Freedom (technically 31_days, 11/07)
Title: Freedom
Series: None; one-shot
Rating: PG (is "fuck" PG?)
Characters: Tarrlok and Amon/Noatak
Pairing: None
Disclaimer: Avatar: the Legend of Korra is not mine. I've used variations on some of the lines from the episode in this fic. (For completeness' sake, they are "Noatak.", "It's over, brother. I'm sorry for what I had to do to you." and "Leave with me now. We have a second chance. We can start over together. Please. You’re all I have left in the world.".) I got the idea of Amon deciding to debend Tarrlok after he realized he'd still become a bloodbender from this prompt on the kink meme.
Word Count: 881 after all.
Warnings: None.
Spoilers: Yes. This is a retelling of a scene in Endgame (episode 12/part two of the finale). Specifically, the one where Amon convinces Tarrlok to flee the city with him.
Notes: This was going to be a drabble. It, uh, isn't. It graduated to a ficlet instead. It was written for 31_days’ prompt for today yesterday, Brother, can you spare a dime?, but then I ran out of "today" about halfway through. So now it's not. Mild AU, because of course it is. Also, by now a fill to this kink meme prompt.
Summary: Tarrlok and Amon, Tarrlok and Noatak, and Tarrlok and the brother who abandoned him, talk.
His brother came in, still clad in his revolutionary garb but without the mask now; good, he thought, then everyone in the city must know that their fabled leader was a hypocrite and a bloodbender and a liar, you lose, but all he said was his brother’s name. He hoped that got the point across that this was not a happy reunion.
Apparently, it didn’t, because Amon told him regretfully it was over, as if he cared about the fucking revolution, and if it was Noatak speaking at the moment, he was at a loss as to what, exactly, he thought was supposed to be over between the two of them. He had nothing to say to either Amon or Noatak. He had a thing or two to say to his big brother, but he’d lost him twenty-three years ago, and that was the one aspect of the man he didn’t see standing before him.
He was right, too, because the very next thing he said was a half-hearted apology: it was Noatak saying he was sorry and Amon saying he’d had to do what he did. It was stunning, the sheer audacity of it, of expecting that was enough or even that it would be believed.
‘No,’ he said. ‘You’re not.’
‘I am,’ Noatak insisted, and he hadn’t thought he would have to elaborate on “You’re not sorry,” but maybe he did, if that confused look was anything to go by. Perhaps the contradiction-in-terms of Amon, non-bender revolutionary, as played by Noatak, master waterbender, had gone to his head or something.
‘No,’ he repeated. ‘If you were, you wouldn’t try to justify yourself to me in the same breath as your worthless little apology.’
‘You bloodbended me.’
He blinked. It was true, of course, and he wasn’t particularly proud of that entire episode or anything, but he wasn’t sure how it had anything to do with the conversation; it seemed to mean something, though, so he bit back his counteraccusation that the entire revolution had been built on bloodbending, too, and asked, instead, ‘What?’
‘You bloodbended me,’ Noatak said, again, and for a moment he wondered if his brother knew about everything else he’d done in that time, or if there was a special significance to this one incident. ‘I wouldn’t have done it, but then you tried to bloodbend me.’
‘It wasn’t just you!’
‘You don’t understand,’ said Noatak, patiently, which was true, he didn’t, he had no idea what this was about. ‘You did it to me.’
‘I didn’t know it was you!’
‘It doesn’t matter,’ and of course it mattered, and who was he to say any of this when he’d been bloodbending this entire time, but he said nothing and waited for the explanation to start making sense. ‘I would have just taken you captive with your bending intact-’
‘Oh, thank you,’ he spat. ‘I’m sure that was very equal to all the other prisoners who weren’t your brother.’
‘I saw what it did to you!’ and he had to bite his tongue not to argue again, that it wasn’t bloodbending but politics, that it had been the threat of Amon and a civil war that had changed him, because this was almost an apology for everything and he wasn’t going to get one any better than this. ‘You defied him, and then you refused to come with me because of our mother who never even knew what was happening to us,’ and that wasn’t fair, how could she know if they’d never told her, it wasn’t her fault, ‘and then even you resorted to bloodbending. I had to do it.’
‘What about you?’ he whispered, quietly.
‘I was too far gone even by the time I ran away,’ he admitted. ‘And I always thought you were the strong one.’
‘You didn’t,’ he said. ‘You said-’
‘I know what I said. I said what I thought. You refused him, and then you had to live with him after I left. It can’t have been easy. I’m sorry.’
He stayed silent again. He couldn’t think of anything to say and he didn’t trust himself to speak anyway.
‘I was going to ask you to run away with me again,’ Noatak admitted.
‘I wouldn’t have come.’
‘I was thinking of staying to face the consequences this time,’ he continued.
‘If you’d asked now, I would have.’
‘I can’t give you your bending back.’
‘I know,’ he said, even if he doubted that was true. He wasn’t sure there were any limits to his brother’s talents.
‘If we stay, we’ll only be serving father’s sentence in his place.’
‘If we run, are we any better than him?’
‘I’m not leaving you again. It’s your choice.’
He thought about it, but it wasn’t much of a choice. If they stayed, Noatak would lose his bending, too, and they’d spend the rest of their lives rotting in a prison cell somewhere. It would be fair, and just, and all those things, but fairness and justice and prison hadn’t stopped their father, either. If they left, they could try to build another life, one that was free from the legacy of their father and his vengeance and his lessons.
‘I think we’ve both spent all our lives paying for this.’