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

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. ]

[anatural]

[Korra's given no hint because she doesn't know. She hasn't given any thought to anything beyond getting through the present moment. One foot in front of the other.

She takes her time, working her way slowly from her arms to her face. Her ribs twinge — she really hopes that's just a bruise and not a fracture. Taking a deep breath and wincing a little at the pain, she pulls off her shirt.

When she looks into the mirror again, she sees her Avatar self standing behind her. She screams and stumbles to the side, landing hard on the toilet seat She readies the water to defend herself — but nothing's there. Of course nothing’s there, idiot. It’s not real.]

[mortemscintilla]

[ Hei has been trained to recognize undercurrents of tension in the air. It's not a supernatural ability: it's the result of honing all five senses to a dagger-sharp point, because in the end, they're the most useful tools you can count on. Five assets that have never failed him. He's halfway through polishing one of his blades with a whetstone (defaulting back to the patterns in Heaven's War -- keeping your blade handy in unfamiliar territory). ]

[ That's when he feels it. A spiky wave in the atmosphere. It hits against his skin, an icy electric current. Ordinarily it'd trigger his internal alarms as a gut-feeling. Someone walking over my grave, as the phrase goes. Now though, he knows it's haragei -- an acute sense of comprehending danger. Not just a case of reading non-verbal clues in an opponent -- posture, breathing, dilation of pupils. It comes from a deeper source. It is the ability to gauge qi. One of the many qualities he's been focusing on developing since he's established his base of operations in the South Pole, with spirits and aural fluctuations rampant at every corner. ]

[ Then he hears Korra's scream. ]

Hey.

[ It takes a heartbeat to force the cardboard-thin door open. He doesn't try to touch her. Stays at the fringes of her peripheral vision, senses on red alert for threats. Nothing's there. But the energy of the room is erratic, disturbed. He's unsure, for a moment, if he's imagining things -- or if the vibes are bleeding off Korra herself, a kind of spiritual malaise. ]

[ He doesn't know. The supernatural isn't his forte. But PTSD, panic attacks, meltdowns. He's familiar with those. More than. ]

Korra. [ Quiet but steady. ] Breathe. It's just me.

[anatural]

[The room is too small. Korra can feel the walls pressing in on her. If it came to a fight, she wouldn't have any room to move. She's trapped in here.]

I can't — [She pushes herself up and heads for the door, not caring that he's standing in the way. He'll get out of her way or she'll push him away.]

[mortemscintilla]

[ Why would he impede her path, when it's clear she's practically suffocating, as if smothered inside-out by the weight of some private hell? Her stare, blank and wild and glassy as an animal caught in a cage, reminds him of that evening he'd broken the wardrobe after they'd made love, its echo booming through the room and cutting through the high-pitched buzz in his skull. He remembers it so well. Trying to catch his breath except his lungs weren't working, though he could feel them stretching and expanding (too much, everything too much, salt and pulse and skin and red, red, red everywhere he looked -- ). ]

[ Lost in a blurred miasma of trauma, beyond the reach of soothing words, tipping inexorably towards violence. ]

[ When he moves, it's careful -- a measured shift of weight. Stepping clear to let her pass. He drifts after her, at an arm's length. Determined not to crowd her, in case she lashes out. ]

You want to go out for some air?

[ Impersonal, but with a dark concern at the edges. Being outdoors -- starry sky, empty vista -- usually clears his head. But who knows if that's what Korra needs. ]

[anatural]

I'm fine. [She has to be fine. She refuses to be anything other than fine. She's not going to be bowled over by a figment of her imagination. She's not that pathetic.

Korra turns to look at him and repeat the message, only to find the Avatar spirit standing behind him. Its raises a chained hand — to attack her? To attack him? She doesn't plan on waiting to find out.] Enough! [She swings her fist at the figment, forgetting that Hei stands in its trajectory.]

[mortemscintilla]

[ It's there again. That energy that seeps through the air in a sparking chill. Hei's eyes narrow, lips parting to speak. But then Korra swings around. The expression on her face melts from tense-browed sanity to something crumpled, dazed, foggy -- right before a shadow passes across it, leaving it at once shuttered and terrifyingly naked. Then Korra rolls back in, a Fury sweeping across the face of the heavens. The jittery shock coalesces into red-hot rage. ]

Hey.

[ She swings at him. He ducks and feints, then comes around to grab her. He isn't sure what's wrong with her, but the air around her is like being caught in spiraling coils of a hydroelectric plant -- volt after volt of brilliant ferocity. If he can just get her to stop, to calm down -- ]

[anatural]

[He manages to pin her arms, but Korra's feet are still free. She kicks them up in the air, the flames dancing perilously close to the bedsheets.]

She won't leave me alone!

[She struggles to break free of his hold.]

[mortemscintilla]

'She'?

[ None of her words are making any sense. Part of him fears she's gone crazy, is having a psychotic break as her mind collapses under the weight of all that crippling trauma. That's how everyone close to him ends up -- scarred or disfigured or broken in some way. Her eyes -- they remind him of all the soldiers he's fought with. The newer ones who had this look of sheer psychic wildness. The older and more mutilated showed no emotion at all: faces a fretwork of scars, eyes blank as a wall. Then there were those hovering in the middle ground, neither new nor old: they had the look of men who'd realized their lives were irretrievably lost and they could only await the inevitable passage into the final stage. ]

[ All those faces seem to dance behind his eyes, superimposed over Korra's feral expression. Hei shakes it off. She struggles wildly in his hold, arcs of fire jetting from her flailing legs. He feels their singeing heat. Except she's not at the peak of coordination. Not her usual one-hundred percent. Within less time than it takes to loose a strong sneeze he hoists her up. Tries to drag her outdoors, so she won't set the building on fire -- but makes it as far as the bed. ]

[ Their unwieldy combined weight propels them across the mattress. They land in a rough and disgruntling tangle with Hei folded across Korra, pinning her flat. ]

Stop that. [ His tone is sharp with a controlled fury. Hands clasping her wrists, keeping her pinned, in case she tries to lash out again. ] What's going on? Is there something in here?

[ A menacing presence? A spirit? He's not sure. But he's never seen Korra come unglued like this. ]

[anatural]

[The figment vanishes as they land on the bed. Of course it does. It's not real, and Korra knows this, but it still sends adrenaline coursing through her. Her heart is pounding so hard she can feel it echoing in her skull; her body practically vibrates with energy that has nowhere to go.

It’s fine, she wants to tell him. I’m just going a little crazy. He shifts slightly on top of her, making her instinctively arch up against him. The threat is gone, but all that chemical energy doesn't just vanish. It needs somewhere to go. And seven month's worth of pent up sexual tension knows just the outlet for it. She doesn't kiss him so much as grab his lips, with the ferocity of a predator going for the kill. It isn't sweet or romantic or loving; it's desperate, violent need.]

[mortemscintilla]

[ When her mouth crashes on his, it's blinding as a blow. ]

[ Hei's breath comes out hot and unexpectedly hoarse, ragged with shock. The angle is all wrong and the kiss is too hard, too much. He tastes copper in his mouth: a sharp wash of blood and pain. He wants to draw back. Get her to calm down, explain to him what's wrong. He hadn't known what to expect when he got here and retrieved Korra -- but he hadn't been planning to have sex even if there was the remotest chance of it, because he hadn't felt the least bit sexy. These few months, desire was an irrelevance, locked up tight, inaccessible. Korra had become -- is still -- in so many ways, the model, the reference point, of security, of release. The stock figure of fantasies, as Amber had once been. Except none of those fantasies came without an accompanying whirl of misery. ]

[ He couldn't deal with that. He hadn't been ready to plunge in anxiety and mourning. In her absence, the only fucking he could tolerate -- fast, cold, almost antiseptic -- was with barflies and drunk tourists by the town's waterfronts. Strangers, not local Water Tribe girls. Even then, he'd succumbed only when his patience wore thin; not often. ]

[ He tries to break away. Tries not to think about how overwhelmingly good this feels -- Oh, yes and Mine and More More More. But his body twitches, live wire, electrified like a dead slab of meat coming awake. Instead of rolling off her, he pitches forward, his weight hot and solid, an immovable blanket. Kisses her back -- a messy openmouthed slide of lips and tongue and teeth that's both greeting and approval. ]

[anatural]

[It's such a relief, having him here to touch. Korra's been celibate the entire time she's been traveling, mostly because she is monogamous by nature, but in no small part because there simply weren't any suitable candidates in the dives and dark corners she found herself living in. There was one guy she made out with, even got her hand on his dick, but he didn't have a condom and threw a hissy fit when she wouldn't let him come on her face, so she tossed him out the front door and his pants out the window. She has a high sex drive, but she will never be that desperate.

She slips her tongue into his mouth and licks away some of the blood, a half-hearted apology. She tries to break her hands free so she can rip off his shirt. Too many clothes — she wants to feel his skin.]