♦ ♦ 13th Contract

[mortemscintilla]

[ The weekend has come and gone. ]

[ Familiar faces have come and gone with it, leaving him feeling like an animal who's been taunted through the bars of a cage. Ugly memories, dormant for so long he expected to be free of them, emerge now as if risen from the dead. Horrors worse than what lurk in a crate of vodka have his head pounding -- tick tick tick like the City Clock. Like a time-bomb. Sometimes he sees Amber, free-floating, whispering riddles in his ears. Sometimes it's Yin, watching him with blank eyes and a sad not-smile. Pai is almost always closeby: never quite visible, calling out to him from behind a spray of blood. ]

[ Barely able to distinguish sleep from wakefulness, he isn't sure which is worse. The City feels twice as surreal after the atmosphere of the weekend, the atmosphere of his mind. ]

[ Fortunately there are ample distractions. ]


[Audio]

So this place has taken its 'prison' aspects a step further.

...Is this a practical joke?

[ Options For Run-Ins: ]

[ Shed: Pent-up energy and a mind for solitude have him trekking through the woods. He's in no mood for the chatter and music of smoky bars. He can't muster that effort to be On tonight -- to handle human faces and prying questions. Worse, the City's full of pests and spies. He'd rather not be out in public, where he could be recognized. The outdoors are a better bet, particularly so late at night. Holed up in an unheated shed, a flask of something foul in his coat pocket, he can lull himself into imperfect numbness. ]

[ If he doesn't freeze to death, locked and stranded, first. ] 

[ Houseguest: The moon is pale in the sky. Masked and armed, Hei slinks through rooftops in the early-night darkness. Passing like a shadow past signboards and sloping tiles -- graceful, nearly weightless. He's alert, keeping track of everything. But his mind is fixed on Pai, on Amber and Yin and all the possibilities wasted. The thought-pattern is irrational. A time-waster. Dropping into an empty flat, he tries to snap out of it. It's chilly in here. He doesn't bother switching on the lights. Changing into civilian clothes in the bathroom, he splashes cold water on his face and resolves to head home. ]

[ Until he realizes he's stuck in. ]

[ What now? ] 

[OOC: open to action and network replies. I'm cool with assuming he was stuck with more than one person during this curse. On that note, those he's trapped with are welcome to threadjack any network responses! Hei's in a tetchy mood after 4th Wall, so GIVE HIM HELL<3 ]

Comments

audio;

[anatural]

[peering at the door, then sounding hopefully]

Or jerky?

audio;

[mortemscintilla]

[ Stop. STAHP. You're making him hungry. ]

Jerky. Capri sonnes. Nutbars. Wrapped sandwiches.

[ He's going to start drooling. ]

audio;

[anatural]

What's a capree sons?

audio;

[mortemscintilla]

Fruit juice. Sipped from a straw. [ A beat. ] They might even be in lychee flavors.

audio;

[anatural]

Lychee juice isn't the only thing I drink.

audio;

[mortemscintilla]

[ Too late. He already associates Korra with lychees. He unscrews the flask to take another gulp, thoughtful. ]

It's all you drank when you were a child.

[ Although, they prooooobably shouldn't bring that up. ]

[anatural]

[Korra stops, her feelings in a tumult. The day after that curse, she had been terrified. She had spent an entire day with this dangerous man, young and innocent and vulnerable. He could have hurt her so many times.

It's only now that she finds herself wondering why he didn't.

She studies him with new eyes. He's not Li, the blundering idiot she'd first met. He's not the masked man who beat her senseless time and time again. He's a combination of the two and something else entirely. She doesn't understand him at all.

But she's not afraid of him either. She no longer sees Amon when she looks at him. He's more like fire -- dangerous, amoral, but not something to be feared. You just have to handle with care.]

Why were you so nice to me?

[mortemscintilla]

[ Why...? He stares at his drink as if he expects the answer to float out like a genii. He can't tell her about Pai, whose absence resonates even in the noisiest moments of his life. Or about Mai, who was -- logically -- a permutation of his sister. Someone to protect. Someone he ultimately failed to save. It returns again -- that dark deadweight leftover from the weekend. For a few moments it had levitated quite high, letting him loosen up, smile. But now it drops in tight again.]

[ He stares past Korra, as if addressing someone only he can see. ]

You'd prefer if I'd killed you?

[ Which, of course, neatly sidesteps the question for now. Hei is built out of a textbook of defense mechanisms. It probably explains his obsession with weapons. ]

[anatural]

[Normally this would set off Korra's temper, but not tonight. She feels different tonight. It's almost like those brief times when she connected with Avatar Aang. If you look into her eyes, they might seem much, much older.]

You could have.

[It's not a question and it's not a judgement.]

[mortemscintilla]

[ They do seem older. Her whole aura, different, disparate. He's used to flare-ups and volatility from this one. A small part of him is as curious as it is bemused. ]

[ He ignores that part. ]

Don't think about it too much.

[ He's an expert in double-speak. The reply is equal parts Don't worry about it and It was a fluke. Normally he can justify anything -- the murder of innocents, anything - -for the sake of maintaining his cover. Letting her go was a drop in the bucket. One rare good-deed after a lifetime of bloodshed. ]

[ Too little too late, more than likely. ]

[anatural]

[She's tempted to press the issue, but you don't poke a fire unless you want it to grow.]

Thank you. For taking care of me that day.

[She hasn't said it before, but it's suddenly important that she says it now.]

[mortemscintilla]

[ There's a split-second reaction that skips over his face. Something opens, for a moment, and shuts itself, all at once. Thank yous and I'm sorrys are nonexistent in his profession. She shouldn't be thanking him anyway. He was, after all, taking care of her for the explicit purpose of killing her. That he didn't is besides the point. There's nothing admirable about that kind of foolishness. ]

[ He just nods instead. A simple act, bypassing the formality of an awkward you're welcome. ]

[ He almost wishes they were playing charades again. ]