He works hours longer than he needs to, hours longer than he should. Hunched over his desk, a single lamplight burning like a beacon in an epty ocean, he buries himself in work. His superior officers eye him oddly, one mutters supercop under his breath while passing on his way out. Mako ignores it, ignores the crick in his neck, the blurry exhaustion of days without sleep, the feverish burning of an over abundance of thought. It's not enough to blunt the pain. It never ever is.

It's been weeks. Days and days and countless hours, but the burning shame never dies. It's a burden, a shadow, a fiery torment he can't escape. Korra is dead and the last time he saw her she was fleeing in tears. From him. She probably died unhappy, abandoned. It's his fault. It'll always be and he can't, won't forget it.

Bei Fong kicks him out near one (she's worse about staying late than he is, but ten times higher up on the work hierarchy than he is). He gets takeout for Bolin, who won't be home. Maybe this is wishful thinking, he tells himself, that maybe enough wasted takeout will wish his brother home.

Bolin hasn't been home since the night of the break up (i can't speak to you right now quickly turned into where were you?! she needed you and you left her!). Mako buys cartons and cartons of things that nobody will eat. He trudges home.

The apartment is clean. Too clean (sometimes, when he can't stomach the thought of sleeping in this empty home alone he just scrubs and scrubs the floors, the walls, the dishes as if enough soap and pain will wash away the guilt). He loses himself in hanging his coat, ironing his trousers, folding the laundry again and again and again until it's perfect. Then he stares out the window until sunrise, makes breakfast for two and dumps half in the trash.

He thinks of starving as a child, of Bolin starving as a small green-eyed boy. He shouldn't waste food and yet Mako doesn't know how to make just enough for one. The thought makes his head hurt and so he leaves for work.

Mako stops for coffee and still forgets that Korra doesn't like black and that he's only buying for one now. There won't be a pretty watertribe girl waiting at the corner on polarbeardog back. There won't be strong capable hands to take one coffee, pull him up behind her. She won't sip her drink, wrinkle her nose, and decide that his must taste better (except that he drinks his blacker than koh). Mako thinks of Naga's smell and the feel of Korra's waist beneath his arm.

How strange that weeks ago she was here, real and tangible and stressed and tired, yet alive and vibrant and just Korra, but today Mako is just a confused cop with one coffee too many in his hands.

He chokes on a sob and wishes he'd died with her.