What if Arja had known her parents all of her short life, only to have them stolen from her? Forced underground at the age of nine, she asks where they are. She's scorned, forced to her knees and stripped of her bending. Driven to the edge of darkness. What has she done for them to spit their venom at her?
When she bathes, the water is limp around her. Not an extension of herself anymore; the elements are no friends to the daughter of the Avatar. She combs through her hair, scratches the flakes out of her scalp until it's raw.
Her favorite place is the bridge. Her mother once did this trick where she propelled herself through the water. Arja always wanted to try it, but she never will. It's such an easy thing, she thinks. The water reminds her of her parents; it was where they found peace too. Not death, but contentment, though one can't have everything.
So, she lets herself fall off of the bridge in the pinkened, azured twilight, lets the wind brush the hair out of her eyes, lets the welcoming embrace of the water usurp her entirely as her arms hang uselessly by her sides. Her fingertips throb as she's pulled under. It's really too late to consider what her mother would think, her eyes always set for battle. Her father always had this lingering sadness about him. Maybe she inherited it.
The water seems to compress around her, and she wonders if the pressure closing in on her is just her mind dying. It's loose and free about her one second, yet it's cocooning her—
But she can't control it. She can't, so why is it acting this way? Arja struggles. Does she really want to die? It's not as if she lives a hard life, just an empty one. Not even necessarily because she lost her bending. Between watching nonbenders build things with their bare hands and seeing the Equalists do both magnificent and terrible things, she realizes that her bending isn't mandatory to operate in the world.
It hurts, it was a part of her stolen wrongly, but she filled that void. She'll never have another mother, another father. People who care about her for who she is.
She can't breathe can't breathe and it hurts, but suddenly she's flying.
The room is cold, and the bed beneath her is hard. Arja awakes reluctantly, yet she can't remember falling asleep. It's as if she's been suspended in time. She's looks up and can barely see the ceiling. The curtain to the clinic bed is partly pushed back, revealing the wall adjacent to her bedside, yet hiding her presence from the rest of the room. Everything is silent, so silent that she can almost hear her heart. When she asked her father why she could sense the beating of her own heart so well, at least seven years ago, he glowered.
"I'm not sure what to do with you," a man in a chair says. His clothes are dark. She adjusts her eyes and—no. It's him. The one who took everything from her in the name of peace and equality. The one with the ghost-face.
"Your existence was an inconvenience, though that was my own fault. I suppose the Avatar and the esteemed Councilman thought that their citizens couldn't count. If I wanted, I could've caused a scandal, but I'm not quite so petty, and the attention would've been ill-advised." Wait—what? "I wondered, 'Am I being paranoid?' I see you now, and I have no doubt."
Arja closes her eyes and croaks, "Who are you?"
"Really, you can't guess?" Pulling his hood down, he begins to take off his mask. "You don't notice the family resemblance?"
Noatak doesn't quite understand what propelled him to sleep with the Avatar.
He has no true identity. The young Noatak-he hates everything about himself. He loathes the emptiness he felt while bloodbending, the hollow thrill of power, yet any brief displays of love were little weaknesses.
No matter what he does, he is the monster, simply rotten because of the dint of birth. Here he is, blaming his father's blood after all of these years of running away from it and asserting his independence.
Noatak doesn't quite know whether he feels or adapts. If any emotions are merely ornate masks to please others. He's good at that, saying just the right thing by monitoring someone's expectations. It began with his father, and it extends to every individual around him.
His reason dictates that he wanted to take the Avatar's heart and crush it while digging information out of her. The Avatar, while powerful, was emotional, erratic. She'd recede, then pull closer. Tears and the prick of nails, pleasure. He isn't accustomed to being on the receiving end of affection and forgiveness. She apologized to him when he told her that his family is dead. Hm, it is partly the Avatar's doing, after all. The Avatar said that only the present matters (as if she knew remorse), that she felt relieved to be there, even when she sometimes treated their trysts as burdens, when she succumbed to happiness in angry tears.
She told him of her suspicions about Hiroshi, and so Amon prepared accordingly, though he couldn't exactly cite the source of his precautions.
Their meetings transpired haphazardly because his schedule was unpredictable, consumed by his own muddled agenda. They "first" met in the day, yet that was an exception. Normally, he spent his days as Amon and his nights as Noatak. Well, not Noatak. A man. So, he hid in shadows in the sunlight and exposed himself in the moonlight.
And their daughter—how is it that a boy who was supposed to die can mature to bring life into the world? This second life with a child—it's a dangerous path. But he will prove the spirits wrong. They howled for his death, and he emerged triumphant. He's more than the Avatar, more than the supernatural.
His daughter. Whether inside a lie or the truth, she's the daughter of two powerful people. An orphan reclaimed. She's lucky; she'll never have the lure, the penchant for sacking veins, regarding others as sacks of blood to be controlled. Messy, stringy bags with soft exteriors. Is that what he thought when he held the Avatar in his arms?
Arja. Her name is Arja. Yes, just like Tarrlok to be sentimental.
Even though she is the nonbender and he is the master bloodbender, the promise of a new family controls him. A family unlike the secrecy and torments that permeated his former life. One day, they can start over. He won't be a monster. He'll be a man, and she'll be his daughter. She won't cry in his presence, won't wish death upon herself, won't have to take special herbs to numb her hopelessness.
How is it that he can abandon his movement? He tires of the secrecy, tires of hiding himself. Arja hates him, hates the man, not the monster. He appreciates it. She's the first person to not believe in a lie.
It makes sense for her to react so awfully to the truth. He's a disgusting person, and his lies are terrible because they emanate from him. To compensate for his own emptiness, he creates distractions, meaningful illusions that will impress others with traits he is devoid of: honor; integrity; empathy. His false identity has noble intentions. A legitimate reason for his actions.
What is Noatak's purpose? To be a leech, to thrive on blood and the sorrows of others. Noatak insisted a long time ago that his cause was to help nonbenders, but he went astray, like a child in a tempest, like a tiger-seal in a snowstorm—or is it the other way around?
She'll never forgive him for what he is. Arja argues, smacks him across the face. Noatak won't hit back, and it's not as if anybody but her will see his visage. She says that she'd feel guilty if he were truly a nonbender. Then again, guilt is a delayed emotion in their so-called family.