A/N: Greetings, all! I hope everyone who has been reading this fic has been thoroughly enjoying it!

Oh, and this is kind of awkward, but the content of chapters 9 and 10 bled into my mind, and I realized that it should be WARNING: THIS chapter contains brief but graphic description of violence.

Amon wasn't sure how, but walking back into the house, he felt both exhausted and completely energized.

"Where could you have possibly been for this long?" Emi asked when Amon walked in.

"Made friends with a sky bison and he wouldn't let me leave."

Emi laughed. "You and animals bonding? It sounds too good to be true."

Amon pulled his boots off. "I'm a farm boy, remember that. I'm actually really good with animals."

"What kind of animals did your family raise?"

He tossed the boots aside. "Pig hybrids."

Emi nodded. "Local roast pork always was the best."

Amon tried to brush off his discomfort with the comment. "Wouldn't know." She crinkled her brow at him. "I uh, don't eat pork."

Emi frowned. "Sorry, I didn't realize you didn't. I figured since you—"

Amon shrugged. "It's an easy assumption. Don't worry." He looked to her. "So did you finally learn how to make fruit pies or did they reveal that it's a strictly Air Nomad secret?"

She shook her head. "Nope, just that my lack of inner peace would probably result in it not being its top quality."

"Interesting."

Emi lightly pushed him. "I was kidding." She paused to watch him and his seemingly extreme distraction with his fiddling with his clothing. "What're you thinking about?"

"How much I want you right now."

She smirked. "You could've just asked." She pushed him down into a lying position on the bed he was sitting on and pulled off his shirt. Impatience took over, and Amon wriggled out of his pants and underwear. Emi chuckled. "For someone so spiritual, you're not patient in bed."

He smirked. "Do you blame me?"

She pulled off her top and allowed Amon's still a bit shaky hands to pull off her bottom clothing. "Well, I am pretty irresistible."

Amon showered her neck upwards in kisses, his tongue then poking eagerly into her mouth. Emi responded positively, and figured she'd let Amon take the reins. With every move he made, it was if he was determined to hit every sensory spot in her mouth, running along each tooth, the soft palate at the top of her mouth, and almost so far into her throat that she would've gagged. Even in those slightly unsure moments, all she would do is lightly bump her tongue against his. Like a moose lion having a small rock thrown at it, it didn't do much for Amon besides stun him for a few seconds before returning to what he was doing before the distraction.

Emi could still sense his inexperience from just the way he couldn't keep foreplay up for more than a few minutes, slipping his tongue back into his mouth while taking Emi's hips and moving them into a more optimal position. She kissed the tip of his nose as his features scrunched in that Amon-serious concentration.

"Mmm, what can I do for you, Em?" Amon mumbled as they pulled together.

"No worries about me. We have all night, right?"

"Just tell me one hint to you."

"Told you, talk to me."

They caught a similar rhythm, and Amon pulled Emi against his chest, her head resting so he could whisper in her ear. A bit of anxiety crept into Amon as he realized that he wouldn't get as lucky as the first time with Emi.

"You've changed me, Em. I hope you know that. I used to never let people get this close, and now, with you…" He stroked her cheek as they picked up speed. "Spirits, this is just too much sometimes. Take me, Em. Just take me from this old life I led."

"Oh, I'll take you far beyond your old life…"

He shut his eyes, the ecstasy moments away. His breath hitched as the moments fled. Just as Emi had done, he dug his own filed down fingernails into her shoulders. She gasped when he dug them fully in her shoulders and his breath played on her neck. "Spirits Em, I love you…"

She could sense his unwinding. "Don't forget to p—"

He moaned into her ear, and, although there was a nearly climactic pleasure from Amon's orgasm, she couldn't help but feel the mood cracking.

"Amon?"

"Hmm?" he replied, still recovering.

"You didn't pull out. Again."

Amon hadn't cleared his head enough to care. Instead, he pulled her into a kiss. "Stop worrying."

She pushed him away and pulled herself away from me. "No, spirits, you don't get it. We do need to worry." She sighed. "Put your pants on, I can't tell you this naked."

Wholly uncomfortable with the mood Emi had sunk into, Amon pulled on a frown as well as his clothing. "Get on with it."

"Amon…I've been keeping something from you…about my family." She took a deep breath. "My father was an active member in the Moon Monster Triad when we were kids." Amon's stomach clenched. "He…he was the leader, actually. He…well, he…he killed your parents."

Images flashed by his head of the tall, dark haired man with the muscled shoulders who had burned his face. He could still hear the man's voice with its growling pitch and the way sarcasm dripped off the word non-bender when he spoke to a young Amon. He remembered the man's eyes, and how they were darker than the yellow-gold of most people of Fire Nation heritage, but rather a honey gold like Princess Azula's eyes. When he looked up at Emi, he saw the same honey gold.

"Why did you tell me this now?" he demanded, his voice low and forcefully controlled. He'd lost his true calm demeanor the moment he tried to kill that Earth Kingdom boy, maybe even the moment his mask broke.

"Please Amon, don't take this as an attack or act of malice from me. I only kept it from me because I wanted to redeem my family and treat you like the person my father should've treated you as. I don't hate non-benders like my father. You know that. I don't even like bending. All my life, my father made my bending a point to mold me in his image, but I never wanted to be a killer like him. Please Amon, I know I should've told you sooner—"

He couldn't dare to look at her, disgust blinding him. "I trusted you. Spirits know I trusted you. What was this for you? A trip so you could lessen your guilt at your legacy? I meant nothing to you, and I bet I still don't."

"I do care about you."

He shook his head. "No, no, you know what, I'm glad you told me. Someone needed to clear my head from this nonsense I've taken on in the past few days. What was I thinking? Sleeping with a bender, let alone a firebender. Thank you, Emi, for reminding me exactly why benders can't be trusted."

He stood and walked to the door. "Can you hear a word I'm saying? I didn't become close to you so you could cast me aside as any bender. I knew you held a grudge against benders the moment I recognized you as the farmer's boy. I came with you so I could learn my father's mistakes, and see exactly what that kind of violence did to people. So yes, I wanted to make myself feel less like a monster, but it was also for you. Don't deny it, Leader of the Equalists: you slept with me even though you knew I'm a bender. You don't really care as much as you say that I'm a bender."

He pushed open the door. "You've got some nerve trying to lecture me on how I dealt with what I went through. This balance between our families isn't equal, in case you haven't noticed. Your father murdered my parents and took my face. You're disgusting, just like your father was."

Amon turned around. "Spirits, you are so stubborn sometimes. Why don't you look me in the eyes and try to hear me out. I gave up my bending for you! Does that mean anything to you? I don't know why I thought you were different, that somehow you could see that I'm not just my dad's daughter."

Amon squeezed his eyes shut. "Blood's the strongest connection any of us have. You didn't see them that night, but I did. Mom had told me a week or so before that she was pregnant. Your father didn't stop at a killing blow to the chests or however it is you firebenders kill. No, he wouldn't stop until he'd cooked them alive. When I found them, they were creatures out of a nightmare. They were barely meatier than skeletons, with charred bits of flesh hanging off their bones like a moo-sow after a village feast, chunks of organs still lay in their ribcages, intestines going from grey red to sizzling into a burned crisp, the clothing somehow able to show only the most gruesome parts. Their faces—oh, it was one of the worst parts. Teeth were the only real parts that stayed intact, but covered in black, half baked lips falling off the skin, noses a few flesh specks and the black holes, eyes a pile of melted vanilla ice cream with the pupils sunk into the mess or gone all together." He sucked in a breath. "Mom was burned so badly that I could see inside her womb and see the fetus. The fetus' face was half burned off, showing its cartilage face and its right eye was in full view as the sphere it was. Its hand was burned to a skeleton, and I could see the half-finished innards only warmed."

He turned back to face her. "You father was a monster, and you're a fool to think the wounds of the past can be healed with a stupid love affair between the witness generations." He moved to leave, but her hand clasped his arm. "Let go of me, or I'll take this as you wanting to fight me. I'll gladly accept. If my honor's in shreds, what's left than to do whatever I deem necessary to get it back?"

She let go of Amon's arm, and he broke into a sprint out. Tears threatened to pour out of Emi's eyes.

"Go ahead and run like the coward you are! Don't think I'm going to go chasing after you!" she yelled into the darkness.

All common sense spilled out of Amon's mind as he ran, his only coherent thought being a need to get away from Emi and her legacy. He ran through the temples, eventually getting so concerned with escaping that he took to running on the edges of walkways. The vertigo from his ears returned with a vengeance, rocking the world as he ran. Right before he was to jump back onto solid ground on a walkway between temples, his balance tipped him to the left and off the wall.

He was registering his feet losing contact with the wall when he hit the grass and dirt floor fifteen or twenty feet below. Luckily, his shoulder took the brute of the impact, his head and neck taking the aftereffects. Dazed, he looked up and watched as the world continued to toss as if he were still on the boat in the open ocean. His shoulder sent a shot of pain through his body, and knocked it against the floor until it stopped hurting.

He looked up again, but the world hadn't steadied itself. He groaned and shut his eyes, hoping the unsteady vision would go away. His head ached, but he wasn't sure if he was feeling that pain or the one in his shoulder.

He opened them once more, only to find his sense begin to cut out one by one. What little hearing he had shut off. He wasn't sure what went next, but even with his eyes open, he felt like he was in a dream state, like he was seconds from falling asleep. He shut his eyes, letting his body skip a step.

Amon woke up with nearly every muscle in his body aching, his mouth with the distinct tastes of dirt and blood. He spat out the blood, but knew the dirt taste would be sticking around. Pushing through the pain, he sat up.

If he'd tumbled another fifty feet, he would've fallen off the cliff. All in front of him lay what was once a lower balcony, but plants had transformed it nearly back into the field the stone sat on. He glanced behind his shoulder at the wall he'd fallen off of the night before. He winced, not remembering it being so high.

He glanced to the side, and saw the guru headed toward him. It was a wonder that the man could keep finding him, but Amon let it slide.

"Quite an interesting meditation spot," he commented as he sat down.

Amon coughed a pathetic dry cough. "Do you have any water?"

He handed Amon a canteen, and he drank gratefully. "So, my friend, what do you say to unlocking that third chakra today?"

Amon's shoulders slumped; he couldn't imagine any of his emotions willing to flow down the metaphorical creek. "What does it involve?"

"The fire chakra, located in the stomach. It deals with willpower, and is blocked by shame."

Amon's stomach lurked; shame was a domineering emotion in his mind, and he couldn't bear to meditate on it. "I um, I don't think I'm ready to meditate on that yet."

Guru Zopa raised an eyebrow. "Are you shameful?"

He nodded. "I'm overwhelmed with it."

"Perhaps talking about it will help? If you won't face your shame head on, try to touch its edges, for now at least. Like I said, this process can take as long as you want it to take." The guru took a meditative position. "Give your shames a name."

Amon took a deep breath, still barely sitting up. "Where do you want me to start?"

"Name your biggest shame. The one that turned your fire chakra from mildly mucked up to clogged and oozing spiritual muck."

It was strange to think that there was a spot on his stomach oozing spiritual muck, and he guessed it theoretically was very ugly. For the first time since he was a kid, he actually felt the shame washing over him. He couldn't look at the guru. "I betrayed my dead family. I was blinded by lust and…slept with the daughter of the man who practically roasted my parents to death. My honor's gone, and…I know you're from the Earth Kingdom, but in the Fire Nation, honor is just about all anyone cares about."

The guru chuckled. "The Fire Nation and their honor obsession has always been funny to me, but I'm glad you brought it up. So, can you fully sit up, Amon?" He pulled himself into a cross-legged position. "So you think that you should be shameful of your supposed love affair with the daughter of your parents' murderer, right?" Amon nodded. "Why is that so? Has the daughter showed any signs of mirroring her father?"

"She has the potential."

"How so?"

He bit his lip, but let it go, realizing how childish that habit was. "She's a firebender, and so was he. She fights with a lack of control. Actually, her whole demeanor is based on a lack of forward planning and control. Without a conscience and control, how can I not be wary of her?"

"I don't mean to disrespect you, but I think you're pulling excuses out of the air. It's nothing to be shameful of, what you did. Even so, I can understand where this kind of opinion would've sprung. Amon, if you can't see a direct link between your parents' murderer and his daughter, you shouldn't treat the daughter as her father."

"But my parents…how can they look at me as anything but shameful? Out of the millions of girls in this world, I pick this one."

"Your parents would be cruel to set restrictions on your happiness. If they are people worth caring about, they would be happy that you found love with a good girl." Amon stayed silent. "Allow your shame to flow out. Accept that you're a man, and your love for this woman is nothing more than normal and something that should be treasured, not scrutinized. What we're born with doesn't make us."

Amon shut his eyes and tried to let the shame pass.

Tried.

He honestly tried, but it was as if he was throwing his soul into the chakra creek. How could he just throw his loyalty to his parents and his morals out just like that? It was a mistake to have slept with a bender, and not even the lust-filled whisper in the back of his head could defer him from that. He opened his eyes.

"I can't do it. I can't let my shame go."

The guru didn't show any signs of disappointment, which somehow only made Amon feel worse. "Like I said, there's no reason to make the process quicker than it needs to be." He stood. "I'll be around if you want to unlock it. Don't rush yourself."

Days passed and Amon didn't leave that spot. Woogi the sky bison sniffed Amon out and would bring water and onion-banana juice with him, thanks to the guru. Despite him being a solitary person in general, he found the isolation unnerving. He'd go between meditating with little success to contemplating exactly how he'd nursed his bender hatred.

"Mommy, do you think you'd be happier if you were a firebender?" Amon asked his mother a few weeks before things started going downhill.

Amon's mother crinkled her brow. "Why would I be happier?"

"Because benders are more powerful and can do neat tricks."

She slid her hand up and down his back. "Do you wish you were a bender?" He shrugged. "To be honest, I don't know what I'd do if I got bending. It's just not a part of who I am, and I think benders would feel the same way if they lost their bending."

How ironic, how her mother's tolerance of benders had turned to a drawing plan for his own revolution against them. It had never even occurred to him that his parents might not approve of what he'd done to the world.

Yet, how could they dislike it? All he wanted was for everyone to be treated equally, for non-benders to have their voices heard. Sure, maybe his means weren't ideal. He had taken away a supposed piece of benders' lives, and maybe he had left them a little lost, like if his mother had gained bending all of the sudden. He could recall people calling his movement terrorism. Could terrorism really have a good message attached to it? Was it possible that he'd gone along the wrong lines to equality?

He shook his head. He'd used the exact tactic Koh and Wan Shi Tong asked of him: fear. They were spirits; they couldn't possibly have suggested something wrong. What had they said about benders and their place in the world? They'd asked him to usher in a new era of non-bending, yet they had to know that his power only allowed temporary freedom from benders. They knew that all Amon would be doing would be scaring benders for a certain amount of time, almost like teaching a misbehaved child.

It wasn't wrong to punish a misbehaved child. It wasn't wrong to take away benders' bending if they weren't using it for the purpose the spirits had originally intended it for. He and all the other non-benders were the innocent, bystander child. Was it wrong to think lower of the misbehaved child? Was it wrong for him to hate all benders simply because he had been told to reprimand them? Should the punisher hate the misbehaved child in order for the child to learn, or would acceptance have worked better?

Amon broke out of his trance, picked up a stray rock, and threw it over the cliff. That didn't even make sense! How could he take away bending yet still accept benders? How could he possibly care for his fellow non-benders while not resenting the very people who oppressed them?

A few months after Hiroshi Sato agreed to secretly fund the Equalists, Amon sat in the rundown apartment he shared with his most trusted subordinate, an Earth Kingdom native whom Amon had named Lieutenant, even from the day Amon walked into his small village and picked the nearly dead man off the dirt after local thugs had beaten him for trying to save his farm from being possessed. The two were sharing an increasingly abundant indulgence of a bottle of expensive sake wine Sato gave them as a gift for their work.

"What do you think of Asami, Hiroshi's daughter?" Amon asked as Lieutenant poured them each a serving of wine in cups hardly worthy of the beverage.

The Lieutenant raised an eyebrow, and wished he could see through Amon's mask, something he refused to take off, even when the Lieutenant could see Amon's black hair flowing out the mask and his casual clothing. Nothing about the twenty-year-old leader of the Equalists said armored leader yet, and the mask felt out of place. "You mean Sato's ten-year-old daughter?"

Amon nodded. "She's quite interesting, if you ask me."

The Lieutenant shifted in his seat and gulped down some of the wine. "I think I'm misinterpreting you, sir."

Amon lifted his mask and took a sip of wine. "Her psyche. You notice how she's so carefree and so clearly not against benders like her father? They suffered the same loss."

"Perhaps she just has the benefit of youth. Kids tend to block out traumatic events."

Amon knew this wasn't true; he could still clearly remember the charred skeletons of his parents and would-be sibling. "I don't think it has to do with youth. I think it's something about the way she thinks as an individual. It's tragic that she doesn't feel anything for her mother's death, yet I don't see her as a completely lost cause."

"What do you mean?"

Amon traced his fingertip around the rim of the cup, as if it'd make the same tune as a real wine glass. "She doesn't hold the anger and resentment people like you, Hiroshi, and I hold towards benders, yet she should. It baffles me, to be quite honest. Here's a young girl who lost her mother, her mother, and young girl's idol, and reacts with no more than apathy after several months. After the grief passes, I'd expect her to be cynical."

The Lieutenant shrugged. "There will always be traitors, sir. Non-benders who refuse to see benders as anything but great. There won't be enough of them to get in the way of your plans."

Amon took another sip, but waited until the mask was secure against his face before speaking. "I can see so much potential for her to turn to our views if Hiroshi would let me. If a girl doesn't feel anger that her mother died, convince her to feel guilty for not feeling angry." Amon stared at the glass and the clear liquid still in its container. "You know why he won't let me near her, don't you?" The Lieutenant shook his head. "He doesn't trust me. He trusts me with his money, but he doesn't trust me to talk to his daughter. Should I be insulted, Lieutenant? Why should Mr. Sato assume that I'd do anything inappropriate with his daughter just because I'm a young man? Do you look at me and think I'm anything more than a man with an idea?"

"I wouldn't know, sir. I can't see your face." Amon smiled for a moment, but let it slide off when he took off his mask. By age twenty, the scars were no more than marks across his cheeks barely deeper than a layer of skin. If he wanted, he could cover them with makeup. "You look like a spirit's soldier, sir. No average, lust-obsessed degenerate."

Amon picked up his glass and dumped the remaining wine down his throat.

"It's gonna be a pathetic day when Asami turns to the enemy because her father refused to accept her differing morals," Amon muttered as he slammed his glass down.

Asami had taught him a valuable lesson in the ways of some non-benders. She'd suffered a tragedy caused directly by non-benders, yet had developed an appreciation for benders, a hatred for non-benders, even. Well, Equalists, anyway. What had caused her to walk another path? Was Asami betraying her fellow non-benders by not supporting the Equalists? Amon didn't hate non-benders because they didn't support him; a good leader never hates those who he fights to protect.

What would he have told Asami if he'd been given the chance, whether it have been when she was ten or when she was eighteen? In those solitary moments, he couldn't think of a single solid argument to having Asami switch causes. Yes, he was sure that Asami wasn't being treated the same as her bender "friends," but that didn't mean that they hadn't treated her with care. Non-benders did have their places among benders, and Asami had fulfilled that, considering Avatar Korra and her pack didn't fail miserably in taking back Republic City.

He looked up at the sky, surprised to find it already blackened by night. He yawned and laid himself down in the grass. As he let sleep take over, he couldn't help remember some dream as a result of a night of too much celebratory drinking from the Equalists' early years that had scripted his advice to Asami:

I don't want you to become an Equalist. What I really want out of this movement is the idea. Equality. That's what I want from you: I want you to spread the message of equality, of a cease of fear from non-benders of benders, of non-benders having a voice in power, of non-bender children growing with the self-assurance that they can be just as great fighters.

A/N: I hope everyone enjoyed this chapter! I actually think my favorite scene in this chapter would be the flashback with Amon and the Lieutenant at the end. I was always kind of sad when in LOK they never showed those two during their downtime. (Whether or not they were, erm, together or not) We're 4 more chapters from the end of this fic, so I hope everyone has found the story worthwhile. :)