[ Hei is aware that she's tailing him. But it will be easy enough to shake her off. It is no reflection on her skills as a street artist. It is just that tailing someone efficiently requires an organized team of associates. In fact, most spycraft is the same: an exercise in uneasy trust, the science of getting people to work with and for you without ever compromising the essential solitude of your position. ]
[ Except for that debacle with Amber. There, he was compromised in every sense. He'd known UB001's reputation as a calculating puppet-master, a ruthless hellraiser. He'd known everything he stood to lose if he misstepped in their chess-game, if he made himself vulnerable to the outpouring of emotion. ]
[ Yet he'd done it anyway. He'd trusted a viper. She'd only been interested in him as prey -- an interest he'd mistaken for affection. He'd invented a heart for her -- only to be bitten by her fangs. That was the rotten core of the truth. ]
[ The trip to the address is a blur. He is wired, hyper-alert, but he isn't fully conscious, either. Mostly he navigates by robotic instinct, a practiced tradecraft of twists and turns to brush off Korra, and tries not to think. Always, before these meetings with Amber, he feels like Schrödinger's cat, trapped in a steel box, neither dead nor alive, waiting for the intervention of some outside event to resolve his ambiguous state once and for all and deliver him from purgatory. ]
[ (Except ... doesn't he feel that way every fucking minute?) ]
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Date: 2015-03-22 12:00 am (UTC)[ Hei is aware that she's tailing him. But it will be easy enough to shake her off. It is no reflection on her skills as a street artist. It is just that tailing someone efficiently requires an organized team of associates. In fact, most spycraft is the same: an exercise in uneasy trust, the science of getting people to work with and for you without ever compromising the essential solitude of your position. ]
[ Except for that debacle with Amber. There, he was compromised in every sense. He'd known UB001's reputation as a calculating puppet-master, a ruthless hellraiser. He'd known everything he stood to lose if he misstepped in their chess-game, if he made himself vulnerable to the outpouring of emotion. ]
[ Yet he'd done it anyway. He'd trusted a viper. She'd only been interested in him as prey -- an interest he'd mistaken for affection. He'd invented a heart for her -- only to be bitten by her fangs. That was the rotten core of the truth. ]
[ The trip to the address is a blur. He is wired, hyper-alert, but he isn't fully conscious, either. Mostly he navigates by robotic instinct, a practiced tradecraft of twists and turns to brush off Korra, and tries not to think. Always, before these meetings with Amber, he feels like Schrödinger's cat, trapped in a steel box, neither dead nor alive, waiting for the intervention of some outside event to resolve his ambiguous state once and for all and deliver him from purgatory. ]
[ (Except ... doesn't he feel that way every fucking minute?) ]