A/N: WOW! I am overwhelmed by the response so far. Thank you so much for your kind words, everyone. :) Here is the next chapter. I'm hoping to wrap up this story before the end of the week, before Episode 9 utterly invalidates everything and kills my motivation, haha. (Though, who am I kidding...can't wait to see what they have in store!)

.*.*.*.

VI
Meeting

One month later.

Korra wiped the sweat from her brow and stepped into the hallway. She should be accustomed to infiltrating Equalist bases by now, but this one felt especially dangerous. Normally, there were just banners with Amon's face staring at her – staring through her, stirring up memories she had tried to forget – but this particular mission had been too intimate. Upstairs, they had come across an office that looked suspiciously like an office belonging to the Equalist leader himself. Plans, charts, and scrolls had been confiscated, some with her name on them.

What made her nervous was how obvious it had been. Amon was not one to leave loose ends; it would be sloppy of him to let them find his top-secret plans. She had no doubts that the office was a decoy. But for what?

Even more telling was the fact that there had been barely any Equalists guarding the area, and no police presence on the scanner. This felt like a trap. So, while Lin had begun to pull apart the office, she had offered to check out the basement floor. Asami was ahead of her, glove bared, and Mako and Bolin had headed in the opposite direction.

The ceiling was low and the walls were metal, the floor a grate over dirt. She shivered; being in cave-like areas still gave her flashbacks, and she shoved the swell of emotions back into her mind to deal with later. The further they ventured into the empty space, the more Korra became convinced that this was not the hideout they thought it was.

"There's nothing here," she called, finally relaxing her stance.

"I think you're right." At the end of the hallway, Asami stood up as well, her hand dropping to her side. "I've reached a dead end, anyway, and there's no obvious sign of any secret panels that I can see." She jogged past Korra, calling, "I'm going to go see if the boys need any help."

"Sounds good." Korra stretched, suddenly realizing how late it was. She wanted nothing more than to be out of this barren tunnel and in bed. "I'll go back up to the office and see if Lin found anything."

Asami nodded and bounded ahead, disappearing from view. With a long sigh, Korra shook her head. "Always two steps ahead, Amon." She began to walk back toward the stairs.

A hand clasped over her mouth and jerked her into a small alcove in the wall.

Korra tried – and failed – to scream. She drove a fist back at her attacker, launching a fireball. Sharp jabs stabbed her shoulder, and her arm fell slack.

Her attacker swung her around to face him, still gripping her mouth, and she stared straight into Amon's mask. Joy and fear strangled her, and she struggled to breathe.

"My apologies for the poor hospitality." His hand lifted from her mouth. "I usually prefer to offer my guests a glass of wine rather than ambush them, but as you can see, my cellar is empty."

She stared into the black eye sockets of his mask, his eyes completely cloaked in the near-darkness. Her first instinct was to yell for her friends, but then she remembered his promise: he would not harm her, but he might harm them.

"Nice decoy you have here, Amon," she said.

"Do you like it? I put in a lot of attention to detail. Some of what you have found is real. Some of it is not. I'll leave it to you to decipher which is which."

Standing tall, she pressed her face close to his, intending to intimidate him. Instead she breathed in his scent, and her mouth went dry. Clearing her throat, she said, "So you're distracting us from something – what?"

"You'll find out soon enough." She felt his gaze trail down her body, and panicked as she realized she liked the attention.

"What are you doing?" she snapped. "Don't look at me like that."

"Just entertaining a pleasant memory."

"A memory that never happened." Flustered, she added, "I thought everything was back to normal." As normal as it could be, anyway. As much as she was trying to move on, he still haunted her dreams, and not in the terrifying ways he once had.

"Back to normal," he repeated. "Then tell me, Avatar, why you hunted me here, when we both know that Tarrlok is the bigger threat."

Her cheeks grew hot. "That has nothing to do with you! We were searching for one of Tarrlok's agents, and we just happened to see the banners through the window, so-"

"But this isn't the first time you've poked your nose in my business as of late, is it?" He leaned close, looming over her from the shadows of the recess. Now that her eyes had adjusted to the light, she could see his eyes through the mask; they were hard. Cold. "I don't like it."

"You seem to like it enough to stay here talking to me," she said.

"Did you consider that I lured you here to warn you that you are trying my patience?"

"Or maybe you lured me here because you're desperate to see me again," she challenged. "You just don't want to admit it because you don't want to admit how much power those memories have over you." She jutted her jaw and glared up at him, half hating him, half hoping she was correct.

His eyes softened, ticking between hers. "And what of you, Korra?" he murmured.

"It never happened," she said, but her voice broke. It was agony to be so close to him without actually touching him; in the cool basement air, she could feel waves of heat streaming off his body. She suddenly realized that her eyes had been trailing his body for several second, her mouth hanging open in an embarrassingly obvious display of longing. She quickly snapped her gaze back to his, wondering if he had noticed.

He had.

Their eyes had barely made contact when he lunged for her, shifting his mask, and his lips pressed to hers. The force of it slammed against the wall, sandwiched her between his warm weight and the cold packed earth. Her mouth parted for him and their tongues slid together. Spirits, how she had missed this. Her hand gripped the neck of his tunic and twisted into the fabric, and a low rumble sounded in his throat.

"We've searched everywhere – there's nothing here," called Mako's voice from far down the hall, startling Korra into breaking the kiss.

Amon pulled back and smoothed his mask back into place. "I must apologize again for my hospitality, for a different reason this time."

She blinked at him as if clearing away a dream. "No, wait-"

"Until next time, Korra." Amon's hand darted out, too quick for her to see, and jabbed a pressure point in her neck. She slumped to the ground as darkness overcame her.

.*.*.*.

"Korra!" Bolin rushed up to her, his silhouette foggy. She groaned and sat up, blinking to clear her vision. Pabu leaped down from his shoulder and pawed at her leg; she patted the fire ferret on the head.

"Korra, are you okay?" asked Bolin as he crouched beside her.

"Did you see Amon?"

"Amon? He's here?" His face paled and his eyes darted around them. "Is this a trap?"

She clutched her aching shoulder. Had it really been necessary to knock her out? She supposed it would have been tempting to follow him. "It's a decoy. He said some of the information is real and some isn't. I think he's trying to keep us busy here while the Equalists launch an attack elsewhere."

Her friend reached out a hand to help her up. Behind him, Mako and Asami appeared, their faces concerned until she reassured them that she was fine.

"So where is he attacking?" asked Mako as the four began to jog upstairs.

Their answer was waiting for them on the main floor. Lin was speaking with a member of her former police force upstairs, her face drawn. When she saw Korra, she cocked her head for Korra to hurry over.

"This place is a decoy," called Korra as she jogged over to Lin.

"So it seems." The woman folded her arms over her chest, frowning. "The Equalists hit a Red Monsoon hangout. Nearly two-dozen gang members were captured – low-level members. A man who escaped claims that they were all being taken to Amon to have their bending removed."

"Unfortunately," said the officer at the door, "we have absolutely no leads as to where they have been taken. We have animal teams on the ground trying to track them. Nothing so far."

Anger, fear and – oddly – betrayal welled in Korra's throat. She buried her face in her hand. "Always two steps ahead."

"Amon was downstairs," said Bolin. "He attacked Korra and disappeared."

Lin stood tall, her eyes wide. "We have to perform a sweep of the area and-"

"We won't find him. He wanted to gloat and disappear." Korra gestured back at the desks. "He said some of these documents are real, so maybe there's something in here that can help us out."

"If there is anything real," said Asami, "guaranteed it's a half-truth that will lead us right into a trap."

Korra marched over to the desk and found a bound stack of papers: The Life of Amon. "It will make for entertaining reading, if nothing else," she said, her voice dripping with sarcasm as she snatched it up. She pulled out a chair and began to flip through it.

Lin turned back to the officer. "I know Tarrlok's agenda will take priority if you are to maintain your cover, but if there is any way you can get a task force to track Amon from here-"

"I can try, ma'am," said the officer. "You should probably take what you need and disappear. The search is spreading, and it will be in this neighbourhood soon enough." He saluted.

"You don't have to salute anymore."

"I know." With a bob of his head at Korra, the officer departed.

"Well, now what?" Bolin sat in a chair next to Korra.

"I guess we start trying to piece together whatever we can find in these papers." She cocked her head at another stack of documents. "Interested in reading a little propaganda tonight? There's plenty up for grabs, if you can stomach it."

As her companions bent over the table, pawing through the literature, she began to leaf through The Life of Amon. A glossy page fell out with his mask emblazoned on it, and a shiver ran through her body.

Curse you, Amon.

The pads of her fingers skated over her mouth and her eyes fluttered closed.

.*.*.*.

Amon silently watched the skyline pass by, half-listening as his third-in-command briefed him on the situation.

"We had two dozen, but one escaped," said his third. "We tried to corner him, but he caught us off guard. Only way would have been to kill him, and there were too many civilians watching."

"That's fine," murmured Amon, still looking out the window of the skycraft. His hands clasped behind his back. "Twenty-three is a sufficiently strong message." He could see Air Temple Island across the bay, its proud spires unmistakeable. Tarrlok's police force had already started swarming the neighbourhood when he had slipped out to meet his transport. Had the Avatar made it back home safely? The thought of Tarrlok apprehending her made his blood boil.

"We arranged to have them dropped off at warehouse 236A, where they will be arranged so that you can perform the cleansing," continued his third, and her voice trailed off. "Amon?"

He blinked, remembering himself, and turned back to regard her. "Thank you. I wish to have a moment to myself before we arrive, to enter the correct frame of mind."

"Of course." With a respectful nod, she backed out of the chamber and closed the door.

Pressing his palm to the glass, Amon let his head loll gently from side to side, trying to ease the tension in his neck. The nights were difficult. By day, he was fully immersed in his plans as always, leaving no room to second-guess himself. But at night... The Avatar haunted his dreams, sometimes as a lover, sometimes as a fierce adversary he could not defeat. He didn't know which was worse.

Her guess had been correct: he had been waiting to see her. If he admitted it to himself, he missed her. The bond they had formed in the cave was stronger than any he had formed since childhood. Loneliness had never been a problem before – he had long ago embraced the lifestyle of a solitary avenger – but now that he knew what he was missing, it was hard to go without.

Besides, her proposal to team up to take down Councilman Tarrlok was looking more and more appealling. Tarrlok had outlived his usefulness. While his regime had initially driven thousands of non-benders to the Equalist cause, increasingly harsh penalties were starting to hurt their numbers. If the regime was not ended soon, the Equalists would suffer.

But he couldn't do it alone.

He had heard rumours of Tarrlok's bloodbending abilities, ones that potentially extended to elite members of the Red Monsoon. The rumours were vague whispers at best, but he knew one person who would have more detail: Korra.

He needed to speak to her again, somewhere where they wouldn't be interrupted. And this time, he needed to keep his primal urges in check, as challenging as that was proving to be. Their relationship was complicated enough as it was.

He closed his eyes, his lips still burning from her kiss.

.*.*.*.

To be continued in Chapter 7...