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 is past complaint -- and quickly unraveling past patience. His hips jerk spasmodically as she tugs him closer, her arms and legs a lovely warm tangle, the clasp of her palm both intensely good and abrasively dry, too much yet not enough. ]

[ With a raw noise low in his throat, he abandons her breasts. Snatches up her hand with his free one, then brings it to his mouth. Gnawing at the heel of her palm, licking up its surface to suck three of her fingers into his mouth. He laves at them, hot and slippery and messy, tonguing the whorls of fingerprints and those faint fighter's calluses, before he guides her hand back to his cock. Shows her how to strip him -- fast, brutal, giving her the freedom to be as rough as she likes. Meanwhile his other hand stays wedged between her legs. Hot digits jab with a cruel tenderness inside her, rubbing at her sweet-spot. Slickness between his fingers, in the sodden tangle of curls; the scent of her, sharp and heady, wafting up and making his mouth water. ]

[ He doesn't know what he wants more. To fuck her, to taste her, to feel her hot little mouth on his cock. It all makes blazing-red fingers span across his brain, squeezing it tight around a single mantra -- I want I want I want. ]

[ In the end, he settles for kissing her again. Wet biting gulps, over and over -- a hot triangle from mouth to both breasts and back again. Keeping at it until her lips are as bruised as swollen as her nipples, the flavors disquietingly identical on the tip of his tongue. ]

[anatural]

[Korra votes for fucking. He sucks on her fingers and it throws her mind inexplicably back to the City, when they'd fucked after switching sexes, the one time she'd felt what it was like to fuck with a penis. Fuck she wants it. She wants to feel that tight squeeze, that aching fullness, the punches that bring pleasure instead of pain. He works her higher and higher and she can't take it anymore. Panting, whimpering, she shifts and aims his erection at her entrance. Too far gone to care about things like condoms or safe sex; even if she wasn't, she's been through too much shit to care.]

[mortemscintilla]

[ For Hei, the fucking during that curse -- astonishingly hot as it was -- hadn't been the most remarkable aspect. It was the almost scientific opportunity to gather data, to make discoveries. He'd often wondered what penetration was like for women. Whether it was nothing like anal sex -- or similar. But those he'd asked had rarely offered a good comparison. And though a few had given favorable testimonials, the pros versus the cons, Hei suspected that possession of a prostate was nine-tenths of the thrill. (Call girls were another story. Their enthusiasm on the subject -- Oh, baby, yeah, I love that big meat up my cunt/ass -- had to be taken with a grain, a whole gunny-sack even, of salt.) ]

[ Right now, though, that curse is the farthest thing from his mind. She guides his erection against her sopping entrance. The head nestles against the wet curls with a liquid kiss; he can practically feel the red-hot energy humming off her. So wet, he could slip in without any effort at all. ]

[ Shit. ]

[ Hei's thoughts splay in different directions, spooling and stretching, snapping like spiderwebs. He wants badly to wrench away. There's a condom in the pocket of his fallen trousers -- old, generic, but still usable. He is of the times of his homeworld, a product of his profession; meticulous and careful by nature. Knocking Korra up again isn't high on his list of priorities anyway. Especially after he'd nearly lost her the first time. ]

[ Except he can feel the hot burls of impatience gathering in his muscles. His hips twitch, thighs ticcing. When he sinks into her, it's with a slippery, splitting, unexpected force -- not by degrees but with one snapping thrust, the full length of his cock filling her, sealing his pelvic bone against the wet thatch of her curls, a relentless pressure against her clit. ]

[anatural]

[He slips inside easily; her body is more than ready to accommodate him, is eager to take him in. And yet the shock is enough to make her throw her head back and scream. It's not that different than with a condom and yet that slight difference is everything. She takes the chance to wrap both her legs around him and winds her arms around his neck, pulling him as close as she can.]

Fuck me hard. [She doesn't want to walk straight for at least a week.]

[mortemscintilla]

[ Hei's not sure if it's that thrilling scream -- or her words, liquid and clotted with want -- that make something roll wildly down in his guts. A shock of yearning to do anything, everything she likes. A seasick lurch as the rational part of his mind, crowded to the fringes by lust, fumbles through the mental calendar it keeps for Korra's cycle, hoping desperately it's the wrong time of the month, that this tragic fall into impulse will result in little more than a stain on the sheets and no future consequences. ]

[ Except he can't think. Not now -- not anymore. She knots herself around him, a pretty flushed bow, and he settles gratefully, their damp bellies pressed together, his weight on his elbows. Cupping her ass with one palm, and her head with the other, fingers threaded tight into her hair. When he sets up a rhythm, there's nothing measured or controlled about it. Nothing like the way BK201 fights or lies or schemes. He drives into her hard -- the kind of brutal pounding that makes the cheap springs in the mattress whine, the headboard judder. Over and over, as if he wants to wreck her, inside, outside. Wants to crawl up into her and just be. His ragged breathing interrupts the gloom, and the way he kisses her is drunken and clumsy, sucking at her lips, her tongue, swallowing the hundred unspoken words that seem to hang in the tiny spaces between them. ]

[anatural]

[It wouldn't be the worst thing in the world, if she got pregnant again. No, it's not something she's actively courting, nor is it something she subconsciously desires. But being pregnant, being a mother, is no longer something she fears. She's not alone, like she would have been in the City, and motherhood at least would give her some purpose. Not the kind of purpose she wants — she saw how Katara, the powerful woman who helped save the world, had her accomplishments forgotten and neglected when she became "the mother of the Avatar's children" — but not a purpose to be ashamed of either.

She doesn't look jealously at young mothers. She doesn't dream of babies. She's just comfortable with the possibility.

But even if she wasn't, this feels too good to waste energy on fear. She kisses him like she wants to eat him alive, pants and whimpers with every thrust. She can feel tears gathering at the edges of her eyes, a physiological reaction to the tension not just building up as he pounds her, but the tension that's been building for the past seven months. Maybe even the last three years.]

[mortemscintilla]

[ Not the worst thing -- but certainly not the best. He'd never wanted a baby. Didn't need that sort of responsibility -- a vulnerability -- tying him down. Self-preservation and pragmatism still took precedence over everything else in his life. Yet ... the loss of that supposedly unlooked-for burden had absolutely gutted him. Unthought of right from the outset, the child -- theirs -- had become shockingly real to him when it was gone, absolutely solid. He'd grieved for it as if for a real person, wishing it could've been saved. Not as a symbol, nor a trophy, nor a souvenir, not merely proof that he and Korra had something beyond a flimsy attraction tying them together. But a reality, that would have been a sharp focus of his life. ]

[ Part of him knows he'd have valued the baby for itself, whatever it was, and through it maybe he would've been able to accept some part of him that was lost forever. ]

[ Except Korra had nearly died the first time. He can't afford a repetition of that. Not after everything else. ]

[ He keeps the pace ruthless, sensation piling up more rapidly than his overheating body can dissipate it. Sweat is breaking across his skin, clean and sharp; he feel the prickle of rising desperation across his nerves. His hands go everywhere across Korra's body, taking possession, mouth gasping as she presses her thirsty kisses into it. The hot pressure matches that sweet sucking pull of her sex. Each time, he slides in deep, rocks his hips in a wicked grind, withdrawing only to slickly plunge back in. It feels like he'll never slow down or stop -- he can't bear to. But he can't bear to come yet either -- not until she's breaking apart beneath him, a crumpled sobbing ruin of flesh as he pounds her. ]

[anatural]

[She had nearly died fight Zaheer. Losing the baby, as physically and emotional traumatic as it was, came nowhere close.

Korra's ribs start complaining as he continues slamming her into the mattress; the pain doesn't detract from the pleasure at all. She even arches up against him, trying to put more pressure on the bruise, which seems to be wired directly to her clit. She's going to come any second now, no matter how hard she fights it off. One little press in the right spot and she'll —

Shatter.]

[mortemscintilla]

[ She crests, and it sends bright red shocks right through Hei, the hard tattoo of his embedded cock growing more ruthless. It's exquisite, the feel of her contracting around him in a rippling sequence that sets off what feels like a gun's sharp metal click. Then the sensation expands at the speed of sound, spiking electrically up his spine, detonating at the back of his skull like a shotgun. His eyes stay fixed on her as she rides her climax out: so wild and beguiling beneath him. Perfect, utterly self-absorbed, blinded and heat-stricken. ]

[ Groaning, he sinks one last time into her spasming body, his thrusts erratic with the tension of the encroaching end. He can feel it waiting for him, yawning darkly somewhere beneath the ache in his lungs, the gaping want, the thudding arousal trying to fill out every empty space inside him. ]

[ Gasping, unsteady, he withdraws from the gorgeous clutching heat of her. His own palm is a miserable replacement: sandpaper after being wrapped in wet silk. But it will have to do. He finishes himself with rough repeated jerks, his hand almost a blur. Comes in a deep rolling expulsion, a half-dozen hot laces scattering across Korra's thighs and belly. ]

[ A flawed precaution to a situation already mired in disaster. But it's the best he can manage. ]

[anatural]

[Come on her skin is one of those things that you'd think would feel erotic, but it's...not. It's just messy. She's coming down from the climatic high, sweat cooling on her skin, the pain of her various bruises and bumps actually feeling like pain... She has a new appreciation for condoms and how they keep that stuff in. Though it's easy enough to clean up with a little waterbending. And then... she doesn't really even know what to do. There's a brief, instinctive urge to pull him close and use him as a pillow, but she's had 7 months to get used to sleeping alone. She doesn't enjoy it; she prefers having a warm body with her, but she's gotten into the habit of a cold bed and the little intimacies that once felt natural are now awkward and uncertain.]

[mortemscintilla]

[ As awkward for him as for her. ]

[ Hei lets her handle the clean-up. Remains where he is, his long swathes of hair coming undone from the tie; skin slick from heat and exertion. The temptation to curl up against her is a fleeting one; cuddling was a recent development between them, its sheen of novelty still fresh enough that it seems unnecessary, even uncomfortable, to resume it like an old habit now. It's Hei's nature to default to distance anyway; the few encounters he's had during their separation were compounded by a selfish carelessness, a necessary purging of tension from the flesh if not the mind. Afterwards, he'd always gone to bed alone. ]

[ He sits loose-limbed on the edge of the bed, hands curled around his kneecaps. Regards Korra quietly, dark eyes detached like those of a jungle cat, but soft too. Interested. ]

[ After a beat, almost casually, ]

Guess I don't need to ask if it's been a while for you or not.

[anatural]

[Why does he always go for the uncomfortable topics? I guess I don’t need to ask if you still like to ruin the afterglow.]

I didn't leave so I could sleep with other people. [She'd been sad, lonely, and frustrated the night she almost slept with that one guy, which is why it got so far between them and part of the reason she tossed him out of the room butt-naked to grab his pants from the puddle outside her window.

She doesn't ask about him; she doesn't want to know. It's no longer that she's insecure about her skill in bed, and it was never about being afraid he'd fall in love with someone else. Strip the excuses away and the truth is, she just doesn't want him having sex with anyone else. But they've never renegotiated their agreement, in large part because when they were living together and fucking just about every day, it wasn't an issue.

She sits it, banishing irritation as best she can, and reaches out to tug his hair.]

What are we, switching hairstyles? That's some wolftail you're growing out.

[mortemscintilla]

[ What afterglow? The fucking should have knitted them back together -- a delicate happiness weaving itself around them like a shell. It hasn't. Instead what should've been a renewal of intimacy feels more like a frantic, awkward handhold between two strangers who've caught each other mid-fall. She's still given no indication of returning home with him. Intellectually, he understands why. She's so altered in herself, so unsettled by everything she's endured that it's excruciating to fit comfortably back into the niche of her daughterly, Avatar-ly life, to meet the expectations of her friends and family. ]

[ He's been where she has. He knows. But he also refuses to return empty-handed. If he has to knock her out and stuff her in a burlap sack, so be it. ]

[ He ignores the fizzle of irritation in her words. He doesn't care who she has or hasn't slept with. He'd asked because he was wary she'd hit the same self-destructive wall as him. When his vitality had slowly returned, after the Syndicate found him in the brutalized remnants of San Pedro Sula, and he'd learnt UB001 was still active. By day -- by night -- he'd sunk into wetwork. The skills he'd honed in the warzone were still there. Along with a streak -- miles wide -- that hadn't been. He was eerily reckless, in a don't much care about the outcome way. More than a few times, he'd swung himself away from maiming and certain death, right at the last moment. Felt like he was high afterwards, when the mission was completed, and he'd prowl the streets looking for women who were willing to fuck him, for free or for a fee, even if certain venereal easter eggs might get tacked on. ]

[ He hopes Korra isn't caught in that vacant headspace. Hopes she never will be. ]

[ She reaches out to tug his hair, and he lightly bats her hand off. In the next beat, he's threaded his fingers with hers. He squeezes them gently, half-wishing she'd shrink and disappear into his palm. Be small enough for him to cradle there forever. ]

I'll get rid of it, if you want.

[ He'd only let his hair grow out of indifference and neglect. It helped that he was residing in the South Pole; the locals interpreted it as an attempt to blend in. (Tonraq met the happenstance hairdo with something almost resembling approval, although Kya had teased, It's not a nice look. It ages you.) ]

[anatural]

[So it wasn't the glowiest afterglow. Still.]

You look like a grizzled old warrior. [Not saying whether or not that's a good thing.

And she's not saying anything about going back with him because she doesn't even register it as a question. Why can’t you be lost with me? He'd asked her, like he'll follow her wherever she goes. He didn't say "Are you staying here or coming back with me?"]

I bet my dad was thrilled.

[mortemscintilla]

[ He hadn't asked the question because he can't imagine letting her remain here. This is a hopeless place -- and he doesn't mean this rathole town. It's painfully evident she's not right in the head. An ill health, whatever form it has taken, that is not a distant or abstract possibility but a presence in the very room, near as the dark cat-curl of Hei's body a few feet from Korra's. ]

[ Yet all his instincts -- to force her to return, to force her to get better -- might do no good. His stomach churns: futility, frustration. Because he can understand, if he were in Korra's shoes, why he'd feel the need to keep moving. Understand why she's embarked on this crazy quest of hers. To meet something new that is surging up. Or to recapture old fragments of what has been taken from her. Maybe she wants to dive down into the wreck of her mind, and meet it. But the idea makes his blood thin with impending despair, because he feels it's necessary to chase after her, help her, pull her back. Shouldn't he? Or should he let her go through with it? Let her do whatever she's out here to do, and assure himself that they'll still be ... tethered. If he just lets it happen. ]

[ Hei doesn't know. Fuck-- he can't even work out a suitable metaphor for this, whatever this is. He doesn't understand what he's supposed to do. All he recognizes is that he is scared, on some level, of losing her. ]

[ He keeps the blur of concerns off his face. Musters a half-smile, his gaze fixed on her with a soft contemplation. ]

He did mention how I [ or Li, anyway ] could almost pass for a man now.

[anatural]

[Almost. How typical of her father.] Well you're not a real man in the Water Tribe until you've gone ice dodging.

[And then she hesitates, because this talk about her father is making it hard to avoid the question — do her parents know she's not in Republic City? Do Tenzin and the others know she's not in the South Pole? Or is Hei the only one who realized? The answer will determine what she does next. She's not so far gone as to abandon people who are worried about her, but she's not ready to go back if she doesn't have to. Finally she takes a little breath.]

Did you tell them where you were going? [To find me?]

[mortemscintilla]

So that's why he tried making me steer that tiny sailboat. [ His eyes shutter with something like amusement. ] I thought he wanted to drown me by proxy.

[ At her question, he pauses, his expression sobering behind that faint, da Vinci smile of his, before a tiny indentation slips between his brows. It's easy to track the pattern of her thoughts. For a moment he's tempted to lie, to magnify the worries of her loved ones so she'll agree to return home -- or at least be amenable to the idea. ]

[ But, even as the impulse flickers through him, he hesitates. Playing dirty is an inherent facet of his nature. But he'd prefer it if Korra makes the choice of her own free will. If she refuses to come back... Well. Joining her on her quest was never part of the agenda, but he also can't stand the idea of leaving her. Going away would mean the risk of not seeing her again, if disaster strikes. And if he isn't with her, he'll never know whether she's unharmed or wounded, alive or dead -- and that uncertainty would be a worse torment than being sure. ]

[ Eventually, honestly, ]

Your father knows. Tenzin does too. I agreed to contact them ... once I found you.

[anatural]

[AAAAAAAARGH. Korra growls and pulls her hand from his, running it through her hair in frustration.]

Why did you have to tell them?! [Because somehow she's pretty sure that once Hei figured it out, he tattled. It hasn't been that long since she last wrote to her parents. Hei figured it out and he told them and why did he have to do that?!]

[mortemscintilla]

[ Hei ignores her petulant outburst, though he does blow out a breath, edged in exasperation. ]

I didn't tell them anything.

[ One of the first lessons the Syndicate drums -- or rather punches -- into operatives' heads is Don't hold out on us. The second is Don't snitch. He's been thoroughly indoctrinated in that law, steeped in the culture and norms of espionage. ]

[ After a beat, he reaches out to stroke the curve of Korra's shoulder, the choppy heap of hair. Ordinarily her assumptions would stir a vague sense of indignation. But this carries such a reassuring touch of Korra's old spark and spirit. He can't keep a tiny curl of gratitude from creeping through him, tangled as it is with the ache of love and frustration. ]

[ In a different tone, more reasonable, he explains, ]

When you stopped writing... I asked Tenzin about you. We figured out, more or less at the same time, that you'd gone AWOL. Pretty soon the news reached your father. We kept it between the three of us because we didn't want to start a mass panic. Not until we knew where you were.

[anatural]

So you're here to drag me back. [The thought makes her stomach feel like lead. She loves her family, but she can't go back to the compound — hadn't realized how visceral her rejection of the thought would be until the possibility seemed real. And she doesn't want to go back to Republic City, to Tenzin's fussing and the President's polite condescension. Sure, she'd get to see Asami and Mako again, but nothing would have changed. She still hasn't found what she's looking for.]

[mortemscintilla]

I'm --

[ That was his intention at the outset. He still wants nothing more but to drag her back, to keep his attention fixed on her, as if that attention has the power to force her back into her old mold. It used to be, that whatever challenge he gave all of himself to, went his way. Because he was the Black Reaper, unwavering, ruthless. And there's an inner voice -- that cool, modulated, therapeutic sort of voice, the voice of Pai at her most rational and of stern articles in magazines at their most didactic, that chivvies him to take her somewhere she can get the help she needs. ]

[ Except... that might be the right help at all. ]

[ A headache pounds behind Hei's eyes, at his temples. He has no respect for quitters and slackers. But Korra isn't any of those things. And what does he know about her feelings, her dilemmas, beyond secondhand guesswork -- what right does he have to say they're not mystical or meaningful just because he doesn't comprehend them? He's not invested with a scrap of spiritual license. It's easy for him to just blow off the whole thing, sweep it under the rug like he would bending or chakras or rebirth if he thought he could get away with it. They're not at the crux of his life. ]

[ But they are at the crux of Korra's. That's why she's out here -- unhinged as she is. Because she wants desperately to get back to being what she is. What makes her special. All that light and grace that she'd once embodied. All that beautiful deadly power. It's been stolen from her -- sapped away -- and she seeks a new source to refuel it. ]

[ The lengthy pause threatens to turn into an uncomfortable period. In an effort to dispel it, Hei reaches for her hand. Rubs her palm slowly with his thumb. The effort is palpable, to be tender but not manipulative. ]

I just want to help you.

[anatural]

Then don't take me back. [She squeezes his hand, trying to convey her desperation without seeming...well, desperate.] I'll figure out something to tell them. Just don't make me go back.

[It doesn't occur to her that this may seem like she's dismissing him, sending him away empty-handed, when really she's picturing an awkward phone call home and then Hei traveling with her.]

[mortemscintilla]

[ He's not sure what to think of that. A cold wind seems to be blowing through him, even as the drying sweat from their fuck still clings to his skin. A sense of impending loss rises up to greet him. He feels certain it's a rejection, that Korra is about to launch her intentions to move on, to continue with her journey while he returns with a cloud of futility hovering over him, forced to deliver the news of his failure to Korra's family in every sense. ]

[ It's a real risk, because Hei feels insufficient to console or keep her. ]

[ His gaze drops; he focuses not on her face but on their clasped hands. He refuses to be parted from her again; he can't stomach the idea of being sent away. He wants to be where Korra is -- or wherever she's going. Sinking into the metaphorical wreck. Going deeper. It doesn't sound so bad, phrased that way. Deep, deeper to ground, like a tree, and trees stay in one spot. Unless Korra tries to plant herself elsewhere. ]

[ Finally, ]

All right.

[ If not for the tension in his shoulders and the heaviness to his face, it could be any of the countless calm words plucked from his vocabulary. Inside, he's bracing himself for her to say either, You should go, or Stay with me. ]

[anatural]

[She sags in relief; she had dreaded fighting him on this. His agreement, however obvious his reluctance, takes a weight off her chest.]

Thank you. [She wants to hug him, but that would require letting go of his hand, so she settled for resting her head against his shoulder. It's the two of them again, like when she fought Unalaq, like when she fought Zaheer. Team Avatar is back. The thought makes her smile.]

[mortemscintilla]

[ She settles her forehead against the slope of his shoulder. And it's that, more than anything, that imparts her meaning to Hei -- a sweet chemical message sinking into his skin. Stay. Simple relief kicks in then, stunningly hard, the wild kick of a waking generator. It blooms somewhere below the ribcage, but the reverberant thrum of joy reaches every long-darkened corner of his psyche. In a single moment, it's like the switch of his humanity has flipped on and the cold machine he's been tenanting for months has become a thing of life again. ]

[ He doesn't say anything. Just kisses her -- a hot, clumsy, grateful print to her temple. Once, then again. His hand draws free from hers. But it's only so he can gather her in. With the humid weight of her body pressed close, he buries his nose in her hair, breathing in deep, filling his lungs with that Korra-ish scent that is like fallen leaves. ]

[ He isn't sure, still, what she's planning. Where she intends to go from here. Interrogation would be easy, but he holds his tongue. He'll let Korra work at her own pace toward whatever she's reaching for. When they're together, they seldom stagnate. They're always in flux, one way or another, hurtling toward something. ]