♦♦ 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 More often than not, he's been measured and withdrawn.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

[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?