Patient #1002

Premise: In the real world, Korra is suffering from insanity, under the care of Dr. Noatak. She escapes this reality by falling into a delusional world in which she is the Avatar… an Avatar that is shocked to find that her former enemy is alive. This is an Amon x Korra (Amorra) fic.

The Legend of Korra and Avatar: The Last Airbender belong to Bryke; I own nothing.

Takes place after Book 1. Passages in italics take place in the hospital; all other action is in the world of Republic City.

The sound of the soles of his shoes against the cool, white tile beneath them almost made Dr. Noatak wince with each step. It was too early; the lights were too bright. He had not gotten enough sleep the night before due to his flight running late.

'The morning is evil, indeed,' he thought.

Focusing on the painful noise of his footsteps had almost caused him to miss his destination. He halted abruptly in front of the door, blinking at the room number, making sure it matched the number printed on the sheet on his clipboard. Of course it was the same; it was not like a week away would change the location of this room in the hospital. With his clipboard held firmly, and a slight adjustment to his coat, he entered his PIN into the dial beside the door. Hearing the affirming beep and the click of the lock being released, he turned the handle and opened the door.

If it were possible, the room that Dr. Noatak walked into was even brighter than the hallway. He squinted against the lights, waiting for his eyes to adjust. He took in the room- a bed, a chair, a sink with a cup sitting on top of it. There had once been a mirror above the sink, but the staff had found it necessary to remove it soon after the patient's arrival; well, remove what was left of it. The frequently-repainted white walls of the room told no stories of the events that transpired here. Dr. Noatak noticed that a new coat of paint had been applied during his absence.

Patient #1002 was still sleeping, but his arrival had caused her to begin to wake. Brown limbs twisted in sterile white sheets as her head rose from the pillow, her dark brown hair splayed out around her. She blinked against the light, much as Dr. Noatak had done just a few moments before. Her eyes fell onto him, empty until they gradually found focus. Recognizing and registering the doctor's presence, the patient jolted back and let out a hiss.

"Hello, Korra. How have you been?" Dr. Noatak pulled the chair over next to the bed, sitting on it without taking his eyes off of the patient.

"Amon! What are you doing here? You died!" Her face twisted up in a mix of anger and confusion.

"Korra, I told you- It's Dr. Noatak, and I had a conference to attend. Not to mention that it was probably for the best, considering how our session ended the last time I saw you."

"I had to put an end to your horrible plans!"

"You tried to push me out the window. It wasn't the best way to part."

"You were bloodbending Mako."

"There is no Mako."

Korra choked out a high-pitched sob and curled into the fetal position, getting tangled in the sheets once more as she drew her arms around her legs. "There is a Mako- and he loves me! He chose me!" She twisted her head to bury it in her pillow.

Dr. Noatak sat and watched. He briefly contemplated returning her stuffed shark to her, the toy named "Mako" that she had developed an unhealthy attachment towards. He decided that it was best not to. The hospital staff had decided it would be beneficial to take it from her when a nurse had come in one morning and had found it hanging from the overhead light by the red scarf around its neck. "He didn't want me," Korra had said. "He chose Asami." Asami - Korra's childhood friend who had visited only once; her friend who had called the toy "cute" and had given it a hug, not knowing that Korra would have an adverse reaction.

Dr. Noatak momentarily turned his attention to his clipboard. He needed to change her dosage again. "Korra, I'm going to up your medication. This may make you more tired than you have been, but I believe there will be positive results. Korra? Are you listening?"

The teenage girl remained with her face buried, continuing her mutterings about Mako's love for her. She was not in the present anymore, Dr. Noatak could see. She had gone into that delusional world of hers, the one in which she insisted that she was the entity known as "the Avatar."

Dr. Noatak took a pen from his pocket and prepared himself for notes.

The cool breeze bit into Korra's cheeks as she took her morning stroll. This was her third walk this week; something in her still felt restless. Amon's lie had been revealed more than a week and a half ago, with most of his "revolution" crumpling with it. The debris of the boat he had escaped in with Tarrlok had been found not long after, along with the gory remains of a few fingers and singed, ripped apart flesh. It had been a little less than a week since Korra had realized the Avatar State; she had since been torn between returning bending to those unfortunate enough to have been captured by Amon, and fighting off the remaining Equalist cells that insisted on continuing the fight, despite the fact that they no longer had a leader under whom they could unify. The Equalists didn't even have their Lieutenant – Amon had snapped his neck that day. Korra made a personal vow to never let such a man rise to any sort of power again.

She had been shocked to learn of Amon and Tarrlok's fate. It was difficult to differentiate exactly what had occurred to make the boat explode - nothing was known other than that the source had been electrical. She sighed, looking out across Yue Bay. Some things would never be known. Korra was not Kyoshi – she did not take satisfaction in the demise of her enemies. If anything, she felt sadness for the Northern Water Tribe brothers. They had not asked for their father to introduce them to the darkness of bloodbending. As seen with Tarrlok, once you know how to do something such as bloodbend, you do not forget it – especially in perceived desperate situations. Perhaps, if they had lived, they could have been reformed... but why dwell on "what ifs?" With Amon gone, she felt as if she had little to be continuously be in fear of... which made her afraid. It was as if the absence of an object towards which she could direct her fear was in itself something that she feared.

Korra reached up and rubbed one of her earlobes; the morning cool was causing it to hurt. Her gaze fell on the dark shape of a tiger-seal, still and basking in the sun on the opposite end of the shore. Wait a second- she's only ever seen tiger-seals at home, in the Southern Water Tribe. What was one doing here? She squinted, shielding her eyes against the harsh morning sun with her hand. Perhaps it wasn't a tiger-seal, perhaps it was some other dark animal that – red. Red on the sand. Korra started to run, adrenaline picking up in her gut. The feeling of dread increased as she ran toward the shape and it began to take on form. Hair. Fingers. Human. She scratched the stray hairs out of her eyes as she picked up her pace. Maybe should could still help him. She began to bend the air around her, propelling herself forward. She was almost there. Good, he was moving. He was rolling over, slowly. He was facing her. Korra stopped dead. Sand flew up around her as her feet skidded. She knew this face. Hell, she KNEW this face. Despite having only seen it for a matter of seconds, she knew this man by his face. A face she had never thought, never hoped to see again. This man, lying in a pool of his own blood on the shore of Air Temple Island, was Amon.

Withdrawing the needle from her arm, Dr. Noatak looked down at Patient #1002. Placing his fingers on the pulse on her wrist, he felt as she began to calm. Her eyes found focus, and met with his.

"Amon." She almost spat the name.

"Must I keep telling you that my name is Dr. Noatak?" He placed the syringe in the front pocket of his coat. He would need to remember to sterilize it later.

"You told me. You said you were Amon." Her voice was raspy, her eyes coming in and out of focus.

Dr. Noatak sighed. "When you were introduced to my care, I told you that I was just 'a man,' and that I would do my best to help you with no promises of success. You are very much invested in this world that you have created in your grief." He tried to look her in the eye once more, but she was gone.

"You're Amon... Amon... Amon was dead, but now..." She was staring out at the wall, her fingers making winding motions in her sheets. "Can a man with a face be Amon...? Or is it something else?" She continued to mutter, and Dr. Noatak sat back down as he turned to a new page on his clipboard.

"Amon?" Korra cautiously approached the wounded man before her. He responded with a groan. She bent down and nudged his shoulder, drawing her hand back quickly. He failed to move. His eyes were half open, not staring at anything, but the his clenched jaw showed him to be in pain. She needed to find the wound from which the blood on the sand had come. Unceremoniously, she poked him on his side with her finger, earning a gurgled and guttural growl in response. Her finger came back slick with blood. Suspicions confirmed, she bent water out of the bay, aiming to close up his wound enough to move him elsewhere.

Amon sputtered, his lips moving in an attempt to make words. Korra leaned in closer, less afraid now that she realized he was completely incapable of moving quickly.

"Yes? I'm listening."

"The wound-," he gasped, coughing a bit. "It opened when-," another cough, "-when I dragged myself on shore." He had barely gotten the final word out when he broke down in a coughing fit. Korra began to work faster; the heaving of his chest with his coughs was causing his blood to flow more quickly from his side. She doubted that he had any idea who she was yet – but would he be accepting her help, if he did?

Why was she helping him? She hadn't even thought to question it. Another human was in dire need of help, and the responsibility to save him had fallen on her. That was all. She had to overlook the fact that this was Amon; she had to ignore the fact that this was the man who had once filled her nightmares with so much terror that she would wake up and not know that she had been crying until a scream ripped itself from her throat and she felt the hot wetness of the tears on her face. That couldn't matter now.

There. That should do it. Korra reached over and took Amon's face in her hands, making sure that his eyes made contact with her own.

"I'm going to move you now. It will hurt, and your side is only healed temporarily, but I need to get you someplace warm and off this beach. Do you understand?" She spoke slowly and loudly. Amon grunted in understanding.

Korra gently set his head back down before crouching next to him, aligning her shoulders with his. She reached beneath him and pulled his left arm over her shoulder, slowly standing. Spirits, he was heavy. She began to walk him up to the Temple, using airbending to help support the weight of his body. Korra knew of a place inside to take him. Many of the rooms on Air Temple Island were not in use; all she had to do was drag him there without being seen.

But why was she so anxious to avoid being seen? If Amon was back, shouldn't she be desperate to try to tell someone? For some reason, she had no desire to alert anyone. Frankly, she didn't quite know what she was doing, herself. She needed to heal him, true, but then...? She paused behind a wall as two White Lotus sentries walked past, either groggy from waking up or groggy from finishing their late night shift. Once their footsteps had faded, Korra darted inside and sped first down one hallway, then another, using airbending to mute her footsteps. She smiled to herself – just a bit over a week, and she was well on her way to completely mastering the art. A third hallway. A fourth. Arriving at a fifth hallway, Korra swept them halfway down before kicking open a door in the middle.

The room was sparse, a little bit dusty. Morning light streamed in through the window onto the small bed, on which Korra placed the wounded man. She turned and locked the door from the inside. Turning back to Amon, she frowned to see his heavy breathing from the exertion of being moved. She wiped the perspiration from his brow with her pelt; it needed washing, anyway. Whipping water out of a flask on her belt, she set out to work on his major wounds. His side had remained intact, but it still needed a much deeper healing. She briefly mused on the irony of using bending to save Amon, but he had yet to object.

Two hours later, Korra was exhausted. Putting the water away, she collapsed into the hard wooden chair across from the bed. She stared at Amon, watching his chest rise and fall evenly. He had fallen asleep at some point during her ministrations. How had it come to this? How had her enemy become her patient? She set her head back and closed her eyes. No one would come looking for her today. Mako and Bolin were seeing what could be done to repair the Arena. Asami was trying to untangle the web of lies that her father had left behind so that she could properly run the business. Korra laughed to herself – she had requested that Tenzin give her the day off because she was tired. Yes, no one would miss her if she wasn't around for a few hours, today...

Dr. Noatak closed his pen. Patient #1002 had fallen asleep; her delusions were on hold, for now. There was a soft knock on the door before it opened.

"You have poor timing, Dr. Tenzin. She just fell asleep," Dr. Noatak addressed the his coworker.

"Ah, well, sometimes the best therapy is the resting of the mind," Dr. Tenzin scratched the back of his hairless head. "How is she doing?"

"She thinks that I died when I went to the conference."

"Oh?"

"Along with my brother, Tarrlok." Dr. Noatak stood up, pushing the chair back against the wall. Dr. Tenzin would not be needing it.

"Her godfather? And how, exactly, did she kill you off?"

Dr. Noatak pressed his lips together in a firm line before answering. "Boat explosion."

The therapist's eyes went wide. "Oh, god - just like her parents..."

Dr. Noatak nodded. "She's definitely drawing from that... except her parents were in a motor-boat accident. In her delusion, she implies that Tarrlok blew us both up. She's revised her fantasy, now that she knows I'm alive. She's likely to revise it again once she discovers that Tarrlok is alive, as well."

"Good lord... she's suffering. Has she killed anyone else off?"

"Lewis. In her mental world, he was my Lieutenant."

"Your intern?"

"Yes. I don't know how I will break the news to him." Dr. Noatak allowed a small smile.

"Break it to him gently. If he needs to talk to someone about it, he knows where to find me." Dr. Tenzin chuckled as the two walked out of the room, allowing the door to click shut behind them.