Noatak was awoken by a fist to the throat.

Then to the neck, the collar-bone, the deltoids. He was pulled from his bed, and crumpled to the floor, where he received more punches to his back. Numbed. Paralyzed. He'd sadly grown somewhat accustomed to this.

He was thrown into the side of his bed. He barely held himself up, his wrists still cuffed, always cuffed. It was in these disorienting brief seconds that Noatak actually preferred the isolation, when the guards would just slide his food tray under the door, with no contact or faces, like the animal he...

Noatak blinked hard and shook his head. He looked up at the wall next to his bed, the darkness of early morning still lingering.

How many days had it been since he'd last seen Korra?

The footsteps behind him got quieter. The guards were leaving. He was alone, for now. He grimaced, groaned, trying to stave the stinging pain emanating from numerous points on his body, places he'd begun to memorize, places more so that were starting to bruise over. Memorizing the points was all there was for him to keep track of, really. Some distant, void-like part of him seethed to find a way to bloodbend and block and protect the points, so that he wouldn't be paralyzed. But no, he couldn't. Not that bloodbending one's own body wasn't doable. It was, completely.

He'd...done it before, admittedly. Three times, if memory served. He did it once during the start of the Equalist Revolution, just to see if it could be done. His mind was so twisted and bent on "equality" that he wasn't even aware of how entirely disturbing what he was doing was. He didn't find much use for it.

That was until the second time he bloodbended himself, which was when he hunted down and confronted Tarrlok after he'd kidnapped Korra. Tarrlok bloodbent all his Equalist troops and Lee into unconsciousness, but Amon walked right up to him, craning against the internal rush of flows of blood, unstoppable, not even a man then, a machine. After that feat, that thing that Noatak was had never dreamed he would be forced into a cell like he was now.

But those instances paled in comparison to the third, and last time. The most haunting memory of all was during the darkest period when he was paralyzed, forced into that...cursed wheelchair. Lee was having trouble scrounging up even the most low-paying odd-job, and Noatak was often left alone in whatever room they were pitifully offered to stay in, and one day he...wondered if he could make himself walk. How surreal that thought had been back then. It seemed more productive than pulling water from the air and dispersing it again, though that discovery was elating enough itself, and it was more stimulating than doing push-ups and crunches for the umpteenth time. So, he bloodbent his legs, and stood up for what felt like the first time in an eternity.

It was agonizing, due to the fact that most of his legs were covered in a mixed degree of burns, the bloodbending itself, and that it disturbed every internal fiber of himself that he chose to do it. He only took three steps before he collapsed to the floor, leaving himself to crawl back up into the wheelchair in a cold sweat, gasping, panting.

He never spoke a word of it to Lee.

But he had told his mother. She was just as horrified as he was with himself when he'd done it.

So no, protecting his chi wasn't a matter of theory, it was a matter of will. After all he'd done, he promised, to Tarrlok, to Korra, to Mako, to all the people he hurt, to himself that he'd never bloodbend again. He couldn't.

So he didn't. He just suffered.

He shifted himself so that he sat on the floor of his cell, his back propped against his bed, so that he was at least upright. The lights, he'd noticed, dimmed during the evening, and brightened in the morning. They never turned completely off. It wasn't as irritating as he thought it would be. His breath regained, he looked down, and to his left...

The mask.

It was still on the floor, of course. He hadn't touched it at all last night. Once he was able to move, he'd just gone straight to sleep, or bed, at least. Sleep was never the easiest thing for him. Getting to sleep, mostly. His mind was usually in high-gear, even before prison. It had subdued quite a bit when he was living with his mother.

After a moment of mental groping, he finally decided to reach and shakily pick the mask up.

He was relieved how...alien it felt in his chained hands. Maybe that was because he had never held it that often. He wore it all during the Equalist Revolution, even while he slept, which was honestly not so easy or often then either, though...not because of the mask.

Why it was here now in his cell was beyond him. Perhaps not everything from the past could be properly erased, he told himself. The door of the cell was closed, locked, but there was still the sound of feet in the cell. Someone was in the cell with him. They didn't have a gentle air like Korra or Lin, or the belligerent hostility of any guard. No, Noatak soon learned what the nature of this visit was.

Qarnau.

"Noatak," the judge said flatly, strolling forward with his hands behind his back. "I wish I could say it's an honor to finally meet you in person."

Noatak tried to look up at him, but only found his eyes vaguely directed near his feet. "I truly wish I could say so as well. Qarnau, I presume?"

"Quite."

There was silence for a moment, until Qarnau casually gestured towards the mask. "Enjoying that? Surprised it didn't sink, what with the weight of all your cruel failure dragging it down."

Noatak handled the mask, scowling at himself. "What I did indeed would've never worked, and it was unbelievably cruel. I can't believe I did all those things. I regret it all."

"Self-realization," Qarnau noted. "That's a start."

Noatak looked up, but not at the judge. So far nothing this man had done had appeared to be in the slightest interest of reforming him. "Qarnau," he said in thought. "That's a Water Tribe name."

"From my father, yes," Qarnau affirmed. "Southern. Times were tough, so he came here to Republic City, met a woman with equivalent aspirations, and started a family of themselves and I."

Noatak said nothing for a moment. That was a lot of new information being unexpectedly divulged to him. What to do with it? Nothing for now. "What were those aspirations?" he asked warily, genuinely curious.

"Fishing." The tone of the judge's voice was so utterly transparent.

Noatak nodded with a slight grimace. "You didn't appreciate their work, I take it."

"Oh, it was honest, and it put food on the table for us and others, and it taught me some lessons I'm never going to forget: hard work, dedication. But I wanted to do something more...influential. It took a lot of studying, and a lot of hard work, but I eventually found myself in a committee under Tarrlok in the Republic City council."

Noatak's eyes widened. He couldn't help but breathe out, "Tarrlok..."

"Ohhh," Qarnau cooed with false sympathy. "Yes. He was your brother, now, wasn't he? And so similar in so many ways. He was a skilled waterbender, he kidnapped Korra, oppressed nonbenders, framed you and your Equalists out of hate..." He chuckled. "Crime flows through your family, doesn't it?"

For the first time in the visit, Noatak looked Qarnau in the eye, adamant but not disrespectful. "Yakone and Tarrlok are different men. I'm not them. Tarrlok regretted what he did as much as I do now. Yakone forced bloodbending onto Tarrlok and I, and I've since denied it, denied him. He's no more my father than Amon was a symbol for equality."

"Hm," Qarnau said, rubbing his jaw. "I see. And...where might they be now?"

Noatak grimaced, mournful of both. "Dead."

"Mm," Qarnau speculated, dropping his hand and returning it behind his back. "How fitting."

Noatak blinked, eyes narrowing in anger. "Y-You think they deserved to die after what they did?"

"Seeing how much pain they caused, and seeing as that was all they were ever going to cause...yes."

All words left Noatak in that moment. This was the man that was keeping him imprisoned.

"Ironic, isn't it?" Qarnau went on. "You declared you were trying to spread equality, peace, when all you ever spread was pain, and fear, which must not be too far off from what you are feeling in this room, alone. And not only is that ironic, but the very thing you taught your blind followers is being used against you, daily, and will be every time Korra comes back to care for you."

Noatak stomped and stood in one fluid motion and threw the mask against the back wall of his cell. It didn't shatter, unfortunately. It only clattered to the floor, hollow, unsatisfying.

"Oh," Qarnau said, mildly surprised, but not scared. "Guess I might've touched a nerve there."

Noatak shakily fell to his knees, unable to stand for long, unable to stand at all while chi-blocked. He slowly looked up at Qarnau, his brow creased, but not in any anger.

"What happened to you?" he asked quietly. "Why are you doing all this? Why me? What..." He looked down, then realized with wide eyes.

"Oh no," he said, looking back up at Qarnau. "W-What happened? Tell me, please. Who did I kill? Whose bending did I take? Who did I hurt? Your wife? Your child?"

Qarnau snorted, smothering the swell of empathy that Noatak had. "If only it were that simple for you. No, you didn't kill any friends or family of mine, and you didn't steal any bending of theirs' either. And even if you had, a simple 'sorry' wouldn't get you out of here. No," he said, his voice growing dangerously quiet, "I'm doing all this because your kind's been getting a free ride out of justice thanks to Korra. Her embezzlement of Kuvira was daring, I admit, but that, I promise you, is where it stops. It's well past high-time someone stepped in."

Noatak furrowed his brow, blinking. "Sh-she's the Avatar. She gave Kuvira and I new lives. She's protecting the world. She's keeping balance."

"And criminals from getting what they deserve."

Those words burned in Noatak. This man...How could this man...

Qarnau turned to walk out, his hands behind his back. "Now pick your friend back up. It seems like last night wasn't enough. You two still appear to have some things to discuss."

He left, and the door was slammed shut, locked. With Noatak left alone, he slowly looked over, at the...

He slowly sighed out his nose.

Fine, then. Maybe there are some things I need to discuss.

As he trudged over on his knees, and picked up...his mask, all he wished for was Korra to be there with him.

Notes: A shorter chapter, but a dense one. The next will be longer, so I'd expect more of a wait on that one. This was originally gonna be the intro to that chapter, but there would be a time jump that didn't really flow well. Keeping all the horrible in one chapter is preferable too. Also, a little bit about Qarnau's past. Is he a sympathetic antagonist yet?

Jokes aside, things won't be looking up for anyone quite yet.