Solivagant - (adj.) wandering alone
The scrapes of metal softly twist behind him, dull thunks of leather and wire sounding off with the slow curl of fingers - he can smell the gasoline gurgle out of the tank, beads of dark amber jumping into the froth of the wake behind them, white cutting over iron water. His brother doesn't want to live anymore.
Noatak remembers being seven years old, running towards Tarrlok as his little brother held the paring knife his father gave him over a crack in the ice - why does Dad always give you things, I want one too, if you come closer I'll - and the knife cuts through the water with a soft plop.
He knows he is going to die and his life slips from Tarrlok's fingers, an electric jolt into a sea of gas.
Part 1. Sahasrara
In the blast Noatak can feel something hit the crown of his head, heat spilling into the air until it burns the creaking leather of his uniform, exposed skin turning red until his body hits the surface of the ocean like pavement. He blacks out just as the waves blanket him in ice.
The constant press of the ocean against his neck has weighed down on him for years, buckling his knees and swallowing up his air like the clap of an ungloved hand paired with, good job, son. Now the cold frosts over the edges of his mind like the crystal glass of a windowpane in winter. It would be easy to keep his eyes shut, to stay in the home of his element and let his mind fester with the cold and give in.
The ocean rocks him back and forth, and Noatak struggles to open his eyes. The saltwater stings and stretched out below him is the dark of the ocean a thousand miles deep, shafts of pale light hanging still in the water as the bottom never quite turns pitch black. His mouth opens and a bubble of air escapes him, lifting to the surface. He has an escape.
He chases after it and his skin is met with the frozen mist hovering above the waves. There is nothing for miles, and even though he is the only living thing there he is insignificant against the endless stretches of water and sky.
Panic starts to spread as the water refuses to hold his body afloat and the air can't fill his lungs quick enough. The frost starts to creep to the edges of his limbs to render them useless when a patch of brown and blue catches his eye.
He swims towards Tarrlok, fingers threading through the water, propelling him forward.
—-
He bends them both to the shore of a dead winter stretch of dry, rocky beach. Trees claw out of the ground like skeleton hands, ashen with a faint layer of snow so thin that crunchy, straw grass stands brittle above it. There are no tracks of footprints.
He can breathe on the land so he exhales, shaky and puffing before his face in a white cloud that cuts into the air. He lifts a hand to crawl out of the ebb of the waves, and with it comes a slick, sticky red that glues long threads of hair to his fingers.
By his side Tarrlok is motionless and bleeding, burns stretching from the right side of his face up into his hair that falls away in thick, wet chunks. The snow around them both is pink like the smudged line of the horizon over the water, white caps on waves like the crests of bone that reveal themselves under the raw, fleshy wounds running across his brother's skin. Tangles of blue-black veins twist into charred edges and loose threads of clothing like broken ink lines lifted from paper, spilled into skin.
Sitting up makes Noatak's eyes flutter and roll to the back of his head as a new endless black tries to consume him, freeze his limbs from beyond his control, calling to him with the promise of rest. Instead he manages to wrap the ocean around his hands and lay them over his brother's wounds, fingers slipping against the ragged edges of skin, nails scraping over the soft wetness of bone. Tarrlok trembles, a brittle leaf caught in a storm.
The red cools to flaring pink and he convinces himself that it's enough; the water falls from his fingers as his head lands against the rocky snow.
Part 2: Ajna and Vishuddha
Pops of light flash behind his eyelids. The pain that spikes down from his forehead travels like a shoot of ice, water splintering ageless rock into thousands of tiny shards and pebbles, broken down into beads of sand.
Noatak opens his eyes, wincing as the pain drives down again, sharp and piercing his skin. He arcs his hand above his head and an annoyed screech follows the movement, something tangling in his hair.
He sits up with a start and with one hard pull on his hair, a crow flutters its oiled feathers and bounces against the beach. He watches it turn around, tangles of dark brown hair knotted around its talons, eyes dead pinpricks reflecting overcast light. The beak is grayed and the feathers shine like oil slicks.
It squawks at him and Noatak sinks his fingers into the snow and sand under his palms, wet and gritty, ready to throw and scare the bird off.
"Oh, you're up."
He jerks his head to the side and finds Tarrlok - the remains of him, the right half of his body nearly torn free from the frame of his bones. A shallow path in the sand shows where Tarrlok dragged himself from the water, high to the safety of the shore and away from the crash of the waves that have smoothed over the dip in the earth where his body used to lay.
The water may heal the beach but Noatak knows better as he scrambles to his feet, crashing to his knees at his brother's side.
"Don't bother," Tarrlok mutters as the water is wrapped around Noatak's hands again, tipping his head away, exposing the white line of his jaw and the half-healed pink skin stretched drum tight over his cheekbone.
Noatak turns the water cold enough to burn, pressing it harshly against Tarrlok's face.
"We can start anew," he seethes. He watches his brother grimace and twitch with pain. Tarrlok's body seizes up and Noatak runs his hands along his sides, peeling back the coat that grafted into skin. Tears slip from the corners of his little brother's eyes at the pain.
He glances away, eyes catching the shift of his skin under the glowing water binding his hands, stilling in the cold. Healing feels unnatural, to use the power in his hands to encourage the flow of blood rather than control it. Noatak mutters a quiet, "I'm sorry."
Tarrlok tilts his head up. "For what, exactly?"
His throat turns raw and throbbing as the lies that used to slip so easily from his mouth, like ribbons of miracle snake oil, sink their claws against the back of his tongue. A bead of blood drops from the tip of his nose and onto his hand from the warm line of red that bleeds from the wound on his forehead.
"For taking your bending," he says, and clears his throat as he chokes on the dust the words kick up in their wake.
Part 3: Anahata
Tarrlok stands sturdy on two feet. His clothing is in tatters and his hair falls across his face, the warped scars covering his body inflamed and beading with blood as he moves. He stands on the mangled remains of his right foot to prove to his older brother than he can walk on his own.
Noatak judges his posture with a frown, waiting to see the twitch of pain in the thigh, shoots of lightning striking across the body. It never comes and his scoff blooms from his mouth as a cloud.
"If you fall, I'm not going to be used as your crutch," he says and crosses his arms. His gaze never leaves Tarrlok's and instead of fear rolling dark grey over seaglass eyes, they remain dull and frosted. He turns on the heel of his mangled foot and starts into the woods, leaving Noatak's feet sunken in the wet grit of the pink snow.
Noatak strides forward and claps his chilled palm against the back of his brother's neck. Tarrlok freezes and Noatak lets his hand slip free, walking ahead with his hands clasping behind his back, leading the way into the thin bracket of dead trees.
—-
Pulses pump through the sharp air; earthbenders can feel life's vibrations through the dense earth, but blood runs thicker than dirt. In the dark Noatak can sense the mad dash heart of a rabbit. It takes a tight coil of nerves in his neck to bring the heartbeat into silence after a snap muffled by muscle and fur. He finds the rabbit body with his hands bringing it to his feet.
He walks the trail he cut into the mountain snow, the campsite burning far off in the middle of a flat landscape. He can see the breath before his face clearer than the touch of sky to land on the horizon.
The world had grown from a sparse forest and sandy beach into the deep snow of the North as they had left the coast, sloping high mountains speckled with midnight-blue shines of ice hidden under snow. The whisper of oil slick wings and metallic caws trailed with them from the walk to the beach into the mountains.
The crow now swoops in low arcs before Noatak, landing on the fresh promise of the trail he intends to carve, hopping the calligraphy of bird's prints into the snow.
At camp, Tarrlok stands at the edge of the halo of light the fire tosses across the snow, just as he had been standing before when Noatak left him. His hands dangle by his sides and his naked scars are bared to the cold, while Noatak hunches his shoulders to trap heat in his chest that flies free from his mouth each time he breathes.
"You can't cook without a fire," Noatak says, striding into the ring of warmth and tossing more dead twigs onto the flames. It spits and hisses with flares of embers catching smoke to ride into the sky, and Tarrlok inches back.
"I'm not hungry."
Noatak digs his knees into the snow as he crouches before the fire, knife in hand to slice under the soft belly skin of the rabbit. It twitches twice before he is finished, nicking at the slow dying nerves, and he can feel Tarrlok's eyes on him as he works.
The feeling unnerves him to the point where he sharply lifts his head, eyes narrowed at his brother. "You brought this fear of the fire upon yourself, now stop being a coward and sit before it."
"Amon should be the one afraid of fire," Tarrlok says without humor. He lifts his charred fingers to tap the hard scar on his cheek. "I think you are afraid of water."
Noatak stabs the skinned rabbit onto a spit, hanging it above the flames and drying his palms in the thick heat. The harsh wind bends the flames away from his skin, twisting and licking and dying against the snow. He quickly shifts to block the wind and feel it pound against his back to protect the flames he needs.
"Tarrlok," he says sharply. He sees his brother tilt his head to the side to show that he is paying attention. "Do you know where we are?"
Tarrlok tips his head back, looking out at the horizon before saying, "The North Pole."
Noatak snorts, shaking his head at the simplicity of the answer. "We are a few miles from our childhood home. Does the house still stand?"
"Mother still lives there."
The things Noatak convinced himself of years ago flood the forefront of his mind: this land is dead, it wipes away life, no one in the cold and wet can live because water is the element of change and lives struggle to still upon it. They are swept under from currents too strong to withstand. They foolishly dig their feet into the snow only for them to freeze in ice with quick death taking them.
His heart is running away from him, so he fits his hand under the loose flap of his uniform, pressing his palm to his chest. His throat is still raw from the beach when he clears it.
"Are - are you positive -"
"Yes," Tarrlok says.
He remembers receiving news of his father's death; the hollow cave-in of superiority falling against his heart, how Noatak picked up the festival mask that made Amon's face so that the press of silken ribbons curved around the back of his head, and not the crack-slap of distant memories echoing across the velvet skin of his neck.
His mother is still alive and he was wrong - the wind is kicked free from his chest, eyes wide and drying against the air.
"She will take care of us," Tarrlok says.
A tight laugh sings against the barrel of his chest like a coin tossed down a storm drain and he bites, "She could not care for us before," and evidence of the hot words billow up in the air.
Tarrlok says nothing, just stands at the ring of light still and unchanging. The wind slips through gaps in Noatak's ribs, hollowing out his chest, and his fingers habitually circle to recall the feel of silken ribbons, but all he can touch is the rough skin and fragile lift of his chest. It has become nearly impossible to breathe.
Part 4: Manipura
The world is a mask of red washed with black; heat tries to melt the ice of Noatak's skin but the dull wind still crawls over his cheekbones, nose twitching and numbing with pain as his skin shifts and squeals like ice floats colliding.
Waking is a challenge. His head hurts, and from the crown of his skull the heat of pain ebbs into his brain. The center of his forehead is still bumpy with the stabs from the crow the day previous, and now new pains form. His throat is raw and his chest can't expand enough for air, like his lungs are filled with a smoke that refuses to expel.
He struggles to open his eyes to see the sky on fire stretched above him.
Slowly he rises, hears the squawk of the crow to his right where he forced Tarrlok to sleep the night before (I'm not tired - like hell you're not), and the Northern snow is painted in thick brushstrokes of flames. Swooping valleys of golden yellow and flickering waves of orange, snowdrifts burning with the rosy red glow of morning embers.
Tarrlok is already awake, sitting in a hollowed out bowl of snow, watching the black bird hop before him. His legs are crossed and the backs of his hands rest against his knees, like he is inviting the crow to eat the skin from his palms.
Noatak watches for a moment, takes in the icy calm of Tarrlok's face, before sinking his hands into the snow near the embers of their fire to search for the remaining food from yesterday.
"When did you wake up?" Noatak asks. His frozen fingers clasp around something slick and jagged - rabbit meat.
"Before dawn."
Noatak nods and walks to him, placing a rabbit leg in his hand. The crow startles and angrily caws as it jumps away.
"Eat as we walk," he says, clapping a hand on his brother's bare shoulder. It is frozen, roughly smoothed with scars, like a crude cut of chilled meat. Dead and inhuman.
With horror flaring in his gut, he pulls his hand away and they start their journey home.
—-
The crow screeches behind them. Noatak looks up and sees the fast-moving clouds drift across the night sky, where the Northern lights twist; like fog drifting low between the gaps in buildings in the city, covering up neon lights, standing high above on a secluded rooftop, it will be safe for you again, Lieutenant, I assure you, hands clasped behind his back and stomach tight and control burning bright at his fingertips.
His mind has been slower lately, lazy with dreams that one day had been real, and his fatigue frustrates him.
Cold needles start to drive into his face and Noatak shakes away the memory of power, mind clearing to realize that a snowstorm has moved in.
He stops and turns, just barely seeing Tarrlok before the swirling snow drifts swallow him, one immobile pillar set against a flat stretch of tundra. It is just the pair of them and the tree brackets have disappeared long ago, leaving them with no food or shelter.
"Did you eat?" Noatak shouts above the wind.
Tarrlok shakes his head and Noatak nods; he'll have food, at least. He has no idea how long the storm will last or how many feet of snow will collect, and the cold sinks in his gut. He can feel snow frost over the bowl of his stomach, ice shooting out to freeze him, and an idea starts to burn through him to thaw it out.
The idea is repulsive. The spark of it turns to wildfire in seconds to rips apart his innards, and his hands flex to find something to control but not even Tarrlok's presence will quell him.
"We're making camp here," Noatak orders and sharply turns on his heel, hands lifting, palms flat.
He swoops his hands up in a curve and the snow before him hollows out into a cave.
"Tarrlok!" he calls over his shoulder. He stands ramrod straight at the mouth of the cave, one hand bent behind his back as the other sweeps forward, slipping easily into the role of a leader. "Get inside, now!"
His brother walks in, and Noatak turns with him, arms pulling upward to enclose them in the shelter. Tarrlok crosses his legs neatly, shoulders just grazing the snow, while Noatak collapses against the wall and curls in on himself, trying to draw warmth from his core.
It does not take long for the air to turn thin in the dark. There is not enough for the two of them, he knows; he also knows that he could simply flex his fingers to rip a mouth into the cave to keep his brother's breath from silencing. No steamy puffs of air billow before Tarrlok's face. A voice in the back of his mind tells him that this is the punishment Tarrlok gets for not listening to him, for not eating and not speaking when spoken to, for letting the crow follow them with wrinkled scraps of rabbit skin trailed in the fresh snow behind them.
He was once able to bend people to his will with words, to wrap pages of speeches around a thousand hearts like newspaper protecting fine porcelain. Now he has to resort to the wrathful touch of a god: a hand at the back of the neck, no longer joined with the peace of great purpose, but with Tarrlok, you are weak, again, work harder. His purpose now is to hide himself within the burden of his disease.
He must sit in the belly of the ice and snow as the fire in him dims and withers. It burns out like a candle with no wax, leaving a charred wick in its place. There are only wisps of smoke now.
Part 5: Swadhisthana
The pain he feels with is unbearable. Noatak keeps his eyes shut, waking from the violent shakes of his body, snow pressing at his back. All is dark and he can feel no heartbeat within the womb of his element.
He shivers and he can hear his throat working with the pain, escapes of animalistic whines slipping from his mouth. He cannot control himself here. There is no control of water because it is the element of change.
An ever-changing element is immortal, there is no spark of new age or death in smoke. It is to be feared like the spirits hidden behind their swaying veils like waves hiding the never ending deep below. Power rests in water and benders fool themselves with their graceful, brittle forms. Their influence is the same as a raindrop rippling the surface of the sea.
In the pit, drowning deep on land inside the snow, Noatak knows this: there is always someone bigger, stronger, scarier than himself that has no death. Ever constant and shifting in his mind as a reminder that it is a part of him, in his nails and skin and teeth, and in the reflection of a still puddle he can see his father looking back at him, this man and this element he is supposed to call home. He can wear a mask and drown without struggle but instinct and blood always comes first.
He jolts with the first breath of a drowning man, and finds Tarrlok awake.
He is accustomed to his brother's silence, so he starts to dig them out. His hands push and pull but never touch the snow.
Bending feels like the fast, deafening cracks of thick ice breaking, like when he was twelve, and their father stuck them on the ice, kicking it free to send them on a float, use your bending to survive on the ice for two full days, I will be waiting here.
He hits the surface and the palest beam of light reaches them.
"Tarrlok, follow me," he orders.
Tarrlok looks at him and does nothing more. Noatak leaves, confident with the thought that his brother must decide to go with him; he offers no other choice.
On the surface of the snow it is still dark. The sharp peaks of snow drifts have softened under the new blanket and the sky is iron grey. There are no shadows, no sparkles of light. Noatak tips his head back to spot the sun and finds another celestial body entirely, as if the first half of the sun is in shadow. It does not burn brightly but hangs at the center of the sky in a dulled, cool red.
Tarrlok sighs and Noatak starts, having not noticed that he was next to him.
"This looks like the land of the dead," Tarrlok says.
"What are you talking about?"
Tarrlok brings his head down and stares at his brother. "The world of the dead. The legends of our people. Father told us."
Noatak tightens his hands, tries to find a grip on the words because his mind is still dulled with pain. His inability to think straight angers him.
"He told us lies," Noatak says, and marches off to what he hopes is north. "Come, Tarrlok."
He cannot hear his brother's footsteps behind him, but he feels the weight of his brother's life heavy on his back. He does hear the flutter of wings and watches the crow swing low ahead of him, black feathers beating with life; not even a storm could keep the bird away.
—-
They travel for what feels like hours, and still the sun hangs in the dead center of the sky. It makes the weakened, slow pulse of pain in Noatak's head pound.
"Move!" he shouts. "Are you the sun, or not?"
"Arguing with the sun is pointless, Noatak," Tarrlok says behind him.
Noatak turns his head as he forges on, "I will argue with you then, for being so helpful. You think I'm idiotic enough to fight things out of my control?"
Tarrlok says nothing and it only serves to anger him further.
"You say nothing, you eat nothing, you hardly even breathe. What is your purpose, Tarrlok? Please, enlighten me, why do you follow me when clearly you would rather be dead?"
His words fly across the snow and echo back to him and he drinks in the thunderous roar of his own voice, like the feedback from a speech delivered over the radio. It floods him and he sighs, finding something to hold onto within the sounds that cut through the deafening silence.
When his voice fades away, it mixes with some new sound, low and rumbling.
Noatak turns and spots three wolves running towards him, bodies thinned to starvation and jaws snapping at the cold air, picking up the scent of blood as it rushes through his veins.
His first act is to lift his hands and send daggers of ice at the animals, and as he sends them flying he realizes his own betrayal of his ideals. Guilt sinks on him and the ice breaks, shards splintering in the air and skidding into the snow.
The wolves still close in and fear takes him, he moves his arms even as Amon screams in protest, and whatever walls of snow he could have made lift into powder that the wind steals.
A wolf sinks its teeth into his forearm, another in his thigh and he loses track of their bites as he falls into the snow.
"Tarrlok! What are you doing?" he screams, thrashing. "Tarrlok, help me!"
The pain stabs, hot wounds packed with snow and fur, teeth trying to hold onto bone to shatter. Noatak's mind floods with bending forms, this move will save your life, don't forget it, but each time he tries to lift his head and hands the wolves descend again. His fingers break inside of jaws and the power centered within him weakens.
As quickly as the attack began, one by one he can feel the teeth release him. Though the snow and blood in his eyes blurs his vision, he can see two of the wolves snap and growl. Tarrlok simply walks towards them and their ears flatten against their heads. They turn with yelps and run off, the third wolf bounding over his body and he can hear all three howl like a nail scratching metal.
He lies there and watches his breath hover above him, all thinned and nothing like the dense clouds from before the weakening of his lungs. The blood drains from him, he can feel its warmth bubble from punctured bite wounds, drag down his skin and cool in the air.
He is drowning again.
A network of red lines decorate his skin like bombed city streets, like the poor areas off the planned gridlock, where he recruited half his chosen brothers and sisters only to turn and destroy their homes. It was necessary sacrifice; Amon had to sacrifice his own flesh to birth the movement, now their own loss would nourish it.
And Noatak thinks of his plans to heal his forgotten utopia and lets his broken hands grip the snow, force it into his wounds as no healing glow encompasses his hand.
There is no ebb of tide within him. The hand at the back of his neck has lifted but it is just as bad to miss it than to carry the burden of death with him.
He remembers watching his Equalists come stumbling into the underground with blood slipping through the gaps in their fingers, tying gauze around falling flesh. They were useless to him injured but his tools could heal themselves with time.
He refuses to die when the weak can live.
He stands.
Part 6: Muladhara
He staggers through the snow, a foot deep and swallowing his calves until the gaps in his flesh fill with it, hot blood melting into pink water. He stops often to catch his breath and blink away the black spots that appear before his eyes, turning back to make sure Tarrlok still follows. He sees his brother move with ease while the footprints behind Noatak are red with his own blood, a scar across the land.
"Follow me," Noatak rasps, one hand sliding over the wound on his forearm. Blood drips down his fingers, black like ink, and he will write follow me across the ground of this land as he did the last.
The crow walks ahead of them both and Noatak hates it, hates the way it refuses to pick itself up and fly, choosing to walk across the soft flesh of the snow as if the bird owns it. He crashes his feet into the hatch mark prints. He would drown the bird, given the chance.
"I see home," Tarrlok says.
Noatak lifts his eyes from the crow, and in the valley of the snow drifts he sees the warming smoke of life crawling from rounded homes. It is a far cry from a city but he sees the potential; a new land for a new start and a new man he can become, one with scars earned from his battles. The old man was born in alleyways and in the jaws of the hungry, and the new will be born in blood and snow.
He steps forward and hears a harsh caw, the scratch of metallic black wings, and the crow lands just a foot in front of him.
All he can make out for eyes is the faint pinprick of grey reflection off black as it stares at him.
Noatak lifts his foot to step forward and the crow doesn't move.
He can only hear his own breath as his heart thunders. Waiting, with his foot hanging still in the air. Crows are fast and smart and will pluck the flesh from a half-dead man's head for food, and Noatak will kill it.
But the crow cries and lifts his wings before Noatak can move again, flying yards ahead to lead the way home once more.
Noatak bites his tongue until it bleeds and more hazy spots flood his vision.
—-
The sky grows lighter. The grey is less dark and is streaked with the pink of the halved sun like dawn behind a linen curtain. Home is tinted in rose.
Tarrlok walks beside him now and stumbles as Noatak does, their movements falling into tandem though Noatak's wounds breathe with blood and his lungs ache for air. Tarrlok is still quiet with no fog of warmth slipping from his mouth, his wounds smoothed over into freezing white marble.
Noatak is grateful for his brother at his side; if he falls, his younger brother will be there as his crutch. A brother made as something to lean against, as someone to lead.
"My first new follower," Noatak mutters as he writes speeches with blood in the snow. He thinks of fourteen and twelve years of hell and camping trips. "You did not follow me the first time but you will follow me now."
Home is there across a flat stretch of unmarked snow, where Noatak lifts his hand and finds the whole building no bigger than his nail as he thumbs over it on the distance.
The crow flies into the air and heads towards the small village. Noatak picks up his pace, lifting his feet as high as he can and the snow scatters across his body, but the exertion causes his breathing to grow heavier, his eyesight dimming.
Someone steps out of his childhood home, someone with a curved back bowed to grief and the weight of three men around her neck, someone with grey braids plaited with somber hands that nothing to hold anymore.
His mother brings a basket of blankets to the clothesline. The fabric crests, her back straightening as she billows them across the air on hands held high. The soft, melodic waves of the blankets wash her until she stands tall and resilient in her work.
"Tarrlok," Noatak breathes. He smiles. He aches but how could pain touch him now that he has found his beginning?
He hears no voice on the wind and Noatak turns to find no one is standing beside him.
He searches and Tarrlok is gone. All that Noatak can see is the single path his own feet cut into the snow, with no second set of prints marring his trail or walking beside it. Not even the memory of the crow's marks lie under the gashes he laid in his journey.
His head pounds again and he is no longer drowning; he will not have the luxury of water to soften the death of his brother, body washed along a beach and left to rot there.
He looks back at the village and wonders how to explain the absence of a brother, a son, a boy to his mother when he sees the crow sitting like a king on the house his mother lives in.
Then, through the dimming pinpoint his vision narrows to, a second crow joins it.
"Tarrlok?"
And the new crow screams yes across the mountains.
Noatak feels his eyes roll into his head, and his knees that once promised to lift the world shake until they give. He leans and hits the land on the small of his back, forcing out a wisp of air. The final pain travels up to loosen the notches of his spine, slips of cartilage and bone pulling free to drift on the wind, dust carried across the snow that swallows him whole.
He once had the eyes of a city upon him but not even his mother notices Noatak die.