His lips are chapped as his feet trudge through the thick blanket of snow. The voice of his brother, of Tarrlok screaming for his return has already disappeared from his ears, and instead the sound of the wind howling takes its place. He sees nothing, and his vision whites out from the snowflakes that cling to his eyelashes. Noatak is too weak to even keep the snow from buffeting him from all directions and he collapses, his mind already reeling from the cold.
He regrets running, he regrets leaving Tarrlok, and while he attempts to rise from the growing cover of snow on his back, he cannot stand. His elbows and shoulders too are far too weak to do so. The dark freezes over him before he's the chance to shed even a tear of remorse, Tarrlok's fearful face refusing to disappear from his mind.
He is not aware to the abrupt silence of the storm, and he does not see the glow that hovers above him, as though it watches him get swallowed by the ice melting into a sea of water. He sinks.
—-
Even with Naga trailing behind her as she walks on the shores of Air Temple Island, Korra can't help but feel unease niggling on the nape of her neck. Her forehead is warm where Amon's fingers brushed her in the nightmare she just woke up from but the air bites at her bare arms like the beginning of the cold seasons. While taking walks on the beach do help her, it seems that the disquiet still has its hold on her.
She rouses from her reverie when Naga growls at something, something washed up not far from where they stand. Korra squints at the figure, trying to discern whether or not it was a dead penguin or something else. She jumps when the figure turns over and she sees a face. The face of a water tribe boy, not much younger than her, hidden behind clumps of his wet, brown hair that are plastered to his face.
She runs to him and checks his pulse, his breathing, Sifu Katara's words about healing echoing in her mind. He breathes, but barely. She sets him carefully on Naga before looking around the beach, wondering where on earth he would have come from.
They turn back to the temple and Korra feels the boy's breathing hitch ever so slightly.
—-
He blinks when the light grows behind his closed eyelids. When Noatak looks to the ceiling, letting his eyes dart about the furniture and the way the room is set out he realizes – this is not his home. When he sits up, he remembers what he's left behind and scowls. He remembers Tarrlok, he remembers his father, no, Yakone's cries of pain by his hold and he remembers running into the storm, not looking back.
He sits up when he hears footsteps making the wooden floor creak outside his door, and he feels her, each step she makes, each breath. He struggles to keep his composure at the sheer power that flows through the woman outside but when she opens the door, he isn't sure what to think.
"Oh, hey you're awake," says the girl at her door. Even though she has features that Noatak grew up with, coffee-coloured skin and blue eyes, she's totally unlike anyone he's ever seen. Her body was built yet soft in places and her veneer just – unyielding if anything. Noatak swallows a lump that forms in his throat and looks away, trying to control the blood that rushed to his face. No girl from his village ever looked like her, yet her hair; he remembers putting it up as she does when he was a child. "How are you feeling?"
He remains silent but still she fills the silence. "I mean, it was cold yesterday when I found you."
"Where'd you find me?" he forces out, his fists clenching out of habit.
"The beach. I was going for a walk to clear my head and there you were," she says coolly and points vaguely outside the window. But he senses something else in her tone, distress and he sees her other hand shaking at her side subtly.
"I see," he breathes. He lets a pause drift between them before asking, "Who are you?"
The poorly-hidden distress immediately disappears from her façade and back is her tenacity. "I'm Korra. The Avatar."
His lips thin to a line and his fists clench even harder underneath the fleece sheets that cover him. The Avatar, a waterbender? Not the airbending monk from his father's- from Yakone's tales, it seems. He doesn't know what passes from his lips next; a question, "the Avatar?"
"Yeah, deal with it." and she even has the boldness to laugh. Noatak finds himself scowling but he remembers that his is not what his father honed him to be, no, he's more than that. "Who are you?"
He thinks for an answer. He is gone from his brother in the North, his name means nothing but still he would use it, out of sentiment, he thinks. "Noatak."
"Well, Noatak-" she strides over to him and next thing he knows, they're shaking hands, and hers is small in his, but it is firm, strong, calloused. She positively beams at him. "Nice to meet you, there's breakfast if you're up for it."
He begins to decline her offer, because he wants to sink back into the bed, to think, to contemplate. Unfortunately his stomach grumbles loud enough to serve as his answer and he scowls.
"All right," is all he says as he gets out of bed and follows her.
—-
Republic City is far from what Yakone's stories made it out to be. If anything, it was grand, it was imposing, as far from his little village as it could ever dream of becoming. He finds himself looking out into Yue Bay, as Korra referred to it, while he eats the bowl of muesli she provided him moments ago.
She reads over the newspaper while he eats and he catches the date, 氵170 ASC, and bites his tongue to hold his surprise. He's meant to be about forty years old now, but how did he even get to this time period? How?
'Amon Still at Large, Now a Danger to the City More Than Ever', he reads on the front cover of the newspaper along with 'The Fire Ferrets Join 7 Other Teams in the Qualifier for This Year's Pro-Bending Championships' but the former interests him more. After finishing a bite of his cereal he asks, "Amon? Who is he?"
And somehow the subject strikes her, the anxiety returns and even while she tries to mask it, Noatak can still feel it as it fills her; the Avatar, afraid of the masked man on the headline of the newspaper, perhaps? He listens intently at her answer. "He's the leader of this anti-bender group called the Equalists."
"Can he really take away peoples' bending?" Noatak asks as he reads more of the article. Korra's anxiety rises as in the thickening silence between them, and he almost regrets bringing up the subject. She cuts him off before he can tell her to drop it.
"Yeah, I've seen it." And then he realizes, this man, Amon has reduced the Avatar into a fear-ridden wreck. Aang would have put a stop to this man immediately, but what has Korra done, if she was indeed, the Avatar?
He remembers how Yakone placed him on a pedestal and expected Tarrlok to do the same as he has, forgetting the fact that Tarrlok was younger than him by years. He should not compare her to Aang, or at least, what Yakone's depiction of the past Avatar was. Her heart still beats in that uncertain rhythm, fear-ridden and he feels pity for it, for her.
"I need some air." And he rises from his seat, rubbing his hands together, beckoning her to follow him out the door.
"You know, I never thought I'd meet another water tribe person up here," he hears her say, as they walk to the docks of the island where a ferry was anchored.
"Didn't you? This is Republic City, Avatar Korra," he answers as he swings his feet to the water's edge. "People from all walks of life are up and about here."
"Yeah, when you think about it." She settles beside him, water splashing against his boots when she brings her feet to the water. "But I don't think water tribe people usually get beached on Air Temple Island anyway."
How? he thinks. But he abandons his calm when he realizes that the water keeps splashing onto his boots by Korra's doing. He forces a burst of water at her in retaliation and laughs when she's sopping wet. He jumps away, his muscles aching while he evades a wave that she brings up to the docks, but he finds himself laughing, in sheer joy at the act of bending, simply. She's indignant when she pushes the hair out of her face but then he sees the mischief pulling the corners of her mouth.
"You want a bending battle, then? Huh, Noatak?" she challenges.
He thinks, what of the bloodbending that he's mastered, would that count for anything here? Would she fear him? Would she fall easily under his control just like Tarrlok did? He pushes the thought from his mind and holds his hands steadily in front of him. Bloodbending was his father's wishes, not his.
"My pleasure, Avatar Korra."
—-
He learns that she's still an Avatar-in-training while they fight, that she's yet to master airbending, to even produce a puff of air. Something she holds contempt for as they splash each other's face with seawater. He knows now that she's part of that pro-bending team on the newspaper, the Fire Ferrets; that she's going to introduce him to them tomorrow if he wants, if he's not going home yet. He agrees, more eager to acquaint himself with the city and to forget what he's left behind, who he's left behind. Tarrlok's grief still echoes in his mind when he closes him eyes.
At dinner he meets Avatar Aang's son and Korra's airbending mentor, Councilman Tenzin and while he sits amongst them and the airbender children, he can't help but feel the warmth that this family has compared to his. He hates them for it but he shouldn't, he knows better than to.
They ask him about going home, and he lies, compulsively. To their questions of his family, he builds a lie based on his own truth, that yes, he has a father, a mother and a brother but he's separated from them. A boat ride to the city from the North, a storm, he fell over the ship's railing. Councilman Tenzin promises that they would help him find his family and again he lies, and gratefully accepts the man's help.
He is not surprised by the stories that come from his mouth; he even entertains the questions that the airbender kids shoot at him. But he himself is not convinced as to how he got there, to the city, to the year. But they take him in easily enough, and it's good enough for him.
Korra takes him back to his room, and he's sincerely grateful for her, for her finding him on the beach. She promises him that tomorrow he meets her friends, that he sees the city. And he goes to bed, sincerely thanking her once she goes, but the images of his brother creeping up in his mind once again. He sleeps in his regret.