Far less humorous than the previous story, but it's still set firmly in the same series. Thank you all for the reviews! This is not so much one coherent story as a collection of smaller ones, though I won't rule out that there might be one or two connected narratives in the future.

The floor was tile, polished to an amethystine sheen, reflecting the light streaming in from a wall filled generously with large windows. A stylish bookcase stood across the room, facing the desk like a supplicant.

It looked designed.

It was designed. The finest interior architects had been promptly hired and set to work, meeting their client's demands for elegant authority. There were subtle carvings in the door, subdued lights in the walls, the faintest patterns in the tile.

There were no pictures of family. No personal artefacts. Every book in that sleek bookcase concerned economy, political theory and waterbending.

Councilman Tarrlok also had a beautiful home. An upscale apartment in the richer part of town, where the streets were lined with stately trees, planted in the time of Avatar Aang, and private parks occupied the spaces between buildings. Every door was ornate, every window adorned with masterful brick-work.

Here too cool shades of blue dominated. Every room had a small, gurggling fountain, or a sheet of water running smoothly down a polished wall. Murals in muted colours depicted scenes from history and legend; here the Siege of the North, there the first waterbenders raising their hands to the Moon.

Beautiful. Stylish. Impersonal.

It seemed that the only inheritance Tarrlok had brought with him from the North Pole was his elaborate hair and a preference for the colour blue.

But tucked away in his personal desk - the one at home, the one in carved driftwood that was, perhaps, not as impressive as the one in his office, seeing as it was meant for aesthetics rather than a display of power - in a locked drawer, beneath piles of paperwork that might not be, if one were to be kind, entirely legal, there was a picture.

An old photo, grainy, yellowed, stained from the instability of those early chemicals, but the motive was clear enough. Two boys, one around four, the other around seven, both smiling widely, the older clutching the younger close with an arm around his shoulders. His eyes are kind, his gesture, though possessive, warm and protective. He's dressed in finery, fur-lined and embroidered, and his short hair is pulled up in a warrior's wolf-tail, round face framed by two loose locks.

The younger is clutching at his brother, even while smiling like a small lunatic, as if unsure how to react to the camera pointed at him. His hands are curled in the older's parka, and his face - half turned away - is pressed against the brother's shoulder. A small, dishevelled tuft of a ponytail can just be seen over his shoulder.

Happy, safe and laughing.

Tarrlok tended to forget the photo was there, locked away, hidden along with everything else he wanted no one to see. The only memory of a family he should have never had.

Amon had only a bedroom to his name. Everything else was for the Equalists. The vast, sprawling tunnels that were for stocking, training, hiding, and Amon had claimed only a small room for himself, just big enough to hold a bed, a dresser, a small desk and - on occasion - a Lieutenant.

It was ascetic, to say the least. The walls were bare concrete, lit by a single harsh lamp, and the bed was a narrow bunk shoved into a corner. The only thing pointing to this being something other than a cell for a prisoner or a particularly ill-tempered hermit was the piles of books stacked on the floor, and the large, closely scribbled map stuck to the wall behind the desk.

It was a place for sleeping and a place for planning.

Not for living.

The desk was cheap; thin, unvarnished wood on a rickety steel frame, with a single locked drawer beneath it, set at just the right place to bump your knee into. Amon never did, but the Lieutenant had a few times.

He didn't know what was in the drawer, and he didn't ask. Whatever else they shared, Amon kept his secrets and they haunted the man enough that the Lieutenant didn't want to ask.

But there were nights when he woke up less cramped in the tiny bed than he should have been, always on nights of the full moon where nightmares kept his leader from sleep no matter how the Lieutenant tired him, and saw Amon bent over the desk by the light of a candle. The drawer unlocked and open, a battered tin-box on the desktop, and clenched so hard in Amon's slim fingers that it might have torn, a yellowed old photo with lines criss-crossing; carefully folded into quarters, and just as carefully unfolded.

He didn't ask, didn't let on, didn't intrude.

Even with Amon's face hidden, his eyes lost in the shadows of the mask, the Lieutenant knew grief when he saw it.