♦♦ 35TH CONTRACT - ANONYMOUS TEXT - Slightly Forwarded to before the 27th

[mortemscintilla]

 It was
a pleasure
to burn

[ A mockery? A salutation? A farewell? Perhaps all three. ]

[ Or perhaps, completely separately, it works for Hei as a statement about his time in the City -- and how he's lived it. He hasn't always embraced it. More often than not, he's been measured and withdrawn. But strangely enough, he's not proud of those times when he's guarded himself against experience. Because although being measured was the rational decision, it was never a pleasure. The times here when he's had the courage to give of himself and experience something without the obstruction of barbed wire and concrete walls has, literally, been like 'burning.' It hasn't been a pleasure in the simple sense of happiness, but in the greater sense of being memorable, mind-altering. Even transgressive. ]

[ He feels that way now. Like he's coming out of a silent stretch of hibernation -- months, years, of being measured, of keeping himself apart. ]

[ Maybe he wants to 'burn' again. ]

[ (Or maybe you're all reading too deeply into it. Maybe he's obliquely advising his teammates on what to do with his body if he accidentally dies during the hullabaloo here.) ]

[ (Don't bury him.) ]

[ ooc: post to tie up loose ends with cr, mostly. Open to action if you want to run into him wherever<3 ]

Comments

action;

[sleepingstar]

[Pai moves slowly as she gets ready for bed that night, taking out her earrings, the dress she had worn for Cain's wedding. Her expression is as level as ever, but there's something pensive in her demeanor.

Getting married seems like such a strange thing to do when the City is ending.]

action;

[mortemscintilla]

[ It's surreal outside -- the air vibrating with a sick, bottled-up tension -- but Hei doesn't mind. He's been worse places with Pai, the air cracking like ice, chaos spilling through the fissures. (Maceió. San Pedro Sula. The terrain of Heaven's War.) Hovering at the window, he studies the view. The grey sky holds a perpetual hesitancy, as if it could open up at any moment. The glow of the doors fascinates him. Step into any one and the possibility exists that you could be somebody else entirely. In his homeworld, everything is a struggle. Disaster knits itself deep inside you. Good things happened there -- sure, he knows that. They just happened to other people. ]

[ In his periphery, he hears Pai shuffling around. Abandoning his perch at the window, he cat-foots into the room. ]

How was the wedding?

[ He's stolen up behind her; he slips his arms now around his sister's neck, hanging over her chair, pressing his cheek to hers. His own face feels hot and moist. ]

[sleepingstar]

[He steals up behind her, but of course she hears him coming. He'd have to try very hard to take her by surprise.

She leans back against him and squeezes the arms around her.]

It went well. [She's assuming. Nothing appeared to go wrong, and the newly weds seemed happy enough as far as she could tell.]

[mortemscintilla]

[ It's not a concept he can comprehend. Marriage. In his mind, a pall of futility hangs over that word. Especially in the City. All the things that seem so important -- financial security, children, ripe old age -- are an impossibility here. ]

[ Still, he doesn't dwell on it. To each their own. Instead, he reaches for Pai's hand. Huddled at the edge of the chair, his fingers encircled in hers, he watches her reflection in the mirror as if to burn the imprint of her face in his retinas. Wondering about what he's going to do, if they exit the City and return home -- to that place that's already stripped them both inside and out. What if she vanishes again? He doesn't want to consider it. Or think about the years he'd spent, after Heaven's Gate dissolved into white light. Years of straining to find her again, hoping he'd recapture the home-ness and rest and peace at her side he didn't wholly believe in, or feel he deserved anymore. ]

[ And then there's the responsibility of Pai. Of what she wants to do, what she needs. It is so huge, it daunts him. ]

[ Rubbing the pulsepoint at her wrist, feeling the fragile tic of her pulse, he murmurs, ]

So what now?

[ No wordgames. No verbal traps. With Pai, he's always honest. ]

[sleepingstar]

[She tilts her head and examines him. No need to ask what he means.]

What do you want?

[For all of the ways that she's struggled against him, rebelled against his need to control, attempted to assert her independence, the one thing that will never change is this: she will do just about anything for him. She will hide the truth so he doesn't have to make hard choices. She will die so he could be free of the killing he hates. She will even let him determine the fate of all Contractors. Anything so that he can be happy.]

[mortemscintilla]

I...

[ He pauses. A piqued silence shimmers in the air between them. In his mind come glimpses of journeys still to be traveled and a stir of echoes urging him onward. It is all ahead in the future, waiting for him: battles, deaths, bloodsprays, exhaustion, coldly glimmering hours strung together like a tightrope without end. He sees himself walking that tightrope with the hourglass frozen in time, the flow of sand arrested. He knows he shouldn't vacillate. It's his obligation to go back, to unravel those messy, blood-slicked knots he's formed by circumventing Amber and Pai's plans. By taking the third option. But there are so many anchors holding him down here. Pai. Yin. Korra. He feels paralyzed. ]

[ His gaze dips, refusing to meet Pai's in the mirror. Instead he focuses on the dark sheen of her hair. ]

I want -- [ An exhale, his tone stark, quiet, worn to the bone. ] I want to know if I still deserve the things I want. Does that make sense?

[sleepingstar]

No. [She tugs him down, so he's kneeling by her side, and strokes her fingers through his hair in a motion she remembers is soothing.] Why don't you explain it to me? [Her voice is gentle, encouraging. She knows how little Hei likes probing into things like this; he's too busy focusing on the present moment and what's happening to look inside himself much. But looking inside yourself was important. That's the only way you really change -- that's how she and the other Contractors began to change.]

[mortemscintilla]

[ Exhaling, Hei settles crosslegged beside her chair. The look he darts up at Pai is brief. Framed by her slightly tumbledown hair her face blooms pale and pretty. The light touch of her fingers is both incongruous and perfectly natural; he thinks of some outsized monster -- all dripping maw and bristling black fur -- crouched near this pale elfin girl. (Death brought to heel? He's sure Amber would laugh at the imagery.) ]

Are you going to tell me it's okay?

[ He doesn't answer, offers a question for a question instead. But buried in there is a plea he'd never say out loud. (Don't lie to me. Not from you. Not if we're going to talk about this.) All that history, the blood and violence and suffering, shared and halved and quartered. They've always been a pair, counterpoint and counterpart. But if they choose different paths, he doesn't want her to lie and go along with it. Not for his sake. ]

[sleepingstar]

That depends on how you explain it, doesn't it? [A promise and not a promise, all at once. She doesn't want to lie to him; she'll exhaust every other available course of action rather than do so. But if that's what it takes to get what she wants, she won't refrain from it.]

[mortemscintilla]

[ He nods, but it doesn't seem to be at anything in particular. He's aware that karma’s a mongrel. Its blood is filthy and it fails to flow in a straight and sensible line. It bites whoever it can and bites randomly. It tallies debts but makes no attempt to match them to the debt-committer. Spend your life totaling black smudges upon your soul thinking in the end they're yours to bear ... ]

[ He knows he's under no obligation to do that. His life hasn't been about reward or punishment but consequence. And one of the things that separates him and Pai from live civilians and dead comrades is an absolute ability and absolute willingness to act on what you think is the right choice. When you know, you know. You don't wait for more evidence. You act. If you act wrong, you live with the results. You act wrong the other way, you don't live at all. ]

[ Finally, in a steady tone, ]

I have a responsibility to go home. With, or without you and Yin. Any good things I've done here, don't seem enough to make up for ... all I did before. Maybe I feel like I shouldn't have a new chance when others didn't. When they died at my expense.

[ People like Amber. Amber, whom he'd wronged, Amber who'd suffered and fought and died so he would be free to choose. And nothing in the City had brought Amber back for another bite at the apple, the life she'd loved so much. ]

[sleepingstar]

You're an idiot. [Said with love, but also a little sad frustration. The future Pai, the one who spent five years as a part of him, coming back into being only in the Gate when he had to make that terrible choice, she would better understand the emotions that Hei currently struggles with. Dead, for all intents and purposes, yet not done learning. This Pai is not yet so wise or empathetic.]

Sacrificing your happiness won't bring any of them back, or undo anything you've done.

[mortemscintilla]

I know.

[ re: both the Idiot, and her next sentence. His gaze shutters, lips pursing for a moment, before he says, ] The dead can forgive and forget. The rest of us should have better things to do. But ... [ But he also understands that everyone owes, and everyone needs to pay. Debts. Liabilities. Ledgers. What else has his life been but an endless cycle of repayments? That's why the idea of being cut loose unnerves him. Because some part of him figures he hasn't quite paid enough. He's paid what the City's law demands, maybe, but some debts exist beyond that. Blood dues. And those aren't collected in the usual way. Those ones tiptoe up behind you like a killer -- and he wonders if it's possible to outwit them. Wonders if he even deserves to. ]

[ His expression is both steady and tired and horribly lost. ]

If I didn't return home, it'd be like I turned my back on them.

[sleepingstar]

You're choosing to suffer just for the sake of suffering.

[mortemscintilla]

That's what Amber would say.

[ He shakes his head, feeling exhausted as the cramping in his chest at her name flares with a high-pitched singing then starts to ebb away, leaving just a dull ache behind. He doesn't have to explain to Pai: the formula of suffering is something they've spent their lives perfecting. Especially Hei. Because he's convinced he cannot grow without pain. Cannot improve without it. Suffering and pain have driven him to achieve great things. ]

[ In a tone that's difficult to decode, he adds, ]

I don't know anything else.

[sleepingstar]

You're not a hopeless idiot. You could learn.

[mortemscintilla]

[ Eyes half-shut, Hei reaches out and spiders his fingers through her hair. Leans in, forehead against the glossy round of her skull, whispering into it as if he isn't talking to her, but to himself. (The distinction is a slim one, all things considered.) ]

Maybe. [ The wrench of doubt, indecision, pulls at him deep, a hook in the vitals. Why does it have to be like this? Why does everything always have to hurt? ] Bad things happen all the time for no reason. So I guess ... why not -- sometime -- something good?

[ It's more a plea than a question. Like he's asking her, Does that make sense? ]

[sleepingstar]

[She leans back into him, resting her hands on his arms in a weird, make-shift hug.]

I want you to be happy. [Don't bother saying "I can't be happy," because she knows you know she doesn't mean in the same way civilians are happy. But that doesn't mean there isn't a form of happiness that he can find. She doesn't want him to suffer out of some ridiculous human irrational sense of obligation.]

[mortemscintilla]

[ He settles an arm around Pai's shoulders and squeezes. Feels the movement of her chest and seamlessly matches his breathing to hers, their lungs expanding and contracting in perfect synchronicity. He absorbs her words in silence; content to simply be near her, drinking in her warmth and calm like water for a long desert trek. He understands what she means, about being Happy. For people like them, the word will always carry different connotations. Will always have a sharper, darker edge. ]

[ He thinks about the past decades, the nights without sleep and the constant edgeless terror; he thinks about Pai because his mind will never be far from her; he thinks about the fact that cosmic fairness is a mysterious thing, not something you can buy or sell, but sometimes that great wheel really ought to come around -- and if it doesn't, you have to wrench it around yourself. ]

[ You have to be brave enough to take that risk. ]

[ Eventually, ]

What about you?

[ As in: What will make you happy? ]

[sleepingstar]

I need to go back. [Simple. Direct. Where before she had lied and hidden the truth from him, trying to protect him from pain, now she acknowledges that it can't be avoided. IT can only be worked through.] I need to help the other contractors.

[mortemscintilla]

[ I need to go back, she says, and Hei is dry-eyed and dry-cheeked, but he can feel the rage and grief digging bloody nails into his chest. Squeezing, slashing. He understands that there is no other route Pai can take: only an act of this magnitude -- an act of zero recourse -- can steer the humans and Contractors off the destructive path they've been set upon. Likewise, bonds of family are the fiercest, and can only be broken by the most extreme strokes. ]

[ But part of him wants to snarl, No. You're staying with me, because forgetting Pai is like disowning the only part of him that knows his real name. But what's even more excruciating ... is knowing that she'll never be complete unless she's accomplished her purpose. She hasn't been happy in the City. When she's smiled here, it's always been a sugar-sick sweetness; her smile has sat on her face like a Halloween mask, twitchy-dark things beneath. When she's been sad, the melancholy has been bottomless and incurable. ]

[ A long moment passes before he realizes he hasn't spoken, or moved. He manages to get his mouth around the words, ]

...I can't change your mind?