caught between dreams

[anatural]

WHO: Korra and Hei
WHAT: Amber’s been playing with Hei’s new toy.

[Korra wraps her arms around herself and shivers a little as she watches Amber just...vanish. The other woman's ability to control time is something she still hasn't gotten used to, even after working with her for almost six months. What it enables her to do is unnerving, and makes Korra feel powerless in a way she hasn't in years, if she thinks about it too much.

Don't think like that, Amber would tell her. You are so much more powerful than you realize. You're the only person who can do what needs to be done.

Someday, maybe she'll even explain what that means. The other woman's relentless mysteriousness is more than a little aggravating -- but only once she leaves. When Amber's around, it's impossible not to adore her. Everyone in the organization loves Amber. (But have all of them kissed her, or is that something special to the two of them?)

Korra tries to shake off those thoughts. She knows better than to attach much significance to physical intimacy. Mooning like this is unbecoming. And yet she stays where she is, enjoying the smell of salt water on the wind and the way she can still taste Amber on her lips.]

Comments

[mortemscintilla]

[ Hei's rage doesn't flare and sputter out; it skyrockets. None of Korra's words make sense. Why would the Syndicate try to eliminate Contractors? That's like a snake eating its own tail. Contractors are their deadliest weapons, their most expedient tools. It's not good business to eliminate your assets. More to the point, why would Pai -- his cool-eyed, ever-rational sibling -- do something as deranged as martyr herself to save them? His mind stutters disbelievingly. This is a ruse. An elaborate trap. Why would Amber never share these details with him? Even the bare rudiments? Was it because he was human? Because he'd turn on her, or clog up the smooth flow of her plans? Why would Pai keep something so enormous from him? These things, these bonds and burdens, they come in pairs, and if she'd planned to go through with destroying the Gate, if she was okay with sacrificing herself -- he would die with her. It was simple as that. ]

[ His face, fixed on Korra, twists into a rigid, thunderous mask. (What Korra doesn't realize -- and what remains a secret even to Hei -- is that he's nowhere near as rational as anyone believes. So many compartments inside his still-human brain, full of trap-doors jerry-rigged all wrong, so some door in there can fly open and let him electrocute a useful Contractor to death as soon as look at him, and another can spring a convoluted lust for revenge at Carmine's murder by MI6.) ]

[ (But the door that might open up to this chance to trust Korra's words: that one is jammed shut.) ]

Not a hero. A pawn.

[ He speaks with a soft savagery. The rage keeps crashing through him, a series of shuddering cataclysmic sparks. Leaving him wrecked, scorch-blackened, a twisted simulacrum of himself. He wants to curse her, as he seizes her by the hair, drags her forward to strangle her. Because what she's saying can't be true. If it is -- then Pai is dead. Then all his time spent alive, searching for her, has been futile. His every muscle tenses: he can't understand why he doesn't spring up, throw the table across the room, wreck the place. ]

[ No. This -- this Cosmic Fuck You can't be what his sister died for. Can't be what he'd wasted his entire existence for. ]

[ He hates how Korra looks at him, the smugness in her gaze. He can cave her face in with one blow. ]

[ Icily, ]

Take me to Amber. If what you're saying is true... Let me hear it from her.

[ Let me kill her. The same way she's destroyed Pai -- and with her, every iota of goodness inside him. ]

[anatural]

[Korra knows if she refuses, he'll (try to) kill her. And honestly, she has no real incentive to. Hei is no match for Amber, particularly since Amber will have her support and all of Evening Primrose.]

Fine.

[To the waiter coming with their food] You should probably put that in a box. [To Hei] Unless you want to finish eating first.

[mortemscintilla]

[ Hei doesn't shake his head so much as offer a short, sharp jerk. The whole restaurant is bedlam of noise: what to others might sound like the gentle hum of conversations and tinkling silverware is to him an encompassing hiss and roar, as if countless ants are chewing away steadily at his mind's surface. The whole world seems sharply delineated, as if he is seeing everything in the moment after a camera flash, a layer of faded light across darkness. A moment never actually sustained, except for him. ]

[ Pai might be dead. The words clatter hollowly inside his skull. He's had bad dreams like this. ]

[ To Korra, flatly, ]

Let's go.

[ He has no appetite, beyond a crawling need to get his hands around Amber's throat. ]