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 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.]

[mortemscintilla]

[ She tries to break her wrists free from the bruising bracelets of his fingers. Hei resists a moment, then lets her -- he's too breathless and dizzied, made in equal parts helpless and predacious by the cruel necessity of his own desire. Her tongue drags across the roof of his mouth, and he feels a strange noise fill the back of his throat -- broken, hungry, happy. He's livid with her for daring to run away. He's sick with the regret that he could've done something to prevent it. But most of all he's in a wild thrill of relief, to have found her again. ]

[ Feelings -- hard and soft -- are not just mixed but melted together, inseparable in their cauldron. ]

[ Letting her tackle the brace of his shirt, he keeps kissing her, like no amount of contact is enough. Sucking on her tongue, her lips, refusing to let her break away. Rough and lewd and wanting -- in a way that matches his hands, plucking at the fabric of her sarashi, carelessly wrenching at the bandages. He already has a knee planted between her legs; instinctively, he rubs against her thigh, nudging her with the straining heft of his erection until it almost hurts -- a sinuous yet brutal friction like a snake coiling around its prey. ]

[anatural]

[She rips his shirt off and knows, with a giddy sense of satisfaction, that he's never going to be able to wear it again. Around her chest, her sarashi puts up much more of a fight — she wraps it tighter for fights than she does usually. In the way. Korra shoves him back and bends the dew off of the open window. She slices through the layers of fabric until they've puddled on the bed and left her breasts bare. Underneath them her skin is just starting to purple, a deep bruise from the earlier fight slowly coming to the surface. She'd meant to heal that. She doesn't care. Hei's erection is thick & hot through the fabric of his pants, and if Hei doesn't act quickly, Korra may very well just cut his pants off too. She's burning too hot to care about little things like what he'll wear when he walks out the door.]

[mortemscintilla]

[ Her sarashi unfurls in ribbons around her, so many tangles like crepe paper streamers. Then there are her pretty breasts, marked in blossoming bruises that he knows from experience will shade into the mauves and yellow-purples of a watercolor painting. Something spikes through him, concern mixed with rage. She's his to mark, not anybody else's. He fights the urge to trace his fingers across the wounds, paper-thin and whispery -- and at the same time to press into them with his thumbs until those contusions throb. The warring impulse is so strong, his hands twitch. ]

[ Then her scent hits him, familiar and strong, like mist rolling across a forest, perfuming the air with every green and living and dying thing. Letting off a hum that scrapes across the taut length of his throat, he grapples her closer. Framing her breasts in both hands, pushing them together to bury his nose in her cleavage, take a long sharp breath. Because -- fuck, that smell of her body. That warm mineral Korra-smell that is like a strange home to him. Doesn't matter if she is feverish, sweaty, moist from exertion. It gives her an extra febrile edge, ripens her aroma. Ripens, too, that dizzying need for her. The fabric of his trousers is an abrasive constriction; his balls ache as if he's been hard for hours. ]

[ Wedging a hand between their bodies, he unzips himself with shaky fingers. Pitches his weight back to toe off his boots and kick the trousers down his legs, before focusing on Korra's, stripping her with a ruthless efficiency, leaving himself at the end of those long, long legs, her ankles gripped tight in both palms. ]

[anatural]

[She wishes he would press down on them; she's so keyed up right now that almost every sensation translates to pleasure. Her breath catches as he fondles her breasts and she lets the water fall, soaking into the thin bedspread, forgotten. She likes playing with her breasts but it's not the same as having someone else touch them. Having Hei touch them. There's just something about the way they fill his palms, the way his calluses rub against the sensitive skin, that nothing else can imitate. And his mouth... more than anything she wants to feel his mouth, biting and sucking and mauling her.

Instead he pulls back to take off his pants, and Korra moves to do the same. She already has her pants a third of a way down her legs when he yanks them from her. She pulls her knees up abruptly, using his iron grip on her ankles to pull him closer. He doesn't get to toy with her, not tonight, not without a fight.]

[mortemscintilla]

[ She jerks her knees up, and instead of resisting, Hei allows himself to be tugged. Climbing across her body, one hand holding himself off the mattress, the other settling across her throat, palm across the windpipe. The pressure is unmistakable but, curiously, unthreatening. Like he needs that moment of brief detachment to let his breath slow and his mind catch up. Needs to feel that kick-starting pulse beneath her throat, to reassure himself she's still alive. ]

[ He meets her gaze then, letting the look rise from beneath his lashes, the unruly dark spill of his hair knifing across their bluish glint. Dips his head to kiss her, so tender that he immediately half regrets the impulse and its fulfillment. His earlier kisses were less deliberate, more savage. A kind of feeding. This is too much, too much intimacy after months of nothing. And yet if he gives into his opposing desires he will do no better, will likely do more harm. Brutality is easy, but the pleasure is too fast and facile, and the aftermath will yield no satisfaction. He needs something more, some essential truth that will be enough to reach through Korra's fogging aura of sadness. ]

[ Except he can't think of a single fucking thing. There's only this. Soft kisses that unravel into something hot and biting and wet, as if he wants to steal her air and white out her mind, needs this imperfect thing between them to be enough to drag her back to where he is. ]

[anatural]

[...that is the completely wrong way to do it. Korra tenses when he puts the hand on her throat, and takes deep, steady breathes, expecting each one to be a fight. The kisses don't help at all — that feeling that he's trying to steal her breath. The last person who stole her breath was Zaheer. She knocks his hand violently away as panic sets in.]

Don’t do that!

[mortemscintilla]

Ssh. Easy.

[ The words are wavering on a drawn breath. He absorbs Korra's tension, puts up the hand she'd knocked off her throat to cradle her face, thumb rubbing across the jut of cheekbone. It's back again, that wild flicker in her gaze, cutting across the smoky warmth of lust to meet his with a renewed panic. It is like treading through a minefield: navigating around this war-torn, damaged new Korra with her hair-trigger volatility, her explosions of panic or violence at the slightest wrong move. ]

[ All the psychic thumbprints of trauma, he knows. She's not that innocent teenager anymore -- sweet as toffee and bright as sunshine -- and the acknowledgement destroys something inside Hei. This was never the life he'd envisioned for her. ]

[ The air between them is still thick with humidity and aborted want. He breathes heavily, but his tone is almost soothing. ]

I won't hurt you.

[anatural]

[Not the life either of them had ever envisioned for her — but could it ever have gone any other way? This is what it means to be the Avatar. The conflicts she's been in started well before she was born; the only way she could have avoided them would be if she hadn't been born the Avatar. If she hadn't been born her. It may as well have been her destiny.

She's perilously close to crying and she hates it. She takes a deep, struggling breath — tries to say something in response, but she can't speak around the lump in her throat — so instead she just yanks his head back down for a kiss. Demanding, scolding, and apologetic all at once.]