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

[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. ]

[anatural]

[No thanks, I’ll keep the sex nightmares. Korra screams and scrambles back on the bed, but she can't get away from the thing. She keeps screaming as something is ripped out of her, like hairs being ripped from her skin. Not just the memories, but her strength.

When it's done, she collapses back onto the bed, panting and trembling.]

[mortemscintilla]

[ Korra's scream makes something in Hei's stomach clench, hot-red arrows of alarm whizzing beneath his skin and piercing the surface in a spring-loaded blur of motion. When the mage detaches herself from Korra, with a loud disgusting pop, he elbows past her. Gathering Korra up, framing her face in his palms, then clasping her shuddering shoulders, arms and hands, doing a head-to-toe sweep that feels more like an aborted embrace than an examination. Nothing seems damaged. The skin where the mage's puckered lips fastened on is stretched and white, but unbroken. As Hei watches, it smoothes and regains color before his eyes. ]

[ From the corner of his gaze, he can see the mage's body undulating, like some gruesome undersea animal getting ready to spew a million tiny offspring into the water. He gets the sense that she's not just absorbed the magic into herself: she is diffusing it, filtering it, feeding on it. As he blinks, she slithers into and out of a dozen manifestations, human and demon, big and small, before returning, seemingly without having moved, to the original one. ]

[ When she does, she smiles. Glances at Hei, her mouth its usual red-lipped shape, eyes restored to their strange aurora-borealis of colors, and nods, ]

It's done. [ Then, gentler, to Korra, ] You'll be fine by tomorrow.

[anatural]

[Korra's not sure how much she believes that. She feels like she's been gutted, like her insides have been ripped out with a rusty spoon. She buries her head against Hei's neck and struggles to breathe. She can't even remember why she went through this agonizing exercise.]

[mortemscintilla]

[ Korra presses closer, her eyes all wild and swimmy like a mute suffering kitten's, and Hei gathers her in for a moment. Smooths a palm down her back, whip-tense and juddering, content for the moment just to cradle the big warm silky bundle of her, listen to the thub of her heart, soaking up her fevery heat. He hopes the procedure is a success. Hopes this trouble will pass away and be forgotten, or if not forgotten, be as unimportant in Korra's everlasting now as the trouble he's made for her himself. ]

[ When her shakes have subsided, he eases her back onto the sheets. Refocuses on the mage, who is watching them with a shade too much interest, eyes squinched with humor. Or is it satire? ]

[ Rising, Hei ushers her out. He's paid her half her fee in advance; the rest of the payment, he'll fulfill once Korra passes through the night without a shadow of those ... Secondhand Dreams. Returning to the room, he shuts the door behind him with amuted click. Hesitates, then settles at the edge of Korra's bed, not quite looking at her. ]

You need anything?

[anatural]

[You could hold me again. Like she would ever say that. He's going through his rapid cycles of hot and cold, holding her close and then acting like she's contagious. So she just shakes her head.]

I'm fine. Not sure I'll be able to get back to sleep tonight. [She slept long enough, if not quite well, before the mage that she's tired but not sleepy.]

[mortemscintilla]

[ Whatever Hei's feeling over the course of events, he keeps buried and unreadable. Ideally, he should send Korra back Topside. But he needs to ensure the mage's spell worked. It's necessary to monitor Korra, at least for a single night. That she claims she's not sleepy doesn't particularly pique him; it's the adrenaline rush from the recent commotion, leaving her body pent-up, her brain fizzing over with ideas yet weighed down with a different sort of exhaustion. He knows what that's like, because he's felt it, too. ]

[ Except his mind shies from memories of how he'd remedied it once, with Amber. Life and warmth reasserting themselves. Reminders that they were still human, including all the flaws and frailties. In their line off work, that was easy to dismiss. ]

[ But Korra isn't Amber. And he can't keep using her this way. Building her up into a vast, soaring cathedral of the innocent, the feminine, the Pai-like. Yet also a blank canvas in that no man's land of anonymity, where he can cast her in whatever role gets him hard: daredevil, ingenue, pitiful victim of his cruel machinations; weak-willed, soft-hearted, half-witted fucktoy, love-starved dupe. She is more than a piece of meat to unhinge his jaw, sharpen his teeth, draw out his claws. ]

[ He keeps his gaze angled away. Murmurs, in the same tone he might've used for, Lattes are half-off at Starbucks, ]

I can give you some of my sleeping pills.

[anatural]

[Korra shakes her head. She's had enough of outside forces having their way with her body — even if it's something as benign as a sleeping pill. She carefully moves off the bed, on the other side from him.]

I think I'll just head home. [She can always run through her katas until she's ready to sleep. Or try meditating again. Meditating is good for making her sleepy...when it's not making her annoyed and frustrated.] Thanks for the help.

[mortemscintilla]

[ Thanks for the help. ]

[ Her gratitude is the last thing he deserves. It feeds something queasy inside him, a bad feeling that slowly coalesces into disgust. Then something else. Almost... regret. How odd. He's accustomed to expressions of gratitude, even declarations of undying love, from a mark. But beyond a certain satisfaction with successful progress, he'd rarely allowed himself to feel anything out of character until after the op was done. This is different -- yet not. It is his own ass he saved, not Korra's. His efforts were stirred by nothing but self-preservation, so that his most valuable, most vulnerable memories wouldn't be used against him further. A miser clutching at gold straws. ]

[ Selfish, self-serving, and yeah, fucking right, he is all those things. Exhausted, confused, brimming in self-loathing. ]

[ And hungry. ]

[ Watching Korra move off the bed, the urge to reach for her, to trace his fingers across her skin, is like the Reaper gloating: You'll never be better than that. Never be anything more than a born user, ready to chew up and spit out whoever is convenient to you. ]

[ Forcibly, he shakes it off. He refuses to think of it that way. (Even if it's the truth.) Korra is wired and tense; needy. He knows a trick or two, at least, to relieve her of that. The best way to apologize for the recent trouble. And the only apology he can bring himself to offer at all. ]

[ Quietly, his gaze flickering to hers, ]

You could stay. There's a few other ways to tire you out.

[anatural]

[Korra glances at him. After everything they've been through today, she's surprised he's offering. Normally he'd retreat into himself, throw up all his walls.]

Is that an invitation? [It may be a bit of a stall. She's not exactly feeling sexy, and his manner isn't the most inviting.]