[ It's her survival he's interested in. Anything beyond that -- happiness, fulfillment, family -- is wishful thinking. Contractors are something that exist independently of human society. Indifferent to the needs and desires of everyone living in the cloistered civilian realm, they lumber ever on, carrying out the instructions of the Syndicate's Frankensteins. No one can truly love a monster, especially a dangerous one, but they can exploit it, and this is what the Syndicate has always done. They exploit it in every possible way, united in their cold hatred for anything different. ]
[ But Hei isn't as resigned to the trade as he lets on. There is nothing rational about prolonging a life of endless misery. But there is nothing rational about struggling in the web of barbed-wire when you are ill-equipped to break free. BK201 is in it for the long game. With each mission, he's simply biding his time. He always has been. Life as a Syndicate lackie is a means to an end. His goal is to learn what happened to Pai. To repay Amber for her betrayal. Until he's accomplished that, he's not going to die. He might say he has, inside him, a calendar of sorts -- a measure of his days, and on each page is a list of errands and sufferings, setbacks and triumphs, he has yet to carry out. ]
[ He isn't sure how many pages there are, or what's on every page. Nor does he wish to. But he intuits that calendar is still quite thick. ]
[ That's nothing he'd bother explaining to Korra. Let her believe he's just a compliant cog in the complex machinery of wetwork. It's safer that way. Cogs don't have agendas. Cogs don't have histories or traumas or raison d'etres. They function mindlessly, therefore they are. ]
[ His chin nudges upward in a tiny jerk -- dismissal, indifference. He lets her pad toward the bedroom. Wrenches open the fridge, where there are a few cold diet cokes and a handful of whiskey bottles. He sips from a sweating can while the air-conditioner labors in the sweltering air, then opens the bottle of whiskey and swallows one burning mouthful. ]
[ He's not interested in getting drunk. Just in melting those frozen knots of anger that still throb inside him. Because Pai is gone -- consumed in a flash of white light, all her energy and potential and bright-blooming life sapped away. Yet here is this eerie doppelganger -- Pai-yet-not -- alive yet completely, selfishly wasteful of her existence. ]
![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2015-03-16 03:18 am (UTC)[ But Hei isn't as resigned to the trade as he lets on. There is nothing rational about prolonging a life of endless misery. But there is nothing rational about struggling in the web of barbed-wire when you are ill-equipped to break free. BK201 is in it for the long game. With each mission, he's simply biding his time. He always has been. Life as a Syndicate lackie is a means to an end. His goal is to learn what happened to Pai. To repay Amber for her betrayal. Until he's accomplished that, he's not going to die. He might say he has, inside him, a calendar of sorts -- a measure of his days, and on each page is a list of errands and sufferings, setbacks and triumphs, he has yet to carry out. ]
[ He isn't sure how many pages there are, or what's on every page. Nor does he wish to. But he intuits that calendar is still quite thick. ]
[ That's nothing he'd bother explaining to Korra. Let her believe he's just a compliant cog in the complex machinery of wetwork. It's safer that way. Cogs don't have agendas. Cogs don't have histories or traumas or raison d'etres. They function mindlessly, therefore they are. ]
[ His chin nudges upward in a tiny jerk -- dismissal, indifference. He lets her pad toward the bedroom. Wrenches open the fridge, where there are a few cold diet cokes and a handful of whiskey bottles. He sips from a sweating can while the air-conditioner labors in the sweltering air, then opens the bottle of whiskey and swallows one burning mouthful. ]
[ He's not interested in getting drunk. Just in melting those frozen knots of anger that still throb inside him. Because Pai is gone -- consumed in a flash of white light, all her energy and potential and bright-blooming life sapped away. Yet here is this eerie doppelganger -- Pai-yet-not -- alive yet completely, selfishly wasteful of her existence. ]