You don't know how you got here
Mar. 14th, 2015 08:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mortemscintilla posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
fuse_boxWHO: Korra and Hei.
WHAT: Two Contractors after a messy hit.
[ The assignment is complete. After a fashion. ]
[ The target's stretch limousine explodes, a time-bomb hurtling at eighty miles per hour. Hei verifies the detonation in the side-view mirror of their getaway van. The brilliant flames glow across the express lane, a bonfire on a humid July night, the deadly cacophony fifty yards behind him on the I-95. The ferocity from the detonation rolls through the atmosphere, juddering both sides of the interstate and adjacent roads like in a San Francisco earthquake. Brake lights flare in a screeching chorus. Behind Hei, beyond the blazing limousine, four lanes of interstate crowded with cars, trucks, and motorcycles careen to an ear-splitting halt, too late for speed demons to swerve and avoid flying debris. ]
[ Their van keeps going. The target is dead. The botched mission completed in less than forty-eight hours. The teflon-coated politician inside the limo had coasted through a dream-life of caviar and champagne, bodyguards at his side, girls in his lap, boys paid to shoot and kill and girls trained to smile and please. A man who didn't hesitate to have his enemies dragged to the desert and fed to the buzzards. ]
[ A prominent Syndicate faction had become one of his problems. And so the politician became one of theirs. ]
[ All BK201 knows is what he'd been briefed on, during the overseas assignment. And that, in itself, isn't much. The less the killing-machines knew, the better. What mattered was that they rectified the situation as they'd been ordered to. ]
[ The remote trigger that sparked blast is still in Hei's gloved hand. With a zzzt and a curl of smoke, he shorts it out. Tosses it out the window, while their van lurches from right lane to left lane to right lane, threading traffic like a bulky needle, becoming a fast-moving blur vanishing down I-95. Hei exhales, absorbing the metal's chill; the van is a freezer. Across him is the only other survivor of the hit: NC-108. Korra. Both their faces are crusted in dried blood, clothes grimy, hair in tufts. But everything else is intact -- unlike the rest of their teammates. The politician managed to weed them out before they'd fully infiltrated his base. Two were murdered in their hotel room by a hitman dressed as a waiter. The other three were machine-gunned on the street last night during dinner in a café by hostiles in police uniforms. The Syndicate is still recovering their mangled bodies. ]
[ Hei and Korra were advised to abort the operation and contact their respective handlers. Neither had bothered. Hei, because his inner-completionist refused to leave the job undone. Korra, because -- let's face it -- she has a streak, miles wide, that compels her to throw herself into the maelstrom of disaster, daredevilry the cover for an easy exit. During their firefight with the politician's hitmen, Hei had to drag her away a few times from almost certain disembowelment or death -- narrow saves that made Korra grin like she was high, the fevery glow off her skin like an irradiated firefly. ]
[ Hei can't say it bodes well. Not for her -- or her long-term career. ]
[ It doesn't matter. They've both succeeded at this mission. Five dead teammates equal five less cuts on the final payment. There's a tidy sum waiting for the two of them. A quarter of a million dollars, each. Hei's cellphone has already vibrated with the message: FUNDS TRANSFERRED. ]
[ It's a living, he thinks, gazing out the window with a sedate veneer but a tensile edge to his jaw. Forty-eight hours, five eliminated associates, and he's earned $250,000. And all it took was a few scrapes and bruises, a tricky full-immersion identity, and a block of old-fashioned C-4. ]
[ The Syndicate's safehouse is in an old motel, one of twelve pink stucco cottages strung out around a gravel parking lot. The cabin reeks of must, and like everything that night, humidly salty. Switching on the rattling air-conditioner, Hei conducts his careful sweep for bugs across the room. Satisfied, he shrugs off his coat -- stiff with caked blood -- before glancing impassively toward Korra, ]
Take the first shower.
[ He's not being a gentleman. But the widest window for enemy retaliation -- and the Syndicate's own post-mission clean-ups -- occurs in the twelve hours after the successful hit. If they're ambushed, Hei doesn't plan to be naked, dripping wet and unarmed. ]
WHAT: Two Contractors after a messy hit.
[ The assignment is complete. After a fashion. ]
[ The target's stretch limousine explodes, a time-bomb hurtling at eighty miles per hour. Hei verifies the detonation in the side-view mirror of their getaway van. The brilliant flames glow across the express lane, a bonfire on a humid July night, the deadly cacophony fifty yards behind him on the I-95. The ferocity from the detonation rolls through the atmosphere, juddering both sides of the interstate and adjacent roads like in a San Francisco earthquake. Brake lights flare in a screeching chorus. Behind Hei, beyond the blazing limousine, four lanes of interstate crowded with cars, trucks, and motorcycles careen to an ear-splitting halt, too late for speed demons to swerve and avoid flying debris. ]
[ Their van keeps going. The target is dead. The botched mission completed in less than forty-eight hours. The teflon-coated politician inside the limo had coasted through a dream-life of caviar and champagne, bodyguards at his side, girls in his lap, boys paid to shoot and kill and girls trained to smile and please. A man who didn't hesitate to have his enemies dragged to the desert and fed to the buzzards. ]
[ A prominent Syndicate faction had become one of his problems. And so the politician became one of theirs. ]
[ All BK201 knows is what he'd been briefed on, during the overseas assignment. And that, in itself, isn't much. The less the killing-machines knew, the better. What mattered was that they rectified the situation as they'd been ordered to. ]
[ The remote trigger that sparked blast is still in Hei's gloved hand. With a zzzt and a curl of smoke, he shorts it out. Tosses it out the window, while their van lurches from right lane to left lane to right lane, threading traffic like a bulky needle, becoming a fast-moving blur vanishing down I-95. Hei exhales, absorbing the metal's chill; the van is a freezer. Across him is the only other survivor of the hit: NC-108. Korra. Both their faces are crusted in dried blood, clothes grimy, hair in tufts. But everything else is intact -- unlike the rest of their teammates. The politician managed to weed them out before they'd fully infiltrated his base. Two were murdered in their hotel room by a hitman dressed as a waiter. The other three were machine-gunned on the street last night during dinner in a café by hostiles in police uniforms. The Syndicate is still recovering their mangled bodies. ]
[ Hei and Korra were advised to abort the operation and contact their respective handlers. Neither had bothered. Hei, because his inner-completionist refused to leave the job undone. Korra, because -- let's face it -- she has a streak, miles wide, that compels her to throw herself into the maelstrom of disaster, daredevilry the cover for an easy exit. During their firefight with the politician's hitmen, Hei had to drag her away a few times from almost certain disembowelment or death -- narrow saves that made Korra grin like she was high, the fevery glow off her skin like an irradiated firefly. ]
[ Hei can't say it bodes well. Not for her -- or her long-term career. ]
[ It doesn't matter. They've both succeeded at this mission. Five dead teammates equal five less cuts on the final payment. There's a tidy sum waiting for the two of them. A quarter of a million dollars, each. Hei's cellphone has already vibrated with the message: FUNDS TRANSFERRED. ]
[ It's a living, he thinks, gazing out the window with a sedate veneer but a tensile edge to his jaw. Forty-eight hours, five eliminated associates, and he's earned $250,000. And all it took was a few scrapes and bruises, a tricky full-immersion identity, and a block of old-fashioned C-4. ]
[ The Syndicate's safehouse is in an old motel, one of twelve pink stucco cottages strung out around a gravel parking lot. The cabin reeks of must, and like everything that night, humidly salty. Switching on the rattling air-conditioner, Hei conducts his careful sweep for bugs across the room. Satisfied, he shrugs off his coat -- stiff with caked blood -- before glancing impassively toward Korra, ]
Take the first shower.
[ He's not being a gentleman. But the widest window for enemy retaliation -- and the Syndicate's own post-mission clean-ups -- occurs in the twelve hours after the successful hit. If they're ambushed, Hei doesn't plan to be naked, dripping wet and unarmed. ]
no subject
Date: 2015-04-16 08:58 pm (UTC)[ Panting, he sags for a moment against Korra, letting her hang crucified and boneless on the ebbing hardness inside her. Gradually the world expands around him again, comes back to brightness and sound. Fuck. His eyes flutter closed. Both hands slipping, skidding down the slippery expanse of her hot body to fall nerveless across the mattress -- before the rest of him follows. He shifts off her slowly, disconnecting with a wet pop. Sprawls onto his back, chest heaving under a sheen of sweat, pulse visibly ticcing in his throat. The condom is smeary with biological debris, and the reek of sex hangs heavily in the air. He'd be mildly disgusted if he had the energy. ]
[ Instead, with careful precision, he tugs off and knots up the condom, before chucking it in the wastebin. Looms over Korra on all fours, but it's only to undo the restraints, dragging her arms slowly down. He doesn't kiss or caress her. Doesn't speak. He's never had the patience for small-talk and sweet-nothings afterward. It's easy to grow wary of softness after a lifetime around killers: only a suicidal idiot would bare his throat to strangers, in bed or in-field, to be rewarded with their opportunistic savaging. By now his habit of reticence is second-nature, a newer layer over the default aloofness. ]
[ That makes it easier. With his mind lapsing to its usual security setting, he's reminded of what a monumental error this was. He doesn't believe for the smallest fraction of a second that Korra is setting him up for blackmail. However mad the girl is, there is not a particle of premeditated meanness or ruthless calculation in her entire body. No -- more real a worry to Hei is that her brazen, importunate behavior -- and his encouragement of it -- is the warning sign of some greater mutual strangeness. ]
[ When he speaks, it's in a voice shorn flat of emphasis, ]
If you're going to nap, do it now.
[ They have to hit the road in a few hours. Find a hotel closer to their rendezvous point, and meet their cobbler. ]
no subject
Date: 2015-04-16 09:51 pm (UTC)Hei may be a crazy paranoid lunatic, but he's radiating "game over" and Korra has no reason (or energy) to push the issue. She's gotten what she needed out of him.
She moves carefully once he undoes her bindings, making sure blood is flowing where it needs to flow unobstructed. Her ass is going to hurt like a motherfucker -- oh well.]
I get dibs on the shower. [He got to tie her up and plow her ass, after all. The least he can do is let her clean up first.]
no subject
Date: 2015-04-16 10:27 pm (UTC)[ So why did you fuck her? Hei thinks bitterly. Amber could already have her in her crosshairs. Do you want the Syndicate to do the same? ]
[ The edges of his clarity blur, then set in harder than ever. Maybe that's why he'd done it? A blatant Fuck You to the Syndicate, and to the woman whose gaze he can practically feel, sometimes, buzzing at the base of his spine. A reminder that he's free to make his own mistakes -- however catastrophic -- as long as they're uniquely his. ]
[ Forcibly, he shakes the thought off. Sits up, loose-limbed on the edge of the wrecked bed, hands curled around his kneecaps. He frowns, but the wattage does not equate to a glower. ]
[ Tonelessly, ]
Whatever you like.
[ As in: I don't care either way. As in: I got what I needed. Now it's time to focus on what matters. ]
no subject
Date: 2015-04-16 10:58 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-04-16 11:11 pm (UTC)[ As it is, they're not safe here. Not safe anywhere, honestly -- and Hei needs to be somewhere that can allow the steady dark calm of his thoughts to come unplugged. He has preparations to make, plans to review, things to think through. Except there's no thinking with Korra here -- even the after-echoes of her energy make his nerves jangle the wrong way. Every decision he makes seems to be contaminated by the mind-altering substance that is her presence. ]
[ He's going to dressed and exit the room. ]
[ He's going to dispel this dangerous cloud of languor. ]
[ He's going to leave. ]
[ Any minute now. ]