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

[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.]

[mortemscintilla]

[ He doesn't want her to depend completely on him. He could never respect -- or tolerate -- someone who clings to him like a leech, dragging him down at every step. His concerns for Korra are more or less practical ones -- about independence and self-actualization and a strong sense of direction. Almost the exact concerns he had for Pai, and which Amber had for him. A strong, credible, almost familial love -- which whips all the extra details into a latte-like froth. White-noise. ]

[ He just wants to console her. No -- that's not the right word. Support her? Help her heal, or, failing that, at least absorb her unhappiness, her tears. Monomania like his has its upsides. He'd spent the last years since her poisoning communicating with Korra through physical comfort, silences, symbolic gestures. And if she had shown more convincing signs of healing, it would have been enough for him. But it's clear Korra isn't better, and that his efforts weren't enough. ]

[ He has to step up his game. Such as it is. ]

[ At her words, he feels the air thin, and something tiny in his chest wrench. But his lips twitch in an almost imperceptible smile even so. A hope that ... it will be alright. That finding Korra and being here is worth these seasick lurches of regret inside him. ]

[ Idly, he rubs his thumb across the pulsepoint of her wrist -- a gesture of old habit meeting fresh, bittersweet affection. ]

I'm glad you couldn't.

[ Because if not for that significant lull, he would've gone on focusing on the Red Lotus, secure in the false belief that Korra was where she was meant to be. ]

[anatural]

[The fact that she managed to fool him for as long as she did is honestly a little disquieting. He's always seen straight through her before; the fact that he missed this for so long means he really wasn't paying attention.]

What about the Red Lotus? [It makes her nauseous just thinking about them...she can feel the agony of Zaheer sucking the air out of her lungs... but she has to ask. He was obsessed with destroying them; she doesn't know if his being here means he's finished, has let go of that obsession, or if he'll go right back to it once she's put back in her place.]

[mortemscintilla]

[ The reply 95% flushed out with only a 5% margin of error is on the tip of his tongue. But this isn't a status report. She isn't one of the members of his network; there's no need to employ businesslike technicalities to create a needful dichotomy between the gory progression of wetwork and the cut-and-dried results it has yielded. But Hei won't deny his obsessive pursuit of the Red Lotus has been without victories. Patience is the mother of success, they say -- and he'd once patiently fashioned a successful career upon the principle that there is nothing alive that cannot be deprived of life. ]

[ It's proven true here, as well. The Red Lotus, like all organizations, have life cycles, the same as the humans who comprise them. And while there are ways to extend those lives -- the equivalent of exercise and eating well, or, to analogize to what Zaheer had done, the equivalent of radical surgery -- those things will, in the end, matter merely at the margins. Often the flaws hidden and inherent in an organization's own DNA will dictate a length of years, and make inevitable the onset of dissolution, and senility, and death. Or, if they are unluckier, the violent onslaught of a disaster -- famine, plague, war -- will quicken their extinction along. ]

[ Hei has done his part in embodying that disaster. There is still a small percentage of Red Lotus stragglers -- but it's a rapidly declining one. As a threat they're all but obsolete. But he's seen enough to know that one battle is never the last. Every scene of brutality carries within it the seeds of the next, and he plans to be good and ready for the next red harvest. ]

[ Which, in this case, isn't the Red Lotus. It's Kuvira's army, which is spreading with dizzying speed like an iron fist across the Earth Kingdom. ]

[ Gently, he squeezes Korra's fingers in his. They feel chafed, brittle, but the heat of her skin, its dynamic thrum, is unchanged. ]

They're not a threat to you or your family anymore.

[anatural]

Oh. [His words should be reassuring — except that's not why she asked, and his answer indicates he doesn't understand that. And it's hard to believe those words, that it can be that simple. The Red Lotus came out of nowhere, set the entire Earth Kingdom to shambles. Her own uncle had been a part of it. They attacked her father even after she defeated their leaders. And she's supposed to believe they're no longer a threat just because Hei says so?

She doesn't believe it. She wants to, but she can't, and even just thinking about it makes her jittery. She wants to either fight or run, though neither are an appropriate option. She stands abruptly.]

I should probably heal up. I'll be right back.

[mortemscintilla]

[ Nothing is simple. He knows that. But he's spent the past few months scattering carnage across the countryside with a few choice words and gestures. Has devoted hours of sleepless toil and cold scheming to bring about the fall of the Red Lotus -- or the massacre of countless misguided people, depending on who you ask. Because that's how he handles potential risks. Cut off the root of the disease, watch the outflung tendrils wither, then move on to whoever's next. ]

[ It should satisfy him. He may be no good at being a decent human being, but he's always had a talent for erasing threats. Except, watching Korra's face with the precision of a jeweler seeking flaws, he gets the sense that he's misstepped. He feels helpless, like an asshole, pressured by the certainty that no matter how he deals with Korra he's dealing it out all wrong. He wishes he could tell her she's safe, that her trauma is over -- except you can't do that. That's for her to decide. And he's never lived with the victims whose lives he'd destroyed -- figuratively, literally. They were human currency for him, assets or liabilities; he didn't see them as people. ]

[ His hand drops from hers as she bolts upright. Straightening, he keeps his body-language neutral. There's a shiver of wariness that she might try to slip away. He conceals it under a veneer of calm solicitude, offering, ]

Let me help you.

[anatural]

[No, she doesn't plan on slipping away. She runs away from things sometimes but it's not her default. She just needs some space to calm herself, get everything under control...and to heal up some of these bruises, because they're going to look really ugly tomorrow otherwise. She throws him a weak smile as she heads for the bathroom.]

Did you become a waterbender while you were gone?

[She draws water out of the tap and starts applying it to her bumps and bruises. Healing hurts - but it's nothing she hasn't gotten used to.]

[mortemscintilla]

[ You're the one who was gone. He wants to say that, except it's not fair. He still blames himself for getting so tangled up in eliminating the Red Lotus that he hadn't noticed how unhappy and out-of-place Korra was. He'd wrenched himself on the straight and narrow, yes, because he was in the grip of those single-minded explosions of mania that hit him during danger, edging him past all mercy, all caution, making of him into a creature of pure intention so ruthlessly collected and focused it could melt tungsten. ]

[ But that was all for her. Because he wanted to keep her safe. ]

[ It makes him feel like a twat now -- burning the village to save it. But he can also understand, dimly, why Korra would've wanted to get away. Because she wouldn't have been able to find her way while she was with him and the others, chivvying her up and trying to love her and expecting her to be this or that. Sure, none of her family and friends can help it, because it's only human. But knowing they all loved her wasn't going to help her recover her sense of purpose. Her ordeal with the Red Lotus was over, but not. Healing took time. ]

[ Takes time, he amends. Because it's evident she's still trying to piece herself together. To reemerge whole from the trauma, marked and changed but stronger. ]

[ She'll get there. He's confident of that much. Whether it takes six months or six years... that remains to be seen. ]

[ He offers her a wan smile of his own. But he doesn't answer, or follow her into the bathroom. Instead, settling at the foot of the bed, he listens to the susurration of running water behind the door. She's offered no hint that she's ready to return with him. Alone, he wonders how best he can convince her. ]

[ Because after all this trouble, he refuses to be parted from her again. ]