Post Endgame

The officials ordered that he be sedated. Their captive, battered and bruised, fought like a wild animal before finally being disarmed and taken down by the best and brightest of Republic City's Police. It was marvellous and terrifying to watch – the last fight of a heartbroken man who had lost everything but his freedom, a freedom he could see slipping from his fingers. No more. A set of broken restraints and a dislocated shoulder later, the Equalist Lieutenant was handcuffed to his hospital bed, injected and locked inside his room. "Hospital arrest", they called it. The healer reset the joint and started to work on the worst of his wounds. His pale skin was littered with scars. Stab wounds, burns, trauma. He had obviously had a good healer in the past to have survived so much. He refused to say who. The healer talked to him quietly as she cleaned and dressed his open injuries. Aside from being silent, he was a model patient. Unmoving, unresisting. Drugged and dazed as he was he refused to sleep. He was too angry. He was shaken to the core with hurt.

The healer's voice droned in the Lieutenant's mind like background noise. He had stopped trying to listen after wordlessly refusing to give his name, age or place of birth for filing. The revolution was over in the streets, but not in his heart. He would oblige to no bender, even if she was a wrinkled old doctor. He quietly pondered the past several years as she questioned him. The only person who could have tended to him before was Amon and of course now he knew his secret. He had no doubt Amon had used his water bending to heal him in the past. It explained his swift recoveries and why age did not seem to be slowing him down. Every morning that he woke to find Amon already up, he might have been saving him as he slept. He had never once suspected something sinister behind the insisted bed-rest that seemed to work so well. Something seemed eerily familiar about the swirling water that mended him now. It made his insides squirm with disgust that had had been so blind.

Hours passed. No longer bleeding, the old healer started work on his hands, a collection of callouses and layers of scars. There was a lot about him that suggested possible connections in his past. The military style haircut, his physical fitness and his healed injuries from long ago spoke volumes. The healer placed him somewhere in his mid-forties, probably of non-bending Earth Nation or Fire Nation heritage. He certainly was no Air Nomad or Water Tribe member. His hands said he had been a fighter his whole life, making him as tough as they come, street-smart and in remarkable shape for a man his age. There were reading glasses in a small compartment of his kali sticks generator along with a small notebook and first aid kit. She had a good feeling he may have been in the military police before the reforms came and only metal benders could apply. No family came to the hospital to visit or claim him, so any connections he may have had were probably long severed. It would be unsurprising if Amon was the only person her patient had trusted in a long time. Now, it was all over.

"You were close weren't you?" the healer's voice suddenly said. For some reason, he heard her, clear as a bell, through the haze of thoughts.

"What?" the first word in hours slipped through his lips.

The old lady's face softened.

"You and Amon. You were close. Not just as soldiers, but as men."

Lieutenant's jaw clamped shut, determined not to say another word. Especially not about that.

The old woman nodded quietly, deciding not to push any further.

"We would very much like to know who you are so we can treat you fairly and appropriately once you are discharged from hospital." she said. "You will not be sent to prison with the general population, that much is clear. The White Lotus will take custody of you. You've been awfully quiet. Are you sure you don't want to share anything with us? A name would be good."

The broken man sat up straighter, ignoring the pain that was left in his body.

"I am the Lieutenant of Amon's Equalist Revolution."

The door opened and in marched the chief of police and two cronies.

"Katara, take a break." the stern looking woman said. "We need to question him for a bit."

"Alright, Lin. I'll be back shortly."

As soon as the door closed, Police Chief Bei Fong threw down three slightly blurred expanded photographs. Each had a different man on it, any of which could have been a photo of him twenty years ago in an annual police photograph. He glanced over them, careful not to let his face give away which was correct. In his medicated haze, it was hard to pick his own face out anyway. An out-dated headshot might slip passed them.

"It's common practice to wipe our data bases of certain individuals serving the law when they need to be relocated." she said. "But they are limited in number. Either you were relocated and scrubbed by the system, or you hid yourself among the profiles to be disposed of. Either way, we'll find your official records. I know a military man when I see one. You can't hide that from me. Even if you've wiped yourself from the database, someone will remember you or have a hard copy. We're digging. We will match any photos we find with any information that comes to light and we will identify you."

The Lieutenant gave her a weak smile. How many people that fitted his physical description had passed through the police doors in the past twenty to thirty years? Probably several and memory was gloriously flawed when it came to faces. Good luck. There were no remarkable features about him at all to make certain his identity from a dozen others.

"So when did you stop serving, huh?" Bei Fong prodded. "You can't be that old. Not older than me anyway. You might have even been an investigator. I probably wouldn't have worked with you though, being a bender and all. And by the way, I'm still a bender."

She raised her hand and crushed the doorknob. Lieutenant rolled his eyes, he could not resist. He would fight her right now in his hospital gown if he could, no holds barred.

"You studied Eskrima and fencing, I can tell that too." she continued. "That narrows it down a little more. We haven't taught those in the academy in twenty years. So you would have joined up as a young thing if you're forty-ish now. Wasn't policing what you signed up for or were you just plain old crooked?"

He wanted to bite back. All his life he tackled everything head first. It was who he was. Frankly, he hated everything about her from the sound of her voice to her scowl. But she was formidable.

"If I could be in your head right now I'd leave you a shell." she declared. "See how you like."

Someone knocked at the door softly. The Chief picked up her photos, repaired the doorknob and left with her goons, trading places with the person outside the door. The old healer, Katara, returned clutching something in her hands. It was his notepad and pen set from his backpack. The Lieutenant was sure the booklet was blank when they captured him. He was good at destroying evidence. He knew all the tricks, but burning paper was just too damn easy.

"I know you don't feel like talking. No soldier wants to be the one who broke." She slid the writing set onto his nightstand, just in reach. "We'd very much like to know about you. We're not fighting anymore, the revolution is over. You were deceived but you can let it go now. Look out for yourself. You could write your story like a letter, one that will never be sent. Address it to someone and say as much as you want to. Really, if we have no record of you so we'd be none the wiser if you lied. You really did a thorough job wiping yourself from the system. It might be therapeutic. The war is over. You don't have to bottle it up anymore."

The old lady set down the pen and paper. She leaned forward and tilted to her head to meet his icy eyes but he refused to look at her. His jaw remained clenched, hands balled in fists.

"When you're ready." she said, then rose and left the room for the night.

The fallen soldier waited until early in the morning before picking up the pen. There was no hope of picking his locks with what he had. They needed to be manipulated with metal bending. Instead of struggling, he decided to try to start to write.

Dear Amon

He stopped immediately as the words formed on the page. He scribbled out a word and replaced it.

To Amon

That did not seem right either. How would he address his former leader if he saw him again? Probably with a punch square to the face.

Amon…

Angry tears burned in his eyes and a cold grip squeezed his insides. He tasted bile and bit down on the pen, trying not to wretch. He considered throwing the writing set aside in rage. He considered thrashing again against his bonds and risk ripping out his shoulder again. He did neither. The pen hovered for a few minutes and then, like water, the words began to flow but with all the transparency and chill of ice.