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

[anatural]

[Korra doesn't dismiss him — she feels a queasy guilt about what she said to him, and she's afraid that if she does tell him to go, he'll take it as an invitation to try & kill himself again. She doesn't want that extra weight on her heart.

So she focuses on Mai, mustering enough strength to pick the sleeping baby up from her playpen, and manages to sit rather than fall back on the couch. It still wakes Mai up, and she starts crying loudly, flailing her arms and whacking Korra in the face. (She's as pleasant when woken up as her father is, Korra reflects with dark humor.)]

Can you get her bottle from the fridge? [If he's going to stick around, he might as well be useful.]

[mortemscintilla]

[ Hei lets her scoop up Mai, who jostles awake and begins to scream, as loud as a car alarm. Her expression, in that moment, reminds him very much of her mother's: beautifully fierce, swimmy-eyed and grumpy. His head swims; he thinks of Tonraq's death, of Korra's anguish, and it is like a stone weighting down the air. A stone that is yet a lightness, because of the wonder, the golden chance, to be near Mai and Korra at all. ]

[ Terrible, he knows, to think of it that way. Gleaning opportunity while Korra is vulnerable, like a two-legged predator prowling for scraps. But he's never been a different man. Never possessed that strength to be noble and decent. Not for one instant in his existence. ]

[ Try, asks that long-forgotten voice that could be his conscience -- or pure delusion. ]

[ He's startled when Korra asks him to fetch Mai's bottle. For a moment, time reverses itself, and they're back to how they were. Before the rift. Before he'd let all that joy and closeness dribble away out of sheer carelessness. ]

[ His nerves buzz: apprehension, hope. Nodding, he heads to the kitchen. Gets Mai's bottle from the fridge, remembering, (another first) not to microwave it, but to place it briefly in a bowl of hot water. Enough to make it pleasantly cool, rather than icy enough to shock the baby's delicate mouth. ]

[ Returning, he hands the bottle to Korra. Waits, like a sentry on alert for instructions, for whatever else she might say. ]

[ Maybe she'll just tell him to get out. It's long overdue. ]

[anatural]

[She's not feeling gracious enough to thank him when he hands her the bottle, though it brings a blessed cessation to Mai's screaming. Before he can pull back, the baby reaches out and grabs his finger. Of course now she would be daddy's little girl. Of course she'd adore him, too young to remember how he left her to die. Korra's the only one who has to bear the emotional scars from her two-month long illness. Nothing in the world is fair.

But Korra resists the impulse to snatch Mai's hand away, in part because she doesn't want the baby to start fussing again... but mostly because Korra wants her to have this. To have a father, even if it's only for a few minutes.]

[mortemscintilla]

[ He watches as Korra fits the nipple against the bulging wet little mouth. Mai's eyes fall contentedly half-shut as she begins to suck. Watching her, it all comes back to Hei: his stupidity, his selfishness. The sensation of his own rage at this baby, at the boiling obscene satisfaction he'd felt in walking away from her, rises up in his gut, burns the back of his eyes. Mai had nearly died. And Korra had to deal with the fallout. ]

[ He thinks about her visit to the hospital. Knows the look of disappointment and sorrow on her face, that never should've been allowed to come there. He remembers learning of Amber's betrayal, about how her machinations had erased half a continent, had erased Pai. How it made a big burning hole in his stomach that nothing could distract him from. ]

[ He wishes he could apologize. It hurts to deny Korra her rage. Hurts that she cannot scream it into his face. Direct the cold barrel of that hatred at him -- with more than empty words. It should have been you. ]

[ Then Mai grabs his finger, and his thoughts rattle to a stop like broken clockwork. ]

[ He expects Korra to jerk the baby away. But she lets the girl latch on, her fingers rosy, quinquefoliate posies against the coarse darkness of his own. She's touching the damaged hand. It registers her warmth numbly, but something pulses along its skeletal fault-lines: maybe old nerves and old memories, coming awake. ]

[ Awkwardly, Hei adjusts his grip. Squeezes the pudgy little paw gently. He wants to kiss the wiggling fingers, the way he sometimes did with Korra -- but doesn't dare. What point is there, lavishing affection on a life you'd nearly extinguished? Like a Judas kiss in reverse. ]

[ The only mercy is that Mai is too young to remember his abandonment -- or be scarred by it. ]

[anatural]

[The peace that settles over the room is almost disquieting. Nothing like Korra had imagined when Asami told her she'd invited Hei to the party. Of course, Korra realizes that a good chunk of it is simply the numbness that sets in when the first stage of grief has passed.

Her arms still feel stupidly weak from that sobbing fit (throwing that stool probably didn't help). She shifts, trying to find a way to support her arm & Mai against the couch without breaking the baby's hold on Hei, because every time she loses her grip, Mai starts to cry. Annoying, but she can't exactly tell the baby "Your daddy's an asshole who abandoned you. Don't get attached." Even if Mai was old enough to understand words, it probably wouldn't help. Korra had known what a twisted, terrible mess Hei was from the beginning, and she still got attached to him, chose to have a child by him. Love is truly the dumbest thing.]

[mortemscintilla]

[ He's always believed that love and a speeding car have two things in common: tunnel vision and the promise of breakneck disaster. It's nothing smart and safe; nothing a Contractor can understand, and everything that can be used to hurt him. In loving, you paint the bullseye across your psyche; you have to trust the other person not to aim and fire. ]

[ (He understands, at last, why Amber, at her most honest, always saw affection as lying parallel with being compromised -- brainwashed. Because that kind of emotion was a pure liability that no spy could afford.) ]

[ It's too late to stop it now. If forfeiting his basic security means keeping Korra and Mai in his life, so be it. There is something dizzy, drugging, about the idea of unlearning how to define the world around him through the jargon of networks, agents, assets and threats. There is something better about the gleeful crunch of realization that comes with the thought: They never have to be part of that world at all. ]

[ Blinking, he notices Korra stir uncomfortably. Each time she jostles Mai, the baby's little hand slips from his. And each time, Mai explodes into a shrill tantrum of aggrieved abandonment. Strange, that she'd do so. He can't block it off, his shaming failure to be her father. It keeps flooding into his head -- walking away from her, his body besieged like a machine with a virus, working with a traitorous disconnection. ]

[ (So it's wrong, isn't it, to cherish the way she keeps grabbing his hand?) ]

Maybe... I could hold her?

[ The words scald his mouth. He's fully expecting Korra to glower in refusal and kick him out. ]

[anatural]

No. [Korra snaps, her mind assaulted with him images of picking Mai up and then dropping her to the ground. Or maybe just walking away, so Korra sees neither of them again. Her hands tighten reflexively around the baby.

But... her arm is tired, and Mai clearly wants him...and as long as Korra's around to keep an eagle eye on them... She sighs in defeat and holds out the now-empty bottle.]

Put this in the sink and then sit down. [That way, if he drops Mai, the fall will be less dangerous.]

[mortemscintilla]

[ Her hot gaze practically radiates her mistrust. Hei can't blame her. He thinks, in a sickening burst of memory, a psychic acid reflux, of all the times he'd held Mai. Fingers twitching around her squirming mass, eyes squinting against the electric proximity of her shrieking. He remembers wondering, each time, what would happen if he let her fall. His grip was always firm; he never had any intention of loosening it. Yet each time, he was entranced by the hugeness of the responsibility he carried, and the smallness of the action that might cast a spotlight on him. A single loosening of his fingers would be enough. ]

[ Hastily, he goes to place the bottle in the kitchen, to avoid Korra's suspicious glance. He feels she's peered straight into his conscience, eavesdropping on his guilty memories. ]

[ He can't imagine how he'll recross the kitchen floor, how he'll settle on the couch opposite to Korra's. He is nearly undone by the sensory overload of all that has whipped past his startled and defeated senses: Korra, Mai, the news of Tonraq's death, the spacious livingroom redolent of happier times, the toys, the aborted birthday party, even the decorations of pink crepe-paper roses with their delicate green satin leaves dangling from the walls. Too much. ]

[ It should have been you. ]

[ Staring silently at Korra, waiting for her to hand him Mai, he wonders how someone atones for his own failure to stop living. ]

[anatural]

[You start by identifying what you actually did wrong, which isn't being alive — it's trying to die. Korra no longer trusts him because of what he did to their daughter, but it's his thwarted suicide attempt that makes her gut churn with queasy rage and resentment.

And yet despite everything, Korra passes her baby into Hei's arms, because she's an idiot. She's always been an idiot about him. He's the mistake she can't stop making.

She shifts her position so that, when she takes Mai back, she can rest her arm against the back of the couch. But she doesn't try to take the baby back just yet.]

[mortemscintilla]

[ He's been caught in that bleak inner atmosphere before -- living while waiting every other minute to die. After Pai's disappearance, he'd hovered on the bare edge of breakdown -- but compared to this, that era was nothing but a poor underpainting smeared across yellowed scraps of paper. He's not made another concerted attempt -- maybe out of fear that he'd botch it again. Maybe because he can't depart without considering Korra and Mai, their existence stirring up troubling, shame-shot second thoughts. As the months went on, he'd begun to think that this must mean, in however meager a way, that even if he did not particularly want to live, neither did he want anymore to die. ]

[ Now he isn't sure. ]

[ It should have been you. ]

[ If he gets jumped by the triads again, maybe he'll let it happen. It feels like what ought to happen. ]

[ Then Korra hands him the baby. Their hands don't touch in the transfer; a fact that leaves him at once relieved and bereft. But he smiles for the pink-cheeked baby, and she smiles back. A sweet smell wafts off her: cookie crumbs and powder and milk. Carefully, he gathers her close, her warmth oddly solacing against his chest. She gurgles and clutches at the ledge of his collarbone. Her eyes are transfixing, two bright blue whorls. ]

[ Impossible to believe he'd ever felt any antipathy toward her. She's just a little girl. His little girl -- except he'd nearly killed her just to learn the lesson. ]

[ Meh, burbles Mai. Likely her way of expressing profound disinterest in his self-pity party. Get over yourself, dad. ]

[anatural]

[If he lets himself die, Korra will find a way to bring him to life just so she can kill him all over again. His death wouldn't bring her father back to life, and that's all she really wants. She wants her dad back. She wants to stop being assaulted by death all around her. She wants a reminder that life isn't all stress, despair, and grief.

That's what this birthday party was supposed to be: a chance to actually celebrate something. Not another blow against her spirit.

Korra sighs and rests her head against the couch. She wishes... she just wishes.]

[mortemscintilla]

[ For Hei, life has primarily been a slow-burning hell. Death has always signified a release from that difficulty -- except the Powers That Be aren't so merciful as to free him yet. Or so bloodthirsty. ]

[ Cradling the restless Mai, he exhales, fragmented memories of his existence -- from the South America to Tokyo to the City -- tumbling by as quickly as scenery from a train window. Bruises, blades, blood-spurts, headhunters, chiggers, curses, laundry detergent, pastries, subways, black cats, grid maps, fake stars, offense and defense, Pai's soft voice, black tea, Amber's exhaustion-husked cries, whiskey, telescopes, bodies in a field of blood and craters, Yin's sad lilac gaze, the Syndicate with its all-seeing eyes, passports, fake IDs, books, ramen noodles. ]

[ And like a straight line cutting through all the erratically scattered points of his thoughts: Korra. The brightness of her leeches color from everything else. She'd saved him by bringing him to her homeworld. Given him a second chance to live. Given him back the echoes of a human vivacity. A home, a child, a life, a fragile bubble of family. ]

[ And he'd thanked her by pissing all over it. ]

[ He doesn't look at Korra, though her sigh floats like a crumpled paper-plane through the air. He keeps his attention on Mai. Fingers threaded with her tiny ones, he extends her arms, wing-like. She chortles and kicks her legs, dangling in his lap, trying to leap airborne. ]

[ When he speaks, though, it's a voice pitched for Korra: edged in something like regret and resignation. ]

I know ... this isn't the time to talk about us. Or about anything. I threw it all away. I threw my life away. I threw you and Mai away. I blame nobody but myself. Still -- [ Gently, he plops the baby in his lap again. Circles her close with both hands, peering at Korra over the top of her fluffy dark head. ] If there is anything I can do right now. To help you. Just say so.

[anatural]

[There is no us. There hasn't been an us for six months. She wants to snap that at him. Also You're damn right you threw everything away, you asshole. And yet what comes out is] Don't die on me. Just...don't.

[mortemscintilla]

[ He isn't sure what to say to that. Half-convinces himself it's just exhaustion, grief, instinctual reaction. He's plunged her into muddy sewage, and she's only clinging to him to keep from drowning. He wishes he were strong enough to make earnest pledges to her. Wishes, too, that she could understand how excruciating every moment is -- how her very gaze is a searing brand of disgrace. He is enfolded, barricaded, every moment, by the memory of his past mistakes. All those people he's ruined, staring at him -- a collective death-ray of unblinking eyes. She is their figurehead, holding them all concentrated in her determined little frame, one supersaturated living fragment of past error. ]

[ When she looks at him, all his cruelties radiate through her eyes. He feels again how'd completely he'd failed her and Mai. How he'd ruined even his own love. ]

[ Clasping Mai against him, he takes a deep breath of her. Squeezes his eyes shut, and wonders if he dares try to end himself again. Looks towards the door -- should he slip out now? Surely he can cover some distance out of the city before morning. Steal a satomobile somewhere, disappear forever. He doesn't know how many manifestations of shame he can stand. But that will frighten her. Anger her. And she'll catch up with him, make him feel it. ]

[ He is no longer under any illusion that she won't know where he is if she wants to. She has a hook lodged painfully, permanently, in his psyche. ]

[ Don' don' don'. Mai plucks at his shirt with chubby fingers, her eyes sky-bright, hugely round. He doesn't smile, but a lightness gathers around his face. He can't help it. She's so stupidly cute. Even when babbling and parroting the most humdrum words, she sounds like she's singing softly to herself. ]

[ Quietly, unsure if he's talking to Mai or Korra, he says, ]

I'll try.

[anatural]

You say that like it's hard. [Korra speaks quietly, the hard edge of annoyance in her voice softened by exhaustion and sadness.] You don't have a dangerous job. You have go to out of your way to get yourself killed here. Don't act like this is something completely out of your power.

[mortemscintilla]

I know it's not.

[ His voice is quiet, impossibly gentle -- maybe for Mai's benefit, or maybe because he can tell Korra is too tired for argument. Yet the tone is almost emotionless, as if he is running through something he's memorized and will put the feeling into later. There's no point explaining to her, how his mind is just a miserable blur. How impossible it makes it to sop up anything but the smallest drops of peace. He can't tell her. The resentment in her is already so apparent, like seeing an immense mesa rise up out of a flat landscape. ]

[ People have it worse than him, though. He won't flatter himself otherwise. He doesn't want to go on. But he'll go on. Put his head down and bull through. What else can he do? Find something that fills that empty space inside him. Something that is peaceful. Calm and steadying. Something that gives him control. ]

[ That's what it's about, isn't it? Not escaping, just regaining control. ]

[ Leaning in, he dots a kiss across Mai's tiny snub of a nose. Half-smiles, when she giggles, cute face all a-crinkle. ]

[ Quietly, ]

I know ... saying sorry isn't enough. Or making empty promises. [ Especially when he feels so permanently fucking disqualified from love or absolution. When he is nothing but a worthless piece of shit who should die. ] But ...when I look at you and Mai, I think it's going to be okay.

[ Different, he knows, but okay. ]

[anatural]

[Korra snorts derisively.] When did that change? [Because he certainly didn't seem to feel that way seven months ago when he walked out to die.]

[mortemscintilla]

[ He wants to flinch, but that's never been his way. Instead he meets her gaze as it burns into him, opaque and blue and blinding. He doesn't know how to go about trying to explain himself, the sad epiphany that crept in increments over him as he'd floated from day to day without Korra and Mai. There seems no way to talk about it sensibly, no way to make it sound anything but facile. Can't explain that he was unable to go to sleep at night -- unable to do anything -- without thinking of Korra and what he'd thrown away out of overwhelming shame and fear. Thrown away for nothing. ]

[ He gathers Mai a little closer -- though she wriggles like a restless kitten -- needing to feel her warmth, her pulse. ]

I'm not sure. It was ...gradual.

[ He can't blame her for being wary. Not only has his behavior been terrible, it is so damn inconsistent. After keeping her and Mai at a distance even as he lived with them ... after being so cruel, so careless ... can he really expect she'll accept him back without a flinch? ]

[anatural]

Don't hold her like that. She gets upset when she can't move her arms. [It's a sin of ignorance, if anything, but it reminds Korra chillingly of Hei's questionable history with consent. There's a part of her that's spent the past seven months appalled by the last 10 years of her life, by how she let him stay so close to her.

She can't regret it entirely. Without him, there's no Mai... and yes, she still loves him on his own merits. Which makes her afraid for Mai's future, when she's old enough to fall in love with the absolute wrong person. How do you stop that from happening when you can't even stop yourself?]

[mortemscintilla]

[ Hei blinks, aware of how tightly he's cradling Mai. The baby whimpers; her eyes are mournful and shining-wet. Dismayed by how easy it is to frighten a child, he is keen to restore her cheerful spirits. Loosening his hold, he lifts her with both hands clasped around her pudgy torso -- gentle, protective. Tosses her, a dizzying few inches, then catches her again. Such a timid distance, yet Mai squeals with delight as if she's riding a rollercoaster. ]

[ Strange. To make her happy seems so easy: a simple physical act. She is a child, he is a grown-up: the pleasure of play is his to give or withhold. Yet, for a few moments, it's Hei who is happy, druggingly happy, treating himself to this stolen dose of tactile joy. ]

[ It won't last. He knows that. His track record as a parent -- as a caretaker, not a bodyguard -- is checkered at best. He can't pretend he did his best with Pai. And Mai is so different from anything he's ever known. A normal girl with different needs. Maybe bigger needs. A poor innocent unsuspecting baby left at his mercy -- and he's already failed her. ]

[ It's a jangling reminder that he's so unsuited to this. What he does best -- or used to do best -- is destroy, deceive. Raising a child is beyond his core expertise. ]

[ Again, that voice intrudes, a tantalizing murmur: Try.]

[ His entire existence has been a string of fuck-ups. Right until the moment he'd met Korra -- an error of errors in itself. Yet a windfall, too -- a stroke of pure luck -- because she'd saved him from a life that nearly tore all his humanity out. Their relationship is so fraught with disaster -- yet he can't make himself regret it. She'd been his reason to try living -- really living -- once again. ]

[ Carefully, he settles Mai back in his lap. When he glances at Korra, his expression is hazy, distant -- but there is emotion, subtle, in the set of his eyes. ]

It's getting late.

[ Implicit in that statement: Do you want me to stay or Do you want me to go?. He won't begrudge her if she tells him to get out. ]

[anatural]

[Korra's heart just about stops when he tosses Mai into the air, instinctively suspecting the worst, ready to air end to soften the baby's inevitable fall. Thank goodness Hei doesn't do it for long.

It's getting late. Korra glances out the window. She needs to meet the sky bison at dawn tomorrow; she needs to put Mai down for the night and get packing.

She reaches out and takes the baby back, ignoring her whimpers and protests.]

Take care of yourself. [No invitation, no promises or even suggestions for the future. But maybe not, perhaps, a permanent dismissal.]

[mortemscintilla]

[ Hei doesn't reply immediately. The way his head is dipped, long hair sweeping over the side of his skull in dark wings, obscures his expression. There's no change in his body language when Korra takes Mai away, let alone a sign that he's heard her -- but he does stir eventually, his arms dropping mechanically to his sides before he rises with a cyborgian smoothness. ]

Yeah.

[ Just like that. Yeah. Like there isn't an immeasurable weight settling in his chest. Like it doesn't feel as if Mai has left the bright welt of her shape in his empty arms. Just Yeah, like she might have told him the time or the date. He's not that unfeeling, at least not entirely. It's just that there's nothing else he can say. Thank you? I'm grateful? I'm sorry? No; those would be words for Korra-and-Hei, and he's under no illusion that this means things will melt back into place. It is what it is. Mai's well-being and Korra's life first. ]

[ He wishes he could hug Korra. Wishes he could kiss the squalling baby; gather her in and inhale her warm powdery scent. Instead he nods, acknowledgement, acquiescence, then turns to walk out the door -- feeling like he's leaving all eight layers of his consciousness behind. ]