A/N: I know the last update only went up less than 48 hours ago, but it ended on such a downer that I just had to keep going. :) Thank you so much to those of you who have taken the time to comment. Your words fuel me~
Previous chapter: Korra and Noatak face Kwan and Qing in their hotel room, but things go horribly wrong.
XXV
Hospital
What have I done? Kwan cradles Qing to his chest and rises to his feet. This is all his fault - he should have sent her back to the base, where she would have been safe. He should have forgotten about Amon and disappeared.
Leaving through the lobby will attract too much attention; he's already going to have to do a lot of explaining about the state of their room. Running for the window, he gingerly climbs over the frame, careful not to hit any broken glass.
The Avatar is still in sight, running around the corner of the building ahead, but he doesn't care - the attackers are retreating, so he's in no danger, and Qing is his highest priority right now. She's barely breathing in his arms, and her skin is still grey. "Hang in there," he mutters, carefully avoiding the cliff.
Once he's on the street, he awkwardly tries to flag down a cab while still holding her against his chest, but no one wants to stop for him. He can't say he blames them; he wouldn't stop for a wild-eyed man holding a woman who looks dead, either.
The hospital is too far away to go on foot, and he doesn't trust an ambulance to arrive in time to save her. There's only one sure way to get a ride. Gritting his teeth, he steps into the path of an oncoming taxi. The brakes squeal, and Kwan closes his eyes, mostly hoping he won't be killed on the spot.
He hears a blaring horn, then feels the soft nudge of a bumper against his shin as the vehicle barely manages to stop in time. "What the fuck are you doing, you asshole?" hollers the taxi driver.
"Republic City Hospital," yells Kwan, and he hurries Qing into the back seat before the driver can leave them behind.
As they drive, the driver casts anxious glances in the rear view mirror. "She dead?"
"No." Kwan presses his cheek to Qing's forehead. The skin is cold and clammy.
"She's not going to die in my cab, is she?"
"Just drive," snaps Kwan.
At the hospital, he pulls out the biggest denomination of yuans he can find in Qing's wallet - he'll pay her back later. "Keep the change," he yells to the driver as he races Qing to the entrance.
Bright white lights blind him, and nurses and patients are scurrying around him like spider-rats. He stands in the centre of the chaos, stunned, until a nurse runs over to him. Then he's answering her questions by rote, none of them sinking in enough to make sense. Qing is whisked away to surgery, and he's alone, staring dumbly after the stretcher.
He finds himself in a cold room with hard wooden benches and four blank white walls. Three other people sit on the benches, two men and a woman; all three of them have drawn faces and sunken postures. A grandfather clock is in the corner, chipped and faded, no doubt a donation from someone's estate. Its tick is incessant, and it reminds Kwan of the tick of Qing's dagger against her rings only a hour or two earlier. He rakes his fingers into his hair and takes a shuddering breath.
He hears the door swing open, and then feels a gentle hand on his shoulder. "Mr. Kwan?"
She's dead. She's here to tell me that Qing is dead. He swallows hard, then sits up, and his fear must show on his face, because the nurse holds up a hand.
"No, no news yet. I'm just here to check up on you." She's young, with reddish-brown hair and wide brown eyes, and he wonders if she's old enough to be any good at her job.
As she sits beside him and begins to take his pulse, he jerks his arm away. "I'm fine."
"You said you were both in a fight. I need to make sure you're okay." She shines a light into his eyes, and he flinches and pushes her hand away.
"I said, I'm fine," he growls.
"Are you sure?" She glances down, and he notices his knees are bouncing. He tries to slow them, but then his hands start to fidget instead.
"My best friend is in surgery," he snaps. "What do you expect?"
Her eyes are so sympathetic that he sighs and buries his face in his hands. "She was only there because of me. If she dies..." He can't even finish the thought.
"Do you need something to help you relax?" asks the girl, opening her bag, and that's when he realizes she's not a nurse, but a doctor. How is she old enough to be a doctor? Or am I just getting so old that everyone under thirty looks like a kid?
"Do you have some hard liquor in that bag?" he mutters.
She smiles kindly and gives him a small white pill. "This will relax your muscles, which should make sure your aches from the fight aren't too bad tomorrow. It'll also relax you mentally, so don't be alarmed if you feel a bit sedated."
"Sedating me? Worried I'm going to start to a fight in here?"
"Yes," she says, and he can't hide a laugh at her bluntness.
"Thanks." He pops the pill into his mouth and swallows it dry. He could use a little medical courage. "Any news about my friend?"
"She's still in surgery. A nurse will come speak with you when she's out. Hang in there." She pats his shoulder, then moves on to the next patient.
By the time a nurse calls for him an hour later, his world is hazy and white and warm from the drug. The nurse tells him that Qing is through surgery - though she doesn't outright say it, the speed of it suggests they were using waterbending. His disgust with bending doesn't pierce his medical haze. He's just glad she's alive.
"The first few hours will be critical," says the nurse. "You can sit with her, if you like. You won't be in our way."
"Yes," he says instantly.
They lead him to a small private room. Qing's skin isn't quite as sickly as before, and her breaths are even, if rattling a bit. He sits beside her and his hand finds hers.
"What are her chances?" he asks quietly as the nurse is about to leave. She only smiles sadly at him and departs, which does nothing to answer his question.
The haze of the drugs makes the lines of her face shimmer; she looks almost ethereal. Spirits, this is all his fault. He should have guessed that she wouldn't step aside and let him get captured. Loyalty is both her greatest strength and her greatest weakness.
He thinks of the Avatar, of her curled lips and flared eyelids as she dropped Qing. She wore a look of delight on her face.
No. This isn't my fault.
This all goes back to Amon. He's the one who insisted on working with the Avatar. He's the one who taught her to bloodbend. Qing was absolutely right: any thoughts of forgiveness were stupid.
He has his priorities straight now.
If Amon walked through the door this very second and held out his hand, Kwan would spit in his face.
.*.*.*.
Noatak doesn't look behind him as he marches back to their house. Passersby stare at his bloody face, but he ignores them. Once he's a polite distance from the crowd, he spits blood onto the street.
"Noatak, wait." Korra's voice; he hears her running to catch up with him. His teeth clench and he picks up his pace.
Once he gets to the house, he marches upstairs, slams the bathroom door behind him, then slides down it to the floor. He wants to weep, but he's too proud. Besides, tears will just make his nose hurt more than it already does.
It's hypocritical to be this upset. Anything Korra has done with bloodbending, he has done worse. What haunts him is the look on her face when she did that first pulse. She enjoyed it. She enjoyed it, and she wasn't in the corrupted state. Korra, plain old Avatar Korra, enjoyed bloodbending.
The worst part is that his gut reaction was jealousy. He misses that control. That's how terrible a person he is: the woman he loves was bloodbending a woman who was once a dear friend, and he was jealous. It doesn't matter how much time passes: he is rotten to the core. No wonder everything he touches decays. Tarrlok had the right idea, and for the thousandth time, he curses himself for saving them from the explosion. No, more than that, he curses himself for not just laying down and dying in that blizzard when he was fourteen. Everyone he has ever met would be better off because of it.
But I still don't want to die. I'm still too selfish to remove myself from this world.
Shakily, he walks over to the mirror and splashes water on his face. Once his face is clean, he gently squeezes the bridge of his nose. It isn't flat-out broken, but maybe a bit cracked. Likely it will swell tomorrow, and leave him with a pair of black eyes.
Korra pounds the door. "Noatak, I need to talk to you."
What can he say to her? I saw the monster in you, and I can't call you out for it, because it was the monster that was in me. I see you sliding deeper and deeper into the life I once knew, and I'm torn between guilt, concern and envy.
"Amon, open the fucking door," she snaps, and that's when he notices what he was too self-absorbed to notice before: she's angry.
The door swings open.
"Only the first blow was out of rage," she blurts. "I was trying to restart her heart. I was trying to save her. I couldn't say it properly, because I was trying to focus."
His jaw clenches. She's already justifying it.
"You shouldn't have stopped me." Her brows drop. "I could have made sure her heart was working, and we could have taken Kwan and dropped Qing off at the hospital."
"It looked as though you lost control," he says, his voice a low growl. "I saw no alternative."
"You should have trusted me!"
"Trusted you? Trust requires honesty." He advances on her, and she takes a step back. "I had to hear through Kwan that you've been using bloodbending without the corrupted Avatar State, and you think I should trust you? I saw the look on your face when you used it. That was not the look of someone who is trying to move past it."
Korra's eyes are narrow. "You have no right to judge anything I do with bloodbending."
He's shaking; he hasn't been this livid in years. This is the type of childish yelling match he would get into in his drunken days, not the mature argument he should be having as a sober adult. He takes a deep breath and tries to control his temper.
"You're right," he says. "I don't. But it's difficult to see you following a path I once walked. I know where it leads."
"You and I are two very different people," she says.
He studies her. "Are we?"
She swallows hard and looks away.
For a moment, they're silent.
"What now?" she mutters. "We didn't finish our mission."
"The rest of our actions proceed as planned," he says. "Tomorrow morning, we will return to the police station. You will return to people who can help you, and I will return to jail." Alone. The word sits in his stomach like jagged stone.
It's all too much - Korra's changing attitude to bloodbending, the outcome of their mission, the inevitable return to prison, the throbbing pain in his nose. He has to get out.
Feigning a wince, he touches the swollen bridge of his nose. "We need more healing salve." He edges past her and strides down the hallway.
He hears her intake of breath, as if she's about to say something, but she must change her mind, because no words follow.
Good. He can't converse any more, not in this state.
Once he's out of sight of the house, he hails a taxi and directs it to the hospital. The nurse at the front desk glances at him.
"Let me guess. Broken nose?"
He shakes his head. "I'm looking for a woman named either Midori or Qing. She would have been admitted as an emergency patient."
The nurse runs a finger down a sheet of paper. "We have a Qing. She's in surgery."
She's still alive. He feels his shoulders relax, but, perhaps out of guilt, he feels the need to verify it for himself. "May I see her?"
The nurse purses her lips at him. "I said, she's in surgery. You can visit her when she's out. Maybe I should put you down to see a doctor while you're waiting?"
He decides that might not be a bad idea, given that his swelling nose is starting to eat into the lower half of his vision. As he fills out his fake registration details, he says, "Does she have any other visitors?"
"She's in surgery," says the nurse again, and Noatak slowly lifts his chin to glare at her.
His ability to intimidate has not suffered over the years. The snide expression drains from her face.
"If she did, they probably would have been sent home," she says, and he wonders if Kwan would have obeyed such a command.
He settles into the waiting room. While waiting for his name is called, he spends the time flipping idly through outdated newspapers and magazines. One article makes him pause: a small piece on the Avatar, a couple years old. His knuckle slides along the border of her jaw. She looks a little weary in the photo, but still so much happier than she is now. His throat tightens.
You would be with her right this second, if you weren't such a coward. Are you ever going to outgrow your desire to run away from your problems?
"Mr. Kanno?" calls a nurse.
The doctor is a young woman, reasonably attractive, with dark auburn hair and brown eyes. Noatak can feel her eyeing him with some interest, but he has no desire to flirt, and she maintains a professional demeanour. After prodding his nose and asking a few questions, she says, "I could send you for some tests, but it seems like it's just a hairline fracture. A short round of healing should fix it right up."
A week ago, the idea of being healed by a waterbender would have seemed abhorrent. "Do what you need to," he says.
She directs him to a healer down the hall, and he leaves a few minutes later with a healed nose. There's still a bit of residual swelling, and he might still have black eyes tomorrow, but at least the pain is gone. He finds himself nostalgic for the days when Korra healed him, which is ridiculous, firstly because she only did it a few times, and secondly because it was only a few days ago. Being imprisoned and then freed has completely distorted his sense of time.
He sighs. If he's already missing her this much after an hour away from her, how is he going to handle the rest of his life without her? It doesn't matter how he feels about her bloodbending, or what feelings of envy or despair spark within him: he has always insisted that a bender is separate from her bending, and so he will spend his last few hours of freedom focussing on Korra, not her actions. He'll regret it for the rest of his miserable life if they spend their last night together arguing.
He almost heads back to the house, but he needs to make sure Qing is all right first, or his conscience won't let him relax. A much more helpful nurse is that the desk this time; she directs Noatak to a room in Intensive Care.
He hovers outside the doorway, almost too afraid to step inside. She's still alive, he reminds himself. That's the important thing.
Clenching his fists, he pokes his head into the room. There's a chair by the bed, empty. Qing's skin is still too pale, but at least she's breathing on her own. He settles into place beside her, studying her face. Her unconscious expression is perfectly slack; he hasn't seen her look this peaceful in a couple decades, at least.
"You weren't meant to be a part of this," he says quietly, "and now you've borne the brunt of it. It isn't my place to apologize for what the Avatar did to you, so I won't. You had the opportunity to walk away, and you should have taken it. That being said, I do regret putting you in that position in the first place. I should have expected that you would never turn your back on Kwan." He rakes a hand through his hair. "I also imagine you've borne the brunt of everything I put him through, in the time since my true identity was revealed to the world. You probably volunteered to help him on this mission; you probably wanted to kill me, for all I've done. I don't blame you - you would be a hero to Equalist and bender alike."
He freezes as footsteps echo in the hallway. Slowly, he shifts to his feet and steps away from the chair.
Kwan moves into the doorway, and their eyes lock.
"You," growls Kwan, his lips curling, but there's a stumble in his movements. His pupils are dilated, and he's blinking too hard, as if trying to clear them of an imaginary fog.
"You're drugged," says Noatak.
"I'll still kill you!" The man tries to lunge at him, but he stumbles and falls to his hands and knees. "Fuck," he mutters.
His heart pounding, Noatak backs away. Kwan lifts his head, but now he looks as though he's about to weep.
"Temporary truce?" offers Noatak, settling against a wall.
Kwan's eyes narrow, but he nods and clumsily finds his footing. He staggers to the chair and drops into it. "Fucking doctor thought I needed to be sedated. If I had known you would come here to gloat-"
"I'm not gloating."
"So, what, you're apologizing?"
Noatak hesitates. He isn't sure what he's doing, exactly. "I needed to see that she survived."
"Barely."
"I gave her the option to walk."
"You should have known she wouldn't!" Kwan's eyes flash. "And you should have known that training your pet Avatar to bloodbend would backfire on you. You can't just give such a volatile person a toy like that and then be surprised when they start playing with it. You're smarter than that, Amon. This happened because of your wilful ignorance."
There doesn't seem to be any benefit to correcting him, so Noatak is silent. Let him think I trained Korra. The last thing she needs is for the Equalists to be armed with information about her corruption.
Kwan shakes his head. "You and your fucking Avatar," he mutters. "I don't know why it keeps surprising me every time you sink to a new low, but it does. I should have expected you to betray everything you ever claimed to stand for."
"I had no choice," says Noatak quietly. "The police made a compelling offer. My love for my brother was all I had left-"
"That's not what I mean." The steel grey eyes bore into him, and he has to fight against his reflexes so that he doesn't wither under the accusatory stare. There aren't many people in the world who can disarm him, but Kwan is one of them.
"Come on, you know what I'm talking about," growls Kwan. "Calling each other by first names, conversations with your eyes: you're in love with her. You're in love with the fucking Avatar."
Noatak wishes for his old mask, because he's not certain he's successfully hiding the shock from his face.
Shaking his head, Kwan gives a low, humourless laugh. "You're in love with the woman who was your own downfall, who hurt me and nearly killed Qing. It's so like you, Amon. So like you to be drawn to something so dangerous, something that's probably going to kill you. You motherfucking hypocrite."
He's so certain about his theory that Noatak sees no point in denying it. "You know how I am," he says, downplaying it.
"I do. You're a power-hungry, manipulative, lying sack of shit, who latches on to anyone who shows him the slightest bit of affection." Kwan closes his eyes. "I wish I could go back in time and tell my younger self all about you, so he would never have to suffer through any of your games."
"I wish that, too."
The man glances up at him. "Is that an apology, or a platitude to try to manipulate me?"
Noatak doesn't reply.
For several minutes, they watch Qing: Kwan from his seat by the bed, and Noatak from his position against the wall. Noatak's mind races. He can end this right now, if he chooses to; he can easily overpower the other's drugged body. But he's sick of cowardice, and he's sick of running. He's sick of seeing all the pain and suffering his actions, past and present, have brought to the people he is supposed to care about. It's time to put a stop to this, properly, the way he originally intended.
"Let's end this," he says.
Kwan looks up, brows pinched. "Now?"
"No. Tomorrow morning." Noatak stands. "Remember the cliff overlooking the docks, where you first suggested I don a mask?" Saying the words aloud is painful, and he sees a wince pass across Kwan's features. It's hard to fight off the memories as they rise up in his mind: staring across the water on a warm summer's night, sticky and flushed in each other's embrace, the broad face of the moon inspiring a conversation about the power of symbolism...
"Of course I remember," says Kwan gruffly.
"We'll meet there at ten o'clock. No Qing, no Avatar, no traps, no tricks. Just you and me, hand to hand." Noatak's tone drops. "A fight to the death."
Panic flits across Kwan's face, and he sees written there what he feels, as well: I don't know if I can kill you.
But Kwan, never one to admit his fears, stands and nods, holding out his hand. "To the death."
Their hands interlock to shake on it, and there is no warmth in those wrinkled hands that, once upon a time, caressed and soothed him. The sensation is so foreign that Noatak jerks his hand away too early.
With a last glance at Qing, he leaves the room.
.*.*.*.
Noatak barely has the presence of mind to remember more healing salve on his way back to the house. He also purchases a pen and some stationery; he'll need those later. By the time he returns, he's walking so briskly that he's almost running.
The house is quiet, and he wonders if Korra went out to get dinner. The door of her room is closed, and there's no sound from the other side. A bit worried, he lowers his fingers to the crack beneath the door, but there's no unusual wind or air currents. She hasn't utterly lost herself to the corrupted Avatar State, then, at least.
He stashes the stationery in the desk drawer of his room, then has a quick shower, eager to rid himself of the scent of the hospital. As he's styling his hair, he sees that his eye sockets are already bruised, but the swelling in his nose is barely noticeable. Good. As vain as it is, he has made it forty-six years without damaging his profile, and he doesn't intend to ruin it now.
Fully dressed, he steps into the hall. "Korra?" he calls. No answer. The door to her room is still closed, so he knocks on it, then pushes it open. The room is empty.
His heart sinks. What if she went back to her old life already? While it would be better for her, in the long run, his heart breaks at the thought of never seeing her again. He was really hoping for this one last night together.
The front door creaks open, and he spins toward the sound. "Korra?"
"Noatak?"
He hurries down the stairs and sees her standing in the entrance, a paper shopping bag in her arms. She sets it on the ground.
"You went into public," he observes, hovering by the stairwell.
"Yeah, well." She glances at the food and shrugs. "We needed food, and I didn't want to sit and think for too long."
It's a sentiment he understands. "Are you all right?"
"Yeah, it was actually fine, even though I got recognized a few times. The shopkeepers were a lot happier to see me than I expected. I guess people don't hate me as much as I thought."
"That's good, but not what I meant."
Her lip quivers, and she sprints at him, throwing her arms around his chest so violently that he almost staggers backwards. "I didn't know if you were coming back," she says, her voice wobbling. "I thought you were so disgusted with me that you left, and I hate how much that bothered me, because I'm supposed to be strong and independent, but this was supposed to be our last night together, and after all that happened I feel like I don't know which way is up, and all I want to do is be with you, and maybe that's wrong, but the time I've been with you is the only time in the last year I've felt good, and I'm just so tired of feeling awful."
He pulls back enough to lift her chin, and then lowers his mouth to hers. She meets him halfway, their lips parting, their tongues intertwining.
When the kiss breaks, he smooths one of the ponytails by her ear. "Qing is alive."
She doesn't question how he knows, but only says, "Oh, thank the spirits," and presses her face into his chest.
Noatak's eyes slip closed as he rests a hand on the back of her neck, pressing his lips into the top of her hair. He breathes in her scent and tries to memorize the shape of her body against his.
"We should eat something," says Korra, pulling away from him. She's trying to hide the fact that she's wiping her eyes. "And then maybe go upstairs for the rest of the night?" She glances at him, as if unsure he'll agree.
He nods, and reaches over to cup either side of her face, gently smoothing the last of her tears with his thumbs. His throat is so tight that he has to clear it before he speaks.
"Nothing that happened out there matters right now, Korra," he says. "We aren't going to discuss it, and we aren't going to dwell on it. Tonight, all that matters is us."
"Okay," she whispers, giving him a quivering smile, and he pulls her in for another kiss.