'Cause I'm a hazard to myself

[mortemscintilla]

WHO: Korra and Hei
WHAT: A series of mildly unfortunate events.

[ Another family visit, Hei thinks acidly, faking a gentle smile and general pleasantries as Tonraq and Senna feign to depart. Their fourth drop-in this month. Ostensibly because they were 'in the neighborhood' -- and not, in fact, because they're here to pressure 'Li' to stop cohabiting with their darling daughter, and man up and put a ring on her finger. Or, in this case, a necklace around her pretty neck. ]

[ Too bad it means a noose around his. ]

[ While Korra prattles with her parents at the doorway, he clears the remnants of dinner (roasted duck stuffed with mushrooms and chilis and pickled carrots) from the table. Calm, cheerful -- but inwardly steeped in the foulness of his mood. Asami has dropped by too: he can hear her giggling at something Tonraq says, hers and Korra's murmurs braiding together in a lilting weave. The whole house is filled with girlish sweetness and family-friendly light, and it is making him unbearably disgusted. ]

[ Stewing, he rinses the dishes with sudsy fingers, watching the briskness of his own hands. They seem so unnatural cradling crockery. They always do. But lately everything else feels like a big pile of unnatural too: the factory-work too tedious, the Beach House's walls too close, the number of guests that drop by every evening too smothering, Asami buzzing around as if she lives here, Tonraq always blustering at Hei's elbow, brimful with manly advice and carefully-worded questions on Hei's future plans, while Senna pokes at every nook and cranny of the kitchen like some creepily Korra-shaped domestic!cop. ]

[ And here is the question: why doesn't he put his foot down? Tell Korra to stop letting Asami over so often? Demand that the 'in-laws' limit their pestering? It's his house too, and who would dare to argue it? It would be reclaiming his life along with it, because it is -- it is like a symbol of something. Of everything. No third wheels, no nosy parents. Why hasn't he? ]

[ Because Tonraq and Senna are nice and unfussy and down-to-earth. Because you don't mind having them around -- in limited doses. Because the same goes for Asami. She's a damn sight better than having Mako or Bolin or those obnoxious Air-Babies over. Also because they're Korra's family, and after all the ways she's accepted you, it's high time you return the favor. ]

[ A twinge of guilt flares. Hei deals with it the only way he knows how. He turns the radio on to the Jazz station, and cranks it up just high enough to cut into conversation. He can feel the others eyeballing him, and looks up winningly, wrist-deep in dishwater. ]

Have a safe trip back.

[ More farewells, more yadda yadda, and then Tonraq, Senna, and finally Asami are out the door, Korra closing it behind them. Hei snaps off the radio at once. Wiping his wet hands on a dishtowel, he mutters, to preempt Korra's prospective scolding, ]

Nice people. But after four hours, I prefer them off the premises.

Comments

[anatural]

[What's so ominous about one little piece of paper?]

Outdated and pointless?

[She stares at him, hurt despite herself. Her head may know it's nothing personal, but her heart can't help kind of taking it personally.]

What is that supposed to mean?

[mortemscintilla]

[ The fact that it's never just a little piece of paper. It's a contract to uphold an institution governed by laws and regulations. Who needs that? ]

[ The whole conversation pricks at Hei, angers him on some level he can't communicate, that after how many years she's known him, how familiar she is with his system of understanding, she'd still bring up marriage as if he's the type to accept it with open arms and a choir of tinkling bells. But he makes himself let that go. It's easy to forget the discrepancies in their backgrounds. Korra was raised as a prodigy, a shining star, the most pedestalized of Good Girls. She is a good girl, truth be told -- diametrically opposed to the deceitful and self-serving lifestyle Hei has practiced for years. To her, marriage is a joyful inevitability, a sparkly lure at the end of a bright tunnel of romance, courtship, and good sex. It's what normal, decent people do. ]

[ Too bad Hei isn't normal or decent. He's a Contractor. In many ways still a consummate professional -- and they are never transported by sentiment. Love is your own poison of choice, but he's learnt never to be carried away because of it, longing for commitment, or hoping to move the 'relationship' to the next level. For him, it's expedience -- pure and simple. ]

[ Shutting the cabinet with a forcefully quiet click, he faces her. His face is closed up, flatly inexpressive. But it's a dismissal more than a rebuke. ]

I mean it's a relic of bygone days. It tries to define your relationship. There are no benefits to it. None that make sense, anyway.

[anatural]

My parents are married. Tenzin & Pema are married. Varrick and Zhu Li are married. Even Bolin & Opal are married. I wouldn't exactly call it "a relic of bygone days."

[She crosses her arms across her chest, despite the instinct to wrap them around her belly. She's wishing that she hadn't brought up the marriage topic. She's just made bringing up the real issue that much harder. But she's also riled up enough that she can't let the topic drop. For someone who claims to be as coldly rational as he does, he can be so freaking irrational.]

[mortemscintilla]

[ As far as he's concerned, she's the one being irrational. That argumentum ad populum shit hardly makes marriage a commendable decision. If her friends and family want to tie the knot, that's their funeral. There are plenty of others who never do -- and are perfectly sane and happy. Why does she want to get married anyway? She's never expressed a desire for it before. Least of all with someone like him. A piss-poor boyfriend, who will by all rights be the worst type of husband. He can almost imagine his vows to her at the altar: I solemnly swear I will let you down. ]

[ The idea makes his stomach curdle. When he regards her, it's with a baffled irritation, deliberately tamped down. ]

It is. [ Words that should be flat rise instead from a deep, tight place in his chest. ] It's also insecure as hell -- because people seek social acceptance by marrying. The security of a label. Like their relationship isn't good enough until society gives its stamp of approval. After which it's magically a respectable union with substance. [ His lip curls, weariness, disdain. ] That's not how it works.

[ Because you commit deeds, not words. How can she not understand that? He's committed to her -- one-hundred percent hers, firing all the cylinders -- without the irrelevancy of rings and vows. Isn't it enough? ]

[anatural]

What would you know about it? [Korra glowers at him.] You avoid spending time with them. You won't spend time with anyone who's actually happy. If you're not here, talking to nobody, or at the factory talking to nobody, you're out with the most miserable, angry, messed up dredges of society. You talk like you know everything about everything, but you refuse to leave your little corner of misery.

[It drives her nuts --- had always driven her nuts --- how he isolates himself in cynicism and unhappiness. When given the opportunity to see a different side of life, too be with people who aren't completely miserable, he rejects it with an almost full-body horror. The most frustrating part is she understands where he's coming from. She's done the same thing herself, in the City, right after returning home, after being poisoned. She understands the jaded impulse. But art the end of the day, that dark cynicism just eats you alive. She doesn't want that for him.]

[mortemscintilla]

[ In a blink, the irritation extinguishes, blotted out by the red-hot flare of rage. He might be trapped in his reality-tunnel as surely as she is trapped in hers. But there's a reason he's never comfortable around her circle. He has nothing in common with them. He's grown up in a world where ruthlessness and rage secure your survival in a lopsided society -- unlike compliance, which leads to slavery, starvation and death. Goodness does not pay a living wage. There is always a disconnect between him and the normal world -- and there always will be. They don't speak the same language, or inhabit the same culture. ]

[ And is it such a loss? Most normal people are indistinguishable in their all-encompassing ignorance: a river of well-fed selfishness, a contagion of insecure conceit. What's more, they thrive at the expense of those "miserable, angry, messed up dredges of society." The shadow world Hei dwells in exists solely so that human beings can live their true nature, express their darkest drives, without endangering the stability of everyday life -- the illusion of wholesome society -- which is the very bedrock of every culture. ]

[ When he speaks, the words are cold with anger and a deeper layer of contempt. ]

My little corner of misery is the reason those happy people stay happy. [ Gutters exist to maintain the beauty of palaces, isn't that the saying? It's not a gross generalization when he's seen it and lived it, knowing the privilege of the Normal Half was just a flipside of the misery of child-soldiers, hustlers, thieves and conmen. People like him. ] So excuse me if I don't join them in their perfect bubble.

[anatural]

Oh please. You give yourself too much credit. [She can't keep sitting. She pushes herself to her feet, almost vibrating with anger.] You just want to believe your misery lets other people stay happy so you have an excuse to stay miserable. So you can indulge in your twisted superiority complex.

[mortemscintilla]

[ Hei stays where he is, unblinking, his pose one of locked-in rigidity. There is rage beneath the smooth surface of his face -- real rage -- and more. Belief. Because it would make it easier to accept that his weltanschauung is fabricated to nurse the festering sores of his bitterness. That permeating his every thought, souring every remark, tainting every conviction, is prejudice and resentment, and something worse: blind hatred for anything happy and flourishing. ]

[ Except it's not that simple. He's lived in a state of privation almost all his life -- coasting by his wits, on the edge of the blade, under relentless attack. It's more than just a matter of resenting the Better Half because they could never know what it's like to crouch inside a muddy trench with sores on your filthy bare feet, shivering under a blanket that's too thin for the winter, or to have skin bloody with flea-bites and chiggers, or rocks tied with ropes to your stomach to stave off those wrenching hunger-pangs. ]

[ It's worse than that. He's disconnected from the happy people, the privileged, because they speak entirely different vocabularies. All their problems are social and psychological. An asshole boss. A dismal commute. A stale sandwich. A depressing job. But suppose you are programmed in a totally different way. Suppose your very existence is constantly under fire, and there is no way out -- no way out but to blackmail and fuck and kill. That is how Hei has lived. As a walking target, a whipping-toy, one of the million scapegoats who exist to keep those on top plump and smiling and well-dressed. ]

[ He was simply lucky enough -- unrelenting enough -- to break free. ]

'Excuse'. [ The words are quiet, but hold an edge of finely honed disgust. How can someone be so willfully obtuse? ] There were no 'excuses' where I was, Korra. You were either alive and miserable -- or you were dead. No in-between. Maybe my problem is rationalizing the world according to how I lived it. But yours is denial. If you think you and your friends live those squeaky-clean lives without someone else paying the price for it, I wonder if you've learnt anything about being the Avatar at all.

[anatural]

[Of course he thinks that SHE'S being "willfully obtuse". Of course he calls her life "squeaky clean" when it hasn't been, not since she was seventeen. She didn't grow up a child soldier, but she's been in the thick of a bloody, brutal war. She has made decisions she can never tell her parents about for the sake of the greater good. And she has seen the terrible things he's done and said nothing. Her hands are not clean. She knows more than perhaps he realizes of how the suffering of some supports the comfort of others. She and the people she cares about --- the people he refuses to get involved with, to know at all --- are working every day to change that. Not just herself and Asami, admittedly children of privilege, but Mako and Bolin, who grew up knowing suffering and privation, who have had to get their hands dirty to survive.

A few years ago, she would've tried to slap him for talking to her like that. Even now her anger is itching to manifest in violence, physicality being the way she prefers to express feeling. But she holds herself back. A fight with him would be brutal... She's confident that she could beat him, but the cost isn't worth contemplating. She has a life to protect.]

You can think whatever you want. [She forces herself to breathe, deep steady gulps until the urge to keep fighting is under control. She can't tell him about the pregnancy, not tonight. Not until they've both calmed down.] I'm going to spend the night somewhere else.

[mortemscintilla]

[ He'll never deny she's witnessed brutality, or suffered unimaginable extremes of it. Sometimes at his own hands. But her very position grants her heights of privilege, of freedom, that ensure that she will enjoy benefits, head-starts and open doors that are impossible for anyone else. That she will remain untouched -- not necessarily by negative societal mistreatment, but by the exclusion that is its worst sort of dehumanization, where her sufferings, her self, are invisible. She doesn't realize that no matter what her sacrifices, she is in the seat of power. It cannot be taken away from her -- despite how relentlessly her enemies have tried. Whereas it's all too easy to take everything away from the pariahs and dregs. Most don't have anything to begin with -- and very little to lose. ]

[ He won't bother to explain that. Or attempt to sympathize with Mako and Bolin. He knows the nitty-gritty of their childhood. Bolin blabs about it often enough. But suffering is not a competition, and rarely stands up to comparison. The boys existed at the fringes as street-urchins -- but they were people in their own right. They were able to snatch at that much. Hei and Pai weren't allowed even that sliver of autonomy. They were not part of the real world. They were like wraiths, locked away in dank tombs and summoned only to dispense destruction and death. Not people, but creatures confined to the shadows. Someone like that has no common language with those who thrive in the light. ]

[ He can feel Korra's righteous anger threatening to dissolve into the burn of violence. (Funny. For her, it's a matter of whether she can beat him or not. Whereas for Hei ... He's killed for less, and could do so as easily as breathing. Such a pity he won't. Love has washed him under and left him a boneless corpse where his self-respect is concerned.) ]

[ He doesn't answer her. Simply steps out of the way, a loose fan of fingers in a gesture of weary dismissal. She's free to go swanning around with the Happy People, to imagine her trials and tribulations are some twisted measure of recompense for the downtrodden, or whatever special little Avatars do to assure themselves they're just like everybody else. ]

[anatural]

[Thank you, kind sir, for your most magnanimous dismissal. She is humbled by your willingness to tolerate her offensively entitled presence. You are truly the most open-hearted of men.

(And no, for Korra, it's not a matter of if she could beat him or not. She knows that, if she went into the Avatar state, she could destroy him. He fights dirty, but so did Unalaq, so did Kuvira, so did Amon, and she has defeated them all. The question is whether she could beat him without destroying everything.)

She slams the door behind her, the only violent release she'll allow herself until she gets to Asami's. There she'll probably render her friend's punching bag into dust before curling up and bursting into great, wracking sobs. How can he love her and think so little of her?]

[mortemscintilla]

[ How? Because if he blinds himself to her flaws -- and the girl has a handful -- he might as well shoot himself through the head in a spray of red confetti. Take away his critical faculty, his ability to judge and measure with both eyes open, and you've taken away Hei. A lobotomy would be preferable. ]

[ Not that it matters. The girl has her flaws -- but Hei is perfectly aware his own cast a monolithic shade over them. ]

[ He listens to the door slam, and something heavy shoots down his spine like a ballistic missile. He can't tell if she was out of line, or if he was. Somehow it's besides the point. They need a buffer of space between them to stew and then cool down. It's what he's learnt to do -- to be patient, to bide his time, to let the mass of conflicting impulses inside him -- remorse, resentment, hurt, anger -- cancel themselves out and leave him quietly drained. They always do this, he and Korra. Bypass any number of several smaller, more harmless fights, and instead bear straight for the championship match, a big rude bloodbath of shouts and angst. ]

[ Distantly, he thinks: This can't be healthy. But there's not much in his life that is, so it's a pretty low bar. ]

[ He doesn't stay in the Beach House. Once he's determined Korra is at Asami's (big surprise), he hits the town. A cool mizzle hangs in the air, and he gets shit-faced at the tavern near the factory and, on old impulse, goes out prowling for live targets, more interested in the fight -- the more knock-down-drag-out the better -- than in the kill. But his kill rate the first few hours is enough to get the word out. Some low-lives flee their usual haunts. Others step up brazenly to the challenge. ]

[ Each hard fight for his life is crowned with that vivid lusty feeling of triumph, sheer joy in existence, strength, cunning. In being himself. Each battle in a smelly back alley is another incremental battle with himself. I'm fucking well here and here is where I don't hang my head. ]

[ That largeness doesn't last. He lurches into the Beach House in the morning, and crawls into the rumpled, empty bed with an ache on his heart, in his head. Dawn is his lowest time. His dreams are grotesque and viscerally ugly: he doesn't remember them when he jerks awake, covered in cold sweat, except for the frightful image of Korra sprawled kissingly-close, white as the sheets, with blood pulsing in thick streams between her thighs. ]

[ In the afternoon, bruised, hungover, he pads into the kitchen. Dustmotes shimmer in the elongated rectangle of sunlight flowing at the window. Blinking blearily, he begins to assemble breakfast. He has no idea if Korra will return or not. But if she does, she will find an apology, offered in his own way. A bowl of lychee yuan xiao in the fridge. ]

[ Not a complete admission of I'm sorry, but an insinuating one. ]

[anatural]

[He's the only one impressed with critical facilities. Korra certainly doesn't think much of them, and if Asami has any opinion, she wisely doesn't say anything. She lets Korra cry herself to sleep in her arms, neither saying anything in Hei's defense when she rages, or anything against him that might compel Korra to defend him when she just wants to vent. When morning comes, she has a big breakfast sent up, and tells Korra they're going shopping before she can suggest angry revenge sex. These are just some of the reasons Asami is the best friend ever.

They stick to the high-end shops in Republic City, both out of Asami's natural inclination, and because Korra doesn't want to be anywhere near Hei's seedy haunts, knowing what she knows about how he lets out stress. They skip dinner at Kwong's and instead get fruit cups from a street vendor.

As the sun starts to set, Asami says You still need to go home and tell him. And Korra says I know.

Going home is hard. The closer she gets, the more she wants to throw up everything she ate in the bushes. She has to stop on the front porch to make sure she isn't going to lose it all on the floor. Finally, because she can't put it off any longer, she opens the door.]

[mortemscintilla]

[ It's been a long day at the factory. He's stepped out stoop-shouldered and hollow-eyed, carrying the smell of metal and ozone in the weave of his clothes. Before the beginning and ends of their shifts, most of the workers loosen stiff joints using the exercises the productivity expert has taught them: deep knee bends and hip swivels. They look like an old-timers football team prepping to take the field. Knuckles and knees cracking, elbow joints popping -- Hei has learnt to tell whose elbow or knee without even looking: each man's body had its own disconcerting sounds. ]

[ Drifting home in the slanting evening sunrays, he knows he's going to quit by the end of the month. The place was fine for settling on his feet after his Lost In Space saga. But he needs a more stimulating job -- or else he's going to stab someone from the monotony. ]

[ He arrives at the Beach House to find the place empty. No sign of Korra. Ignoring a tiny pang of disappointment, he lumbers upstairs to shower and change. In the kitchen, he pours himself a cup of sake, then two, before promptly appropriating the whole bottle. Settling crosslegged by the window, he sips slowly, staring blankly into space. Unsure what to do with himself next. Laundry. Housecleaning. Supper. A book. The minutiae of his domestic sphere are uncompelling. The silence and the sunlight holds him fast. ]

[ It's a long time before he hears the subdued clinks and scrapes of the door opening. His heart tumbles sickly, ears straining. The key might as well be scraping out the lock of his gut the way his body hollows itself at the sound. ]

[ When the door opens, he doesn't get up. He remains where he is, bottle dangling between loose fingers, as he monitors Korra from a few diplomatic yards of distance. ]

[anatural]

[The bottle is the second thing she notices, and it puts her on high(er) alert. Sometimes — not often, but sometimes — liquor makes him playful and affectionate. More frequently, it makes him nasty. If he's too drunk, she'll put off giving him the news for another night, though now that she's home, she'd rather get it over with, the sooner to start picking up the pieces.]

How much of that have you had? [Her tone is more cautious than accusatory. She's just trying to get the lay of the land before she steps on another landmine.]

[mortemscintilla]

[ Getting it over with is a good idea. But it will still take a horse-pill of courage, considering Hei's red-rimmed eyes, the low-wattage intensity of his gaze. He's not the mean-drunk variety of bleary. Just soused enough that everything is hazy at the edges. He likes the Beach House. But it is always the wrong texture and shape when he's alone too long. The lamps make a muted geometry of triangular glows; the couches have a stuffed, intrusive presence; everything fits together neatly and too well, which he can usually ignore but tonight can't. The bowl of apples, the embroidered throws, the tasseled peppers on the kitchen wall. Domesticity, domesticity, everywhere he looks. ]

[ It asks for chaos, which is why chaos creeps out from the corners of his brain. ]

Enough that I won't ask how your visit to Asami's went.

[ His voice is at its most toneless, creating a distance cultivated for Korra's sake. Or for his own. (Or, simply because he is an asshole. Hei tolerates her flitting to and from Asami's place most days, but today the idea that the women were within ten feet of each other makes something in him sour.) ]

[anatural]

[We didn’t have sex But she's not going to justify herself to him. He's the one who opened the door to a more "open" relationship, and while they've redefined their boundaries, made clear what is & isn't acceptable for them, neither of them have made promises of exclusivity.]

I wouldn't tell you even if you did. [The last word is clipped off — she regrets speaking as soon as the words are out of her mouth, but of course it's too late then. She shakes her head and takes a breath.] Look, there's something I need to tell you.

[mortemscintilla]

[ It's not the exclusivity he's concerned about. It's the knowledge -- crippling, mournful -- that Asami is better suited to Korra than he is. The fact that Asami will be better at fulfilling Korra's needs, many of which Hei either overlooks in his default self-absorption, or which elude him so completely he dismisses them as irrelevant. Whereas Asami is sweet and solicitous, ever-willing to cater to Korra's flights of fancy, to smooth over any wrinkles and rough edges with her special brand of honeyed tact. ]

[ What, in comparison, does Hei have to offer? Lychee desserts? ]

[ Knock it off. He's picking at his own anxieties. ]

[ He ignores the bite in Korra's words. Ignores the sting that blooms then dies beneath a cloying gulp of alcohol. Just one swallow -- before he sets the bottle aside. Now isn't the time to be holding counsel with his good friend CH3CH2OH. Especially not when Korra is practically brimming with portent. He's not sure how he's aware of it. But he is, by subliminal degrees. Something about the way the air hums between them. Some instinctual understanding of the way tension bends space, altering gravity. ]

[ He doesn't know. He lets a breath out and waits. He waits, he realizes, the way he waits for the end of his life -- without expectation or desire. Just waiting. Resigned to whatever shape the thing will take. The familiar blankness is unsettling, but also unsurprising. ]

[ Flatly, ]

What?

[anatural]

[She doesn't like that look or tone either. When he's blank, he's unpredictable. When he's blank, he's even more dangerous. She doesn't like that blankness, but she's not afraid of it, not the way she was in the beginning, when their relationship was at its most toxic & twisted. He used to seem so large to her — stronger than her, a better fighter than her, darker than she could ever hope to wrap her mind around, with so much to teach her. Now he's only human, messy and complicated and just as lost as everybody else.

We’re all lost, she reminds herself, and it makes it easier for her to be patient with him.]

I'm pregnant. [Left unsaid, but obvious in her manner, I want to keep it.]

[mortemscintilla]

[ It's funny. For her, he's stopped being a dangerous enigma. But for him, she'll always be that shining, sweet-seventeen miracle. When they eat together, when they fuck, when they talk, that burning imprint of her never fades. She'll angle her head as she lies on the pillow, cant her hips a certain way as she leans across the counter, and the outline of her bone structure will seem more than just purely arousing to him. In his eyes, she's still Korra -- the older and younger versions mixing. Her hair not yet leeched a lighter shade by the sunlight. Her hands not yet filmed with fine callouses. Her face still padded to a beguiling softness. And he'll look at his own self and his body will no longer seem that scar-hardened, calcified thing, either. It is as if their young selves reappear when he's with her ... the strangest thing. ]

[ But those younger, other selves are never really gone, are they? All their possibilities. Why would they be? They're only waiting for you to chase them down and reclaim them. ]

[ She speaks, the words strung in a row like a bandoleer of grenades. But Hei can barely absorb them on account of the searing roar that fills his skull. Not an explosion. The opposite. Heat-vacuum. A rushing emptiness. But it's not because he doesn't feel anything. He's cycling through too many emotions, too fast -- terror, disgust, happiness, suspicion -- that they've dissolved in a blur. Dimly, he's aware of the stillness of his face, its look neither sharp nor stressed. ]

[ Why, he thinks, hadn't he seen this coming? He'd grown entirely too complacent these few months. Of course one big flaming pinwheel of a disaster would crash in on his life, destroy the peace. A baby is a disaster. The first pregnancy was traumatic enough. A presaging of Bad Things To Come, giftwrapped in sickening sentiment. Her miscarriage, the Red Lotus, her illness, her depression -- It was one of the bleakest eras of their relationship. Even as that time did nothing but seethingly brand into his psyche how deeply he loved her. ]

[ He does love her. Terribly, completely. Enough that he can't bear to lose her to a child. To anything. He's not going to let a stupid mistake given flesh come between them. ]

No.

[ Hard and emphatic. His gaze is black -- not burning but icy. No to the baby. No to keeping it. No to this whole surreal situation. ]

No.

[anatural]

[The sad fact is, if he loses her to anything — it's going to be himself. The ice in his voice hits her like a weapon, straight through her chest, but this time she's staying calm. Last night her temper — drained by socializing with her family, and by trying to cover for Hei's ill humor — got away from her. Today she's (a little more) in control.]

Sit down [She gestures to the chair nearest her] and we can talk about this.

[She can be flexible about it this time. The baby doesn't have a heartbeat yet; according to Southern Water Tribe custom, she can still terminate the pregnancy. She's willing to hear him out, weigh the risks and benefits as a couple, but she is not going to bow down to his knee-jerk autocratic instincts. She is not going to change her mind unless he indicates that he understands and respects her position.]

[mortemscintilla]

[ He hates when she's like this. Clear-eyed and calm in the face of his whirling inner-storm. It makes self-disgust race through him, delineating that monster within in a mordant-hot green that sizzles like acid. Already he feels like he's gone too far, sunk in too deep, when he hadn't meant to embark on this affair at all. Now suddenly -- a baby? No way in hell. It is obscene and impossible. He's not fit to be around one. He's certainly not going to let it drive a wedge between Korra and himself. ]

[ He doesn't drift closer. He stays where he is, cross-legged, knotted with tension. His mind is racing. But when he speaks the words come out dangerously flattened, paper-thin. ]

There's nothing to talk about.

[ In the back of his mind, unhindered by churning anxieties, ideas click together with the clarity of operational default. Why she'd brought up marriages yesterday. Why she'd been so punchy and defensive in the face of his corrosive criticisms. ]

[ He doesn't temper the bite in his gaze. ]

Does your family know? Is this why they kept dropping in? [ Sharper, ] Did you tell Asami too?

[anatural]

[If there's nothing to talk about, then why are you asking so many questions? She resists the urge to meet his nasty with nastiness.]

No, my family doesn't know. I didn't even know until yesterday morning. [She doesn't touch his comment about Asami. This isn't the conversation they need to be having right now.]

Come over here so we can talk about this.

[mortemscintilla]

[ It's is exactly the conversation they should be having. Because her silence is a resonating Yes. She'd told Asami, her best friend -- but not him, the goddamn sperm donor. It's Asami she goes to when she's distressed. It's Asami she confides all her tenderest and prickliest secrets to. Asami might be the chief occupant of her thoughts right now. Because no matter what he does or says, how he engages her attention, there is an undiluted link between the two women. Pure and touchingly true. Probably she only wants to keep the damn baby because she's at the age where she's secure enough to consider nesting. The fact that it's his DNA is incidental. As soon as he lets her down -- and he knows he will -- she'll remember she has Asami to fall back on. Once she gets a renewed taste of that, of a relationship that's as placid as a leaf floating in a spring pond, she won't want anything else. He, Hei, will be extraneous. ]

[ The cold certainty sets up inside him like an itch, until he can't stay still. ]

[ He doesn't listen to her. He shakes his head, dry-eyed and sere, and jerks to his feet. Instead of going to her, he goes to the kitchen. Yanks open the fridge, as if looking for something to eat, but it's really just to feel the cold air bathing his face. He takes nothing out. ]

[ Without turning around, he says, in that manner of plainspeaking that comes across as casual brutality. ]

I don't want a baby. Not now. Or ever.

[ It is a tragedy, just waiting to happen. The first time certainly was. The brief era while she'd been pregnant, while things were sheened with hope, she'd looked as if she had no thought in her pretty head. But his head had too many. Thoughts of what kind of father he'd be, thoughts of disappointing Korra, thoughts of great and miserable wrongness, of guns and wars and corpses and death, and even now as he speeds to outrace them it's oh, christ, oh christ -- ]

[ He refuses to allow a baby into their lives. Or worse, to allow Korra to carry it -- only to nearly lose her to a gore-red tide of complications like last time. ]

[anatural]

[That's not true at all, and if he weren't in such a mood, he would realize it. When she's struggling with her Avatar responsbilities, Hei is still the first person she talks to. When she's angry about something that's happened, she rants to him. He's the one who knows the details of her days; he's the one she comes home to. The only reason she told Asami about the pregnancy first is because she needed someone who would listen and not react with knee-jerk emotion. Her parents would insist on keeping the baby; Hei would insist on terminating. Asami is the only one who would let Korra work out her feelings for herself. That doesn't mean Asami is first & foremore in her thoughts; it doesn't mean Hei is irrelevant. It means that not everybody can be everything to everyone.

She sits down at the kitchen table and watches him stand at the fridge. She refuses to react to the brutality in his voice.]

What if I do?

[She's never really wanted one before. She isn't 100% sure she wants one now. Her feelings on the matter fluctuate from moment to moment. But what she definitely wants, what she needs from him, is to know that what she wants matters to him.]