A/N: Thank you for all your amazing support.

Previous chapter: Shared meal and shared space bring out a strange camaraderie between Noatak and Korra...and a shared bed gives Korra some dirty thoughts that trouble her.

IX

Fallout

"Sorry hon," says the barkeeper, "but I think I'm going to have to actually kick you out now. We really need to clean that corner of the bar."

Kwan barely manages to lift his head. A row of empty shot glasses lines the bar around him like a fence, so many that he wonders if he's seeing double.

"You got a puddle of drool on my bar," adds the barkeeper. She leans closer. "Or is that vomit?"

"Sorry," he mumbles. "Thank you for saving me." He can't remember what she saved him from, exactly, just that she has been very kind to him, and he's been repeating himself a lot, and she's probably getting annoyed. He squints, trying to hone his dulled mind. A single word rises in his thoughts:

Amon.

So much for numbing his rage with alcohol; even barely conscious, it still boils in his blood.

"He's with the damned Avatar," he slurs at the barkeeper, waving an empty shot glass for emphasis. "And he fucking taught her bloodbending. He's a million times worse than I thought. A million times worse."

Her nose wrinkles as she plucks the glass out of his hand. "Yes, we've been through this. But you're about two drinks from passing out again, and you need to give your liver a break. I really can't do any more for you right now."

"I won't kill myself now," he says loudly. "I promise. I'm going to get my revenge on that bastard, and-"

"Yes, we've been through this, too. Come on, love." She grabs his shoulders and steers him to the door. "Do you remember where you're going now?"

He stares at her blurred face. "The...hotel?"

"That's right. You're going to go to the hotel at the end of the block and ask for my aunt Mara. She can give you a place to sleep this off."

"You've been so kind," he says. "So kind. I don't deserve-"

"Stop. You've already thanked me enough." She gently pushes him through the doorway. "You can repay me by not killing yourself. Promise?"

"Promise," he slurs, and he staggers away from the bar and around the corner.

A few seconds later, the world slips out from under him.

He awakens with a splitting headache, a dry mouth and a kink in his neck. The scent of damp earth occupies his nostrils. When he lifts his head, he realizes he fell asleep in a drainage ditch, and it's early morning. His clothes are damp with mud and vomit, and the prospect of climbing back to street level and cleaning himself seems so overwhelming that he lays his cheek back in the mud, closing his eyes.

The revolution will run itself just fine without me. Maybe I'll stay here. I've had a good run.

But his skin is getting itchy, and the knowledge that he failed to stop Amon is still heavy on his mind. The man knows all their strategies, all their secret bases, all their contacts; he could bring down their entire organization within minutes, if he chose. He has to be stopped if the new Equalist movement is to succeed.

When he thinks of the guilt he felt when he attacked Amon, he's not sure he can do it again. Maybe he needs a new approach - especially now that the Avatar is in the picture.

First things first: he'll go to the hotel, get himself cleaned up and spend a good hour or two meditating. Once he's calm and centred, he'll check in with his lieutenant.

It's becoming apparent that he's still too emotionally invested to do this alone.

.*.*.*.

For the second time in row, Noatak awakens to see the Avatar's face. As with before, her visage brings him face-to-face with uncomfortable truths about himself, and he's not yet awake enough to shove them aside - not without a little help, at any rate. Spirits, he needs a drink.

Her eyelids part, and now she's staring at him with fear flickering in her eyes, confirming the darkest thoughts floating through his mind: you're a monster.

Make that two drinks.

"Were you watching me sleep?" she demands, a bit more aggressively than necessary.

He eases out of bed and speaks calmly: "I was just about to return to my room."

She says nothing, only stares. He feels her eyes track him as he walks back to his room, pulls the cork from a wine bottle with his teeth, and pours himself a full glass.

"You're drinking?" she asks. "For breakfast?"

Swallowing the liquid too quickly to taste it, he turns to face her. She's hugging the blanket to her chest, head tilted, almost feline, and he can't figure out what the expression means. Is she judging him, or hinting that she wants some, too?

"There's enough to go around if you want me to pour you a glass," he says.

"It's not even noon." She glances at the clock. "It's not even ten."

So she's judging, then, not hinting. He pours another full glass.

"You aren't what I expected," she says.

The scorn in her voice almost makes him laugh. "And what did you expect?"

"A criminal mastermind. Disciplined and obsessed."

"Not wrong," he says, "but only one part of the picture. Amon is a carefully manufactured image, Avatar. You should disregard everything you think you know about me." He swirls the wine and inhales the scent, half-turning to face her.

She's still studying him, and she stands, pacing across her room to lean against the doorway. "But you're not just a little different from that image, you're nothing like it. Like all the drinking, and the fact that you had this long-running love affair that ended with you completely disregarding your own safety just for a chance to sleep with your ex. And you shower and eat just like everyone else, you sleep and you snore-"

"I don't snore," he interrupts, but she's still going.

"-and you get your heart broken just like the rest of us, and you weep, and you even have a mourning tattoo. You're so...human."

At the mention of the tattoo, he glances at his arm; it's been a part of him for so long that he almost forgets it isn't natural. A simple curving black band over his left bicep, its curled ends holding a white and blue orb; his fingers slide over it. He remembers the way, during clear nights when the moon was full, his mother loved to tell the story of Tui and La, and the moon-goddess Yue. The Avatar and Katara had always been among the heroes in that story; every time she told it, his father left the room, his face stony.

The ritual had disappeared once the brothers became waterbenders, once full moons were no longer cause for celebration, but for dread. How he wishes he could go back to those days, wrapped with Tarrlok in fur blankets, hot milk warm in their stomachs, the fire crackling beside them, the moonlight streaming in through the window and landing in a perfect glowing square around his mother's smiling face.

"Who is your tattoo for?" asks the Avatar, and he's not sure if she's being nosey, or just making conversation.

"My mother," he says quietly. His weight is suddenly too heavy to bear, and he sags to a lean against the wine table, staring across the room to where the Avatar stands in the doorway.

"Oh." She senses that the conversation is awkward, he can tell, but where normal people would shy away from awkwardness, the Avatar goes barrelling toward it. "But it's a mourning tattoo - I thought you left her when you were just fourteen, before she died."

It irks him, how much Tarrlok told her about their past. He prefers to have at least one or two secrets to hide, and between Tarrlok and the police, most of his secrets are already in the Avatar's hands.

Though if he's honest with himself, it's kind of relieving to not have to worry about which card to play when. Even before his literal imprisonment, the façade of Amon was isolating in itself; even around Kwan, he had kept his deepest secrets held closely to his chest. He's starting to realize just how alone he is in the world. Besides, he did enjoy the feeling of camaraderie the night before - even if it was with the Avatar, of all people. As ridiculous as it might have seemed a couple days ago, his loneliness nudges him toward honesty.

"As I said," he tells her, "you should disregard everything you think you know about me. I visited her, in her later years, once the man who fathered me was out of the picture, and Tarrlok was already here in the city."

Her eyes widen. "Really?"

He nods. "Three weeks, each year. I told Kwan and my followers that they were training and meditation missions to commune with the spirits, but instead, I posed as a travelling merchant and returned to my hometown. I brought her pottery clay from the Earth Kingdom, and she bought it, then made bowls to sell back to me. She was so excited at the thought of her bowls travelling around the world." He smiles and pauses for a sip of wine. "I always drastically overpaid her for those bowls. They were quite lovely, though, and I kept most of them."

The Avatar is staring at him, bewildered, as if he has done something utterly unexpected, like burst into song and dance. "That's actually pretty sweet," she says begrudgingly, and for the first time in decades, he feels a bashful glow on his cheeks.

"I thought I was so clever and stealthy," he continues. "I slowly built up a friendship with her, over the years. She seemed genuinely happy to have someone to talk to." He remembers how her violet eyes lit up each time he arrived at the door, and his chest tightens.

"Did she ever figure out who you were?" asks the Avatar.

The corner of his mouth lifts. "I underestimated her, the same way I underestimated everyone who was not me: you, my brother, even non-benders. I should have known that a mother will always recognize her child, even when he has aged two decades, even when his skin has paled and his voice has changed.

"I returned one year to find that her home had been abandoned. The inside was littered with dried funerary shrubs; that was how I learned of her passing." He feels his voice losing strength. "A single envelope sat on the mantle, sitting in a finely crafted blue bowl. My name was on it, and it was still sealed. Inside was a letter that read, 'I never gave up hope. Thank you for more time together, however brief. I love you. -Mama.'"

The Avatar is still hovering in the doorway, her face drawn. "That's so sad," she whispers. "Why didn't she say something sooner?"

"I don't know. Maybe it would have been too much for her to bear, admitting out loud that her son had been alive for decades, but hadn't returned to her; not in the way she wanted, at least." His fingers trace the perimeter of the tattoo. "I didn't take it well. I smashed the bowl to the floor, and it cracked into quarters." He remembers how he wept and tried to force them back together - the last bowl she had ever made for him. Her only legacy, shattered in a moment of infantile rage, just like her family years ago.

"Over the next few years," he says quietly, "during my travels, I buried each of those pieces in a different nation. Maybe she knew, deep down, that I was keeping all her bowls, not selling them around the world, but the thought of her pottery travelling meant so much to her that I felt it was only fitting." He bows his head. "If only I had been watching Tarrlok more closely, I could have learned of her illness before she passed. We might have sat together as mother and son, one last time, instead of both of us adhering to some unspoken game where neither of us admitted to my identity."

His voice fades, but the thoughts continue. If only he had openly confessed his identity to her, she might have grounded his growing lust for power before his revolution had warped. If only he hadn't left Tarrlok and his mother with that monster, everything might have been different. Or if only he and Tarrlok had told her about Yakone's training before everything spun out of control...

This line of thought is darkening his mood. He has never taken the time to properly deal with his mother's death and all the emotional baggage that comes with it. These are thoughts he thought he had successfully buried, but now they're engulfing him.

The Avatar is watching him with eyes shining with pity, but now his mood is sour, and his lips twist.

"Do not pity me." He wishes he hadn't shared such a personal story with her. Pity is a sign of imagined superiority. An insult.

"I'm just surprised," she says quietly. "I didn't think a person like you had any good inside him."

The words hit his worsening mood just the wrong way. "A person like me," he repeats.

"A villain." She either doesn't notice his growing anger, or has decided to ignore it.

"A villain." His voice drops in pitch. "A curious assessment, Avatar, given all that I did to fight for the rights of the oppressed during my days as Amon."

She snorts - just a small noise, yet so dismissive, and it brings all his worst fears about himself to the forefront.

The last of his patience fades.

"Everything I have ever done has been for the sake of what's right." He regards her with the cold look he perfected in his days as Amon.

Instead of wilting under it, she crosses the room, planting her stance a few paces away from him. "Oh, come on. You can't be that delusional."

He won't be intimidated. He drains his wine and sets the glass aside, then moves to stand in front of her. His hands, trembling, lock behind his lower back as he glares down his nose. "I regret many things, Avatar, but I do not regret my intentions. I always meant to save non-benders, and to save this city. If you refuse to see any good in what I did for this city, then it is you, not I, who is delusional."

.*.*.*.

Korra stares up at Amon, surprised that he can't recognize his own villainy. Lin mentioned that he was narcissistic - perhaps he is genuinely ignorant about his own evil nature. Something resembling her old fire sparks within her. This is what she has dreamed of, for years: the chance to tell off Amon. The chance to shatter him, to break him, the way he broke her.

"You started a war," she says, challenging him to deny it.

He shakes his head. "A revolution."

"No, a war. You can tell yourself that it was with the best of intentions, but at the end of the day, that giant mask you slapped on Aang's statue didn't do anything to foster equality. You wanted to dominate." Her voice grows in strength as she speaks. She has forgotten how good it feels to be confident.

"The mask was to inspire my followers," he says. "I only wanted to tip the balance back in favour of non-benders." The jumping muscle in his cheek reveals that she's getting to him - without his old mask, he can't maintain that same stoic façade that always made her feel like she could never faze him. The spark within her begins to grow.

"By using bending," she challenges.

"By using a spirit-given gift."

"...which was bending."

He gives a low growl, and she can tell he's getting dangerously angry, but it feels so good.

"You started a war, and you kidnapped Tenzin's family," she says. "They were just little kids."

"And they were not harmed. It was a necessary evil."

"Not harmed? You kidnapped children, and you don't think that might have traumatized them, just a little bit? And then you were going to end their entire culture, just to prove your own strength." She slowly circles him, peering up at him, and scoffs. "Not a villain! How deluded are you?"

"This discussion will end," he says, his tone leaden, but her delight and her anger are burning out of control.

"But the most cowardly thing of all - the one that shows how power-mad you really were - was when you took your own brothers' bending and kidnapped him." His eyes flash, and she takes a step back, realizing she has pushed him too far.

"I saved Tarrlok," he snarls, lunging forward to loom over her. "I rid him of our father's curse, then hid him away so that he would be safe from the war." His arm slices the air for emphasis, and she can feel how badly she's hurting him. She can taste it.

The Avatar State is beginning to pull at the edges of her consciousness, and that's when she realizes that her heightened emotional state is starting to run away on her. Is this me, or the corruption?

"You kept him hidden to keep him quiet," she snaps, but now the words are pouring out of her mouth without her control. "Rid him of the curse? You knew he was a bloodbender long before the war even started, and you didn't bother to remove it until it was convenient for you. Some saviour! You didn't want him to recognize you, because then he would be a threat to your quest for power."

"I had no choice. I saved him as soon as the opportunity presented itself," says Amon. "I could not reveal myself to him too soon, without prematurely escalating the revolution. Of course I wanted to help him, Avatar. I wanted to save him. And I did. You don't know what it's like to be a bloodbender. You don't know the enormity of that burden."

She starts laughing, a dry, humourless laugh. Red fog hazes her vision, and she tries to reel herself in, but venom is still spewing from her lips: "You know nothing. You have padded yourself with delusions and lies to cover up the fact that you climbed over everyone and everything you could, just to try to prove to the world that you were more powerful than me." Her lips twist. "And then you failed."

He growls and turns away, stalking back to his wine.

In the silence that follows, her victory begins to leave a foul taste in her mouth. Why did she let her temper run away like that? What would Tenzin say, if he heard her goading her enemy, being so intentionally cruel? What would Katara say? Aang? It's hard to take a victory from this argument when she realizes that she doesn't really hold moral high ground. Part of the duty of an Avatar is respect for all.

Besides, if there's anyone who can understand the horrors of bloodbending, it's Amon - she can try to push him away all she wants, but at the end of the day, he may be her best chance of learning to control it. She needs him as an ally, more than she wants to admit.

"I got a bit carried away," she mutters, her voice hoarse with the pride that she can't quite swallow.

His back still turned, he says, "No, you were correct. All of it."

She peers at him, trying to decide if he's manipulating her.

When he finally meets her gaze, his face is blank. "Don't think I'm unaware of my own shortcomings," he says flatly. "I had good reason to want to die. I know what I am. I know what I did. I know that as good as my intentions might have been on the surface, there was an undercurrent of power that warped me."

Her own worries weigh so heavily on the mind that she can't help asking: "But some of that was due to bloodbending, right? Katara told me that bloodbending leads to madness. It corrupts. Destroys." Her emotions, still heightened from earlier, are changing. Panic is rising inside her, but this doesn't feel like a typical panic attack - instead of the usual pressure on her chest, this time the Avatar State is closing in around her, pressing into her. It's exhausting to hold it back.

"It certainly corrupts," says Amon, "but the bloodbender is ultimately responsible for his own actions." He pours himself another glass of wine, oblivious to her internal struggle. "I'd like to be able to blame bloodbending for my actions, but I cannot."

"But it makes people cruel and detached," she says. "It drives them mad. Didn't you feel that go away, once I took your bending?" Once I stole it from you.

"To some extent," he says, swirling the glass. "There was a...calmness. It was like a wildfire inside me, one I had to fight to contain."

"All the time," she says. "A constant undercurrent."

He nods and takes a sip.

"It's exhausting," she rasps. Sweat trails down her temple. "It's so tempting to give in."

His gaze slowly rises to lock onto her, his eyebrow raised. "Avatar," he says with a careful, even tone, "are you all right?"

Red haze pulses in her vision in time with her heartbeat, and in the safety of that red haze, she finally admits to herself how good it felt to control the Lieutenant, to kill Asami's attacker. She can sense Amon's blood from across the room, and she wonders what it would be like to bring him to his knees and force him to bow to her. What it would be like to build the pressure in his veins until they explode. The taste of iron floods her mouth.

"Avatar," he says, more firmly.

"I am corrupted," she gasps, and whistling fills her ears. He can teach her. He controlled it for most of his life: he can show her how to do the same.

She will not be destroyed, not yet, but her sanity is slipping, it's slipping, it's no longer hers...

"Amon," she begs. "Help me."

The Avatar State takes control.