bolin watched the jar on the kitchen counter, labeled Pro-bending Fund, rise with metal coins and the rare paper yuan and fall.

"Not this season," their mother would sigh, dipping her hand into the jar to scrape up the last of the coins. "Did you have to get their hopes up?"

Their father ignored her and leaned close. "I will get you boys into that arena, mark my words."

On their first trip to the movies, Mako and Bolin both kept running ahead of their parents, the air crackling with the promise of something new. Their parents kept yelling for them to stop, wait, and catch up.

It got to the point where their father was so annoyed that he tugged his scarf from his neck and knelt down, motioning for the boys to come close.

He looped the scarf around their shoulders and tied the ends into a thick, special knot.

"There," he said, roughly patting them both on the shoulders, accidentally knocking them together. "Now you won't get separated."

"Dad," Mako whined as Bolin tried to run off, effectively choking him.

His father stood with a shrug, his mother leaning into his side with a smile. "Hey, you knuckleheads are the ones that keep running off. At least now I know you'll have each other when you get lost. Or abducted by evil spirits."

He and Bolin still ran ahead, Bolin out of excitement, and Mako partially out of spite. They moved in tandem and were impatiently waiting at the box office when their parents slowly met up with them.

At least when one brother awoke in the middle of the night, or had difficulty sleeping, the other was there to talk to.

Mako liked to burrow under the blankets, shifting them until a small cave was formed that consisted only of the brothers. It was always too dark in their room to see anything: they relied on sight and sound and memory to move about the room, to find each other.

Mako held the back of his hand against the mattress and sparked the smallest flame he could manage, no smaller than the flickering of a candle. Bolin's face lit up with the dull orange light. He relied on Mako's bending to create warmth and light just as both boys relied on their father to bring them the same.

"Fire is life, Bolin," Mako whispered.

Bolin's fingers uncurled to reach for the flame, and Mako closed his fist quickly to snuff it out. Only when he heard Bolin's fingers softly move against the sheets, tucking them back against his chest, did he relight the flame. Ages ago, the blanket caught on fire and while Bolin scrambled away in silent horror, Mako remained calm as his father had caught him, and with a steady hand the fire had died under his control.

Bolin's eyes flickered with the movement of the flame. "What's earth?"

"Huh?"

"If fire is life, what's earth?"

Mako shrugged. Earth was dust and specks his mother tossed out of the house. Earth was sometimes, but not always, raised to trip up people in the streets that were rude to his mother. Sometimes it was makeshift bowls and spoons, or formed into delicate structures of animals and buildings in the park, all made by their mother's hands for entertainment.

"Earth is Mom," Mako decided.

Bolin nodded, eyes never leaving the flame. "And fire is Daddy, too."

"Yeah."

"So we're both."

Mako was silent. He wasn't sure if he liked being both yet.

"We're the only people that are both," Bolin continued.

He shrugged. "The only people that we know."

"We're Fire and Earth."

Mako thought of his mother. Of his father. Of what their elements meant and how much he loved them and his brother.

"Yeah," Mako said. "We're both."