二十九

[anatural]

[ action ]
[After dropping Korra off for her duties at the Welcome Center, Naga is padding her way through the City, heading back to the Beach House. Her jaw is hinged wide open as she pants to try and keep cool, and her hackles are raised.

Something is very wrong with this place. It's not just the climate, which is too hot for an arctic animal like herself. There is something unnatural going on with the environment and the polar bear dog does not like it. There's too little water. The plants are unhappy. The wild animals she snacks on are fewer in number.

Who, what, and wherefore aren't questions she's capable of asking. All she knows, as she stops by the Fountain to lap up some of the water, is that she Does Not Like This.]

[ooc: Care to run into a cranky dehydrated polar bear dog? You've got options!

option a: run into Naga anywhere in the City!
option b: run into Naga and Korra in the evening when Naga picks Korra up again]

Comments

b) Naga then Korra?~<3

[mortemscintilla]

[ Hei has no unnatural animal senses like Naga. But even he can intuit that something is wrong. ]

[ There's a draught branching in arid cracks through the City. It's subtle, barely perceptible. But at its heels, a premonition skitters up his spine. He's taken to outfitting hygrometers near the City's lakes, to determine the rise or ebb of the water levels. He's started using less water to dilute coffees and steep teas at the cafe. Obeying the cold jangle of warning that's crawling through his nerves, he's also begun storing water barrels at his Underground safe-house, with the same sense of a rainbow coin tucked away in his wallet for emergencies. Just in case. ]

[ Returning from work, he stops at a sidewalk fruit-stand to buy a red half-moon of watermelon. Settles at a bench near the Welcome Center, and bites into it, the flavor exploding sweet and crunchy between his teeth. The evening rays are slanted and pink, but even at this hour, the air is muggy. The back and chest of 'Li's shirt are dark with sweat, the rustle of the tree-leaves overhead dappling shadows and sunlight across his face. ]

[ Still, he enjoys his snack, along with the scant relief offered by the shade. ]

[anatural]

[Naga pads her way towards the Welcome Center. The drink she'd taken in the Fountain helped, but she's still overly hot and thirsty. It has not put her in the best of moods.

When she smells Hei, she stops. Her hackles rise and she bares her teeth. Korra may have made her peace with him -- or something like it, judging by how often she's come home covered in his scent -- but Naga still doesn't trust him.]

[mortemscintilla]

[ If Hei spots Naga in the distance, he doesn't let on. ]

[ Instead, he takes another bite of watermelon, chewing with a determined indifference. But that sentinel part of his mind is scoping the area out, on watch for Korra. If he could, he'd rather avoid her. He's in no mood for company or anything else tonight. Not Korra's fault -- just an offshoot of the Visitor Weekend. He's made an effort, over time, to view her as separate from his memories of Pai. But Pai's unexpected visit has left him at once lonely and disordered. A hundred memories of Heaven's War are gathered all around him now, in the slats of pink and orange light. They settle in dark corners like vultures waiting for carrion. ]

[ It's Pai's unwitting doing. ]

[ Somehow she'd brought all those figments with her, renewed and solidified in every dimension. Just the sight of her had evoked a sickle-sharp mindset Hei had stuffed behind a safety-valve all these years, gathering dust from disuse. Although she's gone, the after-traces linger, like a retinal burn-in from a shockwave of light. He's reluctant to see Korra while he's still trying to blink those blind spots away. Worse, he doesn't want to learn he's suffered a relapse. To discover that, even now, he can't wrench Korra free from the sticky morass of Pai-ness. ]

[ Scat. He doesn't look at Naga. But maybe the Polar-Whatsis will get the message. By the osmosis of mutual irritation. Or something. ]

[anatural]

[Naga remains for a little bit, watchful and wary. But when Hei doesn't move, she decides that (for the moment) he's not a threat. She growls a warning low in her throat for good measure and continues to the Welcome Center.

Hei is eventually forgotten as Naga and Korra run into friends outside the Welcome Center, and some time passes before they return in his direction.]

[mortemscintilla]

[ If Hei were a rottweiler, he'd growl back. Instead he continues munching his snack. There's a cool gust of relief when the animal pads away. While Naga's appearance isn't forgotten -- like everything else, it's jotted down meticulously in Hei's mental logbook -- it isn't dwelt upon either. Five minutes later, Hei is plunking the watermelon rind, gnawed down until it's all green and shiny, into a trashcan. Wiping his palms on his jeans, he sets off at a steady clip down the street. A visit to the Underground seems attractive tonight. He needs something to hack to pieces. ]

[ But only halfway down the street, he spots Korra and Naga again. ]

[ Oh, great. ]

[anatural]

[Sucks to be you, Hei. Korra catches sight of him and waves. She didn't have any emotional encounters over the weekend, and no way to tell what his mood is from this distance; there's no reason for her to not be pleased to see him.]

Hey! Didn't expect to see you out here.

[mortemscintilla]

[ Against his sullen silence, Korra's enthusiasm strikes a discordant cord. Already Hei can feel his shoulders tensing, his spine like the tail of a stingray. He doesn't want to stop walking. But his feet slow against his will. Slipping both hands into his pockets, he nods at her greeting, eyes averted. (He isn't sure, exactly, what he means by the ambiguous gesture.) ]

[ Finally, ]

I was heading home.

[ It's spoken in a dry, almost inflectionless voice -- either disengagement or tiredness. ]

[anatural]

[Well that's.......unsettling. She can't tell if that's plain tiredness or if he's shut himself off.]

Are you okay?

[mortemscintilla]

[ Hei isn't sure either. There's a vein ticcing in his temple. He's already waiting for the cold draft of memories to wedge in. For the Pai-layers to obscure his view of Korra, so he's unable to see her any other way. Except ... ]

[ Except nothing happens. ]

[ Frowning, Hei meets Korra's eyes. His own narrow a bit, with the same instinct of gazing up at a cloudless sky. But for the first time, he actually sees her. It's like looking at something you've been living with for months -- a sculpture, a painting. Something that's been in the periphery so long you've grown blind to it. Until you borrow someone else's eyes, a fresh viewpoint, and think -- Oh. Hundreds of times he's seen her, yet it recedes in a blur of color and half-snatched scent now. Suddenly he's confronted by a fully-lit reality. How could he have mistaken her for Pai? She's too tall. Her skin and eyes are the wrong color. Her aura is absolutely, nightmarishly different -- distinct. For the first time, looking at her, Hei finds himself unable to decide if her face is a mess of imperfections (too animated, too open, too childish), or the opposite. ]

[ Aloud, he says only, ]

I'm fine.

[ No, he isn't. He's studying her too closely, like the scene of a roadside carnage. ]

[anatural]

[...she doesn't like the way he's looking at her. She feels like some carnival freakshow. Her legs squeeze Naga, and her grip shifts on her cane, self-conscious.]

Why are you looking at me like that?

[mortemscintilla]

[ Hei doesn't answer her. His face is frozen, thin-lipped, but there's no absence in his gaze. No distance. For once, he's one-hundred percent there, giving her one-hundred percent focus. Except it doesn't seem friendly in the least. More like she's a quarry he hasn't yet decided to skin alive or to mount on the wall as a trophy. ]

[ (Why hasn't he ever noticed that length of that neck and the width of those shoulders? Or the furred edges of those eyebrows she's always scrunching up? In the back of his mind, a voice prompts: Imperfect? Or the opposite? Ugly? Beautiful?) ]

[ With every heartbeat, he comes closer to forming an opinion. ]

... It's nothing.

[ Wrong voice. Wrong shape. Wrong face. Everything -- everything -- wrong. (Except, yes. He's made up his mind. She's beautiful. Probably as beautiful in her own way, as Pai is in hers.) ]

[anatural]

It's never nothing. [She's not pushing him to tell her. Mostly it's just an expression of frustration. His moods are fickle, and if there's a way to predict them she doesn't know because he never tells her. Every time she manages to push him into sharing, it hurts.

Naga's started growling, low and threatening, and Korra turns her attention away from Hei to soothe her friend. In a weird way, it's a relief. She knows what to do when Naga's angry. She never knows how to handle Hei's moods, even when she can identify them.]

[mortemscintilla]

[ Naga's growl slices through the hazy cobwebs of Hei's space-out. Swallowing, he shakes his head clear. It's as if there's a choke-coil of tension between him, Korra and her pet. He feels the buzz of it in the air, in the slope of Korra's shoulders and in Naga's bristling white fur. He wants to say something. Wants, almost, for the Pai-memories of last year to coalesce into a cold bead in his mouth, something blue and marble-patterned and tiny he can spit out like a loose tooth. He wants to hold it up to the light. Show it to Korra. Look. This was the culprit. Watch that glittery bead refract the sunshine, spinning a hundred scenes of memory in its tiny empyrean. ]

[ Except that's impossible. ]

[ Instead he reaches, carefully, and settles his palm on the tip of Korra's boot. It's a strange gesture -- as if gentling a skittish colt. (Not too different, in its own way, from Korra's body-language with Naga.) ]

It is nothing. [ If she knew how little a Nothing, she'd laugh. (Or maybe cry?) Idly, he drums his fingers against her toe. ] Just ... a long week.

[ He remembers a story he liked to read to Pai as a child. The Snow Queen. He feels like Kai, after the mirror-splinter in his eye melted away. (This, he thinks, is Pai's doing too.) ]

[anatural]

[She doesn't flinch when he touches her boot, but a part of her is surprised that he's being so gentle. She'd expected him to lash out like he always seems to.]

Can I help?

[mortemscintilla]

[ Lash out? At the moment, he has no reason to. It's been awhile since he's experienced this. The cold bite from clarity's teeth, severing those dangling threads of memory. Letting him see again. In its wake, he expects to feel something. A difference in his attitude toward Korra. A jolt as if from a jammed gear, before the elaborate mechanism of illusions falls apart. But there's nothing. Just a vague tick-tock, soft and persistent, as if from an old clock, establishing its permanent residence in his mind and his sternum. He can feel the earnest force of Korra's attention, her kindness in not pushing, not questioning. ]

[ He doesn't answer right away. His fingers carry on tracing the shape of her boot. Eventually: ]

I'm not sure how you could.

[ His voice is quiet but not dismissive. (As if, for one miraculous moment, he's taking the offer seriously.) ]

[anatural]

Do you want company?

[No innuendo in her voice or hint of suggestion. If he'd rather be alone, she won't be offended. She herself prefers to be alone when processing difficult things. But sometimes it helps to have someone around, just to be there. Proof that you're not alone.]

[mortemscintilla]

[ It only takes Hei barely a heartbeat to respond. ]

No.

[ He wasn't in a sociable mood to begin with. But after this recent shock of discovery (rediscovery?), he wants to crawl somewhere dark, away from lights and voices and any stimulus. Try to absorb what this means. (Maybe, finally, absorb Pai's visit and departure -- and the ripples of its impact.) He can't do that while Korra's there. Whatever tangled thing he's carrying inside himself, she can't make it better. Perhaps because the tangles she carries in herself are so much smaller and simpler? It wouldn't be fair to her. (But when has he ever been fair to her?) ]

It's all right. [ He says it very quietly, in a deadpan way that covers up a surfeit of conflict. ] Just need to clear my head.

[anatural]

Okay. I'm -- [around if you need me. Except the last time she said something like that, he'd freaked out and ended things.]

I'll see you later. [Disappointingly neutral, like he's just somebody she knows. But it's for the best.]

[mortemscintilla]

[ Hei hears the ambivalence in Korra's voice. He has a strange sense that he was being offered something valuable, and that he'd royally flubbed it. It surprises him -- but why? -- how extraordinarily patient she's being. Hei could never draw her a map of the minefields inside his head. The triggers, the shockwaves of Keep Out, have no pattern. They're as hidden from him, in a way, as from her. Yet she's trying, in spite of his ever-escalating levels of cruelty -- all the verbal cuts and physical blows he's ever dealt keep reverberating back at him, putting the lie to his notion that he has no remorse -- she's stayed on the whole patient. A patience with its own bursts of petulance and tantrums, but so much milder than his own variety. ]

[ He doesn't know how Korra does it. Maybe, at 18, it never occurs to you that you can't. ]

Hold on. [ The words are offered to the air in that measured tone you use to show you aren't hesitating when, in fact, you are. He doesn't meet her eyes. Instead he focuses on his fingers, still resting on her boot. (With a sensation that is shockingly physical, Hei knows his feelings for Korra in this moment as he's never known them in the rare times when they're both happy.) ] It's too hot to walk. Give me a ride? Or should I worry about Naga biting my head off?

[anatural]

[He is the weirdest, most confusing, most maddening person ever. She offers him company, he says no, she says she'll leave, he basically asks to tag along. Sometimes she just wants to shake him hard until all his misaligned bits are put back in order.

But for tonight, she just smiles.]

Down, Naga.

[She gently nudges the polar bear dog with her heel and the creature reluctantly lowers herself down so Hei can mount.]

Welcome aboard Naga Express.

[mortemscintilla]

[ Shake him until he's fixed. If only it were that simple. Sometimes Hei can't help but think -- It's so fucked up, living as an animal masquerading as a cyborg masquerading as a human. Always feeling the gears of instinct versus conscience versus rationale -- clanging and eroding as they knock against each other, turning the most vital parts of him into crunched glass. But this isn't the time to put out his mind's fingers, and trace each jagged edge individually. ]

[ There's a moment of surprise -- yet not -- when Korra smiles and sets Naga down. He clambers onto the animal's back with an easy grace, settling behind Korra. Not too close -- no cinch, no motorcycle hug. But as he leans in over her shoulder, assessing the vantagepoint from his position, his eyes drift across her nape, at the border where the upswept hair turns into fuzzy down. There's an impulse to press his lips there. ]

[ Instead, quiet and matter-of-fact, ]

I'm not paying the toll if she throws me off.

[anatural]

[Naga rises again and Korra silently directs her towards Hei's apartment.]

Huh?

[Whatever you're referencing goes straight over her head. (No, it's not because Hei's so close. Not entirely, at least. She's pretty tired.)]

[mortemscintilla]

[ A headshake paired with a rueful exhale. ]

Never mind.

[ There's nothing about Korra that seems frightened -- despite having him at her back. Still, a part of Hei whirrs on and begins cataloguing everything -- the vulnerability of Korra's position, the angles of the buildings overhead, the potential views from their windows and balconies, the pace and force with which Naga lopes down the street. The sunlight strikes fire off the water at the lake. One hand cupped around his eyes, Hei feels a smile bloom. Maybe it's dehydration. Maybe it's the post-adrenaline rush that still fizzles in his bloodstream after Pai's visit. ]

[ But it's the kind of smile that's both tired and free, tailed by a low Huh of a laugh that's so uncharacteristically Hei that he finds himself biting his lip and shutting his eyes, a distant memory of painted carousel-horses he never sat on and fairs he never visited bubbling out of his consciousness. ]

[anatural]

[She feels that laugh and turns her head to look at him, confused. She's not afraid of him right now, no -- nothing about his current mood seems violent and for all his wild unpredictability, she can usually feel his (physical) violence coming.

The laugh is weird, though. Really weird.]

You sure you're okay?

[mortemscintilla]

[ Hei succeeds -- nearly -- in smoothing his expression into an impassive mask when she turns. But he can't fight that twitch at the corners of his mouth. Maybe joy is an involuntary muscle? Maybe this is what love feels like for ordinary people, vertiginous and freeing and exhausting all at once? But Hei knows that's not what it is. He's just tired. Coasting on residual dollops of adrenaline, trying to gear his mind back into its normal settings after it's been flipped upside-down, and not doing a very good job of it. ]

Yeah. [ The word stirs tar-thick from his throat. Clearing it, he repeats, more decisively. ] Yeah. I'm fine.

[ A beat's worth of hesitation, before he leans in to drop his arms into a loop around Korra's waist. His head settles heavy and almost-indolent against hers. And he is quiet, caught in a sensation of time slowing down around them, a bubble within which this sort of closeness can happen and be completely good. ]