Ｈｅｉ (Ｌｉ Ｓｈｅｎｓｈｕｎｇ) (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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fuse_box2015-05-04 12:52 am
mortemscintilla) wrote in fuse_box2015-05-04 12:52 am
Entry tags:
And down will come baby...
WHO: Korra and Hei
WHAT: And babbin makes three.
[ Hei has the baby -- Mai -- wrapped in two extra blankets. One from Senna, quilted with squares of fur and panne velvet: white, purple, black, dark blue, each square with a different emblem of the Water Tribe appliquéd on it. The second, in the rich red silk he's familiar with from his own homeworld, is a gift from Tenzin, embroidered with characters of the baby's name, and what he recognizes as ancient Air Nomad runes for health and protection. ]
[ He tells himself he bundles the baby up so thickly to compensate for his lack of body warmth; his hands are always strangely chilly when he touches her. Often it feels as if the slight gust of his breath might be like an arctic blast against her delicate skin. Or maybe ... he does it to add an extra buffer between them, a layer of warmth. Compensation for what he can't yet feel. ]
[ Each time, holding the child, he feels himself teetering numbly on the edge of the scene, on the edge of the house, life. Pink sturdy brat in his arms, but not connecting, not really present. Senses staticky; breath half-held. He wants to ask someone, Is this normal? Is it supposed to be like this? There is no way to speak the words. ]
[ Instead, quietly, he sits with the baby on the porch steps. ]
[ In the six weeks since the birth, this is the first time he's been completely alone with her. Bolin has left -- after spending ages pulling funny faces at the tot, chattering to her with unabashed enthusiasm, as if she can understand him. Mako -- who always seems to have an excuse to drop by, awkwardly brandishing a toy like a grenade -- has returned to patrolling downtown. Tenzin and Senna, who've practically moved in to help Korra with their shiny little grandchild, are blessedly at Air Temple Island. Korra and Asami, meanwhile, are on a shopping run. (Asami's idea, and one Korra had agreed to only reluctantly, letting her friend lure her out to the car under protest. She'll be fine for an hour with her dad. Right?). ]
[ Korra, though she's recovering with remarkable rapidity from her delivery, still seems a little run-down to him. She'd spent much of the early days on the makeshift pallet in the nursery, prone beneath the duvet, the baby fussing at her side. Sometimes, usually at the tip of dawn, when the baby quiets down and Hei can coax her back into their bedroom, he thinks of the delivery -- a blurry slo-mo nightmare. The baby just a slick quivering mass extruded from Korra's birth canal. Her labial lips stretched and torn. Curled around her in bed, weeks later, he touches her there with a curious delicacy, feeling those hairline scabs in the process of healing. To remind himself he's wreaked another manner of intimate violence upon her. ]
[ You look like you're in shock, Korra had teased, smiling wanly when they'd first deposited the baby -- just an impossibly tiny form, wrapped in white flannel -- into the crook of her arm. Hei couldn't answer. His eyes kept traveling from her pale puffy face to her daughter's, over and over, uncomprehending of all the circumstances that'd assembled to make this impossible, incredible, unfathomable young woman give him a child. ]
[ Now, the child in question sleeps. It is what she mostly does -- when she's not shrieking the goddamn house down. At first sight, she'd reminded Hei of a bloodscummed howler monkey. (She's got the howl, at any rate.) But time and the breast have turned her, in her few weeks of life, from that ugly red monkey, into a peach-and-cream person with blue eyes and clenched fists like rosebuds and a small cap of dark brown hair. In no way deformed or blatantly evil, as he'd feared -- but it's a tad disappointing that she seems in no way superior, either. ]
[ Shifting her gingerly against his shoulder, Hei tries to feel the requisite rush of tenderness for her -- without success. What emotions do wheel through his head are too fast and hazy to catch and pin down. All there is, as he regards the baby, is a twist of shock that bumps his heartrate up. This live thing came from Korra. From me. ]
[ Maybe it's proof, somehow, that death and violence aren't the only measures of his life? ]
WHAT: And babbin makes three.
[ Hei has the baby -- Mai -- wrapped in two extra blankets. One from Senna, quilted with squares of fur and panne velvet: white, purple, black, dark blue, each square with a different emblem of the Water Tribe appliquéd on it. The second, in the rich red silk he's familiar with from his own homeworld, is a gift from Tenzin, embroidered with characters of the baby's name, and what he recognizes as ancient Air Nomad runes for health and protection. ]
[ He tells himself he bundles the baby up so thickly to compensate for his lack of body warmth; his hands are always strangely chilly when he touches her. Often it feels as if the slight gust of his breath might be like an arctic blast against her delicate skin. Or maybe ... he does it to add an extra buffer between them, a layer of warmth. Compensation for what he can't yet feel. ]
[ Each time, holding the child, he feels himself teetering numbly on the edge of the scene, on the edge of the house, life. Pink sturdy brat in his arms, but not connecting, not really present. Senses staticky; breath half-held. He wants to ask someone, Is this normal? Is it supposed to be like this? There is no way to speak the words. ]
[ Instead, quietly, he sits with the baby on the porch steps. ]
[ In the six weeks since the birth, this is the first time he's been completely alone with her. Bolin has left -- after spending ages pulling funny faces at the tot, chattering to her with unabashed enthusiasm, as if she can understand him. Mako -- who always seems to have an excuse to drop by, awkwardly brandishing a toy like a grenade -- has returned to patrolling downtown. Tenzin and Senna, who've practically moved in to help Korra with their shiny little grandchild, are blessedly at Air Temple Island. Korra and Asami, meanwhile, are on a shopping run. (Asami's idea, and one Korra had agreed to only reluctantly, letting her friend lure her out to the car under protest. She'll be fine for an hour with her dad. Right?). ]
[ Korra, though she's recovering with remarkable rapidity from her delivery, still seems a little run-down to him. She'd spent much of the early days on the makeshift pallet in the nursery, prone beneath the duvet, the baby fussing at her side. Sometimes, usually at the tip of dawn, when the baby quiets down and Hei can coax her back into their bedroom, he thinks of the delivery -- a blurry slo-mo nightmare. The baby just a slick quivering mass extruded from Korra's birth canal. Her labial lips stretched and torn. Curled around her in bed, weeks later, he touches her there with a curious delicacy, feeling those hairline scabs in the process of healing. To remind himself he's wreaked another manner of intimate violence upon her. ]
[ You look like you're in shock, Korra had teased, smiling wanly when they'd first deposited the baby -- just an impossibly tiny form, wrapped in white flannel -- into the crook of her arm. Hei couldn't answer. His eyes kept traveling from her pale puffy face to her daughter's, over and over, uncomprehending of all the circumstances that'd assembled to make this impossible, incredible, unfathomable young woman give him a child. ]
[ Now, the child in question sleeps. It is what she mostly does -- when she's not shrieking the goddamn house down. At first sight, she'd reminded Hei of a bloodscummed howler monkey. (She's got the howl, at any rate.) But time and the breast have turned her, in her few weeks of life, from that ugly red monkey, into a peach-and-cream person with blue eyes and clenched fists like rosebuds and a small cap of dark brown hair. In no way deformed or blatantly evil, as he'd feared -- but it's a tad disappointing that she seems in no way superior, either. ]
[ Shifting her gingerly against his shoulder, Hei tries to feel the requisite rush of tenderness for her -- without success. What emotions do wheel through his head are too fast and hazy to catch and pin down. All there is, as he regards the baby, is a twist of shock that bumps his heartrate up. This live thing came from Korra. From me. ]
[ Maybe it's proof, somehow, that death and violence aren't the only measures of his life? ]