What we lost along the way.

[amonfire]

Characters: Amon Noatak and Tarrlok
Date: After the fire.
Location: Fire Sector
Situation: Amon gives up trying to stalk Councilman Tarrlok as the situation in Keeliai escalates, and finally drops the act to look for his brother.
Warnings/Rating: Discussions of child abuse, other uncomfortable topics, and the potential of violence.

[ Noatak defined himself by the experiences that created Amon until every bad memory and worse mistake bled together into one grey smear that hung over him like a storm cloud. An inescapable series of interwoven moments that were permanently burned into him unlike the scars he fabricated. Eidetic memory was a curse that stung most on the days you were left alone with nothing but your memories to sit beside you.

Noatak was fourteen explaining away the split lip his father gave him as a 'hunting accident' to his mother; he was still a teenager and standing in the storm that he blindly ran into, lost and afraid; he was forty and running away all over again, still just as lost and afraid. He was forty, and maybe still Noatak, running over the anonymous message he sent through a café console with a sick, heavy feeling in his gut that this another mistake he was making.

Come to the fire gardens outside F1-3B if you want news of Amon's demise.

Maybe it was too poetic, or perhaps even too blunt. He sent that message to Tarrlok awhile ago, still unsure if whether or not was wasting his time sitting out by the mentioned fire gardens. His brother's recent activities did nothing to imply he remembered the penultimate events leading up to their shared fall. He still had his bending, for one. There was no way of telling if he made the connection and figured out that Amon and Noatak were two sides of the same coin. All Noatak could do was sit, and wait. ]

Comments

[amonfire]

I already said I'm not stopping you, and that's the best I can do. I've worn too many masks to know when I've taken one off.

[ Noatak had taken to finding the floor the most interesting thing in the room to look at. Tarrlok was taller now that he took notice of it. ]

We were both very set in our ways before that was ever an option. By then I convinced myself reaching out to you would have done us both harm. Or...that you wouldn't believe me.

[disfavored]

I know. But I don't want anyone to hurt you, either. [Not because he doesn't harbor any anger, but because he thinks Noatak has still suffered enough, given what they both went through.]

I would have done something. [Or at least, he really likes to believe he would have.] You're my brother. I would have tried.

[amonfire]

Nothing will happen to me, or you. Even if we're in opposition I won't let anything happen to us again. [ Noatak finally looked up at his brother, and smiled in spite of himself. However joyless it was than it was at least a reassured sort of stupid grin that cracked the ice in his demeanour. ]

I know you would have, but you weren't the only one who had changed. You wouldn't have found anything in Noatak while I wore that mask.

[ Despite Tarrlok's earlier reaction, Noatak chanced to reach out and lay a hand gingerly on his elbow. ]

It won't be like before, Tarrlok; if you'll trust me this time it won't be how it was when our father was alive.

[disfavored]

[He flinches, but does not move away from his brother's touch this time.]

I want to trust you. I really do. You and mother were the last ones I ever...

[The last people he'd ever really cared about before he started trying to care for Republic City as a substitute for actual human interaction. Because it was too dangerous for someone of his family history to get close to anyone.]

But I just don't know, Noatak.

[amonfire]

I won't force the issue; not this.

[ Noatak wasn't going to sit there and claim that his animosity for benders and the Avatar had dissipated just from coming here, but he had nothing to gain fighting with Tarrlok now. Call him sentimental or nostalgic or even hopeless, but he just wanted his brother back.

His brother at least had a city and the social skills to integrate himself into normal society. Noatak took his hatred and inability to find a substitute for what he'd lost and turned it into the Equalists. And they knew how that turned out.

Noatak sighed and made an odd, choked noise. ]

We're messed up, hollowed out people. Aren't we?

[disfavored]

...I'm trying not to be. I can still do something.

[Something like save Republic City no matter what the cost. Because if he couldn't be the city's savior he'd just be nothing but Yakone's rejected son.]

[amonfire]

It's all terribly ironic that we both wanted the same thing, and ended up fighting each other on opposite sides of the fence for it.

[ Noatak consciously didn't specify -- what did they want? To be the hero and saviour of the city? Or what is all more basic than that, and they just wanted to carve out a new, more accepted identity to forget the ones they shucked off so far out North. Acceptance and joy were far reaching, rarely attained goals in all honesty.

With some embarrassment he realized that he hand still hovered on his brother's arm, and he quietly retracted from him. ]

I should...I should go. You have the public to warn; I'll keep my head down for while. Not the first time I needed to.

[disfavored]

Noatak, I...

[There's something he wants to say. Something just on the tip of his tongue. Something he's been wanting to say for the last twenty-six years, perhaps, something he regretted not saying the last time he saw his brother.

But he can't. No words come out.]

Yes. Just lay low for now. I'll see how it plays out.