a/n: a very grateful 'thank you' to everyone who followed, favorited and reviewed! Enjoy.

And it's Noatak withOUT the mask on, Amon WITH the mask on.
Trigger warning for a hard slap.

[Chapter 1]

I. The Mask

Each family has different habits, and theirs is this: She scars her father's face before every meeting.

He sits on the kitchen counter, black hair slicked back, grey beach-glass eyes closed placidly; Korra stands with her fingertips covered in molding wax and smears it onto his face – first, on the corner of his mouth, make it bumpy and rough, thumb it into a sneer; then the eyebrows, make them disappear. Then she pops the tops off the powders, inhales their chalky damp smell, and drags visceral pinks and reds from his temple to his jaw with a practiced hand.

She thinks she's probably the only seventeen-year-old girl who puts more make-up on her father than on herself.

Noatak can't talk a lot while Korra's doing it, because otherwise the make-up gets ruined, but she talks to him, dropping short ideas into the silence between them, like pebbles into a pond – Dad, the new recruits are catching on fast to chi-blocking, and I finally cleaned my uniform – and he just listens, hums notes of approval from deep within his chest. By this point he's already wearing the gauntlets and double-breasted coat, with the hood slung back, and he looks bigger than normal, swollen with charisma and power. And of course she leaves some things out, like breaking bricks on the roof with her feet, and reducing newspapers to ash from ten yards away. He wouldn't like that.

The setting sun paints the kitchen walls in shallow afternoon sunlight, in thick swaths of dusky pale yellow; he is outlined by the sun behind him in thin gold lines. Korra washes the powders off her hands and into the basin, the colors running together in dusty trickles, and he slides off the counter and checks his newly scarred face in the mirror on the wall.

"Excellent," he says, his voice carrying the hard clear tap of a bell, and she thinks that maybe today, maybe…

Noatak leans against the counter, notepad in hand, crossing things out and re-writing. Tonight's speech has to be perfect, she knows this, but everything else is ready to go and if he's in a good mood already… she sidles next to him, reading over his shoulder, the short, scratchy strokes of the pen itching away at her mind. Little ink gnats she wants to splat to the wall. Korra follows his assertive scrawl across the page, and her breath hitches on a phrase near the beginning. He wrote about Mom. Actually, today might be a bad day to ask.

"Is there something you want?" he says, pausing his scribbling; she can't read his face because of her own handiwork.

"Um… Do you have a copy of my lines? I wanna go over them," she asks pertly, because it's a question he'll like.

"You should have them memorized already," Noatak says shortly.

"Dad, I just want to double-check," she says, and he wordlessly rips a sheet off the notepad and holds it out between two fingers. Korra already knows what it says. Those ideas have been tattooed into her mind for a long time, and she knows them better than her own name: bending is an abomination, bending is oppressive, my mother was only one among thousands who have suffered at the hands of benders… rid the world of benders and we will finally be free.

She believes it, she really does, she has lived and breathed this all her life. But the speeches still make her stomach cave in, the words creeping over her skin like insects. Korra has never asked what her father thought of his only daughter being a bender – and of three elements, no less; no one's ever even heard of something like that before. And what does he think of himself? Sometimes she understands, because of Mom; and sometimes she doesn't. The page blurs out of focus before her eyes.

Noatak puts the notepad aside and crosses his arms, musing at his feet, thinking –

"Now, Korra, tell me what it is you actually want," he says, startling her. His command is inflected with a ringing coolness, struck through with an impatient ire. He can't stand it when she lies.

Korra hesitates, words rising to the top of her throat; each passing second of silence will chip away at his patience. But she wants it. In spite of everything she lives in, she wants it so badly it aches – she feels it when she rolls a quivering sphere of water in the air between her hands, when she freezes the rain so that it shatters on the street, when she pulls loops of water out of the rooftop rain gutter and they shimmer as they twist. It feels like - like nostalgia for a good dream, the kind whose movements settle on you in the morning and you seal them in with a regret and a sigh.

Teach me how to waterbend.

She can't say it. She feels guilty. She wants something that is wrong.

"It can wait."

"Fine. Go dress yourself. We're leaving as soon as the sun goes down."

Korra slips into her room, where the uniform is hanging from a hook on the wall. It looks like Dad's, all grimly maroon and double-breasted, but it curves recklessly over her hips and squares off her muscled shoulders. She straps the gauntlets to her wrists and makes a fist, feeling a surge of anger as the leather groans and creaks, and then she bares her teeth as she paints around her eyes with kohl, unfurling great wings of black. It's bitter work, putting on a different face, a different body, and a different name, but as she finishes, she relaxes. Her doubts whittle away the more she whittles away at the girl who is Korra, stripping things off, remolding, rebuilding.

Korra slides the blue wraps off her wolf tails and shakes out her hair. It bursts from her head in lively chestnut waves and she brushes it back with her fingers, tying a deft knot on the back of her head. She turns in front of her mirror, checking - she has a streamlined severity this way, and it makes her more intimidating, almost wraith-like. Korra is always surprised that she likes it. It makes her blood crackle with energy and rage, her spine harden with arrogance. She would laugh at the girl who wanted to waterbend, too weak for scruples and trapped in her own fears. This girl is unbreakable. She is limitless.

Korra is almost done, but there is one last thing, in the black suede bag tucked into the back of a dresser drawer. The other Korra avoids it, and buries it away where it can't find her. She loves it, and guards it like treasure. Korra tilts the bag over her open hand, catches the half-mask, and covers her face, sweeping across the curves with both palms and knotting the ribbons together. She flips the hood over her head and she's finished.

She strides into the living room as a fiery dusk flares across the sky, and her father is Amon now, standing by the window, hands clasped behind his back. He has his mask on – the mask carved from a glacier, implacable and serene and relentlessly still; the fixed smile is predatory, infinitely patient. The last rays of sunlight catch his eyes and they gleam like the ocean at noon.

"You look marvelous," he says, voice proud and resonant behind the mask, and her breath catches. No matter how often Korra hears it, no matter how often she sees the transformation, Amon makes her nerves bristle, makes a cold thrill of power shiver through her.

"I know," she says, smiling; the lines of her half-mask are drawn with the concentrated essence of a bird of prey, uncompromising sleekness and ruthless fury. They are interrupted only by a blue lotus blossom, frozen to the center of the whiteness on her forehead.

The mask cages the last bit of herself under its cool ceramic touch, under denial, denial, denial – this is what she wants, this is who she is –

Korra is gone. There is only Tenchu. Amon and Tenchu.

Korra hates Tenchu.

II. The Prisoner

They leap and tumble across the rooftops of the city, diving from fire escapes to empty balconies, moving noiselessly. By the time they reach the warehouse by the docks there are drumbeats pounding in her blood and she pants for air, feeling her lungs and throat dry and hollow out. From their spot on the warehouse roof, the entire city sprawls before them, restless and groaning; a leviathan scaled in square lights, turning fitfully through a grimy asphalt dream. Over the mountains, the moon is plump and full.

Korra makes for the ladder but Amon grabs the back of her uniform and pulls her up short, turning her around by the shoulders to face him. She huffs and lifts her arms, lets him fix her up. He always has to do this, always has to arrange and rearrange into neurotic perfection, but they wouldn't have made it this far without that kind of compulsion. He flattens the wrinkles, tugs on the hem of the coat, and crouches to straighten her shin guards. She feels like a doll.

She rolls her eyes towards the harbor, skimming over the horizon, rounding Air Temple Island, drawing dashes between the boats out on the sea… and she stops at the statue of the Avatar. Korra stares at it, stares him down; scowls at his calm copper-green face, the arrow, the mouth on the tip of smiling. She feels its blank stone gaze push back…. looking at her, looking into her… she's rising, like someone is trying to lift her from the ground by her senses –

She breaks the quiet with a gasp and jerks her head around.

"What's wrong?"

There's no one else on the rooftop, no one at all.

"Dad…" she starts, as Amon flaps her hood into artistic looseness with two hands. He doesn't say anything. He just waits for her to finish the thought.

I don't want to be here. I don't want to be a part of this.

"…never mind."

"That is the second time tonight you've chosen not to answer me," he says, taking a step back, his mask tilting to her feet and then up to her face. She's passed muster.

"I know. I'm sorry," she mumbles, the words barely passing between her lips, and he snorts.

"Your hesitation does not amuse me in the slightest, Korra, and I would advise you to resolve it before the rally begins," he growls, and a sticky, greasy knot drops down her throat. She can't – she can't –disappoint him, she just can't… Over his shoulder, the Avatar statue watches her.

"Yes, Dad. I will," she says.

"Good," he says, snapping the word off an unspoken threat,and Korra takes it from him, all the things she wants to say tangled up in silence and confusion. He sighs heavily, rubs his wrists, and casts a glance towards the ladder over the ledge. He's reading something far away, written on the skyline with the soft glow of streetlights. Abruptly he brushes his hood back, lifts his mask, and does the same to her, forcing her face into the curve of his hand, his palm warm and dry.

"Korra, look at me," he orders, searching for her eyes, "Korra."

She does.

"It's fine to be nervous," he says. She gives him a miserable, half-hearted little nod, yes, Dad – and he hugs her, pressing her head to his chest, arms wrapping around her. Her father is always somewhere underneath the calculating combat activist, always... She closes her eyes, wanting to just sink into the solid warmth of his broad chest, the closeness and the thun-thun of his heart beating through the uniform, the way he rests his head on hers and tightens his embrace until her ribs hurt, he holds onto her so well. Korra lives an airless eternity until he finally lets go and holds her out, both hands on her shoulders, smiling. Everything is fine, it's okay, she's forgiven, and her soul is brimming with a calm, flowing joy.

He pulls her in again, briefly touches his lips to her forehead. Then he covers up the kiss with her mask, tugging it bluntly back into place. She follows him down the ladder to the platform and then onto the catwalk over the warehouse floor. They walk into a sudden silence as the sparse crowd of men and women on the floor, in their sleek Equalist uniforms and gleaming insectoid cowls, pause their preparations to look up at Amon and Tenchu, their leaders.

"The revelation is at hand, brothers and sisters," he booms, and they are both greeted with a heady rush of cheers. There is an expectant rustle, a nervously happy ripple of murmurs; they want him to talk to them, to speak to them, to cast them words of encouragement from his place on high. Korra waves at their cowled faces and grins when some of them laugh and wave back.

Her spirits lifted on the weight of his affection and they soar even higher on the Equalists' enthusiasm. They love her, they adore her; Tenchu is their hope, their instrument of freedom, their revolution blossoming inside a dream child. But he took off her mask and hugged Korra.

"Carry on. Our real work will begin in earnest soon enough," Amon says, and he offers his arm to Korra as they tramp down the staircase, metal clanging with each hit of their boots.

They are met at the bottom by the Lieutenant, lean and wiry, a man returned to seed by his mission, his every movement wrapped in unhesitating devotion. His goggles are pushed to the top of his head and he bows to them, stiff and efficient. He never shows much interest in Korra, beyond being her father's daughter; in his presence she has to stifle the urge to cling to Amon, drag him away to somewhere else. Amon is never her father when the Lieutenant is around.

"Amon, Tenchu," the Lieutenant says, in his dry dusty gravel of a voice.

"A report is in order, Lieutenant," says Amon, as they walk across the empty warehouse floor. The switch is almost always imperceptible but she feels it now, like an eyelash on her skin; from here on out, he will be only Amon. Korra finds herself squeezed out from between them and makes a face at their backs, letting the distance grow. She bites her lip, tasting the air for the atmosphere in the dimly lit, cavernous warehouse. There is a lively tension. Everyone seems to be on the same kind of edge, breathless and eager.

"Everything is prepared and ready for tonight," says the Lieutenant, "and I received word from Sato that the gloves are in final production stages as of two days ago. We should be ready to distribute them in the coming month."

"Thank you, Lieutenant," Amon says, and Korra unthreads his tone and finds the same color in his earlier approval of the scar make-up. She turns her head away from them, frowning, and stops to watch as the enormous banner of Amon is unfurled from the rafters, billowing open over the stage with a heavy snap.

"You'll be pleased to know the task force was very successful in providing for tonight's demonstration," the Lieutenant continues, and they round the right side of the stage and slip through a side door into a small, damp machine room.

"So I see," Amon says, voice raw with anticipation, and as she looks around the room, an icy shiver slides up the valley of Korra's spine, curling around her neck and scalp.

There are prisoners. Five of them, all men, kneeling on the ground, arms and wrists bound behind their backs and gagged with strips of white cloth. They're not making much noise; just snuffling on the gags, faces red and blotchy. Korra's gaze flicks to the massive Equalist man standing at attention near the doorway, and then back to the men. She swallows her tongue and stiffens because they don't scare her, they don't.

Amon walks down the row with deliberate slowness, studying each one, and the air in the room turns thick. He leans down and grabs a man's face, the mask inches away from the man's stifled grimace. The man is older and well dressed in red and gold, with bushy salt-and-pepper side burns and narrow, belligerent eyes.

"Well met, Lightning Bolt Zolt," he drawls, and Zolt responds with a contemptuous haughgh through the gag. Amon shoves his face away and steps back to scrutinize the row, arms crossed, thinking to himself.

"Zolt first, naturally," he says suddenly, throwing two fingers at Zolt, and then he points out each man in turn as he continues: "then the one in orange and the one in blue. Tenchu takes the two benders in green, that one and then the younger one, after I've finished with the other three. If one of them breaks down, skip him and give us the next."

"Yes, sir," responds the large Equalist, with a sharp bow of the head. Out the door, someone calls for the Lieutenant, and he leaves the room, only to poke his head back in after a second with a hasty "Amon, sir! You, too, Jin!"

Amon and the Equalist stride out of the room without a backwards glance and Korra is left standing there alone, eyes roving over the bound men, her heart emptying and then emptying again and then emptying one more time and damnit, she's hesitating.

She didn't want the younger one. He's at the end of the row, sort of detached from everyone else, several feet away; he might've squirmed away from the rest. He looks around her age, or maybe just a touch below, round-faced with wet, shimmering green eyes and a black cowlick all lifeless and limp. He barely looked up when Amon passed him over, sitting hunched over himself. Couldn't even flinch. There was just numb, painless fear. Korra makes a scathing noise and scuffs a foot on the floor, sketching a wide half-circle in front of her. Benders are evil.

She saunters over and cocks her hips, folding her arms in a casually threatening imitation of Amon. When he doesn't look up, she taps him in the knee with a light kick-swing of her foot and he startles, eyes widening with a questioning whimper.

Korra rolls the gag down his chin, cloth pressing into his round cheeks, and then off his face completely. He twists to wipe his mouth, slick and shiny with drool, on his shoulder, rolling his tongue on the aftertaste of the gag.

"What's your name?"

"I think there's been a mistake," he splutters, and his voice is young and earnest. Korra sniffs and closes her eyes for a second, just for a moment.

"You're a bender, aren't you?" she asks, mouth tightening around the word bender, wringing its syllables dry with disdain.

"Yeah, but – "

"Then there's no mistake," Korra says swiftly.

" – but I didn't do anything wrong," he says desperately, "I don't know why I'm here! I just got kidnapped by you crazy Equalist guys and now you're gonna do something to me, I don't even know what you're gonna do but I can already tell it's not gonna be fun – "

She presses her fingers to his mouth and he pulls his head back, crossing his eyes at her hand.

"I asked you for your name," Korra says, "not your whining."

He glares at her, thick eyebrows furrowing over his snub of a nose, and Korra doesn't like it, he's making her feel bad.

"Bolin," he says finally, "and you're Tenchu. I've heard of you. You're a bully."

Korra blinks, tucking the last comment away to a place she can't hear it, and finds a smirk somewhere in herself. She thinks of her father, and his precise, rich way of nailing people, hammering them down with just a few light taps of a phrase.

"What do you bend, Bolin?"

She can't do it. She sounds stupid trying to drawl, or whatever, but she keeps the smirk.

"I'm an earthbender," Bolin says proudly, back straightening, chest lifting, "and I'm not bad."

Korra wonders who told him he could be proud of his bending, who told him he could look at her like that from under his brows, like he's not ashamed of being bender scum. Who allowed him to think that way?

"What's it like?" she says, in the tone of an afterthought, and Bolin gapes at her. His shoulders slouch.

"Uh… I guess it's… it's amazing," he says in a slow voice, face turned up to her. "You feel like… like you're made out of rocks."

"… 'made out of rocks,'" Korra repeats, and she's kind of disappointed.

"Yeah, made out of rocks. Like you're part of the earth and the earth is part of you, like you're not just kicking stuff out of the ground, or punching boulders or anything, but you're just… moving energy around. Like if I bend a wall out of a mountain I'm not… like… ruining the earth," Bolin says, "because I am the earth. I'm the whole earth, just walking around."

He trembles a bit, coming back to where he is, tied up on the floor, and his gaze drops crestfallen to her boots. But yeah, he was right, it was something like that… it was like you were the earth, what with its steady beating hum of chi rising through your bare feet, vibrating into your bones, rooting you into the ground, filling you with an enduring, persistent agelessness…

"That's pretty neat," she says lamely, because she doesn't know what else to say.

"'Neat'? You're an E-equalist and you think earthbending is 'pretty neat'? No offense, but doesn't that, uh… make you a pretty b-bad Equalist?" Bolin asks, looking up again, voice shaking; he's being fresh with her, how desperately brave. Korra unsettles, feeling all of her insides tilted the wrong way, and she makes a face.

"No, you're a bad Equalist," she snipes, and he makes a weird noise that splutters as he tries to hold it in, but it comes out anyway, all choked and helpless. His expression is torn in two: fear, and… and he's trying not to laugh.

"Yes! Yes, clearly, I'm a bad Equalist," Bolin says, ropes straining against the movement of his shaky, faltering laughter, "but maybe, if you untied me, you could show me how to be a good Equalist…?"

"No can do," says Korra firmly, shaking her head; but she likes Bolin, him and his odd, plucky touch of daring, talking to her like he's not her enemy but her friend, and he looks at her kind of funny for half a second.

"…you have a really nice smile."

"What?"

"Your smile. It's pretty," he mumbles, ducking his head. And she didn't even notice she was smiling, but now she feels it grow, spread wide and warm over her face. And he smiles at her, a shy, crooked quirk of the lips, teeth barely showing. She vaguely remembers that she's supposed to be intimidating him, but he's nice and doesn't seem bad at all…

Bolin's shoulders hunch up to his ears, color draining from his face – wait, she didn't do anything for him to look so terrified – and Amon reaches out and tugs the gag roughly into Bolin's mouth.

"Tenchu," he says without looking at her, keeping his eyes fixed on Bolin, who looks faint, "come with me."

He leads her to a deserted hallway and, without warning, steers Korra into the wall, one hand on her collarbone, the back of her head going crack against the cement. Her foot slips out from under her and she braces herself, a hot, sickly bitterness welling up from the bottom of her gut, as he paces a short distance away. He turns on his heel and tilts her mask up her face, carelessly, brutally. Her tongue is stuck to the roof of her mouth and she can hear him fuming.

"I didn't want to do this, but you leave me no choice," he says, and there is a swelling silence –

He backhands her, a stinging slap that cuts across her face and lands hard enough to loosen her hair and knock the mask askew; his nails rake across her cheek like knives. If she clenches her jaw any tighter it will crack and break, so she straightens her stance, lifts her head, and stares at the wall in front of her. There is nothing to say.

"Korra, you're a disgrace," he snarls, and she loses a breath and sucks it back up, she's not going to cry. He paces a tight line around her and she stares at the wall, so hard that it becomes a vast expanse of beige, a great stretch of nothing. She is the wall.

"Far be it from me to doubt what you told me earlier, that there's nothing wrong with you. But, I'm beginning to suspect otherwise," Amon says smoothly, leaning in closely, his words hot on her face, and she fights back the impulse to duck or shield herself – no resisting, just wait, be a wall – "and unless you can convince me of your convictions, now, you will make me very angry."

"There's nothing wrong with me," Korra blurts, taking her eyes off the wall, and she clamps her mouth shut as his eyes narrow.

"Your reassurances are meaningless," Amon says, "until you prove them with your actions. Do not disappoint me, Korra, by hesitating when the time comes. Do what needs to be done."

There is a long pause.

"Say it!"

"I won't hesitate!"

"As expected," he says brusquely, and leaves her there without another word. He disappears onto the warehouse floor and Korra takes a moment, lets everything go slack, chest heaving; she rubs her cheek where it still smarts and feels hotness pool around her eyes. She's not going to cry. She's not going to cry. She presses the back of her wrist to her eyes and digs her teeth into her lower lip, she's not going to cry…

Korra takes a deep breath, holds it, and lets it go with a whuff. She readjusts her mask and marches back to the warehouse floor, ignoring Bolin as she passes through the machine room, and she makes a beeline to where her father is standing with the Lieutenant. The Lieutenant glances at her and then to Amon, a small smirk twitching on his mouth. He's ferreting out their moods.

"Are you ready?" the Lieutenant asks, twirling a kali stick in his hand, it buzzes as it spins a blurred circle through the air. He's caught a whiff of humiliation, son of a bitch, he loves the stench.

"Of course," she says dismissively.

"You shouldn't be so difficult," the Lieutenant sneers, "your father is a great man."

Since when does the Lieutenant scold her? Korra wants to smash his goggles into his face but she rolls her shoulders back, lifting her chin.

"He can't finish a newspaper sudoku to save his life," she says, returning the sneer in kind. She can't help herself, she has her own weapons; she's emboldened against his petty needling.

"Your father will lead us to equality and freedom," the Lieutenant says sagely.

"He's a terrible singer, can't even get the words to 'Secret Tunnel' right," Korra says, matching his tone, her voice louder than his. She doesn't care about the Lieutenant. All she can think about is her father making eggs in the morning, singing in his lush baritone, and how good it sounds.

"Without him, non-benders wouldn't have a chance in this city!"

"Yeah, and his imitation of Councilman Tarrlok is the funniest, dumbest thing in the world – " and he wakes her up with a bouquet of lotuses on her birthday, still carries her to bed when she falls asleep during the radio music hour, never forgets how she likes her oolong tea – but he thinks she's a disgrace –

"And you're a bad-tempered brat, and if you were my daughter – "

"But she is not, so that is enough," Amon says, in a voice frozen over, and they both stop. He meets her eyes, holding them for a long, infinite flash of a second, and looks away.

III. The Rally

Finally, at last, they're on stage, the world falling into place before her, the crowd of faces bright and clear and waiting and everyone is here except her because she is outside of herself, bracing her soul for what comes next what must be done. The crowd reacts flawlessly to Amon's every play on their emotions, their feelings are like clay in his hands the firebender took a mother from my daughter and then he took my face I've been forced to hide behind this mask ever since

But their pity is meaningless because Korra is Tenchu and she is made of steel forged from rage and vengeance and she remembers her mother, nothing but a face caught behind a snarling knot of flames, and it's fire that cooled her father so much, she can't forgive it, she will never forgive that fire because the only thing that bending has brought to the world is suffering and Korra is lost somewhere, plunged in deep under the curves of the Tenchu lotus mask, Tenchu who would rid the world of benders, unyielding and sure.

And the revelation, the revelation is the solution what is the revelation, Tenchu? What is it? What is she searching for?

And then the microphone is cool and heavy in her clammy hand and she has the floor, has their breathlessness, their unblinking faith the spirits spoke to us with the answer, chose me and my father, gave us the power to take bending away permanently Korra rings on their souls, the crowd is waiting with baited breath and now for a demonstration and then the crowd seethes and boils with hate, an immense tide of anger, flooding onto the stage as Zolt and the men and Bolin are dragged into the blinding spotlights.

Her father moves like a man freed from gravity, weightless and calm as Zolt's lighting lands sizzling and spitting onto the stage, and it splutters into a huge feather of fire as Amon pins the block to his chakras through his neck and it dies with a sigh your firebending is gone forever

He makes short work of the other men and then he takes the fourth - leaves Bolin to her. She is ready. To block is to overwhelm their heartbeat with your own, consume their rhythms, unravel their threads of chi – can you feel it, Korra, each throbbing chakra – each one hangs inside you like stars on a chain – you have to cut each one off, you count down from seven, six, five on your heartbeat – she will not hesitate – Amon glides and breezes like the wind around the man's desperate earthbending, forces him to his knees, she is empty and serene, the noise of the crowd is but a shadow over still water – four, three, two, he collapses with a moan as Amon severs the last chakra – and now it's just Bolin left and she will make her father proud and she advances, blood searing through her, tangled through with the cold light of the full moon. There is no turning back.

a/n: chapter 2 has 2/3 parts completed - Combat and Hurt, with Discovery on the way. Review me hard, baby. It encourages me to write.
p.s.