[ He looks away from her troubled little face toward his own teacup, knowing she won't pursue the matter any further. What else can he tell her? That he barely sleeps anymore? That at night, the most venomous parts of his mind wake up and slither about beneath the floorboards of his sleeping brain. Bad dreams always gnawing away his rest. Sometimes in his nightmares he is trapped in the red jungles of South America -- but at other times he is in the City, or in Tokyo, and for all the wrong reasons. Each morning, as the sun cuts swathes of pale light across the room and his eyes flutter open, he grows steadily more uncertain of where he is. Of whether he is really awake. ]
[ Then his alarm goes off and he scrambles to sit up, cramming himself against the headboard. Republic City. Of all places, Republic City. Every time he wakes here, he feels the shock of supposed safety like a sudden slip and fall. There is no need for aliases and relentless vigilance here -- a fact that leaves him shaky and disoriented, his chest shuddering at the transient zenith of a strange, all-encompassing feeling. Terror, or something close to it. ]
[ A city he's become so comfortable with -- yet since he's left Korra, it's suddenly become alien to him, a pretty oasis built for someone else, inhabited by strangers, his own presence that of a ghost. The place makes no sense for him without Korra's life justaposed with his, and the loneliness and alienation is almost a sickness. ]
[ So: better to tell her he wasn't sleeping because he was working late. It is true, even if just one truth among many. ]
[ Quietly, he examines her over the rim of his teacup. She is perfectly still, the shifting colored lights from the rainfall playing across her face. Her mouth tight, eyes weary, the energy around her beginning to fritz and boil into quiet incoherence. Too much frustrated energy, too much feeling. He knows what that's like. Except it's ten times more horrible because it's Korra who is dealing with it. ]
[ He wants to ask her what happened. But maybe she doesn't want that kind of exposure. Not with a man who is practically a stranger to her now. ]
[ Instead, softly, ]
Try the mooncakes. They're made of lotus seed paste and vanilla ice cream.
no subject
[ He looks away from her troubled little face toward his own teacup, knowing she won't pursue the matter any further. What else can he tell her? That he barely sleeps anymore? That at night, the most venomous parts of his mind wake up and slither about beneath the floorboards of his sleeping brain. Bad dreams always gnawing away his rest. Sometimes in his nightmares he is trapped in the red jungles of South America -- but at other times he is in the City, or in Tokyo, and for all the wrong reasons. Each morning, as the sun cuts swathes of pale light across the room and his eyes flutter open, he grows steadily more uncertain of where he is. Of whether he is really awake. ]
[ Then his alarm goes off and he scrambles to sit up, cramming himself against the headboard. Republic City. Of all places, Republic City. Every time he wakes here, he feels the shock of supposed safety like a sudden slip and fall. There is no need for aliases and relentless vigilance here -- a fact that leaves him shaky and disoriented, his chest shuddering at the transient zenith of a strange, all-encompassing feeling. Terror, or something close to it. ]
[ A city he's become so comfortable with -- yet since he's left Korra, it's suddenly become alien to him, a pretty oasis built for someone else, inhabited by strangers, his own presence that of a ghost. The place makes no sense for him without Korra's life justaposed with his, and the loneliness and alienation is almost a sickness. ]
[ So: better to tell her he wasn't sleeping because he was working late. It is true, even if just one truth among many. ]
[ Quietly, he examines her over the rim of his teacup. She is perfectly still, the shifting colored lights from the rainfall playing across her face. Her mouth tight, eyes weary, the energy around her beginning to fritz and boil into quiet incoherence. Too much frustrated energy, too much feeling. He knows what that's like. Except it's ten times more horrible because it's Korra who is dealing with it. ]
[ He wants to ask her what happened. But maybe she doesn't want that kind of exposure. Not with a man who is practically a stranger to her now. ]
[ Instead, softly, ]
Try the mooncakes. They're made of lotus seed paste and vanilla ice cream.
[ Something to cool her burnt tongue? ]