Tumblr crosspost (11 November 2019)
Aug. 2nd, 2021 09:53 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
anghraineI reblogged a headcanon ficlet I'd written in Dec 2012 about Noatak in his early Amon days:
Almost Forgotten
It was unsettling, sometimes, to realize that he’d almost forgotten his name, and still more unsettling that he’d never quite managed it. He wasn’t Amon, of course; that was the hooded mask, pure and bloodless, an image his mind projected onto the stage. He was—Noatak of the Water Tribe, his mind answered him back, Yakone’s son, prodigy bender. His fingernails dug into the weak human flesh of his palms. But perhaps there was an advantage in it. He needed information, and the truth could be its own disguise.
So, now and then, Noatak walked down the street in blue-lined grey, his face and hands unpainted. You can trust me, I’m a waterbender, I’m one of you. No more of a lie than any of the others he’d told. Men laughed and joked with him, women flirted with him—that would never be anything but strange—and occasionally, Triad members thought they’d spotted an easy target in his thin, slouching figure. He quickly disabused them of the notion, but fighting them, fighting without restraining any part of himself, slicing and icing, chi-blocking, dodging, bloodbending all at once, brought with it a rush like nothing else. In those earlier days, when he was still restless, his power gnawing at him, he often found excuses to get lost in Red Monsoon territory.
My father’s land, he thought one evening, wandering home, and laughed to himself. He’d already set two groups of bloodbenders running. Noatak straightened up into his usual confident stride; he didn’t need the moon, unlike those others, but it still strengthened him, until he felt invincible under the bright silver moonlight. Yakone was dead, the Avatar was a child, newspaper clips told him his brother was safe and successful in the capital, he was the greatest bloodbender in the world, and his movement gathering supporters more rapidly than he himself had anticipated.
To his right, he cast a crisp, elongated shadow. He was a tall man, but it towered over him, stretching high and featureless along the alley wall. Now that, he thought, was Amon.
Almost Forgotten
It was unsettling, sometimes, to realize that he’d almost forgotten his name, and still more unsettling that he’d never quite managed it. He wasn’t Amon, of course; that was the hooded mask, pure and bloodless, an image his mind projected onto the stage. He was—Noatak of the Water Tribe, his mind answered him back, Yakone’s son, prodigy bender. His fingernails dug into the weak human flesh of his palms. But perhaps there was an advantage in it. He needed information, and the truth could be its own disguise.
So, now and then, Noatak walked down the street in blue-lined grey, his face and hands unpainted. You can trust me, I’m a waterbender, I’m one of you. No more of a lie than any of the others he’d told. Men laughed and joked with him, women flirted with him—that would never be anything but strange—and occasionally, Triad members thought they’d spotted an easy target in his thin, slouching figure. He quickly disabused them of the notion, but fighting them, fighting without restraining any part of himself, slicing and icing, chi-blocking, dodging, bloodbending all at once, brought with it a rush like nothing else. In those earlier days, when he was still restless, his power gnawing at him, he often found excuses to get lost in Red Monsoon territory.
My father’s land, he thought one evening, wandering home, and laughed to himself. He’d already set two groups of bloodbenders running. Noatak straightened up into his usual confident stride; he didn’t need the moon, unlike those others, but it still strengthened him, until he felt invincible under the bright silver moonlight. Yakone was dead, the Avatar was a child, newspaper clips told him his brother was safe and successful in the capital, he was the greatest bloodbender in the world, and his movement gathering supporters more rapidly than he himself had anticipated.
To his right, he cast a crisp, elongated shadow. He was a tall man, but it towered over him, stretching high and featureless along the alley wall. Now that, he thought, was Amon.