They say it’s blind they say it waits, but every time it seals your fate

[mortemscintilla]

WHO: Korra and Hei

WHAT: Korra gets a front-row seat into Hei's dreams. Specifically his relationship with Amber.

[ Anger burning under the surface of his skin, clouding everything around him, Hei had stormed off after wrenching his photos away from Korra. He hadn't stopped to consider if the photos were loaded with a special brand of City-magic. Hadn't realized that after she'd touched them, memory-fragments had clung to her fingertips like ragweed pollen. Seeping into her pores, germinating day by day. ]

[ And of course he had no way of knowing what she'd dream of, several nights later. Or that the dreams wouldn't be hers. ]

[ Like most of his dreams, it's a vivid one. A forest unfurling like a dark green sea. Autofire and muzzle flash color the night. Tree stalks and bones shatter with hot plashes of fluid. The air is heavy with a shrill sound and scent that is somehow primal, hostile, terrified. It is like being enveloped in blood. ]

[ Everywhere, there are bodies. Acres upon acres of them, piled atop one another like split logs. Armless, legless, headless corpses, fields of little rag dolls pulled apart, liquid, stuffed with streaming redness, flowing out and away. Hei's, Pai's, and Carmine's handiwork. The result of a successful night-raid. From the corner of his eye, Hei glimpses a Contractor, one of Amber's squad, drifting through the blazing camp with the flayed corpse of a girl draped around his shoulders. The girl’s skinless body shimmers, blood-glazed tissue reflecting firelight the way moon rays reflect off a placid lake's surface. The Contractor is whistling, dreamy-eyed. ]

[ Hei isn't sure if that's his Obeisance -- or if the man is insane. He doesn't care. The war is like that: it gets inside you, under your skin and into your bloodstream, plants roots in your heart and mind and soul. You surrender to its cruelty as a matter of survival. ]

[ A starburst of light. Another memory -- one that makes his nerves jump. Pale skin and a curl of parted lips. Green hair tangled across a red uniform. He feels the humidity of the Brazilian forest, hears buzzing mosquitoes, sees gossamer netting. It's nothing compared to the global warming between Amber's thighs, the clamor in his head, his thoughts tissuey, friable, as he arches over her. Wait… hold on, Hei. Scrambling around in her pockets. Taking out a swiss army knife, extending the nail clippers. She giggles, Your fingernails are like knives. He gives her his hand and she trims his nails. Then files them down smooth. Her voice, singy-songy, Don't need a female circumcision. When she finishes the strange manicure, she eases his hand back between her legs. ]

[ Ohhhh. Her soft cry tastes like butterscotch against his hungry mouth. ]

[ Little details pinwheel through Hei's brain. The way her pulse flutters when he curls his fingers around her throat. How her hair feels like a wash of green seafoam as she bends her head, taking him with such gorgeous smoothness into the cool-hot vacuum of her mouth. The taste of her on his tongue, tart and rimey yet somewhow sweet, like biting into a dripping peach. How, each time, he has to fuck her with his eyes closed -- because the way she looks, lying beneath him, flushed and gasping, wisps of that pale hair sweat-plastered to her body, she is hypnotic, and he knows he can lose himself in gazing at her, lose the urgent rhythm of his cock in her slick wet sex. ]

[ Burying his face in the hollow of her neck, inhaling her cordite-and-mint scent, Hei drifts -- in the cradle of his dream-body, yet outside of himself, watching from a great distance of space and time. 

It was always a struggle, he remembers, to control himself with Amber. But she'd sense that; brace her hands on his shoulders and ease the shakes out of him, coaxing him with her voice and body and kisses to take it slow. He only had to listen to her and obey. He'd sometimes 

wonder what she was thinking in those moments. Part of her, maybe the deepest part, was always locked off -- even when they were that close. Maybe it was because she knew things about the future that he'd never be able to grasp. She had purposes -- for him, for Pai, for herself -- that Hei couldn't even imagine. ]

[ He remembers other things too -- less important, yet somehow more precious to him. The way Amber could be so hard to please, a kakuru puzzle in equal parts tantalizing and mystifying -- but when he got it right, it was like cracking the vault to something blissful: her skin filming like melted butter under his lips as if she were running a fever or a marathon, her wordless mewling cry as she came apart, a wavering song that melted into a scream. ]

[ Nights in the jungle, blackness so absolute it becomes a living entity, Hei remembers those stolen moments with her as a respite from everything. Being with Amber made the brutal truths of the war bearable. When she held him, he believed, however briefly, that there were no such things as hatred, or cruelty, or pain. And when she kissed him, he thought he'd never want to kiss anyone else again, ever. ]

[ Except he should've known -- even then (especially then) -- that Amber was mapping out the starchart of a different future for him.  Everything they'd shared -- at a depth and breadth both thrilling and terrifying. But it was never enough. Especially in the wake of war and politics, carnage and tragedy. Two people could never share the same psyche. ]

[ Afterwards, he remembers, Amber would always let out a jittery sigh -- satisfied, yet somehow wistful. That was nice. You're always such a quick study, Hei. A girl appreciates that. ]

[ A girl appreciates that. It was as if she was giving him advice for down the line, when he'd find himself years and miles away from her, in bed with someone else. Knowing Amber, she probably was. ]

Comments

[mortemscintilla]

[ Shitfuck. ]

[ She walks away, and Hei feels as if she's torn off a whole top layer of his skin. What's left behind -- a mess of shredded tendons and sinews that feel like frayed red yarn -- threatens to collapse under the weight of realization. Korra has been having dreams. Dreams about him. About his past. The idea -- impossible, ludicrous -- makes a fine sheen of sweat break out on Hei's skin. Makes him feel like a bug in a belljar. Like that overdramatic ham of an actor in that stupid fucking movie. What was it called? The Truman show? He can't remember. ]

[ I've just had some trouble sleeping. The words clink into place like bullets within a slow-revolving chamber in his mind. He understands their implication now. Realizes this must've been going on for a while. The few weeks following the photo curse. Almost a half-month -- except he wants to round down instead of up. He wants to round down and down until it is a nub; until the idea of his life being replayed in Korra's mind dwindles to a flicker, then a fantasy, then a small, fleeting thought that he had entertained one afternoon and then rejected for sanity. ]

How much did you see?

[ He's whirled to face her before he realizes it. His eyes are enormous. He looks like a little boy, confronted by a monster under his bed. ]

[anatural]

[She's shocked by how young he looks. How scared. If he'd been angry or threatening, she would've kept trying to lie, but the raw emotion in his face knocks the air out of her lungs.]

Nothing! Just sex! [Which is, in fact, the exact opposite of nothing. Good job, Korra.] I thought my mind was playing tricks on me, after the picture curse. I thought they were just dirty dreams.

[mortemscintilla]

[ This should be impossible -- except there are shortcomings in labeling anything as impossible. Especially where Hei's concerned. (Especially in the City.) ]

[ She says, Just sex, and something flickers across his face, an undercurrent of sickened horror. Usually, Hei can be surprised without registering it one iota. But his fortification of iron walls and secret minefields has dissipated. Nausea roils through him, a silent paroxysmal judder. One hand lifts absently to drag through his hair like that will help, because fuck this -- more City-magic dragging the filthy details of his life through the streets, through stranger's minds. ]

[ Except his horror isn't for himself. It's for whatever Korra must have seen. Just sex -- she assures him. But Hei has no idea what facet of his sexuality, his history, she's witnessed. Whatever violations he's routinely submitted to during assignments, they are compartmentalized and shelved away the moment they're over, irrelevant as the cuts scab up and the sweat dries, supplanted by the physical satisfaction of a crisp signed check. ]

[ But to be chemically fixed in time and passed into a different mind -- not a fucking static photograph but a living, breathing memory -- that is an exposure which can never be covered again. ]

Who was I with?

[ It is rasping, yet steady. Given the recent curse, the most logical conclusion would be Amber. But those are memories Hei clutches to the most private depths of himself. Something sordid -- skullfucking a drunk rentboy in a dirty bathroom only to have the kid puke all over his shoes and his dick, pulling a train on a camp follower who turned out to have a blasting cap wedged between her broken teeth, her head exploding under a stray backhand and fragments of her skull and teeth tearing the nearest soldier to ribbons, coercing a mark into sex under the guise of trust and love, only to give the signal a few hours later to have his entire family slaughtered before his eyes, even one or two innocently screwed-up games with Pai, brimming with the pre-pubescent curiosities of children who didn't quite understand sex or boundaries yet -- anything would be preferable. ]

[anatural]

[Korra knows that her answer isn't going to be the one he wants. And not because there isn't an answer he wants. She knows from those pictures, from those dreams, just how important the green-haired woman was to him. She can well imagine how terrible it would feel, having precious memories shared against your will to people you hardly care about.

Her eyes quickly, subtly scan the area around them, looking for exits and weapons she can use if she has to, before she says quietly:]

The woman from your pictures. With the green hair.

[mortemscintilla]

[ Amber. Of course. He doesn't know why he asked. It is perfectly obvious. Obvious like getting clobbered by a falling section of concrete in a crumbling building -- that it would be his memories with her, that they'd be fed like toxins into Korra's dreamscape, that the City would delight in stripping him past even the last fragments of reserve and dignity, in reminding Korra -- poor out-of-her-depth Korra -- of all the ways her affair with him is false-bottomed, deficient, imperfect in every sense. Except they both have always known that, in their own ways. ]

[ Why Hei still insists, despite knowing, on prolonging their affair, is the killer. ]

[ For a moment, disgust is so enormous it pinions him. Korra is right before him, giving off hot waves of anxiety, her eyes darting like two pretty blue fish searching for an escape, before the snapping jaws of his temper tear her in half. ]

[ Except Hei can't look at her. Can't make himself move. It's not fear and it's not shame, but there's a depthless uneasiness rolling through his head, reminding him too much of how Pai's energy is fused with his, that there is always someone sharing space in his skull, but now there are two, and it's -- ]

[ Even the Black Reaper needs time to process. ]

[ It's a long moment before he speaks. But when he does, he addresses the practicalities, not the sentiments, ]

I'll find a mage. Topside, Underground. Doesn't matter. As long as they get rid of those dreams you're having.

[anatural]

[That...was not the reaction Korra expected. It's such a pedestrian response, completely ridiculous in the face of the City's madness.]

Since when has anyone been able to stop a curse? Unless you know who made it so curses don't reach the Underground.

[Wait. There's an idea there. A possible solution... maybe... It's teasing the edges of her understanding, but her mind is too addled by exhaustion and liquor and fear and residual lust to catch it.]

[mortemscintilla]

[ Pedestrian, yes. But Hei's priorities have never quite matched up to everyone else's. Even in the wake of disaster, his mantra is rooted in survival: Focus on the center, not the framework. Chase the possibilities. Force the solution. Even in the moments where he's ticking like a human time-bomb, when his body is just a merciless cage of machinery chewing and swallowing every ounce of sanity, even when he's going up in flames, outside, inside -- Even then, he's been trained to remain in a suspended state of clarity. To soothe the beast clamoring within, to keep it cool; and when it's time to run, to let it flow, striking a balance between instinct and irrationality. ]

[ Because, in his profession, that unequivocally separates the living from the dead. ]

[ A thought passes -- brief, unfiltered -- through his head. Tinged with a regret, but also a gratitude. At least it's Korra who's privy to his dreams -- not an opportunistic stranger, a potential threat. If it were up to him, he'd share those memories with no-one at all. But ... to tweak a phrase: Better the misguided angel you know. ]

[ The misguided angel in question speaks, and Hei takes a breath. Forces the white-noise of his thoughts to settle, like the way tumblers click into place inside a lock, sliding into order. (Damage control in your psyche isn't quick or easy -- but he's got a decent amount of practice at it.) ]

[ Eventually, not quite looking at her, ]

I don't think it's a regular curse. If it was, they'd be whining about it on the Network. [ One thing he can count on in the City: the citizens' tendency to overshare. A beat, in which he pauses, gaze flicking sideways to study Korra. He catches her idea out of the air, though it is clear that she herself isn't there yet. ]

Stay Underground in the meantime. That should keep the dreams away.

[anatural]

[Oh, that was her idea! And a pretty good one too, except now that it's out in the air, she can see the flaws.]

I can't just hole up in some random dump down here. Jinora and Bei Fong need me. [Or at the very least, they'll worry and ask questions that Korra doesn't want to answer.]

[mortemscintilla]

Tell them you're pulling a double-shift at the bar.

[ Why answer unwanted questions when you can lie? That's how Hei functions 99% of the time. ]

[ There's still a sense of distemper -- disquiet -- humming in the echo-chamber of his body. He feels strangely raw, stripped bare -- and the way he seems to navigate the moment, internally, externally, is with a kind of precision. It's the same way his body remembers when to evade and when to strike in open-hand combat, how to execute a perfect pirouette to catch his balance mid-fall, his exactitude in the way he slices his dagger across a target's throat. There's also a residual tug of resistance, at the idea of his most secret, precious memories laid out for someone to see. ]

[ But it's too late to focus on the Whys and Do Not Wants right now. They have a problem on their hands. And he needs to find an effective solution -- for Korra's sake as much as his own. She may be privy to sexy dreams, so far. But he can't risk her witnessing -- experiencing -- anything uglier or more traumatic. He may not owe her his loyalty or his tenderness -- but he owes her that much, at least. ]

[ Quieter, he adds, ]

I'll book a motel. You can stay there until this curse is dealt with.

[anatural]

...........fine. [She doesn't say it with particularly good grace, but she pulls out her device and sends a quick message to Jinora to let her know. She hates being exiled down here. Who's to say it'll even work? Even if it does stop the curse dreams, what if her mind just replays the dreams she's already had. She feels helpless. Hopeless. Frustrated in more ways than one. She wraps her arms around herself to hold it together.]

[mortemscintilla]

[ In all honesty, Hei feels the same. But he can't afford to sulk. He needs to fix this. Whatever she's seen in those dreams has clearly upset her. But once the matter is dealt with, time will iron flat those memories the way a wave smooths over a rock on the shore. He's sure she'll go on -- not unperturbed, but not irreparably damaged, either. He's determined for nothing to alter that, whatever vagaries intercede. ]

[ He glances at her -- and she looks so small and lost, hugging herself as if warding off a chill, her eyes reminding him of water in a a pool, lit from within, shimmering and throwing reflections across the whole surface of her face. A small, grudging part of him will always be a little protective of her, for so many unvoiced reasons. A memory-fragment of Pai insinuates itself into his thoughts, and he forcibly jerks his gaze away. ]

Come on.

[ There are a number of hotels -- clean, anonymous, secure -- that will take Korra in. The air, despite it being spring, is cold, a breeze stirring grit through the streets, rustling litter on the cobblestones. Making a beeline for a building, narrow and gray, festooned with fairy-lights, Hei keeps his shoulders high against the wind that stirs the hem of his long overcoat. Flashbacks unspool, of that time he'd left expensive lingerie in Korra's room and called her down to a swanky motel in the Underground. But the charge of energy between them couldn't be more different now. ]

[ The suite he books is on the fifteenth floor, furnished in that neutral zone of peaches, beiges and dark wood finishes. He allows Korra to step in, but remains hovering at the doorway himself, his energy thrumming with a quiet impatience to leave, to track down a sorcerer or witch, someone who can dispel this particular curse. ]

[ To Korra, an attempt at businesslike that skews toward reassuring, ]

Will you be okay on your own?

[anatural]

[She rolls her eyes, in absolutely no mood to be gracious.]

Pretty sure I can handle sleeping alone in a bedroom. I've done it since I was six. [Not entirely true -- for most of those years she slept with Naga nearby -- but true enough for their purposes. She doesn't need to be babysat. And she'd really rather not be around him right now. He pretty clearly doesn't want too be around her. (Not that she can really blame him.)]

[mortemscintilla]

[ He tries not to let the waspishness get to him. It's just the patented teenage sulkiness, with an extra Avatar-flavored dose of I Am An Adult And Can Handle Myself. The attitude reminds him strongly of how Pai could sometimes be -- headstrong, stubborn, sulking for ages without deviation. He draws in a slow breath, exhales with a resigned look, and gazes down at her, a flicker of lashes that hides his eyes and yet suggests a brief hint of gentleness. ]

I'll be back once I've found a mage.

[anatural]

[She's tempted to say Sure, whatever, but what comes out instead is]

Don't take too long.

[She hates being trapped waiting.]

[mortemscintilla]

[ Don't take too long. As if wasting time is even an option in such circumstances. ]

[ Hei leaves her at the hotel, his calm underpinned by a distant hum of anxiety. Something is rising inside him -- an innate hunger for violence, an itch to let off the massed tension in his body. The news of Korra's dreams hasn't sparked it. But it's certainly made it worse. It's like a lit fuse -- red-tipped and hot and buzzing -- that runs from his mind to his muscles, ready to ignite at any moment. It's only through a careful sense of monitoring that it doesn't. ]

[ By 2 AM, he's combed his way through the Underground's magic dens. Has endured the hairy eyeballs of a lot of things that don't have eyeballs at all, or else are nothing but eyeballs. He's snapped the necks of two vampires who started tailing him near the Circus Carnivore, has had streetwalkers descend on him like clouds of mosquitoes, alarming and desensualizing in their numbers, been solicited by a large percentage of grotesque creatures selling cure-all drugs, their bodies dotted with needle marks and surgery scars, been bodily thrown out of one dive down by the waterfront, and has the beginnings of a migraine. ]

[ But after a stop at a yuppie-sorcerers' coffee shop, for the largest, blackest, joltiest thing on the menu, he finds a suitable mage. A twenty-something girl, with enormous green gages in her ears, and frizzy black hair scraped into a ponytail to reveal a ruddy round face that is neither plain nor pretty, decorated in about a dozen silver piercings. Her credentials seem solid; she's done a number of spells to erase bad juju infesting Gysahl on the Green. But Hei prefers to be sure. Wandering idly around the periphery of the coffee shop, listening to her chatter, he whips a blade from his coat without warning, before flinging it at the girl. ]

[ Who stops him, without shifting a muscle. In a blink, Hei finds himself detached from the ground, and held, in a way that is rather pleasant, a couple of feet up in the air, watching his blade float to the floor like a feather. ]

[ Well shit. ]

You're hired.

[ Now it's just a matter of returning to hotel, and having her work on Korra. ]

[anatural]

[By the time they get back, Korra is fast asleep. Willpower can only keep a person awake for so long. And unfortunately, just being in the Underground isn't enough to stop the dreams. She's curled up in a tight ball, a pillow between her legs, making soft sounds of frustration as she continues watching Hei and that woman have sex — frantic, fierce, even violent, and yet it's so clear that while he'd hurt her for her pleasure, he would never actually harm her. Envy roils deep in Korra's gut.]

[mortemscintilla]

[ He leaves the mage waiting in the upstairs lobby, before making his way to the room. A cursory knock, then he lets himself in. Korra is, predictably, asleep under the quilt. But it's not a calm slumber: he watches her tic and twitch, giving off heavy fumes of frustration even in repose. The dreams, evidently, haven't subsided. Something churns in Hei's stomach: disquiet, and a weird sensation that is sister to shame. He has no idea what she's seeing -- but it's terrible that she should be seeing anything at all. ]

[ Even as a spy, he thinks there is such a thing as Too Much Information. Especially if it just rubs salt on your wounds. ]

[ Reaching out, he touches her shoulder -- a light skim of fingertips. ]

Hey. Wake up.

[anatural]

[Korra comes awake with a gasp and a shudder, as though something has been ripped from her. Her skin feels clammy.]

You're back.

[Does that mean...?]

[mortemscintilla]

I found someone who can help.

[ His eyes stay on her, emotion absent in the set of his expression. But at the edges, there's something there, like a wisp of smoke eking out through the gap in the door. It's warm enough to suggest reassurance, but there's a certain tension to it that it's the only thing Hei bothers to verbalize. ]

She says it -- [ extracting the stray fragments of his memories from her psyche ] -- might hurt a little.

[anatural]

[Korra's not focused enough to catch the wisps of concern; the only thing she registers is the blankness in his expression as he says "It might hurt a little". She doesn't like the way that sounds.]

So where is she?

[mortemscintilla]

[ Hei half-wants to take her hand, give it a squeeze. But it doesn't seem like either an appropriate gesture or moment. Instead he fetches the mage. She comes in briskly, like a nurse: a perfectly nondescript young woman, yet something about her holds the gaze. Maybe it is the eyes. They are perfectly ordinary: round, stubby-lashed, deep-set. But it is difficult to tell their color. They seem to be all colors at once, including ones eyes don't usually come in, like the fuchsia of sunset, and the green of the first sprigs of pine-trees. ]

[ To Korra, she extends a hand, bedecked in rings, ]

I understand you're suffering from Secondhand Dreams.

[ Is that what they call it? Hei thinks, but doesn't say anything. Instead he remains stationed by the door, part-sentinel, part-accomplice. Magic, unlike science, leaves him in a frustrated limbo where he can't do much to directly help the situation -- relieve some pressure, sure, but not to fix anything. ]

[anatural]

[Korra's addled enough that it takes her a moment to understand the handshake. When she shakes the other woman's hand, her grip is weak like a dead fish — she doesn't want to accidentally hurt the woman.]

Uh...is that what they're called?

[mortemscintilla]

[ The mage nods, her smile the pleasant neutrality of a professional's. The three piercings by the corner of her mouth seem to glow in the dark like tiny cigarette ends; Hei wonders, idly, if they are her power center. ]

Think of it as a smoke. Something you can inhale. Absorb into your body. Except once it's inside you, it becomes an open wound. Suppurating but never getting any better or worse. It's cloaked so it won't show up in physical examinations or images. But -- with your informed consent -- I can get it out.

[ Her attention shifts abruptly from Korra to Hei, and he finds himself caught in her scrutiny. That gaze of hers is somehow piercing; it makes him feel all laid open. On closer examination, he suddenly notes that she isn't twenty-something at all -- more like twice that -- and there is an eerieness to her girlish effervescence. ]

I can give you something too. For those dual auras of yours.

[ Dual auras? Hei's eyes narrow, first with confusion, then an angry burn of understanding. Tersely, ]

Stick to what I've paid you for.

[anatural]

I....still don't get it. [That explanation just made it even more confusing, honestly. And then she's talking about dual auras and no, seriously, Korra has no idea what's going on.]

But you can stop the dreams, right? [Let's stick to what's important, please!]

[mortemscintilla]

 Of course. But it will sting.

[ The mage offers a genial, soft-edged smile which promises to go slowly for her patient's benefit. She presses her hand to Korra's forehead, like a mother taking a child’s temperature. Then she turns and fixes her flickering scalpel eyes on Hei. ]

She'll be feverish afterward. But nothing worse than the symptoms of a mild flu.

[ When she glances back at Korra, the air around her seems to shimmer, the way the ocean's surface does when struck by sunlight, all dancing dappled colors. Her eyes go large and dark, and a huge wet pouting sucker abruptly surfaces where her mouth should be, of such a bilious paleness that just looking at it makes Hei's balls want to crawl up into his body. ]

[ Before he can move -- or protest -- the woman presses the huge pullulating lips to Korra's temple, It is like a kiss. But there is no avoiding the obscene wet smacking sound as they touch the skin, fastening close, leechlike. It goes on and on, as if the thing is sucking out the complete contents of Korra's pretty little head. ]