Count the bodies like sheep

[mortemscintilla]

WHO: Korra & Hei
WHAT: Months after Korra disappears, Hei receives news on her whereabouts.

[ When the word first reaches him that Korra -- missing for months -- has been spotted near the dingy steel-factories in the Earth Kingdom, Hei doesn't credit it. He's hauled in a fishing trawl's worth of Red Lotus members who've supplied him with similar non-leads. It's always a toss-up about what they know; give the order to hook up the alligator clips and crank the generator and they spew so much bullshit that even if there's real intel mixed in with it, you can never be sure, much less make use of it. ]

[ When further word comes confirming the first word -- he's sent tails on the scene -- a heat-flicker he'd like to call joy but that is really shock courses through him, from his toes in the steel-enforced boots to the very ends of his long hair. ]

[ Korra hasn't been abducted. Korra is still alive. ]

[ After the debacle at the South Pole, where the Red Lotus had attacked Tonraq, and where his daughter wasn't even considered an eligible candidate for leading the tribe, Hei had let her return to Republic City -- ostensibly to focus on her Avatar duties. In truth, he'd thought she'd prefer space to lick her wounds, while he hung back to focus the entirety of his energies on weeding out and eliminating the Red Lotus. They'd exchanged letters, terse and to-the-point -- he out of natural reticence and security reasons, she due to time-constraints and a lack of anything new to report. But halfway through, the correspondence ceased. In the dizzying vacuum of silence that followed, Hei learnt, from Tenzin, that Korra wasn't in Republic City. Had, in fact, never arrived there at all. ]

[ Looking back on it, Hei wonders: why hadn't he guessed it sooner? Would a smarter man have come to his senses faster? He'd been so caught up in eradicating the Red Lotus. In safeguarding Korra. But, as usual, he'd lost the forest for the fucking trees. It's so obvious now, so terrifyingly self-evident, that Korra was drifting away from everyone -- her family, her friends. He'd known she had, in clinical terms, posttraumatic stress disorder. He recognized enough of the signs. With it came that morose detachment in her that none of his efforts could regulate. She'd just floated further and further off. Small as star-dust and infinitely heavier.]

[ Maybe it is me, Hei thinks bitterly. Maybe I drive them off. ]

[ But that's useless self-indulgence, and fails to solve the problem at hand. Which consists of the latest bulletin. The Avatar is fighting in illegal underground brawls. ]

[ Collecting his essential gear, Hei abandons the South Pole -- recently his base of operations -- and heads to the Earth Kingdom. He hasn't informed anyone in his network where he's going, beyond a few key players. He doesn't need to. Over the past few months, he's amassed assets who hail from either careers in need-to-know environments, or those who've spent their lives in the dust, right at the fringes of society. They've joined him for profit and plunder and he gives them plenty -- a kind of privatized intelligence operation, more shadowy, better connected, and substantially less accountable than official security firms in Korra's world. ]

[ A miniature Syndicate, Mao calls it snidely -- though Hei prefers not to think of it in those terms. ]

[ He needs to scour through deep waters for the control and intel necessary to stay afloat. The organization doesn't represent a life-vest, but a safety net. An expansive tool to cover greater ground, and secure a heftier bulk of weaponry, manpower and resource. Because no-one fights harder or moves faster than mercenaries when they smell a pay-off. ]

[ At the specified location, not far from the waterfront, Hei drifts in -- a hooded sweatshirt, heavy workboots, clean-shaven but with his hair in the haphazard tie he's taken to favoring after he'd stopped cutting it. The air is bilgy with damp; the pitted streets are pretty much deserted. The few guys he passes aren't dangerous so much as desperate, broken by pills or inhalants or strong drink or the unstoppable craving for all those things. Some pale faces jump out of dark alleys asking him for something, or offering it, but most give him wide berth. A cold glint in Hei's gaze, lurking past the mildness, discourages confrontation. ]

[ Korra. Are you really out here? ] 

Comments

[anatural]

[The building is crowded, sweaty, and loud. There's no tiered seating worth speaking of — you can't see anything from the back unless you're tall, or one of the fighters goes sailing through the air, as Korra does after her opponent slams her with a column of earth. She reins in the impulse to respond with firebending (certainly not as hard as resisting the Avatar state while dying). Nobody here can know that she's the Avatar. And, more importantly, she's been paid to lose. Dinner and a place to sleep tonight depends entirely on her making it look good.

She hurls boulders at the little Princess — a young, slight earthbender who looks like she'd break in half if someone like Korra breathed on her — and wonders if the girl knows that this isn't a real fight. They're both just tools to fleece a crowd of idiots. A few years ago, the scam would have infuriated her. Sleazy assholes taking advantage of people who are already poor. But she doesn't have the compassion to spare anymore. Let the Air Nomads deal with the shitty people of the world.

The girl turns the rocks back on Korra and she lets them hit. Falls to the ground and is down for the count. Out of the corner of her eye, she can see the manager smile approvingly. Great. Maybe she can eat meat tonight. She pushes herself to her feet and stumbles over to the bench to wipe off the blood & dirt and catch her breath while the crowd left the building.]

[mortemscintilla]

[ The place reminds Hei of an animal cage. The stench of blood, sawdust, incense and sweat hangs in the air. A chicken-wire barrier allows bettors to size up the fighters as they place wagers. Sickles of rust-colored light pour through the cracked casement windows, picking up a patina of dust motes suspended in the ring. This is a rough place to fight, but not the roughest. The spectators have an air of roaches feasting on mildew; they're here for a satisfyingly violent night of bruises, tits, disfigurement and tears. But not blood-sport. They haven't descended that far into sanguinary vice -- yet. ]

[ Eyes narrowed, Hei elbows his way through the crowd. Then he sees her.]

[ Watching her fly through the air, battered and bruise-mottled, the first emotion that surges through him isn't shock. It's anger. Like seeing a painting one has always admired willfully defaced. A painting one had owned -- at least once upon a time. His face tightens with suppressed distaste, but he stays where he is. Watches the fight play out -- so blatantly, lopsidedly staged to his critical eye. ]

[ Why the hell is she here? This is beneath her -- in every sense. Could she be that far-gone? That craving punishment and debasement, flirting with a quiet deathwish? ]

[ He doesn't know. All he feels is a cold rage escalating within. When the fight ends, he doesn't show himself. Hangs back in the fringes, a blur of shadow, to observe Korra and the slimy prick he's identified as the manager. There's still an instinctive need to gather information, even as everything in him itches to grab her and swing her over the knee, to belt her until she screams her lungs out and explains why she's out here. ]

[anatural]

[If she were to look back on it, Korra wouldn't really be sure how she got started down the road of illegal underground fights. It just happened, like it was inevitable. Jobs like this are convenient, well-within her skillset, and easy to leave behind. Nobody has to know who you are. Nobody cares.

Like this guy. He natters as he tosses her money, about how she looks familiar, oh, hey, you look like the Avatar! Whatever happened to that girl? Korra can't get away fast enough.

Whatever happened to that girl? The same way one might ask Where did I put that wrench? Oh never mind. Like a tool that's been misplaced because you don't need it anymore.

She notices Hei without recognizing him. Walks to the front door, seemingly oblivious but ready to fight if she has to. People have tried to mug her before; they've learned to regret it.]

[mortemscintilla]

[ She brushes past him, no recognition in her eyes. That isn't surprising. Even without the cowled shirt bisecting half his face in shadow, the long hair adds ten years to his face, which bears all the traces of a reprise to a hardened lifestyle: blank hooded eyes and hard-edged features, a certain tautness around the mouth indicative of cruelty and late nights. It is a different sort of menacing now, though. An unobtrusive, almost businesslike, I-will-kill-you-with-my-boot-heel menacing. ]

[ None of that is remarkable, in and of itself. What's more stunning -- or should he say similar -- is the absence of spark in Korra's gaze. In other circumstances, he'd acknowledge the irony. She looks like him at twenty, crumpled up and then smoothed out again, faint creases of surface turmoil and deeper fissures of mental scars showing inside-and-out. Whereas he's learnt to retract that vibe, to let it rip only in choice circumstances, like the cold glint of a switchblade. ]

[ Like right now. ]

[ Unobtrusively, he follows her out. The block is deserted, the windows dark on the buildings that stand like rotted stumps of fingers between empty lots overrun with weeds and refuse. He keeps at a distance, flowing steadily with the shadows of their surroundings, until she's at the mouth of an alleyway. ]

[ There, he steps into the open: ]

Korra.

[anatural]

[He speaks before she has the chance to tell him "Fuck off and grab someone else's purse." He speaks, and she freezes. He found her.

She shifts slightly, keeping her feet firmly planted on the ground as a tidal wave of emotion tries to knock her over. Anger at him judging her, masking fear and guilt. Happiness at seeing him again. Resentment that it took him this long. Humiliation, a fresh surge of agony at the reminder that she's not the person she used to be. Dread, because there's no way he's going to love the person she's become.

She certainly doesn't.]

How'd you find me?

[mortemscintilla]

It doesn't matter.

[ He was expecting her to bolt like a frightened alley-cat. When she doesn't, he sidles closer, giving her a measuring look that is not cold, is not emotional enough to be cold. Nothing is frozen in his gaze that can be thawed. His eyes have the dull blue color of permafrost and most observers get the immediate sense that this is the shelf on which his personality rests. ]

[ It's a lie. But he isn't ready to go through the motions of joy and relief. Not yet. It's too enormous, this tragedy, Korra's inexplicable change, the staggering discovery. He has to keep it under lock and key. To work up to it, one iota at a time. Otherwise the intensity of it might swamp him completely. ]

[ (He wonders if she'll tell him, why she ran away. Wonders if she'll believe him, if he says I was caught up in destroying the Red Lotus, but it was to keep you safe. Not push you away.) ]

[ A beat, then: ]

...Why?

[ He doesn't whisper it. Doesn't say it in a voice cracked with emotion. He asks evenly, flatly. Like someone doing business. ]

[anatural]

[Why. The simplest possible question, and yet the answer is so complicated she doesn't even know where to begin. If he'd show some emotion, it'd at least give her some kind of starting point, but his manner seems to demand a rational, objective answer and she doesn't have one.]

I can't do this here. [She's not sure she can do it anywhere, explain everything in a way that will make sense to him, that he'll accept, but she certainly can't do it in the middle of an alley while her body aches and her stomach complains that she hasn't fed it since early this morning. So she starts walking away. He can always follow. And there's always the chance that he's no more real than those visions of herself in the Avatar state. Reality and hallucination are getting harder to tell apart; the thought should scare her more than it does.]

[mortemscintilla]

[ Hei's gaze, the frigid aura, the solid stance, doesn't falter. But inside he can feel something shiver in his chest. He's not sure if it's real emotion or a facsimile, so he elbows it into that untrammeled box with the rest of his undigested ideas and sentiments. It's what he's been doing since he'd learnt Korra had vanished. He'd focused on the practicalities and logistics of locating her. But he didn't think about Korra at all. His mind just closed up shop on the whole horrifying news. It was as removed from his immediate concerns as poetry or music. Once in a while she'd turn up in a dream, but the details dissolved as soon as he awoke. ]

[ It was simpler that way. Better than digging out the deluge of grief and anxiety and loss that was buried under all his cold layers of precision and control -- a hot wellspring that seemed bottomless. Because to face it would be to understand, in a deep physical way that made it hard to draw breath, that Korra might be lost forever. Might be dead. Worse, that she might've died misunderstanding him, and there would never be a chance to put that right. ]

[ Except Korra isn't dead. She's right here, her voice, her manner, everything a distant thrum of memory. A carbon copy of the real Korra. A pale imitation of the real thing. ]

[ He watches her turn on her heel and exit the alley. Hesitates a beat, then feels it. There. That invisible hook snagging into his ribcage. Tugging him along. Time and separation may screw up lots of things. But not this. ]

[ It's a quiet consolation, that at least some things never change. ]

[anatural]

[It's a neat trick, shutting feelings out like that. It's one she's gotten pretty handy with too in the three years since she fought Zaheer. It's what allows her to walk to the nearest food stand without panicking about the upcoming conversation; order fried noodles with extra meat and not let fear ruin her appetite; and head to the motel room she's been renting by the night with neither dread nor hope. She ignores the proprietor's lecherous grin as the older woman notices Hei and no doubt assumes Korra's turned to prostitution.

She opens the door to a tiny, dingy room — little more than a bed and a bathroom. A wooden crate from a local grocery store serves as her dining room table. She plunks the food down on the crate.]

Are you hungry?

[She didn't get enough food for his prodigious appetite, but it's easier to ask that question than to get to why he's here.]

[mortemscintilla]

[ The room is shoddy, dank and smells funny. Hei remembers they'd fucked in a lot of cruddy holes like this over the years, as if theirs was an illicit affair to be hidden from decent eyes. It all pinwheels through his mind; the rooms like an endless procession of boxcars, with their worn and faded floral wallpaper, the sagging beds with their stiff cotton sheets and uncomfortable tick-ridden pillows; often there would be a sink in the room and inevitably he'd pee in it; the toilet and tub would be down the hall or down another flight of stairs. Invariably, too, the rooms would be on the top floor, under the eaves, and if he stood up too quickly and forgot, he'd hit his head. Like all those rooms, this one too reeks of rotten cauliflower -- ye choi fa. ]

[ Korra had taught him the right word for that, he remembers. Ye choi fa. Not cai hua. He'd liked the sound of it. ]

[ Always, in those memories, he and Korra are warmly-entwined in bed. ]

[ That's not the case here. He stays at a distance. Arms folded across his chest, leaning at the wall between the door and the window, as if to circumvent an escape attempt. The grubby bed is between them. It is almost eerily symbolic. ]

[ To her question, he offers a terse shake of the head. ]

I ate before I came here.

[ Perfectly polite, as if they're two strangers. (They're not. But it's better than being reminded of a different, sordid familiarity about the room. San Pedro Sula, after Heaven's Gate vanished. The crummy hole that'd smelled of mold and piss and socks. No windows, no tables or chairs, just a bed that didn't bear looking at. He'd spent months there, saturating himself with filth and whiskey, like a rabid animal responsible for its own confinement.) ]

[anatural]

[She shrugs.] Suit yourself. [She opens up the box and starts digging in, looking for all the world like she's forgotten the word hanging between them: Why. She hasn't, of course — it hangs like a noose around her neck, making it uncomfortable to swallow — but she doesn't let it show.

If he wants her to talk, he's going to have to start the conversation himself. She's hoping to put it off as long as she can.]

[mortemscintilla]

[ The greasy aroma of noodles should stir his appetite. It doesn't. Instead, while Korra digs into her meal, he watches her, gaze flicking with measured precision across her face. Now that he can observe her at leisure, he finds himself picking out all the subtle details that signify the enormous inner-upheaval she's experienced. Unable to reconcile the sight of that hair -- choppy, boyish -- with his mental image of Korra's bouncy wolf-tails. Or the fact that her face, once sweetly padded with childhood softness, looks so hard and emaciated now. Even the body, sturdy yet somehow wasted, won't sync up with what he expects to see. ]

[ Even the bright intensity of the eyes is gone. ]

[ What happened to you? He wants to ask. But the question is buried under rocky sediments of bitterness and self-recrimination. How hadn't he seen this coming? He knew she was unhappy. Knows too, that depression doesn't divebomb. It creeps like an infection. He could've done something to prevent this. How could he have gotten so wrapped up in defeating the threat of the Red Lotus, that he was blinded by the essentiality of Korra? ]

[ There seems no acceptable excuse. Inside a burning curl of guilt takes root. Outside his face expresses only bleak alertness. ]

[ The silence stretches out, during which he lets her finish her meal. His scrutiny doesn't let up. They've both been forced to develop patience, in different ways. This feels like one more test of endurance. ]

[ Only after she's finished her meal, does he state: ]

You didn't answer my question.

[ An order, not a reminder. In her absence, that peremptory streak in his nature has widened by several hundred miles. ]

[anatural]

[The peremptory tone is both aggravating and a relief. Annoyance might not be the best place to begin, but at least it gives her somewhere to start.]

It wasn't a question so much as a word. You might try asking an actual question.

[mortemscintilla]

[ He's in no mood to play the game of semantics. Already, he can feel the old habit rising to flesh, to reach out and grab her by the hair, drag her close and shake her until the answers come tumbling out of her mouth. But it takes only a blink to wipe his mind clear of its tinge to violence. Instead, he touches the bridge of his nose as if to massage it, then instead lets his fingernail drag idly across the rough-smooth surface of his cheek like a match to tinder, a more measured display of impatience. ]

[ Finally, flatly, ]

Let's start with why you're out here.

[ How could she run away from her life? From herself. Her name and calling. ]

[anatural]

[Korra kicks off her shoes and turns around to face him before crossing her legs.]

I needed a change of scene.

[She remembers the exact moment she decided to leave. There was a terrible storm going on outside... she had looked out her window and thought Nobody would notice if I just disappeared. She knew it was irrational, that her parents would miss her eventually, that at some point Hei would come back and wonder why his bed was empty, but the urge to walk out into the storm was hard to resist. How long would it take for her parents to notice she wasn't at the dinner table? A few days? A week? Would Hei bother looking for her, or would he just go kill more of the Red Lotus?

Going back to the South Pole had been a mistake. The tribal council had been shocked that she thought they'd even consider her as Tonraq's successor. She was the Avatar; she had the whole world to take care of. Oh, the Air Nomads were doing that? Well still... Korra got the distinct impression that some people distrusted her because of what happened during the civil war. The South Pole was just another place that didn't want her or need her. But she couldn't just leave, not while her father was recuperating. It's not like anybody needed her in Republic City either. She felt trapped in the compound of her childhood and tortured by reminders of all her childhood dreams & ambitions. And she barely saw Hei — he was obsessed with eliminating the Red Lotus. He wasn't around to offer her comfort, a reality check, or even just the distraction of mind-blowing sex.

She managed to not walk out into the storm that night, but that was when she knew that she had to leave. She needed new surroundings and a chance to be alone. So she told her parents that she was needed back in Republic City and sent the same message to Hei, wherever he was, and booked passage on the first boat there. Once she landed, she immediately got on another boat, setting off for some distant corner of the earth kingdom. And then she just walked.]

[mortemscintilla]

[ If Hei were stupider, he'd agree. Going back to the South Pole was a mistake. But it's not that simple. He can't say exactly how long Korra's been unhappy. But it was gradual. The dark weight of despondency had seeped under her skin long before Zaheer poisoned her. Long before Hei had
ever met her. Intellectually, he knows all Korra's fears. Knows her insecurities and shortcomings, though they are nothing compared to his, which are enough to fill a room. But the hurt at her disappearance was raw and real, no matter what good reasons she'd had -- or thought she'd had -- for dropping out and eschewing all contact. ]

[ Again, he wishes he could've helped her. The regret is intense, and deep. At the waste of time, of her. All the missed signals and resultant unhappiness. Back in the City, when he'd coasted along that chilly edge of ennui, she'd listened and seen and accepted him, hadn't she? Or tried to, without judgement or condition. Accepted his paranoia, his craziness. Took his abuse, tried to diffuse it, and been slow -- so slow -- to retaliate. None of her snark or blows came unprovoked. She'd started out with him as sweetly serene as an angel. Looked at him with such soft curiosity in those big innocent eyes. Given him pleasure -- which he'd taken selfishly -- and solace, which he'd mocked. No, not mocked. Rejected with a cruelty meant to humiliate, because the very idea that someone should feel affection for a monster like him ... It was obscene. Idiotic. The idea that her sincerity could be real. That a girl so bright and shining should be drawn to such a hollowed-out, bloodstained mess of a human being. ]

[ God. How wrong I was to her. And he couldn't even return the favor, repay the kindness, when it counted. ]

[ He doesn't know how to say that to Korra. All the emotion inside him has congealed, frozen up. Stoppering him. ]

[ Instead, Contractor-cool, he prompts, ]

So you're what, now? On hiatus? Retired?

[anatural]

[As flat as his voice is, Korra can still hear (or thinks she hears) a trace of snide derision. He's always been good at cutting things, whether it be with knives or words. She bristles with resentment.]

So? The Air Nomads are doing just fine. They don't need me. I can do whatever I want.

[mortemscintilla]

[ He's not trying to be snide. But he doesn't understand how she can abandon her duty. It is mindboggling, to look at her and not feel the brilliant impress of that Avatarness -- that gloriole of shimmery energy around her, that glow of self-purpose and pride. He's learned, first in sckepticism and then in some emotion too complex for him to parse, to rely on it as a constant. Part of who Korra is, as twined to her as skin or blood or air, as unflagging as earth or sea or sky. ]

[ And now it is, without preamble, just absent. Leaving him disoriented, wary, unsure of how to behave around this altered Korra. ]

[ In a cold tone dropping somewhere between disbelief and disgust, he asks, ]

So what exactly are you doing? Besides entertaining low-lives as a walking punching bag?

Let's see how well phone tagging works

[anatural]

[She glowers, her fists clenching her pants in an effort not to lash out.]

If you just came here to be judgmental dick, you can walk out that door right now.

[She doesn't want to hear his disgust or feel his disappointment. It's hard enough living with her own. But what's she supposed to do about it? The world has told her over and over and over again that it doesn't need her anymore. Thanks for your service, now go away. The only thing she's been trained for, the only thing she's ever wanted to do, and they don't want her. There's no retirement program for Avatars, no counseling for spiritual leaders who need a new career path. She is on her own.]

<3

[mortemscintilla]

[ Walk out the door? If only it were that easy. Part of him yearns to. The freedom to slip out, away from this... not-Korra. This disquieting abraded husk. To put distance between them and get a fresh perspective. He can picture this dingy sunken town blurring around him, see himself walking right out of it. Getting some wheels, driving highway to highway, road to road, away from this embodied human disaster. His fantasy has an empty vista, but it leaves him restless and disinclined. Because he can't leave without Korra. As long as they are both alive, a part of him will always want her. Will miss her with a tingling tactile greed, because a fragment of her fierce little spirit is always dancing inside him. ]

[ He is no longer under any illusion that she's not the brand of lover he needs. Not perfect by a long shot -- but perfectly suited to what he is. ]

[ She's made him that way. A skyhook in his ribcage. ]

[ Everything in him is churning -- frustration, need, remorse, grief -- yet when he parts his lips, his voice remains at its usual ice-tipped edge. ]

Same way you've walked away from your real life? [ He shakes his head, a short disdainful jerk. ] One of us has to stick at something.

[ He just never imagined it would be him. Between them, for all her nervy vervy brashness, Korra was always the steady one. The one with a purpose. ]

[anatural]

Why should I stick somewhere I'm not wanted? ["Needed" would probably be the more accurate word to use, but in this case, for Korra, the two words are interchangeable. If you just want her around as set dressing, if you just want her to stay in the background and "recover" even after she's able to walk and bend again, then you don't really want her.]

[mortemscintilla]

Korra...

[ That burst of vitriol -- raw and terrible as it is -- is almost like a flicker of light from a half-shuttered window. Suddenly he can see her. Recognize the Korra he'd fallen in love with, the fury shining off her. All that strength and fragility and burning wildness he remembers. Her eyes, even blazing out of bruises as they are, contain everything, dark and light, that first piqued, then utterly fascinated him. ]

[ She is still there. But it makes him sorry, to find her again, smeared and deformed, beset by so much misery that it's enfolded her like a carapace, ]

[ He closes his eyes briefly. Exhales, and when he looks at her again, he hasn't softened. But there is something else in his gaze. Almost an understanding. He's been where she is a hundred times, levelled with bitter aimlessness and pain: the sharp variety from the broken things inside his chest, the throbbing variety sunk deep into his brain and the bone-deep kind every other place. ]

[ But each time, he'd picked himself up. Ignored the urge to collapse and kept moving. Because he isn't the collapsing type. He's always been built to do what should be done, no matter how bruised he is inside. ]

[ Quieter, ]

You think that. But it's not so. You're unhappy. You've been through terrible things. But you'll round the bend soon. You've still got your whole life waiting for you.

[ Not because she's the Avatar. That is an enormous part of it. But also because she's Korra. She's meant to burn in blinding bliss, not starve that glow out of herself until she fizzles miserably out inside. ]

[anatural]

[Her whole life... to do what? Her tribe doesn't need her. Republic City doesn't need her. Kuvira is taking care of the Earth Kingdom. So what's she supposed to do? Go serve Kuvira's forces? Become a cop like Mako? If Korra really believed that there was no longer a place for the Avatar in the world anymore, she probably would. It's not like she thinks herself too good for scut work. In the City — yet another place that didn't need an Avatar — she'd been perfectly happy living what passed for a normal life.

But deep down, she feels like there is still a place for the Avatar, somewhere that she's needed, something only she can do. That's why she left for the Earth Kingdom in the first place. Jinora had told her once that Aang had shared this piece of wisdom with her other self — When you hit your lowest point, you are open to the greatest change. So she tried to shed her skin, hoping that she let go of enough, she'd find her purpose. All she's found so far is more muck.]

So what do you want me to do? Go back to the South Pole and wait for you to finish destroying the Red Lotus? [Her mind shies away from the obvious suggestion of joining him in that hunt. She doesn't have the stomach for his kind of torture, and the idea of facing again the people who almost destroyed her is too terrifying to contemplate.] You say my whole life is waiting for me, but for the past three years, I've been waiting for my life. I'm done. No more.

[mortemscintilla]

[ He hates that Korra can be like this. Hates the proof that her insecurity has crept into places so secret and so pervasive that he -- or anyone else -- can never reach or mend them. Korra's spirit should be composed of brimstone and bedrock; not a storm-tossed wreckage at the mercy of the elements. ]

[ He wishes he could say something to reassure her. But she isn't just some aimless slacker, a twenty-something with a future ahead of her who needs to buckle down. She doesn't just need to be in the thick of her life, tangled there with no purpose. She defines Purpose. Or used to. How horrible it must feel to her, to imagine the thousands and thousands of years of Avatar legacy ending with her -- a paltry footnote instead of an illustrious volume, overlooked and redundant in a world with no use for her. The idea that life is marching on relentlessly, while the tide of time erases her -- so that to her family and friends, she is essentially a loose end, an obligation they have to fulfill. It is awful and unthinkable, yet it seems to be what she feels is happening. ]

[ He hesitates, the muscles in his throat tightening like a knot around his voicebox. He hadn't allowed himself to worry or grieve for her, when she was missing. But that was out of nothing but default repression and the refusal to feel things he couldn't afford to feel. The same instinctual backlash from anything that might prod a seeping wound. ]

[ Except now he can feel it resurfacing -- a bolus of misery he is not at all prepared for. Keeping it controlled, he drifts closer. Then he is at her side, kneeling to look at her straight on. ]

[ In a different voice, not soft but quietly rasping, he says, ]

I know you're tired. You want everything to just ... stop. But it doesn't work that way.

[ His hand shifts to curl around hers, the gesture almost unsure. A test. It's not an act, for what it's worth: he's forgotten how to be duplicitous, in that gut-deep way, when he's around Korra. But the element of calculation in his nature is never far. ]

You know ... even when you think you're none of the things you were when you first became the Avatar ... Even when you can't see a place for yourself anymore... I still -- I can't imagine being here if not for you. You kept me from losing my mind -- at least in a way that counts. Let me do the same for you. I know you're lost. Not asking you to just snap out of it. But why can't you be lost with me?

[ It's stated dryly, but the message is implicit. If you leave me, can I come too? Because I don't know how to be a person whose mind isn't aimless and in constant anguish. I should get to share this fucking burden. ]

[anatural]

[Because I’m afraid of depending on you too much. I’m afraid that I’ll never be able to stand alone if I do. Even so, his words tug at her, making it impossible to pull away. It's not the kind of need that she needs... it's not the kind of thing you base your life on, but it still soothes that bone-deep ache inside her. (And he smells so good. She'd forgotten how good it feels just having him nearby.)]

I was going to write again. I couldn't afford paper and ink for a few weeks. [It's not a rejection, not an explanation, yet not an agreement. Just...an opening.]