[ She still eats with the same charming gusto. Seated at an angle from her, Hei tries not to let it get to him. Except sometimes he doesn't know what to say in the face of Korra's enthusiasm, or to her literal face in which liveliness disguises such beauty that he can imagine a normal man would have thrown himself on a knife in sacrifice to it. Even now, after everything seems scattered, wrong, broken, there are moments when he looks at Korra and recognizes that he'd wanted this girl -- or someone like her -- for as long as memory stretches. Wanted these elements, at any rate, as starkly as a child wants snowfall or superpowers or a caped wonder-woman. ]
[ He'd just been waiting, like a boy standing at a fence in twilight surrounded by snow and emptiness and silence, looking at a road down which no one ever came. ]
[ Quietly, ]
I've packed a few for you to take home. With date congee for Mai.
[ It sounds like a subtle prod for her to leave. Except nothing about his manner is unwelcome. Sitting across from her -- chewing with steady precision at his empanadas -- his gaze is completely benign, a hint of chemical wonder overlapped by something close to pure, human absorption. ]
no subject
[ He'd just been waiting, like a boy standing at a fence in twilight surrounded by snow and emptiness and silence, looking at a road down which no one ever came. ]
[ Quietly, ]
I've packed a few for you to take home. With date congee for Mai.
[ It sounds like a subtle prod for her to leave. Except nothing about his manner is unwelcome. Sitting across from her -- chewing with steady precision at his empanadas -- his gaze is completely benign, a hint of chemical wonder overlapped by something close to pure, human absorption. ]