I meant to upload this for two days running, and kept forgetting. My bad!

TWO

Korra's neck hurt abominably, and she was cold. Waking up was not a pleasant experience. Her face hurt, too, and her knee ached as she banged it against the floor in the death throes of sleep. She groaned, so not ready to be awake; not ready to face the new day after how well yesterday had gone.

Looking up, she could see Tarrlok sat up neatly in the chair she'd produced yesterday. He didn't seem to have slept at all, the dark shadows underneath his eyes attesting to that. He was hunched ever so slightly over his fingers, interlocked in a steeple that he was resting his chin on. He was not looking at anything in particular, gaze glazed over, but came alive as she looked him over as if he'd felt her glance at him. Their eyes met for a second, and they looked away at nearly the same time.

"You've bruised," he said, and she nodded. "Badly." She shrugged. If he was trying to strike up conversation, it wasn't going to work. He'd been briefly sympathetic with his nightmares; that had been entirely ruined by the "tell nobody speech" he'd thrown at her afterwards. "How are you going to explain it?" he asked, clearly impatient with her lack of enthusiasm. She'd only just woken up, and the morning was a horrible time, what did he expect?

"Don't know," she mumbled, beginning to shift. Okay, she was going to be awfully stiff, it was probably a good idea to stretch as soon as possible. The pain was inevitable. She stretched out her arms with a groan of relief, feeling her back expand gloriously, pointing her toes and drawing in each foot to her butt then extending them again—halfway through, she caught Tarrlok's gaze caught on her, not even trying to hide it. "Do you mind?" she said, releasing her arms and sinking back down with a feeling of discomfort.

"Not at all," he said, with artificial charm and sincerity. "In fact, carry on. Whatever you like. Don't let me interrupt you—pretend I'm not here." She sneered at him and got to her feet, ambling stiffly over to the bathroom. With the light switched on and peering into the mirror, a mild, "Yikes" escaped at the sight of herself. Yeah, Tarrlok had been right about that much. It wasn't pretty. Her arm was pretty bruised, of all the things… one of her knees had a truly ugly blotch that was incredibly tender and her tailbone wasn't feeling so good… but the worst of it was definitely her face. There was one awful one on her cheek—she prodded it gingerly and hissed; ouch—but the biggest was across her forehead, which must have been where Tarrlok had head-butted her. Whoa. She felt slightly impressed; she looked rough. With a glance back at Tarrlok, she noted with disappointment that he wasn't sporting any damage from last night. Aw, that made it look like he'd just beaten her up; he should at least have some bruises…

How was she going to explain this? How was she going to explain this to Amon? He'd made it perfectly clear that fighting wasn't appreciated—but then why had he put them in a room together, really, he was a tactician and he should have known that the two of them hated each other with a fiery passion. More importantly, how was she going to explain this? She gave Tarrlok a resentful look. This was all his fault. He should be the one to come up with a story—she was the one who'd got the better of him, it wasn't fair that she came out of it looking like she'd been beaten to a pulp!

"I hope you're happy now," she said glumly, irritably. "What am I going to do about this?"

"You were the one who couldn't leave well alone!" he snapped, getting out of the chair and going to sit down on his bed now that she'd vacated the area of floor next to it.

"You were the one screaming your head off! How was I supposed to sleep through that?" Korra felt a twinge at how callous she sounded, but he was just so annoying, he was so Tarrlok; if it had been anyone else—maybe with the exception of Amon—she would have been sorry for someone having a nightmare, but he was being such a pain about it, and he was going to get them into trouble.

The creak of bedsprings told her that Tarrlok was turning over restlessly. "The all compassionate Avatar," he grumbled.

"Nobody ever said I had to be nice." She prodded the cheek bruise again. Oh, this was awful. There was no way she could explain that away as… falling… or some other transparent but nearly plausible reason, she'd quite clearly been punched in the face.

"Lucky for you, then."

"Whatever. This is still all your fault."

"It is not—," he began heatedly, and then abruptly went silent. "Oh, this is ridiculous, I'm not arguing with some immature child." Korra snorted so hard that she was fairly sure she displaced something, and turned around indignantly to face him through the bathroom door, leaning around it to glare.

"You didn't seem to think that I was so childish when you were… ogling!" she said huffily, hanging onto the door and swinging back and forth slightly. "You were definitely ogling!" He gave a long suffering sigh and threw himself onto his other side, away from her. "Oh, fine, sigh all you want, but I saw you. If you keep doing it I'll hit you in the face, and make you explain that to Amon!" He didn't reply, and she was left to throw filthy looks at him every so often in the hope that he could feel them burning through his back.

Korra splashed some water onto her face to fully wake herself up, still clinging onto the optimistic approach that something magical would happen and the bruises would disappear, or Amon wouldn't come see them for a week or something… All she could come up with was I fell, and she couldn't have fallen on her foreheadand her knee and her forearm all at the same time, that was about as ridiculous and implausible as excuses came.

The main door opened, and with a startled shriek Korra leapt into the shower in the hope that if it was Amon he wouldn't come into the bathroom. Then her mind, moving at a significantly slower rate than her reflexes, suggested that it would be incredibly strange to be found hiding fully clothed in a shower that wasn't running, and with some regret she turned on the water. She stood underneath the freezing spray and tried not to yelp at how cold it was.

"Councilman Tarrlok," came the nasally tones of the servant, distorted by the water "and… Avatar… Korra?"

"In the shower," Tarrlok said lazily, nearly lost altogether in the rushing of the shower. Korra turned down the dial slightly to be able to hear better.

"Well, only your presence is required—Amon wishes to break his fast with you alone." Korra blinked, droplets of water clinging to her eyelashes, and listened even harder through the beginnings of shivers. This thing took ages to warm up, she'd set it to the highest heat… "Are you fit to leave, or shall I give you some minutes to prepare?" She could probably get out now that it wasn't Amon… but, no, appearing drenched and fully clothed could only go down badly, oh, what was she doing? Captivity was doing really strange things to her brain…

After a moment's thought, Tarrlok said, "Some minutes to prepare, I think. I'll only need a few." The door closed again, and Korra peered out of the shower to see if the servant was gone or if he was just waiting in there—and yelled as Tarrlok came through the door. Accordingly, he jumped at the noise, and looked irritably at her. "What?" he demanded, and she straightened up her full height impressively.

"What if I'd really been showering?" she demanded, grabbing a towel and wrapping it around her soaking torso.

"Does it really matter?" Tarrlok rubbed at his forehead as if he had a headache, and made shooing motions at her. When she didn't move, he sighed and reached forward, bodily dragging her out of the shower and ignoring her shouted curses and attempts to poke him in the eyes. Much to her disappointment and irritation, he fobbed off her attempts to hit him as vengeance, and—worst—began to change without even moving from the doorframe.

"When you will learn to close doors!" she yelled at him, kicking the door shut and hoping it had hit him on the way. All she got back in return was a muffled curse; she spat back a particularly good one that Bolin had taught her. Abruptly, forcibly, she was reminded of the people that were looking for her, and deflated. Naga—had she ever spent this much time away from Naga before? And she missed the kids, and her friends, being around people who were nice and kind and fun company, rather than hitting her in the face and making her want to gouge their eyes out…

She fell face down onto the bed, grumbling stifled by the fabric, and brooded to the mundane sounds of the shower.

Korra rolled off the bed and hit the ground with a thud and a grunt as Tarrlok came back into the room. She pulled herself up to kneeling, sprawled a little and yawning widely. As weird as it seemed, she hadn't enjoyed being by herself at all. Having Tarrlok around to bicker at and bounce off was almost preferable to the strange loneliness and emptiness that rolled through her when she was alone. Korra was never alone; she always had Naga, always had her friends and family around her. Anyone, however aggravating, was preferable to solitude.

"You were ages," she said, in between another yawn, and looked up. She cut off a curse midway through at the sight of Amon following through the door after Tarrlok, and was caught between trying to hide and realising that that would look awfully suspicious. "Ohhh," she said, almost shrinking, "um—" Then she looked at Tarrlok properly, for the first time, and noted how… unlike himself he seemed. That expression—it was almost shell shocked, it was nearly vacant; he seemed far away, somewhere else entirely, and he wasn't registering her being on the floor at all. He was, in fact, staring over her head. What had Amon said to him? Had Amon already found out about their tussle and… punished him for it? Why had Amon even come back with him?

At least one of her questions was answered when Amon turned his mask in her direction, and she saw his eyes narrow slightly through the slits. His hand tapped against his side, once, twice, and then went very still. "Well," he said, slowly, his voice rumbling through her, "you didn't mention that, Tarrlok." Korra dully registered that he was calling Tarrlok by his name, and frowned at that; what on earth had they talked about that had brought about this change? "Care to explain?" He was speaking almost familiarly… He stepped forward to get a better look, and Korra's skin prickled, and she moved to get to her feet. She didn't want to be down on the floor while this was taking place. Even standing up, she was still about a head shorter than everybody else present, and she didn't like it. "On second thought… there's no need for far-fetched excuses. I made it clear that I didn't want fighting; a couple of days in the Avatar looks like she's been in a bar fight. But," he added, focusing solely on Tarrlok once more, "I forgive you…"

"What's… going on?" Korra asked uncertainly, looking between the both of them. "I don't understand…"

"Neither do you need to," Amon said smoothly. Behind him, Tarrlok frowned ever so slightly, and shifted uncomfortably. Something very odd had happened to change their entire dynamic; Tarrlok was no longer as in control. He seemed a little lost, and a little confused, and Korra didn't like that… He'd lost control in the past, but that wasn't the same as this now, the man she saw almost shrinking in on himself defensively. What had Amon told him? "You would do perfectly well to remain in ignorance for now."

"Whatever you've told him, I have a right to know!" she said, sure that she was pushing her luck but equally as sure that she needed to know what was going on. She was the only one out of the loop, and that was a dangerous position to be in, in the enemy headquarters…

Tarrlok stirred for the first time. "Leave it," he said shortly, and Amon turned to him, giving a nod. Korra didn't know what that nod meant—permission, approval, warning—but the slightly haunted cast to Tarrlok's expression wasn't exactly filling her with confidence and she subsided.

"However, I am growing curious about what occurred for this"—Amon waved his hand over her vaguely—"to have come about." Korra opened her mouth and shut it again, trying desperately to come up with something, because Tarrlok might as well have been a zombie at this point for all the awareness and sentience that he was showing, and resorted to the classic.

She blurted out, "I fell", and listened to the disbelieving silence. If ever a silence had taken on characteristics, this one was blatantly disbelieving.

"On your forehead," Amon said, utterly deadpan, without moving, and she knew she was blushing with the ludicrousness of what she'd just said.

"Yes," she said, a little too quickly. Amon turned to Tarrlok.

"Well?"

The other man stirred, rubbing at his nose thoughtfully, and looked Amon right in the eyes. "The Avatar was getting on my nerves," he said simply. "I dealt with it badly." They both ignored Korra's indignant cry.

"Like you could take me," she grumbled, crossing her arms. "Don't make me laugh."

"Whatever the true case… this will be the last case of fighting, do you understand me?" Tarrlok nodded dully, and Korra followed suit reluctantly. It wouldn't serve anything to try and fight this. In fact, she'd be quite happy if nobody punched her in the face for a while yet, her cheek and forehead hurt quite considerably; they wouldn't stop throbbing. "Good. I suppose I should have some breakfast delivered for the Avatar. I presume that puts everything in order—" Amon was abruptly cut off by an Equalist hurtling into the room.

"Sir!" they panted—it was impossible to determine who or what was underneath the suit while they were flailing around like that—nearly bent double. "There's—important news—there's a United Forces fleet in the bay—the Lieutenant said you were—to know—at once."

"What," Amon said, flatly, coldly, and Korra shivered once more. She decided to sit down. When he spoke like that, her legs became a little bit wobbly, and she was not going to fall over in front of him. "Why weren't we aware of this before they were in the bay?"

"Our scouts were taken out," the Equalist said, sounding fearful. "The airbending master, Tenzin—with a group of others, he tracked down the hideout the Councilman used to hide the Avatar—he determined that there was a fight and that both had been captured, and sent a message on a private line so that we couldn't intercept it." They straightened up, still wheezing.

"What was that message?" Amon asked, very quietly.

"A declaration of war."

Time flowed oddly after that—Korra listened carefully, committing each word to memory, sure that any minute Amon was going to disappear off to conduct business somewhere private, but he didn't seem to care at all that he was speaking about things that were presumably secret in front of two of his enemies. (In fact, he kept glancing over at her, and it was putting her on edge.) Or was Tarrlok even his enemy any more? Once or twice he nodded over to at the Councilman as if consulting him, and Korra was left baffled and largely ignored, sitting on her bed and being quiet in the hope that they'd pretty much forget that she was there. She seemed to be the only one left out of the loop, and that was almost incomprehensible to her. Tarrlok of the curfew, of the taskforce, standing there silently and listening as Amon conducted proceedings was something that made no sense to her at all. She couldn't wrap her head around it.

Korra oscillated between delight that her friends had found out so quickly—Naga, it must have been Naga!—the fact that a fleet was already in the bay and another on its way, and fear about what Amon was going to do. The United Forces had declared war, with Tenzin's backing, over the abduction of the Avatar and the Councilman, two high profile names with which to launch an all out battle on the Equalists. The fleet had been nearby to start with, gloriously, and it was here, and the Equalists didn't stand a chance, she was sure.

Then the Equalist left, and Amon looked at her properly, full on, for the first time. She wished that she could see his face, see the expression that he was making; was it malevolent, thoughtful, calculating? Tarrlok sat heavily down in the chair still out, and put his face in his hands. "What are you going to do?" he asked, the sound muffled through his fingers, and raised his head back up with a toss of his hair. "How are you—I—maybe we should leave, go far away—"

"What are you saying?" Korra asked, astonished. "Tarrlok—what happened?" He looked at her, expression conflicted, and rapidly looked away again.

Amon rubbed at the back of his neck, the only one still standing. "That's an idea," he said thoughtfully. "With the United Forces fleet bearing down on us… I acted rashly when I seized the two of you, and these are the consequences… perhaps it's best to just cut my losses and leave now before war breaks out fully." Korra blinked. She was hallucinating. She had fallen unconscious and was dreaming. She'd knocked her head when Tarrlok had thrown her all the way back in City Hall, and this whole thing had been a feverish delusion.

"No, I can't leave Republic City," Tarrlok said, looking a bit more himself. He was sitting up a bit straighter and had gained some strength. Korra knew things must be dire if that was a hopeful sign. Although, she thought, if they were debating leaving… she hadn't been mentioned at all so far, they could just be referring to themselves! Maybe they were leaving her out of this entirely. "I made a life for myself here."

Amon shrugged, leaning against the wall. "As did I. Lives change in an instant. You know that, Tarrlok."

Frustrated, Tarrlok shifted in his chair, and inclined forward. "Noatak—" he began, and then abruptly stopped, shutting his mouth with an audible click as his teeth clamped down. Amon turned to him, whipping fast and snake-like, and exhaled very, very slowly in what sounded like an attempt at patience. Korra looked between the two men, blinking quickly as she tried to connect the dots.

"Noatak's a Water Tribe name," she said, and nobody told her to be quiet, so she steamrollered on before they could make her shut up. "You're—you're Water Tribe? And he's Water Tribe… but your skin? Your skin is so light—do you know each other? You know each other somehow—you're"—she looked at Amon, mind racing wildly, he hated bending and… if Tarrlok was Yakone's son and knew bloodbending and Amon hated bending and was trying to eradicate it surely there was a connection there somewhere, that couldn't be a coincidence—"a… a friend—a cousin—an illegitimate son of Yakone's!"

To her bewilderment and irritation, Amon chuckled. "Wrong on all accounts of identity except my nationality, Avatar," he said softly, and she felt her spirits fall. She'd been so sure that she was right; maybe she was entirely wrong and there was no connection between the two of them at all. Perhaps Amon just had a particularly incriminating piece of information about Tarrlok that he'd used to intimidate the other man… perhaps they'd just met in the past and there were secrets… There was no way that they could be related, really, what were the odds…? "But close," he added, with a quieter chuckle, "close." Korra looked between the two of them again, trying to figure it out. "However, this presents us with a problem." She frowned. That didn't sound good.

Tarrlok was still half out of his chair, eyes moving about the room like a wary animal. "What do you mean?" he asked, voice low and dark. "Let's just get away from here now, before everything goes wrong; they won't have time to find us, and we'll be far away before anyone figures anything out." Amon shook his head.

"We can't leave the Avatar here with an inkling of the truth," he said, and Korra's stomach seemed to swoop sickly, feeling as if it were moving separately to her body entirely.

"You can," she interjected very quickly. "I don't really know who you are—I just guessed, but I have no real idea, and even if I did I wouldn't tell anyone anyway, your secret that I don't know is safe with me."

"Noatak," Tarrlok said, almost pleadingly. "It should be just the two of us—they'd track us down if we brought the Avatar with us, we'd never be at peace, always on the run…" Korra nodded vigorously as Tarrlok spoke, leaning so far forward with tension that she nearly fell off the bed.

With a sigh, Amon removed his mask, and Korra was surprised to see the scar below it—she'd assumed that his backstory was a lie—but then he rubbed at it, and it slowly came away. Underneath was a man who looked startlingly like Tarrlok, perhaps a little older, a little different, but undeniably like Tarrlok… "Now that she's seen my face, brother," he said, "is leaving her here still your preference?"

Tarrlok ignored Korra's mumbled, illuminated, "Brother?" and stood up, impassioned. "What are you doing, Noatak?" he asked, searching the face of the man opposite him.

"Truthfully," the man underneath the mask drawled, "leaving her here could never be an option. It's that or kill her—and I feel that would be a terrible waste of such potential. Think of it, Tarrlok. The two of us, we'd need never fear others—two master bloodbenders"—Korra once more went ignored, with her yelp of surprise –"and, in time, perhaps more…" He looked towards her in a way that made her skin crawl, and she really hoped that he wasn't implying what she thought that he was implying. "I'm quite adept at disguising myself; we could start over again peacefully… if you're so against the idea of the Avatar coming with us, then do it. Kill her."

Korra scrambled backwards, considerably alarmed, and fumbled for a sense of her bending. Dammit, it was still cut off from her! She looked at Tarrlok, eyes wide. "Going with you doesn't sound so bad," she said brightly. Captive was better than dead—she could try and escape, nobody could keep the Avatar controlled for too long; she would get back home unless Tarrlok killed her here. To her dismay and abject fear, he stepped across the room. "You don't want to do this," she babbled. "I'll come with you, I won't get in the way, I promise—" His eyes hardened, and she held up her hands as if to ward him off.

Tarrlok sounded very tired as he spoke.

"You really think that I'd kill you," he said dully. "Just like that." He turned to Amon—Noatak, she guessed, ugh, it was so weird to think of him as Water Tribe—and nodded shortly. "I won't kill her. Have your potential, then." Amon—Noatak—smiled.

"Well then," he said, "that's settled." He hit her chi points with more force than was technically necessary and as she fell to the floor, momentarily going weak, she made sure to glare at him. She was not going to go along passively with this. She was going to make their escape hell.

When she lay there for a good minute or so pathetically, he sighed and pulled her up from the floor none too gently. "I know you can walk," he murmured into her ear, uncomfortably close. "I won't be carrying you; you can be bloodbended the whole way, or you can walk yourself. Which would you rather?" Tarrlok watched, looking tiredly uninterested; he then turned his head to the side as not to see.

"I can walk," she mumbled, gritting her teeth.

"Good," he said evenly, giving her an appraising look. "Good." It was so strange to see his face. That voice coming from that face, not the mask of her nightmares—it was almost worse, much more odd, so much stranger—and she didn't like it at all. "We need to be dressed somewhat differently," he said, to Tarrlok. "I certainly can't get away like this."

Tarrlok stirred from his dull thoughtfulness, and nodded shortly. He looked as if some puppet master had cut his strings, leaving him slumped and lost, but Amon's words reinvigorated him. "Of course, Noatak," he replied, even making an attempt at a smile. "Do you have any?"

"We have a… costume department of sorts here, for when people need to go undercover. We'll take clothing from there. Who should we be?" He moved towards the door as he spoke, motioning for Korra to go ahead. With a resentful glance at Tarrlok, she did so, shuffling unhappily and dragging her feet. Amon gave her a none too gentle prod in the back. "Move," he said, dropping his voice softly; did he not want Tarrlok to hear or something? Everyone was well aware that he was a creep; he didn't need to hide it. Even more grumpily, Korra marched ahead by his side. Every time that she moved too far ahead he'd just tug on her shirt and pull her back like a disobedient pet. Tarrlok walked behind the two of them, utterly silent.

Much to Korra's disappointment, they didn't run into anyone on the way. She had been hoping for someone to see them, to see Amon without his mask as the unscarred Noatak, and raise all hell. Sullenly, she thought that Amon probably wouldn't have gone unmasked if he'd known that anyone would come upon them anyway, but she'd still got her hopes up. If she was going to escape properly, she probably needed to do it before they took her away from Republic City, before they took her somewhere that she didn't know and didn't have any allies. She waited, constantly tense, for a good moment to escape.

Amon locked the door behind them with a heavy click as they stepped into a room full of clothing; rows upon rows stretching away from her, organised into groups from each of the four nations, and some others besides that she didn't recognise at all. There were signs over every rack in the large hall. Korra read some of them, interested despite herself, and saw "Fire Nation, east coast, 150 ASC", "Air Acolyte, current", "Fusion; Earth Kingdom and Northern Water Tribe Peasant 165 ASC". Okay, she was kind of impressed by this. And slightly awed. How long must it have taken to collect all of this?

"We don't want to take too much," Amon mused, moving about somewhere to her left, "because we'll need to move quickly, but we should take enough to be several different people if the need arises…" Korra's heart sank further in her chest at that. How was anyone going to track her if her appearance and identity was constantly changing? Of course he wouldn't have been uncanny enough to have taken Korra of the Southern Water Tribe: Avatar blatantly around, but… this… She took a step forward, reaching out her fingers to touch the rack, and was considerably surprised when Amon rapped her hand as if she were a small child. "I don't think so," he said. "Stand there, and don't move."

Breathing far too fast, Korra cradled her fingers to her chest and retreated resentfully for now. He was rifling through "Northern Water Tribe Petty Nobility: 160 ASC" and abruptly seized one outfit, throwing it altogether at her. She managed to catch it with some effort and looked down at it foolishly.

"Put it on," he called to her, projecting curiously rather than raising his voice. He selected something else which he tossed much more carefully to Tarrlok; the other man caught it elegantly. Of all the things, that made Korra look down to the floor, ears burning. It was two against one… however out of it Tarrlok was, Amon—Noatak—was clearly determined to establish links with his brother—ugh, it was so weird to think of them that way—which closed her out of the loop.

She snuffled, clearing her nose and blinking rapidly, and felt a creeping stab of embarrassment. "Where do I change?" she asked, nearly hopefully, pretty much knowing what the answer would be.

The look he gave her was darkly amused, patronising and almost pitying all at once. Take a wild guess went unspoken. "Here," he said shortly. Korra decided to make one last try of it, try and persuade them that she'd be good; the door was locked, she couldn't escape from here even if she wanted to, she just didn't want to change in front of them, couldn't, wouldn't…

"But," she began, hearing a whine sidle into her voice, "if you'd just turn your back—"

"No," he said, even more tersely. "Here. You can give up the idea of escape. Change here, where I can see you."

Korra clutched the fabric to her chest, and as a last resort, looked to Tarrlok—he seemed to be more moderate and less steady about this than Amon—only to see him already undressing casually, methodically. He wasn't meeting her eyes, even when she tried to catch his gaze. She looked around for other options… This probably wasn't going to work, but it was worth a try… Quietly, she slid into one of the aisles created by the racks of clothing, and made to change there very quickly. She yanked her shirt over her head, tossing it carelessly to the floor, and held up the outfit, only to realise with a stab of panic that she had no idea how to put it on. She turned it over in her hands, trying to find the body of it, sleeves—a hole to shove herself through at worst, there must be some way into it—

A hand latched onto her shoulder, and pulled her back with strength that she knew that she could never match, twisting her around to look into a face that was frighteningly patient. "I said 'where I can see you'," Amon said, quite mildly, and she shivered all over, swallowing dryly.

"I—," Korra began, croaking, and he cut her off by pulling her bodily back into the clear area before most of the racks.

"If I can't trust you to follow orders, there will be retribution," he said, coolly. "I'd rather not stoop to dressing you like a child"—a quick flick of a glance downwards made her acutely uncomfortable at being described as a child—"so do I have to?" Resentfully, angrily, she tried to twist out of his hands. It was futile. He simply tightened his grip. "Very well," he sighed, pulling the clothing out of her fingers.

"No!" she said hoarsely, "no, I can do it myself"—scrabbling at his shoulders, already clad in different clothing that made him look so much more Water Tribe, even though that skin was inexplicably light, what had he done to it?—

He fobbed her off as inexorably as the tides and reached for her trousers—she kicked him instinctively, and he cuffed her around the head. "This didn't have to be difficult," he told her, and she tried to hit him. "Oh, behave," he said, beginning to become irritated. "We need to be getting away quickly¸ and you are becoming dead weight." Mutinously, she subsided.

"Noatak," Tarrlok said, sounding tired. "Let her do it herself." Korra looked up in surprise, and met his eyes for a full second before he turned away to look at Amon instead. "It will be quicker." As if to emphasise this, Korra kicked Amon in the shin again. He cursed, and practically threw her away from him.

"Very well," he replied to his brother, then addressing Korra. "You have a minute. If you're not finished by then… I'm sure you understand." Korra wasn't sure whether that was a murder threat or a gross bodily harm threat. Either way, she didn't want to invoke it. Modesty is a luxury, she thought, and changed as quickly as she could. It was more humiliating by this point than embarrassing; fear made her clumsy, and once or twice she tripped over entirely and had to pull herself back up by the rack, hurting her hands. The outfit was much more complicated than the clothing in the Southern Water Tribe; beautiful, but complicated. She was sure that, in the end, she was given much more than a minute, but she didn't slow down.

When she was finished, she was wearing something much prettier than anything she had ever had before, and she felt acutely miserable in it. Amon tossed her a robe, a coat, to put on over the top, and she drew the fur lining at the neck and the sleeves close to her face and buried herself in them, feeling safe for a second.

The hand on her back was far too gentle, which wasn't right at all, and Amon was looking down at her almost beneficially. "Good," he said, and she released some of the tension that she was carrying uncomfortably with her. Nobody was going to kill her at this moment in time. For now, it was probably a good idea to swallow her pride. What was she implicitly afraid of? Nobody had touched her so far; it had only been looks, and she could deal with looks. It wasn't right, it wasn't easy, but she could deal with looks if she had to. It wasn't worth getting herself killed over.

Amon gave her a casual scan, and frowned. "Do something with your hair," he said to Tarrlok. "Not least because—like father?" Tarrlok gave his brother a dark, disappointed look, and shrugged, and let his hair down around his shoulders. Korra watched, oddly hypnotised. He moved to do a warrior's wolf tail, and then hesitated—good, she thought, good, you don't deserve one—and left two hanks down either side of his face still to put into tails. Amon looked disapproving at this remnant of his old hairstyle, but didn't say anything.

"You, as well," he added. Korra blinked, distracted, and fumbled for the bag he threw to her. It was full of hair things… Taking a deep breath, she decided to go for simplicity, and pulled most of her into a bun with a intricate tie from the bag. Hoping that neither of them would recognise the iconic hair loopies, she thought of Katara as she braided each loopy, either side of her face, and drew on memories of Katara to give her strength.

To her surprise, they travelled by Satomobile, one with a closed roof and tinted windows. They stopped only to procure an amount of money that was disappointingly large—they would be well provided for and have no stumbling problems that she could exploit, damn—and then she was put in the back and indignantly tied to the door. "If you try to escape, it will go badly for you," she was warned, and some hopes of escaping before they left Republic City deflated.

Slightly more cheeringly, they arrived at a train station. Korra brightened. A public place! Perfect. She could wreak hell here. They parked quite far away, practically on a cliff edge, and she was hurried metres clear by Tarrlok. Watching, confused, she understood as Amon bent some water out of the river below and the Satomobile went hurtling over the edge to make a strangely beautiful descent—incongruous, that big, heavy thing sailing through the air as if it were weightless—and breaking apart on the rocks below. Unbidden, the image of herself going over the edge came to her, and she swallowed, trying to make that lump go down.

When she looked up at Tarrlok, unable to help herself, she saw that his expression was nearly as conflicted as hers. Then he noticed her, and schooled it carefully to that politician's face, cool and unreadable. She scowled and turned away again, mind racing and trying to formulate plans. She needed to get away from them somehow, obviously—before, she might have attempted going to the toilet, but now she wasn't sure that they'd let her get away with that. They were overly careful, completely ignoring privacy… it was worth a try, perhaps, but she wasn't going to pin any hopes on that. She could get lost in the crowd, scream for help…

Something occurred to her, and she snorted, unable to stop it escaping, and then once more. Tarrlok, staring straight ahead, said, "What?" tersely. She shrugged. "No, Avatar Korra—I said what?"

"Well," she said. "I was just wondering how you're going to explain this."

"Explain what?" he snapped, temper clearly wearing thin. She shrugged again.

"Two old men travelling with a teenage girl. That's all."

"I am not old," he said, outraged, showing the first signs of his former personality in a while. "I'm not even forty, what do you mean old?" It was almost precious how concerned he was with her apparent insult to his person when he'd kidnapped her and was now attempting to take her somewhere that nobody would ever see her again. Almost. "Noatak," he called to Amon, who had been making sure that there were no signs of remaining wreckage below—Korra was horrified and slightly impressed at how far his range was, bending the water all the way down there—and was now making his way back to where they stood. "How are we going to explain this?"

Amon ignored Korra's snide, "I could be your granddaughter", which provoked Tarrlok into a hiss of annoyance, and rubbed at his chin thoughtfully. "You and I will be brothers; nobody knows that Councilman Tarrlok has an older brother. I don't think we could label our relation with the Avatar as family… the dynamic is too strange to call it family. We can't have a girl her age travelling alone with two unrelated men, it's true."

"Maybe you should just take me home, then," Korra suggested nastily, albeit under her breath.

"She's going to have to be somebody's wife," Amon said finally, and her head snapped up.

"What?" She hadn't thought before she'd said that, and for a moment she was afraid that he was going to be angry, but he seemed more exasperated.

"Oh, don't flatter yourself," he said. "It's to avoid unwelcome attention wherever we go. We won't be in public long; you won't have to suffer the indignity of a little acting for a long period of time. People will still gossip… it's in their natures… but it won't be as outright scandalous as no explanation at all." Scandalous, he said, she thought, stifling an unreasonable desire to burst out laughing. He didn't want it to look scandalous when that there was Councilman Tarrlok, revealed to be a bloodbender and Yakone's son and also to be the brother of also a bloodbender who was also Yakone's son the hypocritical leader of the dangerous terrorist group the Equalists and here I am the Avatar being taken for creepy 'potential', oh my god—

It was so unfunny that she could have laughed until she cried.

Tarrlok didn't want any responsibility for her—he didn't even seem to want to touch her, which she was finding strange and off-putting, because every time she even went near him, stumbled, tripped, wandered, he would practically leap off into the other direction—so it was decided that she'd be Amon's wife. Oh, good. She wasn't sure that either would have been better, but Amon's presence made her a lot more actively nervous and his hand on her shoulder had nearly hyperventilating unless she was making a concerted effort to appear calm.

She was putting a lot of effort into appearing calm. Amon's arm was around her shoulder, and his hand rested near her neck. The heat radiating off it, and him, was keeping her constantly on edge. The fact that he'd already given her a threat—an almost amicable threat, of all the things—was not helping. Every so often, he would play with the hair curling behind her ear as a reminder. "If you choose to cause trouble," he'd said, sounding largely bored, "there's a pressure point here that causes first pain, and then unconsciousness. Nobody will see. Nobody will know. You will simply have fainted. Unless you have a heart condition I am unaware of, in which case it might induce death." After a moment for her to digest that, he'd continued, "Don't cause trouble."

And she'd nodded resentfully and tried to breathe through the suffocating effect that hand was having.

Korra had never seen the train station before. She'd heard about them—the mechanisation of the trains laying off earthbenders left right and centre was a topical issue in some circles—but nothing had prepared her for the… immenseness of a train. They belched steam, and were unbearably loud, and ridiculously crowded, and that was all that she could see from a distance, behind the barrier of the ticket machine. She tried to deal with the frantic hammering of her heart. Before coming to Republic City, she hadn't really dealt with technology… it didn't travel well to the South Pole and so they largely got on without it… Satomobiles were one thing, but the train was enormous, and she was sure that she'd heard about accidents, crashes, entire carriages piling into one another and squashing the people inside like a tin can crumpling…

"Come on, let's move," Amon said. He sounded so affable that she looked up at him in open surprise, and then remembered that they were supposed to be a couple. His hand digging into her neck for just a second brought her right back to reality. Oh. Right. He bought three tickets from the uncaring boy at the desk—who didn't look a lot older than she was, and completely bored—and they moved through onto the platform.

"Do you know where we're going?" Tarrlok asked, far too casually. Korra hadn't even thought of that; she'd been caught in denial, fear. She listened, trying not to look too attentive. Thoughtfully, Amon looked at the board of trains.

"We have a single, day-travel ticket," he replied, rubbing at his chin with his free hand. His other was absent-mindedly tapping at Korra's shoulder, and it was making her skin crawl. "We can go anywhere between here and Ba Sing Se… and other directions besides."

"Ba Sing Se?" Tarrlok suggested, crossing his arms and standing there like a lump.

Amon shook his head. "Too big, too busy, too many people there who might have heard of—well, heard of you two. I was a mask. Ba Sing Se is out of the question." Rebuffed, Korra thought she saw Tarrlok almost… deflate. He didn't seem very on board with this plan, and she cheered up. If she couldn't get away before they left Republic City, then she might be able to whittle away at him. "Perhaps… something on the way. It would be safest to travel for a generous period of time, just to be safe…" His finger traced over the map, casually plotting Korra's entire future. "It's dangerous to take so many days to travel, but if we can get there… here." He tapped the map, and illogically Korra looked around, hoping that someone had seen that, that somebody now knew where she was going… Nobody was even looking in their direction, and she turned back to the map feeling heavy, the fact that they had pretty much successfully kidnapped her sinking in.

The place that he had chosen was on the south-west of the Earth Kingdom. It was the other side of the world entirely. All that could be said for it was that it was closer to the Water Tribe, but there was no regular travel between the Water Tribe and the rest of the world, she'd have to escape and fend for herself there… Dully, she became aware that Amon was talking again. It might be important, she thought, and forced herself to listen.

"I need to go to the toilet," Amon was saying to Tarrlok in low tones, and she wrinkled up her nose. That was an image that she didn't need. "If I leave her with you, are you able to keep her under control?" Tarrlok regarded his brother somewhat coolly.

"Are you implying that I'm unable?"

Amon gave him a rough pat on the shoulder. "I know you're finding this difficult," he said, nearly with affection. "That's why I asked. That's all."

"I'm capable," Tarrlok said, and Korra knew that Amon had registered the coolness of his tone as well, by that expression he made for just a moment in between smiling—ugh, he was smiling, this was too weird—and leaving. Well, here was a chance. Whatever he'd said, Tarrlok was clearly out of it and had been for a while. With Amon gone, he lapsed into all out brooding. Now that she was here and had this opportunity, what was she going to do with it?

Korra felt a stab of panic for a moment, and suppressed it. Right. She needed to get away, maybe into a crowd, make a scene, get people's attention. She was almost afraid to look at Tarrlok, as if he could see her thoughts, would read it on her face, and in one quick, smooth motion, kicked him ferociously in the back of the knees.

He went down hard, cursing, not having seen it coming and reached out grasping for her; she evaded his hand with ease and darted off, heart hammering in her chest. This was time to be clever, but all she could feel was fear and an animal desire to flee; she'd seen the fury on his face and knew that he wouldn't be so lax and inclining in her favour if she was headed for the exit, openly shoving people aside. Jumping the barrier was harder in the clumsiness of dread, and she hit her shin, crying out and frightening travellers, who scattered—yes, yes, she was making a scene, if they caught her, it would get out that a Water Tribe girl had—

Someone was gaining behind her, and she knew those steps, knew them knew them knew them, oh no—

Her feet went out from underneath her and she knew that that was bloodbending—he was bloodbending her in public, but too subtly that anyone would notice, shit—and then he was on her and she was shrieking, terrified, and he was incongruously holding her, lifting her up tenderly; that face loomed above her, pale like some demonic spirit and the eyes boring into her with cold fury as he spoke gently, falsely.

"Are you all right?" Amon said kindly, as his fingers brushed back some hair from her forehead gently, and pressed down on the pressure point with vicious efficiency.