三十

[anatural]

[She's woken up by an incessantly cheery tune. It takes her awhile to place it as her network device -- and another while to figure why, because it's not the two beeps of a message or the tune Hei recorded to let her know her battery's dying.

It's a little calendar notification. One year in the City! She stares at it uncomprehending (always a little slow in the mornings).

One year.

Shaking her head, she takes a minute to figure out how to make the stupid notification away and then shoves that thought -- One year -- out of her head. She's just going to go about her day as normal. Ayup.]


[ video/action - late morning - option 1 ]
[Korra is out on the beach. You can only really see her face, but the sound of the waves is unmistakable.]

Hey Chekov, get over here. Bring swimtrunks. [It's time you learned how to swim, Spaceboy.]


[ action - late afternoon - option 2 ]
[Another day, another session of physical therapy. The hospital's practically a second (third?) home to her at this point. She walks through the front door, waves at the receptionist, and then makes her way towards the PT's office.]


[ action - evening - closed to Hei ]
[She's run out of ways to distract herself, but it's still too early to sleep. So even though she's tired -- and she's always tired, reason #754 why she hates that lunatic who shot her, because just being alive never used to be this exhausting -- she heads over to Hei's apartment to say hello and maybe be distracted.

Knock knock.]

Comments

[ action - evening ]

[mortemscintilla]

[ The general aura of Hei's apartment is one of absense. Flat and nearly featureless, the surfaces scrubbed clean and vacuumed spotless, the scents of laundry, cooked food and detergent almost impersonal. This isn't a home. It's a tidy way-station. ]

[ But today, as the door clicks open, the interior lacks that sheen of well-kept detachment. In the kitchen, something fizzles in a frying-pan, smoke spiraling so the fire-alarm gives off shrill metronomic beeps. The livingroom is a mess of colorful shopping-bags with crinkled tissue-paper scattered everywhere. Little shoes and slippers tossed about, blouses in pastel shades heaped together with patterned jeans and white summer-dresses that swirl across the couch like licks of whipped cream. (Hei had bought Pai what he called "a few clothes to start with" while assuring her that they weren't really shopping, that he'd give her money, tomorrow, to really get what she liked without an annoying boy hovering nearby.) In its cage, the lizard seems to catch the strange energy vibrating in the air. It's been doing a funny dance all morning. (Hei has a vague suspicion that Pai fed it something she shouldn't have). ]

[ Leaning a shoulder against the doorjamb, he regards Korra with a blank look. It's not affront so much as surprise -- a mix of I wasn't expecting you and You've caught me at an odd time. His eyes seem like black holes in the dim light, but that's just because they're all pupils. It isn't that he's detached or disengaged as he always is. It's the fact that he's horrifyingly, monstrously there. (He's killed people like this, in Heaven's War. But of course Korra doesn't know that.) ]

[ Eventually, ]

...Something wrong?

[ As if he's completely oblivious to why she always drops by. (He's not. But there's a flare of reluctance, at the idea of this relationship, so convoluted and personal, opened up to Pai's scrutiny. ((Or is it the other way around?)) ) ]

[anatural]

[For a moment, Korra's pretty sure she's knocked on the wrong door, even though Hei answered. She can hardly see inside, but the very energy of the place feels different. Almost lively.

She glances between what she can see of the room and his face. Seriously. Did she knock on the wrong door?]

N-no. [The weirdness throws her off; she forgets for a moment what she was going to say.] I just thought I'd stop by. [You told her she could. She hadn't made that up, right? He told her she could.]

Is this a bad time?

[mortemscintilla]

[ Is this a bad time? ]

[ She always asks him that. Always edges around the circumference of whatever implosion-or-explosion-site his mind has disintegrated into on that particular day. Like her nerves are violins, playing out a high-strung wail of all the ways he'd hurt her if she dared to be spontaneous. He's almost sorry for it, but the damage is done. The most he can do is try to rectify his cruel behavior. Maybe at some point she'll stop looking at him like he's a walking psychic scar. Maybe one day she'll think nothing about him but what he is in her present-tense. ]

[ Maybe. ]

[ Which is why, instead of snapping, Yeah. Bad time. Get lost and shutting the door in her face, he says, ] No. [ A beat, then two, before he takes a step back. ] Come in. [ It's not a Bad Time at all. It's dangerously close to the opposite. (Maybe that's the problem? He wasn't expecting the muddy well of his life to bubble anew -- especially not at this point, after a scorcher of so much loss and disappointment.) ]

[anatural]

[Her lips twitch in a smile that's equal parts relief and uncertainty. She steps inside and doesn't bother being subtle about checking out the place.

Girl's clothes. Lots and lots of girl's clothes. Clearly too small for her, which means...well...]

Shopping for your secret girlfriend?

[Teasing, of course. She's not jealous. Jealousy would be ridiculous, considering they'd agreed not to be exclusive. She's not petty. (Spoiler: a part of her is.)]

[mortemscintilla]

[ At the question, Hei bristles. ]

[ But only for a moment. He's still not sure how to explain Pai's arrival to her. He's not stupid enough to imagine avoidance and deflections will work. Not here. Pai has the power to reshape his whole world, just by existing. He can't hide the changes in his flat -- or in himself. Changes that are a thin underpainting for the others that will follow, on and on in bright impasto strokes. Shutting the door behind him, he takes care to only hit the primary lock. He's given Pai an extra key, and a deadline (a curfew?) for when to return home. Since her arrival, his need to look at her has been a thirst, and the sight of her, constantly surprising in her solid, quiet thereness, goes down like fresh clear water. Still, he knows Pai is growing tired of his hovering. He's been trying to moderate. ]

[ To Korra, he says, measured and careful, ]

Someone from back home showed up. [ The Someone Important is unsaid but blatant. ]

[anatural]

[The "Someone Important" is loud as a siren's wail, and not reassuring. She could be his girlfriend from his world. (Again, not jealous. At all. Nope.)

She could be that important person he couldn't save.]

You must be excited. [It's an unspoken invitation to share more. Maybe also reassure.]

[mortemscintilla]

[ Again, that knee-jerk bristling. ]

[ He's been surly and sharp and uncommunicative plenty enough before, so it stands to reason he'll be more so now. None of that interferes with how ... inadequate Korra's remark makes him feel, though. He listens to the smoke-alarm beep, the frying-pan spit and sizzle. Wants to say something reassuring. He's taciturn by nature, but also seldom at a loss for speech, if it's needed. But he can't come up with anything. Nothing's changed about how he feels for her. Nothing is gone, or diminished -- even if clarity has lent it an unmistakably sordid whiff. But with Pai's arrival -- Korra, everything else -- has moved so far down the queue that any number of other heavy things have to shift around before it can be reinstated. ]

[ He doesn't want to have to explain that to her. Hopes he won't. Almost certainly she'll be glad most of his attention is focused elsewhere. A handful of fucks and an occasional almost-conversation -- ideally, that's all she ought to want from him. ]

[ Too bad nothing in the City is ideal. ]

I am. [ His voice drops a little, like his gaze. He leans against the counter, arms folded. ] But the flat feels a little crowded. [ Because it's only slightly larger than a rat's ass. ] I might have to move to a bigger one.

[anatural]

[So this important girl is going to be living with him. Well that makes things.......different. How will that work? Can it work? Korra's gotten used to them being secret, only ever having to worry about explaining to her own housemates where she's been. Now there's another person in the equation.

Don't think about it don't think about it don't think about it.]

If she's anything like Asami [and the number of clothes scattered all over the place certainly seem to hint at that], you'll have to.

[mortemscintilla]

[ Hei finds himself shaking his head. He can move that much, but he's also somehow plastered to the ceiling, looking down on them both from above, these two sad people who don't know how to talk to each other, and never really have. It's like one of those awful maudlin plays, where everything slides into disaster because neither character has the right words, and from the audience it seems so simple, if they'd just say what they're feeling, thinking, everything will be peaches and cream. ]

[ Except this isn't a play. He reverts to that sort of detachment -- a psychological insulation that is almost academic -- when he's fucking with a mark's head. But Korra isn't a mark. He's learnt to save whatever remains of his honesty for her. Because the patience and honesty she's shown him, just be being herself -- he can never give back. ]

[ Keeping half-an-ear to the low hiss of the frying-pan, he lifts up one of the blouses on the couch. The frilly peach material leaps into relief against his black shirt. ]

She's not like Asami. [ Not like any girl Korra has likely ever met -- a phrase that sounds both proud and ominous, even in his head. ] The clothes were my idea. I'm sure she'd prefer something low-key herself. But -- [ A shrug, that makes it clear: I'm used to spoiling her. ]

[anatural]

[Korra's trying so hard not to repeat her past mistakes. She had been immediately, blatantly, nauseatingly jealous of Asami, and it had led her to do things that she now looks back on with regret. (She doesn't realize how she's overcorrecting, that it would be better for her to speak what she feels instead of trying to convince herself she feels something else.)]

What's her name?

[mortemscintilla]

[ Hei nearly says Pai. But he cuts himself off. Pai was what she went by on the battlefield. What he grew used to calling her. Their callsigns were color-coded: Red. Green. White. Black. An additional buffer, layered on top of their messier codes. But here, in the City, he's more determined than ever for Pai to know only one name. To only ever be one person: who she chooses to be, not who she's ordered to be. It may not mean much to her. But it does to Hei. ]

Xing, [ he says, and the wistful affection is evident in his tone. ]

[ (He notices the strangeness in Korra's behavior. Simple jealousy -- owing largely to a lack of clarification that Pai is his sister, not his lover -- doesn't occur to him yet. Sometimes it's still easy for him to forget, how uncertain and young and fragile Korra is.) ]

[anatural]

[Ouch. That -- ow. She's never heard him sound so openly affectionate before, and it hurts more than it has any right to.]

Xing. That's a pretty name. [She doesn't hate this girl she's never met. Nope. Not at all. That would be stupid, and wrong and more importantly, ridiculous.

She looks at the piles of clothes -- all bright, colorful, frilly, feminine -- and adds that to the ever-growing list of things she'll never be. A real Avatar. A leader. A pretty girl. She and her stupid cane would look ridiculous in pretty clothes like these.]

I should go. You and Xing probably have a lot of catching up to do. [She's not imagining what kind of catching up that is.] I don't wanna get in the way.

[mortemscintilla]

[ Hei has drifted to the kitchen. Her words are nearly incomprehensible to him over the spitting of the fry-up -- golden braids of ma hua, a sweet dish Pai is partial to. Switching off the heat, he catches the last few words: ...Probably have a lot of catching up to do. For a moment the sentence whirls around in his head, unmoored to anything obvious. Then -- Oh. His preoccupied mind presents him with snapshots of the last few minutes: the pretty clothes, Korra's brittle smile, the superficial cheer in her voice, her careful questions about Pai. These fall into place in his system of understanding, connecting the numbers and dots into a clear picture. ]

[ She's insecure. Jealous. She doesn't realize -- Exhaling, Hei shakes his head. I am such an idiot. ]

Korra.

[ He doesn't say Stop. But there's no need to. Three steps, and he's leaning at the kitchen entrance, blocking the path between the livingroom and the door. ]

[anatural]

[Really it's just bad timing. Last week Mako lectured her about not doing anything to try and escape, and he's right. She's been here an entire year and she hasn't done anything except die, get her ass kicked multiple times, and damage her shoulder & leg. There had been some weak, pathetic comfort in at least being desirable, but even that's not true anymore.

She's so sick of herself.]

What?

[You could at least let her leave with something resembling dignity.]

[mortemscintilla]

[ The self-loathing radiates off Korra like a miasma. ]

[ Hei remains poised at the kitchen. But his mild look has faded into something more querulous. Part of him -- the cold, self-serving part -- says: Just let her go. He wants his space today. He has obligations elsewhere -- to Pai -- and a powerful twitchy need to avoid everything Korra is making him feel. He can't do that unless she's gone. After Pai vanished, it was like his spine was pulled out of him. Without her, he was only ever able to crawl. Looking at Korra, he's reminded of how whacked-out he was, searching for a semblance of backbone. How close he'd pulled her in -- in all the wrong ways -- when he had no right to. ]

[ Here is an unexpected flipside: taking an inventory of the nostalgia that already seems like it belonged to someone else. Hei feels like one of those people who, in the warm glow of summer, forget what it's like to walk down a frigid winter street, wrapped-up and shivering. The tangibility of his old loneliness eludes him. All because Pai has dropped back into his life, as smoothly as time reversing itself. ]

[ So? Is Korra a doll you put on the shelf because you're too busy to play with her. ]

[ Hei grits his teeth. Back home, on his last meeting with Maxley, the man had sneered: Look at you. Still pushed around by women. Well -- fuck that. It's true. The women in Hei's life have left the most livid scars. But also the best-loved. He's nurtured and framed each one, counting it among the collection of his treasured sores. A life-lesson, a Thank-You note, stamped on his psyche. He doesn't count Korra among them -- not yet. But every encounter pushes her closer there, like blood racing to a gash. ]

You do realize [ flat and terse ] Xing is my little sister.

[anatural]

[Korra stares at him.]

You have a sister?

[mortemscintilla]

[ Hei ducks his head, as if it's hard to meet her eye. Instead he examines his palms. There's a smudge of flour on his wrist, and a spattering of dark oil stains on the cuff of his shirtsleeve. He isn't sure why it's so hard to discuss Pai with her. But when has he ever discussed Pai with anyone? Back in Tokyo, the idea very had felt slightly obscene, and impossible. He still wasn't sure if she was alive or dead. Didn't understand, why her messier code had been transferred to him, like her ability. He'd been so intense about her then, intense and also intensely private. And in the City, his complete lack of reference to her, not so much as an idle remark dropped ... he's kept her close. Hidden away close in his heart. (That is how he loves.) ]

[ At length, ]

I do. [ Reluctantly, ] Even back home ... I haven't seen her in five years.

[anatural]

[Sister. Sister. He has a sister. How does someone like him -- someone so completely detached from people, who seems to exist as this lone bubble -- have a sister?]

Why not?

[The question pops out of her mouth before she thinks about it. It dimly occurs to her that she shouldn't ask, that he's never very good about answering questions, but she's too stunned by the revelation to even be nervous.]

[mortemscintilla]

[ (Ask his parents. They made that decision -- not him :|) ]

[ Hei tenses, as if he's being threatened, and doesn't quite know what's threatening him. (It's difficult -- so difficult -- to talk about Pai. Especially with Korra. Maybe his sister's return is nothing but his pathetic fantasy. He'll head out later to find her, and there'll be nothing. He'll return to his flat, and it'll be the same as ever, sparse and gloomy, the air smelling not of store-bought clothes but the fried rice he'd accidentally burned a couple of nights ago. Because that's how it goes. Anything he loves -- he probably doesn't love anything or anyone but Pai -- always leaves.) ]

She was ... taken away. [ He's surprised at himself for volunteering even this detail -- evasive as it is. He knows Korra is only asking out of curiosity. But the question turns his spine rigid as a cat's arched back, as if with some strong sense of impropriety. It feels wrong -- as if Korra expects a toting up of his and Pai's suffering, or is taking a grotesque interest in the wretchedness they'd both endured. Or as if she's jealous and requires some annoying proof that this is, in fact, his sibling. Isn't it selfish, to make him relive the whole ordeal of Heaven's War by recounting it? Isn't it obvious enough from Hei's past behaviour that he's experienced something bizarre and prolonged, back home? ]

[ She doesn't know what that something is. You have to volunteer at least a little information. He's disgustingly aware that this sounds like a rationalization. It's bothersome. ]

[ Ordinarily, he gets along well without it. Or with a cold Shut up. ]

[anatural]

I'm sorry.

[The hesitance in his voice cuts through the fog of her shock, and she's aware of how pained he is and how he's not lashing out like he has in the past.

There's a little bit of hesitance in her as well as she reaches a hand out to brush his arm...then changes her mind and tries to hug him. (Comfort for him? Or just comfort for herself?)]

[mortemscintilla]

[ She tries to touch him. And Hei's face opens up, wary, resistant, doubtful. ]

[ This wasn't a pleasant conversation -- or even a semblance of it. Now she's being the kind of sweet and touchy-feely that either pisses him off, or that he doesn't know how to deal with. (Part of him thinks, with a sharp kind of ache in his chest: If you're always going to be like that, she's always going to walk on eggshells around you.) Which would be convenient. No different from his usual flings. Most of the women he's used to 'keeping' are well-indoctrinated in the Syndicate's world -- flatbackers and thieves if not other Contractors. They don't have expectations, don't spin fantasies of intimacy or run off with their mouths. They can take a shock to their life with the same broken-in silence as a slap to the face. ]

[ Yet Hei's arms move reflexively around Korra. The hug is detached. But only for a moment. In the next breath, he hitches her in tighter, his nose in her hair. He can still see her expression, in his mind's eye -- tentative and big-eyed, as if pleading with him, with the whole world, for some scrap of reassurance. This girl he should be treating only as an asset -- but can't. ]

[ Murmured quietly, into the top of her head, ]

Nothing to be sorry about.

[anatural]

[She buries her face in the crook of his shoulder, relieved that he didn't push her away.]

Yes, there is. [It's not the tragic tale of Tarrlok and Noatok, but the pain he feels is clear enough. How can she not be sorry something terrible like that happened to him? (She wonders if this Xing is one of the girls in those pictures. It would explain a lot.)]

I'm glad she's here.

[mortemscintilla]

[ So am I. He doesn't say that. His mouth is dry, his tongue feels stuck to his palate. But it isn't hesitation or anxiety. His hand slides down the curve of her spine to bring her closer. To feel the beads of vertebrae along her back, the warm skin and flexing muscle under the fabric of her shirt, and trace that curiously delicate neck of hers. Pai's arrival has put any thoughts of sex out of his mind. But now, feeling Korra pressed against him, his body spikes to a temperature that's almost -- fizzy. His skin feels hot, and seems to jump, and pressed against Korra, the beat of his own heart seems very very fast. ]

[ It's not a reaction he's experienced -- not since he was a seventeen-year-old in Heaven's War. Everything he's done since then has been almost at half-speed: detached and muted. ]

[anatural]

[She can feel his heartbeat, the press of his interest against her, and she feels an answering tug deep in her belly. It's reassuring. At least there's one thing she isn't failing at.

Pulling back just a little, she leans up to kiss him. They've always communicated best this way, speaking most clearly through touch.]

[mortemscintilla]

[ Even as she leans in, part of Hei is reading Korra, the language of her scent and pulse and heat. Noticing and assessing -- on watch for hesitation. At the same time, the chemicals in his bloodstream -- adrenaline? relief? happiness? -- make it impossible to stay objective. They fizzle in his veins like soda, feeding the dull thud of his pulse in his ears. Dipping his head, he meets her mouth with his. Kisses her in a way he hasn't so far, sweet and lingering, the way he used to kiss Amber. But there's a controlled heat to it too, a sharpness -- like a lick of white-hot barbed wire. Slowly, he coaxes her lower-lip between his teeth. As he does, his right hand travels from her torso to enclose her neck. The thumb edges under her jaw. Not hard but there. ]

[ It's not a threatening gesture. But it is possessive. The Hei in Heaven's War did things in forceful stages, not calculated subtleties. Hard, harder, hardest. With Pai's arrival -- with the resurgence of those memories and that mindset -- he feels the inner-valves slamming open, a degenerative, electric-crackling something pushing its way out. Just below his solar plexus, it stops and crouches under his skin. ]

[ Perfectly silent, perfectly still. Ready to spring. ]