nothing's right and everything hurts

[anatural]

WHO: Korra & Hei
WHAT: Everything hurts.

[Korra feels like she hasn't breathed in almost a month, not since she came home to find Mai alone, choking on her own vomit.

Of course Hei would choose to abandon them just when their daughter gets sick -- the kind of sick that requires doctors and a long term stay in the hospital. She would have taken Mai with her to mediate the dispute (a simple case between the city government and a group of protestors, all of whom were willing to be reasonable once there was a third party around), except Hei walked through the door just as she was leaving, and it just seemed more practical to hand the fussy baby over to him. If she’d just known that Hei was going to leave, and that Mai’s fussing was the sign of a terrible illness...

She’s been holding her breath ever since, terrified that any movement could send Mai down the path of no recovery. When she gets word from Asami that Hei has been found in a hospital at the edge of Republic City — that’s when her heart stops beating.

She walks slowly into his hospital room, feeling disjointed and detached and hardly real. She’s already forgotten what the doctor had said about his condition; she was in too much shock to listen. She’s never seen Hei like this: bandaged, hooked up to beeping machines, helpless. She feels herself start to tremble. He’s always known when to bail from a fight, how to make a strategic retreat. The only way he gets this banged up is by intention. He wanted to be beaten to death.]

You fucking bastard...

[Anger burns deep in her belly. His familiar smell, and the accompanying twinge of arousal, only add fuel to the fire. Biting back tears, she slaps him hard. It makes her palm sting and her clit twitch. So she slaps him again.]

Comments

DAMN YOU LACK OF ICONS

[anatural]

A MISTAKE. [Talk about understatement of the fucking century. For the first time in over a decade, Korra doesn't care about the inhuman look in his eyes; it stirs in her neither pity nor fear. The impulse she always feels to reach out and soothe him is smothered under the weight of her anger.]

Mai almost died. [If she'd gotten held up in the city, if the negotiations hadn't gone so easily, if she'd been just five minutes later... It's too horrifying to contemplate.] She's been a hospital the entire time you've been gone. I should be there right now. [She doesn't have to say that she would be, if he hadn't been stupid enough to land himself in the hospital. A part of her wants to say "fuck it" and leave, the same part of her that piled all his clothes in the front yard, set them on fire, and then told Naga to piss on them. But she's too angry to just give up like that. She needs to see him as broken as she feels. She grabs the hand touching his neck and twists it hard.] Are you listening?

;.;

[mortemscintilla]

[ He is silent -- mostly because she is bending his hand back so hard towards his wrist that all he can do was work his mouth in a soundless plea to be released. That she is right to be so furious -- absolutely and irrefutably right -- only piles on his self-loathing. Mai almost died. That is bad, that is so bad, because Korra is in such pain, and yet she seems so far away, and even if he puts his arms around her he won't be able to feel what she feels because he doesn't have it in him. ]

[ Maybe it's true. Maybe he really doesn't have any love in him. ]

[ Maybe he once did, but he'd let himself lose the thread of it, let it get submerged and trampled on, dissolved, because too much of him is hard inside, and it is better often, just being hard all over. At least ... at least that's what he's always told himself. He doesn't know anymore. He used to be a boy who loved deeply, and what had happened to that? ]

[ The bandage on his throat is wet. ]

[ Not catching her eyes, he says, in that same abraded half-tone, ]

You should be with Mai.

[ Is there even a comparison? Better for her to be with that little morsel of sweetness she'd grown in her womb -- not this waste of oxygen, foul and riddled with guilt, who has ruined her life for too long already. ]

[anatural]

You should be with Mai. You should have been with her when she first got sick!

[She drops his wrist, in part because she'd probably break it if she held on any longer, and in larger part because she wants him to look her in the eyes. She grabs his chin, nails digging into the bruised flesh, and forces him to at least face her, even if his eyes look away.

And it guts her all over again, seeing him bruised, beaten, broken.]

Do you hate me that much? [It's not an entirely rational question, but it's not without merit. He could have waited until she got home and said "I can't do this anymore." He could have called Asami or Pema or Bolin and had them come to watch Mai, or dropped her off himself on his way out. She can think of dozens of things he could have done differently, if his only problem was not wanting to deal with fatherhood. Just abandoning Mai like he did, then trying to get himself killed... It's like he wants her to suffer, some sick twisted punishment for her wanting to have this baby. How angry he must be, if this is how he chooses to lash out.]

[mortemscintilla]

[ He doesn't meet her hot gaze full-on. He just gives her an oblique look out of glistening, red-edged eyes. His aches are mild at best; whatever is dripping into his veins spares him the full extent of the agony. ]

[ At least the physical type. ]

[ Do you hate me that much? That gets him in the ribs. His face stays smoothed of expression -- a corpse or a statue -- but something sparks in his eyes. For a heartbeat he is as furious as she is. A fantasy of shoving her off him to fly across the room swims through his mind. In the next breath it is subsumed by a sharp soul-sickness, buried down so far he wasn't even aware of it until now, that surges up at the thought of a full-out battle with her. He doesn't want to win it -- doesn't even want to hurt her. But he wouldn't mind it if she trounced him past the point of no return. ]

[ The sensation afterwards would be good -- like the kind of aching pleasure that comes from worrying at a sore tooth. ]

[ Because, fuck -- he'd never meant to hurt her like this. At the same time he can hardly believe that he'd ever had the nerve to be her lover, to come to her world as if he deserved it, as if what he was had any merit. The last few years -- hell, everything since the stars scattered like dustmotes from the sky -- is a mania, now exploding into tiny fragments of foul trash. ]

[ Unsteadily, ]

I could never hate you. But -- [ He swallows. His throat makes a dry click. ] It's just no good, because of what I am.

[anatural]

Don't even start with that. [It's his favorite excuse, because of what I am. Hearing it yet again makes her feel like something is clawing at her spine. Her fingers tighten reflexively and she has to swallow back bile.]

I'm sick of your excuses. You don't get to escape the consequences because you're "a monster." You made a choice. You chose to leave our daughter. [You chose to leave me.]

[mortemscintilla]

You need to think it's excuses, then think it.

[ He is amazed to hear how calm he sounds, as the throbbing in his broken hand steps up, the sting shooting up his whole arm. But it's nothing to the anguish crushing at his chest, like a skewer steeped in acid and shoved inside him -- mind and body both. He wishes it wasn't so hard. Wishes he wasn't so hard. Frozen and dried up inside. This thing with Mai should bring him and Korra together, not -- ]

[ There is no together when there's nothing to be getting on with. ]

[ He can't feel what he can't feel. Ever since Mai's birth, he's been trying to shrug his displacement off, but all that happens is he drifts further and further from her. From Korra. He has everything going perfectly for him -- shiny new world, beautiful girl, bouncy baby. Yet all he feels is empty. And frightened. Everytime he looks at the little mass of flesh that's his, he can't feel anything. His daughter, his baby, his little dumpling, his one and only: he feels nothing for her. No wonder, no joy, no happiness. Nothing. His head is full of white noise -- the kind of dead static that makes you think you're going insane. ]

[ It's sick. He knows that. He's done so many despicable things. So much to be ashamed of. But this isn't something he's done. This is him. Not an act but an identity. He's always tried to convince himself he's not shaped by his past. That he's survived it unscathed, with his humanity left intact. ]

[ It's a lie. The baby has given him away completely. ]

[anatural]

[You condescending piece of -- Korra has never been so close to actually hating him. Not even back in the City, when he'd threatened her friends and then acted like a jerk after sleeping with her. She hadn't loved him enough then to feel the maelstrom of anger and disappointment and heartache that's just a hairbreadth away from genuine hatred. She could kill him right now. One of the only things stopping her is she knows he wants her to.

She drops her hand and backs away, stitching herself back together with cold fury until she's somewhere safe to fall apart.]

When you get out of here, don't come back.

[She slams the door behind her hard enough to break it from its hinges. She doesn't care.]

[mortemscintilla]

[ There's a chilling duality to this, Hei knows; how they fell together versus the now, the falling apart. He watches Korra leave, trailing behind an icy cloud of rage. But the storm is evanescent; the anger is just the blinding superstructure keeping her together, until she finds somewhere to fall apart. He's not surprised to watch her go, but he is surprised by the way something in him constricts so red dots dance before his eyes. ]

[ His throat knots, and a part of him thinks, It's better this way. Better if you go on with your life. Forget about me. ]

[ She slams the door behind her, and he doesn't look surprised, doesn't look like a man whose intentions have been misunderstood, who has been holding something back for a glad surprise. His expression stays blank and clear-eyed -- even as a dizzy dip in his chest reminds him to breathe. ]

[ When he falls back against the pillows, inhaling jerkily, she is gone. ]